Page 2 of Hate the Game (Playing Dirty #1)

***Savannah***

I wanted to crawl into a hole and die or run off a cliff.

Anything but continue standing there, pretending I wasn’t mortified.

S. Lane, the way I was choosing to identify myself in the new phase of life, wasn’t easily embarrassed by bare asses.

She took it on the nose and flirted her butt off.

S. Lane was a badass journalist pretending to be a simple girl with simple interests and desires.

She was harmless. As harmless as a praying mantis moments before she bit her lovers’ head off.

I cocked my hip out to the side and twirled a piece of my hair around my finger. “Well, hell, boys. Do you greet all your fans like this?”

Jax Carrington, golden boy Coach’s son, stepped forward as if his attitude alone had conjured a towel into existence. He hadn’t even finished tying it around his waist before he was shouting at me. “Get out! What are you doing in here? This area of the—”

I strutted forward, my cowboy boots clicking across the floor. “Don’t get shy now, sweetheart. Not after flashing me that cute ass and the strongest looking thighs I’ve ever seen.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

I circled him and trailed my finger along his shoulders, very strong shoulders if I was noticing things I shouldn’t be. “I’m S. Lane from the Varsity Ledger. I was invited here and I’ve never been happier to have accepted an invite.”

Cole West stepped forward, using only his hands to cover what looked like a very large package. “You’re S. Lane?”

I flipped my hair over my shoulder and turned my attention on him. “Well, aren’t you adorable?”

He looked around like he wasn’t sure he wasn’t losing his mind. “Excuse me?”

I forced myself to look away and move on to a different guy on the team, not one of the three that I’d left Texas to take down. The new guy grinned when I tapped his chest and flagrantly uncovered his penis. I made a point of looking between his and Cole’s to take him down a peg before moving on.

“I am S. Lane. You can call me Savannah. Or Sav, if we get a little closer.” I winked at Jax. “I’m supposed to be interviewing a few of you but I didn’t bring a pencil or even a notepad. I guess it’ll have to wait. What could we get up to in the meantime?”

Jax stepped closer to me, his voice lowered. “S. Lane was supposed to be a guy. We wouldn’t have tried to initiate you if we’d known you were a woman. This was a misunderstanding.”

I reached up to tap him on the nose and then slowly dragged my fingertip down his mouth and throat before slowing it down to move over his chest and abs.

“I assure you, baby, I’m all woman. I’d offer to show you but my momma always said a lady doesn’t show her whole hand until at least the second date.

Or after diamonds are exchanged, depending on just how sexy the man is. I don’t see you needing diamonds.”

I saw the moment he wrote me off as a ditzy girl with too many notches on her bedpost. His eyes went cold and he stepped back, hands up, keeping distance between us. I wanted to rub my hands together like a movie villain and cackle. He was going to play right into my hand.

“I don’t have time for this.” He turned and walked away, leaving me in the middle of the locker room with the rest of the team. I watched as Cole and Ryder Stone followed him out.

I clucked my tongue at their retreating backs and looked at the rest of the guys around me.

I suddenly didn’t feel as confident in my ability to handle them all.

Keeping my face flirty, I turned and swayed my full ass right to the door to leave.

Looking over my shoulder at them, I winked.

“Later, boys. I’ve got plans for now but my dance card is empty and waiting for a few new suitors, if you know what I mean. ”

I kept up that confident strut all the way back to my room.

I only let myself collapse into a bundle of nerves once I was behind my locked door with a towel shoved against the slight gap at the bottom of it.

My USC liaison, Barbie Tulley, had thought it was a wonderful idea to give me the room directly across the hallway from The Apex Three but I needed my privacy to scream, hence the towel against the door.

I stretched out on my floor, not one bit concerned about the industrial carpet that had probably seen things most porn shoots hadn’t.

Actually… I put down a towel and laid on it instead.

Then, staring at the ceiling with the sprinkler system that blinked red all night long, I let out the longest groan possible.

I wasn’t cut out to stand in a room full of naked men with a smile on my face.

Playing S. Lane was going to be harder than I imagined.

I’d been on campus for three days and somehow hadn’t seen any of the football team until that locker room encounter.

I’d gotten comfortable, enjoying the sun and the campus before I needed to get serious and start taking people down.

Seeing The Apex Three in person made it all real.

Almost too real. I suddenly wasn’t all that sure about my ability to manipulate them.

What if they weren’t even attracted to me? I was curvy and I’d had plenty of experience with athletic men finding my curves too much.

Too late to chicken out. I was already in too deep. And if The Apex Three didn’t notice me yet, I’d just have to turn up the heat until they burned.