Bullied By the Catcher (The Diamond Serpents #2)

Prologue

JEREMY FLETCHER

She was sinfully beautiful.

Curvy and toned. Tanned from her heritage and time outdoors on the field. Eyes that soaked in everything, that drew you in like a moth to a flame and never let you go. An easy commodore she had with her teammates that pissed me off.

If I was honest, everything she did rubbed against the grain, infuriated me to the point of frustration. Not because we didn’t get along. Not because I didn’t like her. Not because she annoyed me or she was secretly a bad person who had done some unfathomable crime.

I wish that were the case. If it were, my eyes wouldn’t seek her out everywhere I walked, on and off campus, trying to catch just a mere glance of Teresa Reynova.

It was the fucking opposite.

I was in love with the star mid-fielder.

Head over ass, stupid, chump in love with a girl who whenever she saw me glared back like I had run over her puppy with my car and had flipped her sweet little old grandma off. Whatever she saw, whoever she assumed I was, wasn’t good.

And that wasn’t something I was used to. Teresa—her name rolled around in my head easily. Teresa. Mine, this deep, dark thing inside of me that had woken up from the moment I’d seen her rumbled possessively.

She didn’t like me for some reason. Teresa can’t stand me.

I hated the fact as much as the realization of it.

We both couldn’t stand to be around one another, more than likely for different reasons, but it fucking gutted me.

The moment she saw me coming, no matter where we were on campus, she turned and went in the opposite direction.

I shook my head and forced myself to walk through the shared athletics gym. To look away even though every damn bit of me yearned to just watch her, to enjoy her smiles and laughter. Even if they aren’t for me.

I was a fucking idiot.

The whole day went by in a blur of endless thoughts of the dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty with a smile that melted me from the inside out.

I was on edge, but I had to try again.

One more time.

I headed down to the dining hall, and like I knew she would be, there she was.

Sitting on her own at one of the back tables, a stack of books surrounding her like she was inside a library.

I licked my lips at the sight of her. She was in an almost sheer white threadbare tank top that looked like it had seen better days stretched over her chest, the bright blue strap of her sports bra underneath pushing her perfect breasts together almost like a damn offering to the gods.

And I was dying for a taste.

As if sensing me, she looked up and glanced around.

My breath quietly seized in my lungs, but I forced myself to walk towards her.

The grin on my face grew with every step I took before I loomed over her.

Confidence had come easy for me growing up, but with her I had to fake it until I made it.

Teresa had the power to cut me at the knees, and it was another fucking thing I didn’t like.

Ask her out. Go have a good time and fuck her out of your system.

That’s all I needed to do.

The guys on the baseball team teased me mercilessly about how I lived like a monk. I wasn’t into the whole one-night stand thing. I’d been there, done that and sure, in the moment, it’d been hot, extremely satisfying for both parties, but that was it. At the end of it, I was no less alone.

But maybe the guys had a point?

Maybe I’d been celibate for too long and now my brain was going haywire, wanting all sorts of dirty, depraved shit with the one girl on campus who couldn’t seem to stand me.

I reached her table, but she didn’t look up.

Of course, the brat didn’t. My jaw ticked as she very knowingly ignored me.

I tapped the tabletop with my fingers in an annoying way, trying to find the goddamn balls to say something.

Anything. But as I stared down at her, Teresa’s soft profile mere inches away, my brain flatlined.

“What do you want, Fletcher?” she muttered.

Her eyes rose and just as quickly looked away from me.

I might get tongue tied around her, but I was great at reading body language, and no matter how harsh or sassy Teresa was, she wasn’t unaffected by me if that small tinge of pink on the apples of her cheeks had anything to do with it.

“Studying?” I asked, ignoring the attitude in her voice that made me hard. For some fucking reason, when I was around Teresa, my damn brain wasn’t capable of stringing two words together.

Her head moved up, and those damn dark eyes of hers locked with mine like I dreamt of every time I closed my eyes. Fucking hell, she was pretty. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Stunning. The woman had a way of short-circuiting my brain with one damn glance. She was my very own Achilles heel.

“Yes, Fletch.” Her lips tipped upward, and even though it wasn’t a real smile like the million and one I had seen her give her friends, I felt it in my fucking dick. “Books are for studying,” she said sarcastically.

She reached over to her binder and pulled something out, and before I knew what was what, she stood and patted my chest with a warm open-palmed touch I felt all through my body.

“Gold star, baseball boy.” She spoke as if she was talking to a kid before she rolled her eyes and sat back down. I glanced at my chest, and the smile on my face broadened wider. Right there, in the middle of my chest, was a gold fucking star.

A sticker.

She’d given me a gold star. Literally.

“Now that you have Scooby Doo’d this mystery,” she continued, ignoring the way I looked at the sticker on my chest then at her as she settled back down into study mode, “why don’t you go have a protein bar, and I don’t know, go look for one of the many jock bunnies that like to follow you and your buddies around and bug them?

I’m busy tonight.” And just like that, I was dismissed. It irked me. Who did she think she was?

“Jealous?” I stupidly asked yet couldn’t get myself to regret the words when she gifted me one of those sexy-as-hell eye rolls and soft chuckle.

“Oh, please,” she scoffed. I knew I’d be hearing those two little words in my head later while I jerked off thinking about other ways she’d sound that while my head was buried between her thighs.

“I mean, if you ask nicely again, I’d do pretty much anything for you, Teresa.

” The flirtatious tone in my voice was foreign to me.

I had no idea why I tried so damn hard around her.

Liar, the thing that she’d woken up by just existing whispered in my head.

You want her as infatuated with you as you are with her.

“Tere,” she corrected then slammed her book shut, and once again, I was granted the gift of her attention solely focused on me. And fuck, I was a goddamn simp staring at her like she was responsible for everything beautiful and that held meaning even existed on this green earth.

“Look, Fletcher. I don’t know what your deal is but—“

“Go out with me. Let me take you to dinner,” I cut her off.

It was risky.

Ballsy, really. But I had to do something drastic. Just trying to talk to her at the gym or forcing myself next to her on her morning runs wasn’t cutting it. No matter what I said or did, it pissed or annoyed the hell out of her.

“No,” she answered way too quickly, shaking her pretty head at me.

“No?” I repeated. She bit the inside of her cheek with what I could only hope was a smile, one that let me know she thought I was cute in the very least. “Why not?”

“You’re a baseball player,” she stated, as if that was reason enough. I leaned forward and watched as those big brown eyes turned bigger, wider. Who can blame her? I hadn’t invaded her personal space like this before, not even on those quiet early morning runs.

My hand rose and stroked her cheek, and I quickly realized my damn mistake.

Touching her was stupid.

Not only didn’t I have that kind of privilege, she wasn’t the kind of girl you crossed boundaries to push and see what you could get away with. Yet the silky soft feel of her skin under my fingers made me hunger for more.

“Who hurt you, Teresa?” I asked quietly. She blinked. Once. Twice. I could have sworn she might have even started to sway closer, leaning into my touch just a smidge, but it was too quick to know for sure before she pulled away and pointed at me.

“Knock it off, Fletch,” she huffed. She might have been pissed at me for touching her, but there was no denying the way her breathing had changed. The way her lips had parted with desire before she licked them and how her eyes had skidded down to my mouth.

“Go out with me.” It wasn’t worded as a request this time, and it earned me an honest-to-goodness snort. A motherfucking snort! When was the last time a girl snorted around me on accident, much less on purpose?

“?En serio, que te piensas?” she rapid-fired Spanish.

My brain worked overtime to translate. Seriously, who do you think you are?

I opened my mouth to answer, but her eyes narrowed and she sighed.

I knew the language but was a little rusty.

Not that I let on I understood what she’d just said.

“I have to study.” Her fingertips tapped the top of her book, but I didn’t miss the way her eyes skirted to the biology book next to her and her shoulders slumped in almost defeat.

“And unlike baseball players, who get a walk on their grades—”

“A walk on their grades? I see what you did there,” I mumbled proudly because it meant she knew the sport I loved so much.

“Soccer players don’t.”

“I don’t—“ I started to share about my grades, but she cut me off.

“So, let’s please not play whatever cat and mouse game or whatever it is you’re doing.”

“I’m not—“

“I get it.” She sat back into the booth, crossing her arms over her chest and making me have to stifle a deep guttural groan as her beautiful breasts pushed together, making my mouth water for a taste. To shove my face between them and breathe in deeply before dropping my mouth onto her….