Craving The Player (Amateurs In Love Book 1)(2)
I warned him. Pushing my arm forward again, I hear a loud smack.
"What the fuck!" he shouts with eyes full of fire as he grabs his now bleeding nose. I bite back my laugh and shrug.
"It's not broken. Relax." I grin to myself and give my head a quick shake. "I told you that if you dropped your arms again I would mess with your pretty face." I turn away from him and reach into my gym bag, pulling out two towels. After I toss him the darker coloured one for his gushing nose, I keep the lighter one for myself. The sweat covering my bare torso is wiped away quickly as I crinkle my nose up, throwing the towel back towards my bag once it becomes wet.
"What if you would have broken it?" he groans.
"Then you wouldn't have dropped your arms next time. Take the pain as a learning experience."
"You were coming for my stomach!"
"It looked like I was aiming for your stomach. You would have no idea if that were a trick or not. That's why you don't drop your arms," I say with unwavering confidence. I’ve trained to be a boxer nearly my entire life, learned almost everything there is to know about the sport. He needs to gain a bit of confidence in me. If my ego weren’t the size of Texas I would have been offended. "Anyways, pizza for dinner?"
"Sure," he replies, voice nasally from the pressure he's applying to his nose. His ability to go with the flow is one of the reasons we get along so well.
"Come on, if you get blood on the floor Dad will kill me." I roll my eyes and grab my bag, waiting for Clay to do the same before leading the way to the showers.
"Maybe I'll leave a trail then." His smirk is immediate when I grunt in annoyance.
Working for your dad has its benefits, but dealing with his rage when you break one of his rules is not one of them. No bloodshed is the most crucial rule in this gym. It has been since before I can remember. We Lowry men don't follow many rules, but the ones we do, we live by. As if by breaking a single one would throw the entire Universe off kilter.
"If you want to go that far, I might as well get a couple more hits in. Soak the floor in your misery," I half-heartedly threaten and turn to Clay with a teasing grin.
He just scoffs, shaking his head. "I'd like to see you try."
"Yeah? Want to bet on how long you'd last in the ring with me?" I tilt my head and straighten my back so all six-foot-three of me tower over him.
Clay gulps but keeps his lips pressed together. "Whatever. Arrogant bastard.”
I laugh. "Always full of compliments, Clay. So, stuffed or regular crust?"
"Grab me a beer, would you?" I shout as I drop back on the couch. My words are muffled as a slice of pepperoni stuffed-crust pizza is clenched between my teeth.
"Do I look like your damn mother?" Clayton calls back. I shove my hand between the couch cushions and grab hold of the TV remote. My greasy fingers fiddle with the remote before finding the power button and the familiar sound of my favourite, hot as hell sports announcer fills the room. "Pretty please can you bring me a beer?" I try again, snickering to myself when I hear the fridge door slam shut.
"Here."
I catch the cold can midair when he throws it towards me like a softball. I turn to face him and crack it open nice and slow. I take a long swig and rest my head back against the couch. "Thanks."
“Don’t mention it,” he grumbles and sits down beside me, holding out a paper plate. He wears a look that dares me not to use it, so I take it with a huff and set it down on my lap. My attention drops to my phone when it vibrates, shaking the glass coffee table it's lying on. Reaching for it, I notice the several names spread across the screen.
I lean back and unlock the phone, grinning. A picture of a naked body fills the screen and my eyes narrow. The girl's athletic, toned figure lies outstretched on what looks to be a bed, with a sheer, white, silky robe sagging off of her narrow shoulders. Her knees are bent, legs are spread wide open, the soft pink skin of her bare pussy glistening between them. I reach down to adjust the bulge in my pants with a needy grunt.
"What are you smirking at?" Clay asks, only to get a shrug in response. "Holy shit. Who is that?” He groans into his fist when he moves to look for himself.
Locking my phone, I roll my eyes. “Fuck off and go find your own.”
“I have my own.” He sounds less than mildly confident in that statement.
“Then what are you waiting for?” I raise a brow, testing him before he flips me off and pushes off the couch. “Maybe if you got laid, you wouldn’t be so damn uptight. You’re acting like a twenty-seven-year-old virgin.”
“Not everyone wants to be a ‘fuck it and chuck it’ kind of guy until the day they die. We’re not all that young anymore, dude.”
Registering his words, I nearly blow chunks all over the living room. “I stopped ageing when I turned twenty-four, remember?”
“Right,” he snorts with a heavy roll of his eyes. It’s not like I don’t know how close I am to reaching my thirties. With Clay getting his shit together with most things, I’m reminded nearly every damn day of the week. The thought of becoming someone that needs to start meeting society’s standards makes a knot form in my stomach the size of Texas and my blood run ice cold.
I feel proud of Clay for realizing what he wants in life goes farther than a good fuck and a cold beer afterward. But his path will never be mine. The whole idea of going to a job I hate five days a week before coming home to a wife and three identical kids waiting on the porch of a two-story suburban home makes me want to kneel and pray to be shipped off to another planet.