Chapter 2
I should go tell Indie.
I should go tell Indie.
I should go tell Indie.
Bugger it.
I’d rather torture Tanner Harris.
Plus, Indie’s exhausted from the match today.
It was a miserable autumn day and she sat out on that pitch the entire time, tending to all those sweaty footballers’ whiney needs.
It’s nearly eleven already; she’s off the damn clock.
And I’m quite certain Camden wouldn’t want her going out at this time of night to help his git of a brother.
I may be a tad overprotective, but Indie’s my family and she’s the one person I try to look out for.
Between having her first real boyfriend and all the travelling she’s been doing with the Bethnal team, she’s a walking zombie these days.
I never realised how late she stays up studying at night until she moved in with me a few months ago.
I suppose changing professions like she did is what’s prompted the extra work.
I’ve been pretty knackered, too, since I started my fellowship with Dr. Miller at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
Operating on foetuses in-utero is fucking mind-blowing work.
It’s intense and terrifying and heavy, but so bloody incredible.
Nothing makes you feel closer to God than holding a developing baby’s tiny hand while they remain inside the uterus, breathing in amniotic fluid and still attached by the umbilical cord.
It’s like waffling between two worlds, standing over a border, or going toward the white light. It’s an adrenaline rush like no other.
But right now, my best friend is my concern and she has earned some time to herself.
Yet somehow, Tanner Bloody Harris seems to find a way to put his needs above everyone else’s.
Him calling for her help tonight pisses me off.
He doesn’t deserve her generosity. Indie is wonderful.
It’s just my luck that she would fall for the twin brother of the one man I loathe with every fibre of my being.
Tanner Harris is a knobhead spunk bubble who runs around like a dog with two dicks.
And my hatred toward him is not because he’s rejected me.
The real reason I detest Tanner Harris is because the minute he turned me down, he started his personal mission to shag the entire city of London, paparazzi be damned.
I’ve lost count of the number of seedy pictures that have popped up in the papers and on social media.
All of them include him and a football groupie flavour of the night.
A few weeks ago, some paparazzi got a shot of Tanner naked from the waist down inside a limo with two women.
Then last week he was running barefoot through Yorkshire, obviously on the run from someone, most likely a husband.
He’s a bloody pig, and he’s turned into a paparazzi’s dream come true with as many situations as he has got himself stuck in.
Yet he turned me down as if I was some kind of demotion for him.
As if I didn’t check all the appropriate boxes for him to shag.
Oh, sorry Tanner, I do have a job. Oh, sorry Tanner, I don’t need your bleeding money.
Oh, sorry Tanner, I don’t have a wide-set vagina like the kind of girls you’re used to.
Maybe I’m still a bit cross.
But it wasn’t like I asked to marry the sod.
I wouldn’t marry Tanner Harris if he was the last tosser on Earth, especially now that he’s been sleeping around like he’s got a terminal disease and he’s trying to live out his last days permanently buried inside the Republic of Labia.
I’ve got some indication from Indie that Tanner is on pretty thin ice with his dad because of all the horrid publicity he’s causing for the team, but he just keeps going.
It’s ridiculous. I’m all about sowing wild oats, but not publicly.
After everything I saw happen with Indie and Camden, I’m staying the hell away from that train wreck.
My family and my career would not tolerate a scandal.
However, there’s a dark, sick, masochistic part of my soul that wants to know what muck he’s found himself in tonight.
So for that reason, I grab my keys and the sticky note where I jotted down his instructions and head out.
Let’s see what kind of floozy he’s pissed off tonight.
He’ll hate that it’s me turning up and the thought brings a cheeky smile to my face.
I drive to the street corner he directed me to that’s only minutes away from my flat.
As I approach, I slow to a crawl in my white Mercedes to get a good look around for where Indie is supposed to be picking him up.
He wasn’t very specific so I turn in to park.
I pull out my mobile to text back the number he called her from when, suddenly, flesh hits the hood of my car.
Panic erupts as I worry about what kind of animal I’ve just ploughed in to or if we’re finally being invaded by zombies like I’ve always suspected.
The flesh sack falls off the other end of my hood and pops up again by my passenger side door.
All I see are bare abs and a fist that begins rapping on the window like a psychopath.
“What the—” I start and quickly unlock my door.
The flesh sack yanks it open and folds himself inside. “Fucking hell, drive!” he shouts, making no move to cover himself as he swerves his head around to look behind us like a maniac on the run.
I am frozen. Completely gobsmacked as I take in the sight before me.
Tanner Harris is sitting on my black leather seat, naked as the day he was born.
And as much as I hate his every fibre, I can’t help but admire the impressive human in front of me.
It’s loads of stunningly inked, smooth skin covering mounds and mounds of tight, roped muscle.
A half-sleeve decorates one arm and a full sleeve decorates the other.
I’ve caught glimpses of his ink before, but nothing like this.
His eight-pack is bunched and rippled as he twists in the seat and crouches down a bit.
He looks enormous in my small car. All six foot three of him is evidently too large for my Mercedes A-Class.
My eyes are completely unapologetic as they glance down to his package. What a package it is. As far as penises go, it’s impressive. For a beardy, long-haired, grizzly sort of fellow, you’d kind of expect the carpet to match the curtains.
It doesn’t.
It’s neat and tidy down there. Not bald, which I’m happy to see.
Men shaving their cocks bald gives me the creeps.
It makes me think of prepubescent boy penises and completely kills any attraction I have to them.
A man should be as he is meant to be. Manly, hairy, and masculine.
The overly groomed fellows flittering around east London these days just don’t get my engine revving.
But Tanner’s package is like a well-manicured garden, trimmed just enough and wreathing one of the most beautiful penises I’ve ever laid eyes on. It’s not standing at full salute by any means, but you can see some seriously glorious potential. I swear I see it pulse right as—
“Stop staring at my trouser snake and drive!” Tanner shouts as I notice flashes going off from somewhere in the dark behind us.
“Bloody hell,” I exclaim, looking over my shoulder for any oncoming traffic. “Tanner, if those are paparazzi and they get a shot of me, I’m fucking dead!”
“You’re dead? I’m on strike two! If I get caught, I’m suspended from the team.”
I begin pulling out of my parking stall and make my way away from the flashes, feeling a jolt as I gun the accelerator. “I can’t believe you’ve put me in the middle of this.”
“Well, I didn’t ask you to come, did I?” he barks, resting his hand on the back of my seat to look behind us.
My jaw drops at his nervy comment and I flick my hand up to knock his arm away from me. “I’m saving your arse from the looks of it.”
“Oh, remind me to send you a fucking thank-you card,” he grumbles, looking out the window away from me.
I quickly slam my brakes and he lurches forward, bashing his head on the frame of the door. “You can get out right now!” I screech, the volume making my ears ring. My narrowed eyes go to the rearview mirror and I see the vultures begin running on foot toward us again.
“Ryan!” Tanner exclaims, turning toward me with a shocked expression and rubbing a spot by his eyebrow. “You’re fucking nuts. I can’t get out. Just drive!”
“No,” I say through clenched teeth and narrow my eyes at him while pulling in an ounce of my control. “You don’t get to squish around on my brand new leather seat with your filthy bare arse and then give me a tone. That’s not how this works.”
The flashes are getting closer as traffic whizzes by us with some rude honks. His steely blue eyes meet mine, narrowing to mirror my expression. I don’t want to be photographed with him but, more than that, I don’t want to be taken advantage of like this.
His voice is deep and authoritative when he replies, “This isn’t a fucking joke, Ryan. This is my life we’re talking about.”
His shoulders rise and fall with intensity that swallows up the little bit of air we have left in the car.
I’m breathing heavily, too, because no one gets up my shirt like Tanner Bloody Harris.
We’re staring at each other, both trying to eye-fuck the other into submission while the paparazzi get closer and closer.
His puckered lips purse with frustration and a dimple forms on his right cheek. “Belle Ryan, will you pretty, pretty please, with sugar and cherries on your tits, help me out right now and fucking drive?”
The corner of my mouth wants to lift into a victorious smile, but I hold back and turn my glare toward the road and floor it, leaving the flashing leeches well in our wake.