Chapter 11
Alani
Blakely clicks closed a window on her computer screen the second I step into the room.
“Smooth,” I say in a droll tone.
Her cheeks pink, and the embarrassment staining them is almost enough to make me forget what an asshole Donavan was a few minutes ago.
“You’re back early,” she says, not giving a voice to the accusation in my stare.
“My babysitter showed up,” I mumble, spinning in the room and falling back on my bed.
I screech when I nearly miss and land on the floor, having misjudged the distance.
Maybe I’m more than a little buzzed.
“I told you, you’re imagining things.”
I brought it up once that I felt like I was being watched, and at first she was creeped out. I don’t know a single girl on campus who didn’t start looking over their shoulders after that girl’s abduction. When I told her it felt like Donavan, she all but said I was crazy.
“He literally stepped out of the shadows tonight and scared Bradley away.”
“Really?” There’s a hint of disbelief in her voice. “He may have helped more than you know.”
I narrow my eyes at her, kicking my foot off the side of the bed and pressing it into the floor to make the room stop spinning.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Haven’t you heard the rumors about Bradley?”
I shake my head, realizing the mistake of it when the room spins faster a little too late.
“Some of the football guys were talking about it.”
I sit up on my bed and glare at her.
“Some of the football guys? You hang out with football guys?”
My roommate is the quiet type. I know she has plenty of opportunities to be around all sorts of athletes here at Lindell because she works for the college newspaper, but every time I’ve ever seen her working, she’s hiding behind the camera rather than experiencing life on the other side of it.
“I had a shoot with a couple of them,” she says with a shrug of her shoulders.
I narrow my eyes at her. “Football season ended weeks ago.”
“It was for the championship.”
“We lost the championship,” I remind her. It was the first one Lindell lost in decades, and there was talk around campus of the head football coach not returning next year.
“Before that,” she says, her voice highlighting her lie.
“You are such a liar.” I grab the pillow from the head of my bed and hurl it in her direction.
It falls two feet from her, and we both stare down at it sitting in the middle of the room.
A cackle rushes up my throat at the sight of it there. As much as I’d like to think I could defend myself if I were attacked like Donavan had threatened could happen, I can’t even get a pillow across the fucking room.
“We’re friends,” I remind her, and that’s truer now than it was when I went to her house for the Christmas holidays.
With the loss of Blaine, who hasn’t spoken to me in weeks and weeks, I’ve spent more time in my room, getting to know my roommate better.
“Tell me,” I urge when she darts her eyes away.
“You’ll make fun of me.”
“Probably,” I say, drawing a smile from her lips.
“Promise you won’t.”
“I can’t,” I tell her honestly.
She chews on the inside of her lip, and I know that she’s going to spill her guts before she even realizes it herself.
She looks like she’s been dying to tell someone.
I take a deep breath, preparing for disappointment.
Something I’ve discovered in recent weeks is that everything seems duller than it ever has before.
I don’t even feel the life of the world unless I’m walking home late at night by myself.
Danger drives me now, and as stupid as that is, Donavan pushing me against the tree tonight proves what I’ve known for weeks.
He hasn’t gotten his fill of me yet, and the notion of that thrills me beyond words.
“On a dare, one of the football players had to do a photoshoot with me.”
The mention of the football players reminds me she never told me what the rumors about Bradley were. I try to shove that in a box in my head so I can bring it up again later.
“You’ve done lots of photoshoots with the athletes.”
I fall back on my bed, yawning and growing bored already.
It’s not her fault she lives a boring life. Most people want boring. Most people would cringe if they had any idea of the things I crave.
“This type of photoshoot,” she says, turning her computer so I can’t see the screen before I have time to sit up fully. “You have to swear that you won’t tell a single soul.”
I hold up my hand. “Scout’s honor.”
“Swear.”
“I swear. Shit, get on with it.”
My jaw unhinges when she turns the screen around. “Holy shit.”
“Right?”
I stand from the bed and make my way closer.
“Jesus. It might have been a dare on his end, but you won the fucking lottery.”
“I was so embarrassed,” she whispers.
“Why?”
I can’t pull my eyes from the screen. Miles of tan skin fill the screen. The look in the football quarterback’s eyes is sultry, the definition of bedroom eyes if I’ve ever seen one.
“He’s naked,” she rushes out on a whisper. “And hard.”
“Did you fuck him?”
The images disappear, the folder minimizing on the screen.
“I take that as a no.”
“I’m a professional,” she growls.
“And the last ten images in that folder were of the money shot. You can’t lie to me and tell me you weren’t affected by photographing that.”
Her cheeks flare red just as realization smacks me in the face.
“There are at least twenty other folders there, Blakely!”
She slams her laptop closed and draws it into her chest protectively.
She holds her head a little higher.
“As embarrassed as I was to take those photos, he was just as eager to share them. I’ve done nineteen shoots since then, and I’m booked solid every weekend until the end of the semester.”
A huff of laughter escapes my throat as I stare at her.
My smile is slow and teasing, and she looks less than impressed at the sight of it.
“That’s so naughty. What would Mr. and Mrs. Corrigan think?”
Her mouth hangs open with the mention of her parents.
They insisted on being called by their last name like the prim-and-proper socialite snobs they are.
We literally had to get ready for dinner.
Leggings or jeans weren’t allowed. It was the most uncomfortable visit I’ve ever experienced, and as much as I hated it, I knew Blakely hated it more.
“They can never know.”
“What are you charging for the shoots, and what would it cost me to get a look at those albums?”
“I shouldn’t have even shown you what I did.”
“That’s not a no,” I hedge as I cross back to my side of the room and sit down on my bed.
“I charge fifteen hundred a session, and don’t ask to see them again.”
“Fifteen hundred a weekend?” My eyes widen. I’ve been thinking of getting a job to take some responsibility off of Ayla and this chick is raking in fifteen hundred a weekend taking pictures? I can’t even spin around a pole in Austin and get that, at least according to the research I’ve done online.
Her chin lifts a little higher.
“What does that look mean?”
“I’m able to do four sessions a weekend.”
I slow blink at her, my alcohol-addled brain trying to do the math of that. “Six fucking grand?”
That’s legitimately drug-selling returns.
“Guys are paying you six grand a weekend to watch them jack off?” I’d fucking do it for half that to be honest.
“To photograph it,” she clarifies as she clears her throat. “I’m a professional.”
“I can’t believe there’s such a market for it.”
“Online pay per click website are all the rage right now. Since college athletes are restricted on what they can be given, they’re finding ways to make their own money.
We have a lot of guys here on scholarships.
When they have to spend all their time either working out, playing their sport, or doing schoolwork, it doesn’t leave much time for a job on the side. ”
“You sound like an infomercial,” I mumble. “If you’re so in favor of athletes getting paid, why aren’t you offering your services for free?”
“My time is valuable too, but the entire point of all this is that while doing a photoshoot they mentioned Bradley.”
“They?” I ask, the plural of the word a little weird after what she just disclosed.
“Not all shoots are solo.”
I smile, my fist tucked under my chin. “Tell me more.”
Maybe there’s some trouble to be found on campus after all.
She shakes her head. “Not all shoots are boudoir either.”
“Boudoir.” I huff. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“Anyway,” she snaps, waving her hand in front of herself as if to shove away the distractions. “Bradley has bragged more than once about scoring with some of the women that leave the parties early. It was implied he doesn’t exactly take no for an answer.”
This sobers me a little.
“So the high-and-mighty athletes of Lindell University will warn the girls about him but don’t do anything to step up and make sure he doesn’t hurt someone?”
“They reported it to the dean,” she says, having a little more knowledge than she initially let on. Knowing Blakely, I imagine she argued the exact same point I’m arguing now.
Donavan would never allow the man to see the light of day again if he stumbled upon Bradley hurting someone. At least that’s what I’d like to imagine. I have limited knowledge of him regardless of how intimate we’ve been in the past.
“You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone about the photo shoots,” she reminds me.
“I won’t,” I agree. “But if you ever need a helper, just let me know.”
“You’d be okay with watching them do that thing in front of the camera?”
The thought of college boys getting naked and jacking off really doesn’t do much for me. They’re boys compared to the man I can’t seem to get out of my head. “I’d be okay with splitting six thousand dollars.”
“I priced it that high because I figured the first guy would tell me no. He didn’t even blink at the price.”
“You should tell them the price goes up next year.”
She looks away.
“You already did, didn’t you?”
She chuckles. “Next semester is booking quickly as well.”
A real laugh bubbles out of me, but it has more to do with the redness growing in her cheeks than anything else.
Blakely Corrigan would never put herself in danger the way I did tonight, and she sure as shit isn’t the type to allow herself to be dragged out of a party and bent over a bed by a stranger.
She was appalled when I told her what had happened between Donavan and me. She shed tears of fear when I explained what happened the day after and how we were held at gunpoint.
She chastised me when I told her how much of a rush it was, how thrilling.
Her response was… Jumping out of an airplane is a rush until the parachute doesn’t open.
“You have that look in your eyes.”
“What look?” I ask, closing them so she doesn’t have easy access to my thoughts.
“The one that says you’ve been looking for danger.”
“You do dangerous things.”
“I take pictures of hot guys masturbating. Not much danger in that.”
I lift my head and glance over at her. “I’m talking about the rock climbing.”
She scoffs. “It’s nothing compared to luring a madman from the shadows just so he’ll pay a little attention to you.”
I drop my head back down to my bed, my eyes angled up at the ceiling.
She’s absolutely right. It is crazy to taunt a madman, but then again, how deranged can he be.
He had me in his truck, and the asshole carried me right back to my dorm when he had every opportunity to drag me into the shadows with him.
It’s not like I would’ve fought him, and maybe it’s that compliance that turns him off so much.