“No,” I rasp.
His eyes flick up, sharp as a blade. “Say it again. Look me in the eye and say it.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
Because I can lie with my voice. But my body won’t let me. My body is pulsing with adrenaline and panic and something far, far more dangerous. Something I definitely don’t want Brody Miller to see. Something I have spent years burying so deep I hoped it would die.
But it’s not dead. It’s alive, clawing its way out of me from the inside, hissing and starving.
Brody’s lips curl—not in amusement, but something darker.
“Oh, Lincoln,” he murmurs. “You really are screwed up.”
Humiliation floods through me so hard my vision blurs. My fingers twitch helplessly at my sides. Shame burns through me like acid, but my first thought is somehow that I don’t like him calling me Lincoln.
“Don’t call me that,” I whisper hoarsely.
He leans in closer. His forehead nearly touches mine. His voice goes low enough to gut me from the inside.
“You think you’re the biggest, meanest fucker at Huntston,” he says. “The captain. Top dog. Golden boy. Untouchable.” His breath brushes my jaw. “But look at you. Look at what a little pressure does to you.”
“S-stop,” I choke out. He ignores me.
“You’ve been trying so hard to tear me down,” he says. “To prove you’re better. Stronger. Straighter.” He lets out a rough, humorless laugh. “But you can’t even pretend right now. You’re so fucking hard for me.”
“I said stop?—”
“Say you don’t want this.”
I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t. I physically can’t force the words out. All that comes out is a pathetic, breathy sound. A cross between a moan and a whine. A plea.
Brody’s expression shifts into something terrifying. Something predatory and hungry. He rakes his eyes down my body, and I have no doubt he sees me for what I am—a pathetic, simpering, weakling. And the humiliation of it all is only making my situation worse.
I’m not just hard. I’m aching. Leaking. And seconds away from begging—for what? I don’t know. For escape. For release. For a goddamn moment of peace.
“Drop your pants.”
My eyes flash open wide, staring into his blue eyes that are darker than I’ve ever seen them before. Like he’s another person.No longer the happy-go-lucky, charismatic charmer with the energy of a labrador. That Brody isn’t here. The man who stands in front of me is a cold, hard, demanding, dominant beast of a man I’ve never seen the likes of before.
And I’m powerless, a slave to his whims.
I try shaking my head. I try choking out a protest. But I don’t actually move or say a word. I only part my lips, and untie the drawstring on my athletic pants.
They drop to the ground in a soft swish of fabric that settles around my ankles.
“These, too,” he says, snapping the waistband of my boxers. “And hold up your shirt.”
Brody steps back, not far, just enough that the air between us is suddenly cold and empty.
“Thought so,” he says quietly, and smirks as he looks down at my exposed erection. He sweeps his gaze up from my leaking dick to my watery eyes. “I thought big, bad Lincoln Beckett would have a bigger dick. I should have known better, considering you try to rub it on me every day at practice.”
“I don’t—” His hand closes around my throat, keeping me pinned to the wall while he puts a few more inches of space between us so he can get a better view of my shame. My face is burning so hot, the flush is bleeding down my chest. My dick is already so flushed and engorged it’s purple, so the rest of me might as well turn the same color.
“There’s something wrong with you, Lincoln.”
“Don’t—”
“Don’t what? Don’t tell you how pathetic you are? Don’t tell you that I don’t give a damn what you like to be called, not when you’ve been set on making my life miserable since the day I walked through those doors? And why? Because I make your pathetic little dick hard?”
