Page 1 of Sacked by the Quarterback (The Locker Room Playbooks #1)

Chapter One

Paul

I shoved myself into the huddle with the rest of the offense, breath steaming from under our face masks in the cold October air. My lungs burned as I sucked in oxygen, but my cheeks flamed in disgrace.

“Clock’s running out and we’re only down by seven points, so we’ve gotta make a move.” Quarterback Will MacLeod jabbed a gloved finger at the other wide receiver then turned to me. “Martell, the ball’s coming to you if you can get out in front of your defender. They won’t expect it after you couldn’t get your hands on the last one. Think you can take what I give you? ‘Cause it’s coming hard.” He gave me a cocked-eyebrow grin with that fucking awful double-entendre challenge.

I ground my teeth so violently they creaked as the rest of the offense in the huddle whooped over the screaming crowd, fake-scandalized. But the desperation that had haunted the offensive line since late in the third quarter finally broke.

Not that I’d tell him, but MacLeod’s plan was a good move, especially for a second string QB and a walk-on. And it’d give me a chance to redeem myself after I’d fucked up, starting too late down the field and barely touching the ball as I failed to catch his pass.

That asshole was on his knees in front of us—how many times had I pictured him in this exact position? So I crowded over him until he looked up. My blood thundered with testosterone as we stared at each other.

“Anything you give me, I can handle,” I replied. The huddle erupted with laughter again. I bared my teeth and shoved my mouth guard back in.

MacLeod’s green eyes flashed. “You’d better, Martell,” he said around a too-cocky grin. “Or your ass is mine.”

My face burned for an entirely different reason.

The huddle broke and I lined up wide right. Everything depended on this catch—State U winning the homecoming game against our conference rivals, for one. Securing my athletic scholarship for another year. Giving my parents bragging rights at the next family get-together. And, oh yeah, whether ESPN’s talking heads would later be babbling about “junior wide receiver Paul Martell’s butter fingers” or “Martell’s impossible game-winning catch.”

Little would they know that my mistake earlier had less to do with my skills and more to do with the epic distraction that was Will motherfucking MacLeod.

My world narrowed to the game. The ball snapped. I sprinted toward the endzone. Eight yards down, I angled across the field, losing the defender chasing me entirely. I whipped my head to MacLeod.

Damn. He’d done it. The pass was fucking perfect. Released just as he got pummeled into the turf.

I leaped, vaulting over an opposing player who dropped low to take out my knees.

My hands locked around the football, and I cradled it into my body. Secure. It had to be.

I slammed into the ground, breath punched out of me?—

Clouds hung in the blue sky between the gaps in my helmet’s face mask, the roar of the crowd the only thing louder than my ragged breaths. In the middle of an out-of-body experience, I sat up, and my arms unlocked around the ball still clenched in my grip.

Touchdown.

One of our guys yanked me to my feet and pulled me into a sweaty hug, yelling and smashing our helmets together. When I pulled away, my eyes—goddamn traitors—searched out Will.

Had he been watching me?

I was being ridiculous—he threw a pass to a precise location dictated by the play, trusting I’d do my job and be exactly where I needed to be. Then he got creamed into nothing by a linebacker. Of course he wasn’t watching. But my stomach knotted in hope like a teenage girl obsessing over her crush noticing her walking down a flight of stairs or some shit.

The touchdown I’d caught had run out the clock, leaving us down by one point, and Will was already regrouping at the three-yard line for the go-ahead for the two-point conversion. My chest tightened, and I clenched my jaw. What the fuck did it matter what he thought? Get it together, Martell. Game’s not over.

I assembled with the rest of the offense, still reluctantly impressed with the play Will executed. As good, if not better, than our starting quarterback would’ve if it weren’t for a potentially season-ending knee injury.

My body moved on autopilot when the ball left our center’s hands to fly to Will. But I’d just made a major play, and their defense was on me like flies on shit. Time slowed as Will assessed the receivers, and then…

That crazy motherfucker ran the ball himself .

The score was barely final when the screaming home team fans rushed the field in a raging river of blue and white. For a moment, I was able to savor our victory, forgetting about my missed catch and that I’d almost cost us the win, and instead focus on the game-winning touchdown I’d pulled in.

Cooldown and media interviews passed in a blur. It seemed like everyone wanted a piece of me and Will. Thankfully, we were interviewed together only once. I managed to answer questions without tripping over my own tongue, and solidly kept my temper in check when asked by one guy about my missed incomplete pass. But God, the way Will handled himself—his easy-going California cool-guy charm had them eating up every sound bite, especially when he told the media he was hoping his mom was watching. I left for the locker room as soon as I could.

The media finally gone, we all cut loose. Whooping and yelling, banging on the lockers and benches, my teammates chest bumping each other and smashing helmets. Sports drink bottles flew through the musky, humid air, the energy practically vibrating off the walls.

I forced more enthusiasm than I felt. We’d fought hard for the win and deserved every bit of praise. At least everyone else did. My mistake had almost cost us the game, and I’d certainly hear about it from Coach. But I already knew an error like that couldn’t happen again.

Shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

I grinned and congratulated my teammates, glancing around for Will. But he and his surfer boy good looks were nowhere to be found.

“Martell, you heading out with us?” one of the linebackers asked. I laughed and shook my head, appreciating the invitation.

“Got a big project due Monday,” I lied smoothly while I took off my sweaty padding. I was doing fine in my classes, which made me a genius in the eyes of some of the guys on the team. As I suspected, nobody questioned my excuse. I held out my fist to him, and he bumped it. “Get some for me, yeah?”

“You know it, man.”

Because of the press interviews, I hadn’t had a chance to come down from the energy from the game, and I needed a distraction. The university had invested millions in the state-of-the-art training facility, so I headed through the well-lit maze of blue, white, and shiny, chrome detailing to the well-stocked refueling station. I killed a bottle of Gatorade and a couple of the peanut butter protein bars that tasted like actual food.

Temporarily sated, I shucked the rest of my uniform. I grabbed my shower stuff, wrapped a towel tightly around my waist, and headed to clean up.

Most of the guys had showered and were already changing to go out to dinner, then on to the afterparty—the real celebration. Sweaty bodies, muscles flexing, backs arching, then satisfied for the rest of the night.

My teammates would be hooking up with their preferred version of Tits McGee, but my chosen partner would be more…Dick McDude. I never made it a secret that I was gay, and most of the team didn’t give a shit. More than a few friends had tried to hook me up over the past few years—not un appreciated. But I hated how gossip ran through teams faster than wildfire, so I kept any dating life—or lack thereof—private. Back in high school, some asshole outed my crush on another student during practice. That was more than enough to teach me to play my cards close to my chest from then on.

And if the current fantasy guy in my spank bank happened to look a little too much like Will MacLeod, well… The team didn’t need more drama, so I’d be keeping that to myself too.

Just as I entered the showers, Will materialized out of the steam like some god, heading directly toward me.

I did not allow myself to look down at where his white towel hit his waist, so I focused on his upper half, which was arguably more distracting. His shaggy blond hair, still wet from his shower, had darkened, the water dripping from the waves onto his shoulders. A droplet slid over his collarbone and down his pecs. I caught myself staring a moment too late, and his green eyes met mine.

He was tailormade to torture me. I crushed my eyelids shut.

“MacLeod,” I called as he passed by. Jesus Christ. What was I even doing? I had no plan. But my mouth didn’t seem to know that.

“Hey, bro,” he said. “Awesome catch today. Totally came in clutch.” The bright, open friendliness on his face took me off guard. His teeth flashed in a grin, white and straight, as his lips tilted up—were they as soft as they looked? Fuck.

Other than in practice, we’d barely said two words to each other since Will had walked onto the team this season. Not that he hadn’t tried. But avoiding a blond, green-eyed teammate who’d crawled straight out of my wet dreams seemed to be in my best interest at the time.

“You got a minute? After I shower?” I asked. Shit, that wasn’t supposed to come out.

“Sure thing. Be a few anyway—gotta get changed.”

Before he could say anything else, I stomped off, took the first available shower stall, and cranked the water as hot as it would go, losing myself in the misty haze.

Fuck me, this was getting out of hand. Thank god I was in there behind a curtain because my dick had decided it very much wanted to be in hand. “Oh, no you don’t,” I whispered to it. I was losing my mind.

It was one thing to be attracted to Will. He was objectively hot. Miles of tanned skin, a body chiseled from the same brutal conditioning regimen the whole team went through. He and I were pretty evenly matched in height, an idea my brain liked to toy with. Would he press me into a wall, biting my neck, rutting against me until we both spilled, warm and wet, all over each other’s abs? I’d already seen him kneel, but how would he look with my hand gripped in his soft-looking hair and his lips stretched wide around me…

The dude was fire.

But even worse, he was someone I could see myself dating, if we weren’t teammates playing for a Division I school. Relationships could tear teams apart, screwing with dynamics, undoing seasons of trust and progression, and forcing the other players to choose sides like the kids of shitty divorced parents.

What sucked the most was how Will had tried to be friends early on, after he’d officially made the team. Talking to me, teasing…maybe even flirting? I’d brushed him off every time, but that didn’t mean I didn’t watch him every chance I got. I couldn’t help myself. But why get close, take the risk, set myself up for distraction and heartbreak? And his sweet, earnest face when I talked to him now…

Enough.

I turned the water to cold, and my body exploded in shivers and goosebumps. Half of my shower was scrubbing off the game sweat. The other half was waiting for my dick to soften.

By the time I’d dried off and slung the towel around myself, I was mostly convinced I could manage to act like a normal human for the time it would take to get dressed and get the hell out of there. Will probably forgot I’d stupidly asked him to stay and was long gone anyway.

No such luck.

He lounged on the padded bench in front of his locker area, one ankle crossed carelessly over the other knee as he watched something on his phone. Goddammit, it’s like he wanted me to look at his crotch. Tight jeans hugged thick thighs, and his upper body was covered by a black tee and a leather jacket that fit better than it had any right to. And the fact that I blushed only irritated me.

“Hey, Paul,” he said. “What did you want from me?”

And wasn’t that a loaded question?

“You think you’re hot shit, but you’ve got a lot to prove,” I spat out, my mouth totally running away from me. “You only played today because of Washington’s injury, and that pass of yours almost cost us the game. Glad you managed to get it together or we’d be screwed.”

Hurt and confusion shuttered his face. It was like every emotion from him blasted into me, magnified a hundred times, and I couldn’t look at him anymore, his wounded expression.

“Fuck you. I know I’m not the starting QB.” Will stood up and crossed his arms around his chest. “But I earned my spot. And the incomplete pass…” Will trailed off, shaking his head as he turned his phone screen toward me. The blood drained from my face as the video replay only confirmed what I already knew.

All my fault—I was too busy watching you move, and I started down the field a split-second too late. But, like the asshole I was, I kept my mouth shut.

Will drew in a deep breath. “I thought—I thought you and I were in synch out there today, especially for that last play. And when you asked me to wait here for you, I thought, just for a second…” His arms tightened around his chest, just slightly, the jacket pulling around his broad shoulders. “You know what? Forget it. Guess I was wrong.”

“Guess so.” I clamped my jaw closed, swallowing hard against any other defense mechanisms that wanted to show up.

Will looked me straight in the face, emerald eyes hard. “I take it you’re not coming out with us?”

“Nope. I don’t need you.”

Will clenched his hands into fists before he turned and stormed to the exit, leaving me staring after him in my damp towel. My eyes followed him until the door slammed behind him. I swiped a hand over my face, oily regret pouring through me. What the fuck had I done?