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  Wildcat

  A Mavericks Tackle Love Novel

  Published by Max Monroe LLC © 2018, Max Monroe

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-0-9989430-4-6

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Editing by Silently Correcting Your Grammar

  Formatting by Champagne Book Design

  Cover Design by Peter Alderweireld

  Photo Credit: Wander Aguiar

  Title Font by: Font Forestry

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Intro

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  You know how it goes with dedications.

  You scan to the page, only to find that the book is once again not dedicated to you.

  Not this time, (insert your name here).

  Because we are the best of friends/are absolutely crazy about each other/haven’t seen each other in a long, long time/are in some way related/have only shared a fleeting, longing glance/have the funniest conversations/have never actually met but already know we’ll love each other…

  You’re funny/funny/funny/funny…

  Yeah, we only really like funny people.

  And this sexy, long, thick…book is for you.

  (You thought we were gonna say cock, didn’t you?)

  Quinn Bailey

  The New York Mavericks

  #9 | Quarterback

  Height: 6-6 | Weight: 228 lbs. | Age: 28

  Alma Mater: Alabama

  Last Season Stats: TDS: 32 | INT: 7| YDS: 4,478 | RTG: 103.1

  You see all of those O’s? That’s my team, The New York Mavericks.

  And that little circle in the center with the letters QB? That’s me, Quinn Bailey. I’m the quarterback, and funnily enough, my initials match my job title. Some call it coincidence, but I call it kismet. I was born to eat, sleep, and breathe Mavericks football.

  Now, the X’s, well, they’re the other team. You can forget about those because they don’t fucking matter.

  When I get done with them, all you’ll remember is me.

  Trust me, I’ll make it good.

  Are you ready to play?

  My phone buzzed as I ducked my head to fit through the door on to my flight, and I glanced down to see who it was.

  Instantly, pain exploded above my eye and pulsed along with my heartbeat.

  “Ow. Fuck,” I muttered, rubbing at the spot I’d just knocked against the hard metal of the airplane’s exterior. Day after day of eating dirt and turf, compliments of some of the biggest guys in the world, and I was going to end up in the hospital from something as simple as boarding my flight.

  “Walking and texting,” a flight attendant said with a sigh, shaking his head. “Hazardous to your health, I tell ya. Just last week, I missed a step on the sidewalk in front of Bloomingdale’s.”

  “Wow,” I commiserated. “That sucks. Did you get hurt?”

  His voice was somehow grave and shrill at the same time. “I spent four hundred dollars in there after I fell into the sale sign! Four hundred dollars meant for things like eating and self-maintenance. I had to skip breakfast this morning, and my eyebrows are making a bid to become one. Trust me, it’s still hurting.”

  I laughed at his tale of woe and decided immediately I liked him. I glanced up again to survey his features, noting he was groomed to the nines—even his so-called overgrown eyebrows—had plump, friendly cheeks, and blue eyes that sparkled.

  I wonder if he’s my brother’s type?

  Taking my life into my own hands, I focused back on my phone as I navigated the short aisle to my seat in the second row.

  A text from my brother sat waiting for me.

  Speak of the devil.

  Denver: Did you make it on to the off-brand deathtrap yet?

  Kicking my bag under the seat, I settled into the leather and typed out a response.

  Me: Just sat down. And there were no flights left on any of the major airlines, so it was either this, FedEx, or you don’t see me.

  Denver: RoyalAir sounds like a one-guy operation with a Prince Harry complex. At least FedEx is a global corporation. They probably could have fit you into their cargo bay. They must haul oversized loads occasionally, right?

  Apparently, my brother was an airline snob. You’d think he worked for Delta or something. RoyalAir was actually a pretty nice, new-to-the-scene airline. Sure, their seats could’ve been a little more accommodating for a man my size, but it wasn’t like the major airlines had La-Z-Boy recliners.

  Me: Ha. Ha. I’m laughing so hard my sides hurt. And to think I was going to set you up with a cute guy I just met.

  Denver: My straight brother picking out men for me? Jesus take the wheel. Tell me, how big was the pool of gay men you selected him from today? Negative one?

  Me: So what if he’s the only potential mate I met for you today? He could be great. You don’t know.

  Denver: Right.

  Me: Fine. But you’re missing out.

  Denver: Sweet baby kittens. You’ve bonded with the random gay man.

  Me: He’s funny!

  I shifted and squirmed, trying to make room for my shoulders in the miniature-sized airplane seat and pulled my Beats headphones up from around my neck to settle on my ears. Candy bars, shampoo, even horses—all cute when you make them little. Seats that I had to be confined to for more than five minutes? Not so much.

  Even the first-class seat struggled to accommodate the width of a professional football player like myself, but a few hours of discomfort was worth the end result—three blissful days with my family before the grind of the upcoming Mavericks season took over my life.

  Once the season started, I never even considered flying home for fear of losing focus.
It was too easy to slow down and slip into a different frame of mind when I set foot in Boone Hills. An hour and a half south of Birmingham with a population of three hundred, it put the small in small town and the simple in simple life. Frankly, it was everything I loved in life—homey, personal, completely feel-good in its eccentricities—but it wasn’t conducive to maintaining the mental focus required to lead a football team at the professional level.

  My phone vibrated against my thigh.

  Denver: Funny ha-ha, or funny-looking? I’m still young and beautiful. I’m not ready for someone with a “good personality” yet.

  I smiled to myself and shook my head as “Rockstar” by Post Malone featuring 21 Savage pumped into my ears.

  Me: Maybe you’re right. Remotely hooking you up with someone probably isn’t a good idea. You sound a lot less likable via text.

  I smiled as I thought about how true that was—in person, my brother Denver was remarkably pleasant. Truth be known, he was one of my favorite people in the whole world, and I didn’t see him nearly enough. He was still in college at the University of Alabama, and my schedule with the New York Mavericks was extensive and long. My trips home were few and far between, and this would be the last one I’d be able to make for a while. Hell, I’d spent last Christmas in a cabin in the Catskills with my coach, his family and closest friends, and several other players, so dedicated was my vow to avoid hometown comfort during the season.

  “Excuse me,” I heard from my immediate right. A guy in his early thirties with a flashy suit and perfectly gelled comb-over hadn’t even made ass-to-seat contact, but he was already flagging down the flight attendant. I couldn’t see Mr. Bloomingdale’s behind the line of people still boarding the plane, but based on the snap of the stupid fuck’s fingers in impatience, I immediately felt sorry for the funny flight attendant.

  Darkness enveloped me as I closed my eyes, pushed my head back into the headrest as best as I could at my height, and tried to let the music drown out everything else. 21 Savage rapped about having a twelve-car garage despite only having six cars, one of my favorite lines of the song, but the annoying hum of the guy next to me pulled me out of the moment and made me crack an eye—just barely.

  “Forty percent vodka, fifty percent cranberry, ten percent lemon juice. Don’t try to cheapen it with less vodka, okay, sweetheart? Take care of me here.”

  Jesus Christ. I guess it’s Merry Douche-mas in July to us today.

  I closed my eyes again without looking over, not at all interested in the play-by-play of this self-acclaimed sweet talker.

  But a female voice was not what I was expecting, especially one that vibrated in my chest like it was physically scraping against me. It had a delicate rasp, almost like she was losing her voice to sickness, but the end of every word came out soft and smooth like silk.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t have any lemon juice on board. I’d be happy to make the cranberry and vodka for you, though.”

  Simple and to the point, she did her best to remain professional, and like some kind of hypnosis, it pulled my eyes open again—both of them.

  Her skin was like a glass of hot chocolate, the mocha swirling smoothly over the surface. Its only imperfection was a tiny smattering of dots—brown freckles sprinkled like cinnamon across her nose—and the deep brown of her eyes worked to look warm despite the dickhead they were pointed at.

  Je-sus, she’s pretty.

  All of a sudden, comb-over in 2B’s use of sweetheart made a lot more sense. He was on the prowl.

  “Fifty-fifty then, babe. But you should really talk to your superiors about catering to your VIP passengers more specifically,” the guy said with a derogatory undertone. Like somehow making her feel less worthy was going to get him somewhere.

  I couldn’t seem to pull my eyes away from her face to look at him, but I had a feeling if I’d been able to, the smug bastard would have looked like he actually thought he could talk to her like that and get in there.

  In my experience, being a condescending asshole and calling women you’d never met babe never helped in the flirting game.

  She smiled minutely—an expression I could tell was forced but I suspected he couldn’t—and gave the asshole what he wanted, if only in an effort to get the fuck out of there. “No problem, sir.”

  “It’s Luke,” the guy said, giving her his name but not bothering to get hers. She nodded, her creamy pink-tipped fingernails squeezing into the leather of the headrest in front of us reflexively.

  Somewhere deep in my mind, I had a moment of disappointed reflection that I wouldn’t be seeing any more than necessary of the beautiful woman in front of me this flight. Lucas Dickhead Doucherson had made sure of that.

  Her eyes came to me then, and I pulled my headphones off, settling them on my neck to better hear her as she spoke. “Can I get you anything, sir?”

  I glanced down at my phone to check the time. It was already 7:55 p.m., and we were supposed to be wheels up in ten minutes. Anything I asked of her would take too much of her time before takeoff.

  I searched out her name tag, finding it a few inches down from her shoulder, nestled in the crisp white fabric of her shirt, and then met her eyes, trying to make my face as remotely friendly as possible, and shook my head. “No thanks, Catharine. I’m good for now.”

  She smiled again, this time big enough to empty the flesh from the dimples in her cheeks, and her nonverbal gratitude ran through me like a current.

  God, why does her smile feel so personal?

  A quick glance to Luke told me he was completely oblivious to the fact that I’d just addressed her by her actual name and received a warm smile in return.

  Some fools can’t be taught.

  I forced myself to put my headphones back in place and close my eyes as she walked away, but my imagination finished the image for me as clearly as though I’d actually seen it. The sway of her hips, the lines of navy that seamed together her hose along her calves, and the perfect sweep of her dark hair across her back—all of it burned on my eyelids and trickled into a special bank of memories.

  A place behind a lock and key—and then a coded keypad for good measure—where I kept inappropriate things hidden away from public discovery.

  That’s right, Quinn. Take that sexy little montage to the grave.

  I’d done this flight—on my way home to Boone Hills—what felt like a thousand times, usually via one of the major airlines and out of Newark rather than JFK, but it was all the same. Usher herd of people on to plane as quickly as possible, cram bags into overhead bins, cater to those of us lucky enough to be in the front of the plane, go over a bevy of safety information that no one paid attention to, and then push back from the gate to get the show on the road and the big metal bird in the air.

  Catharine was prettier than most of the flight attendants I’d encountered in the past, but she was also just another face in the sea. After this flight, I’d never see her again. Frankly, once the season started up, most of the faces I’d see would be ugly, male, and coming at me at full speed with every intention of breaking my body.

  Ah, football. Good times.

  My playlist rolled on to a Selena Gomez song, and I felt my cheeks pull up into a smile. My teammate and one of my best friends, Sean Phillips, was always stealing my phone and adding random music to my playlist. Funny thing was, I normally liked everything he added. Britney, Selena, Beyoncé, Kesha, Lady Gaga—they were all empowered women. And I got a certain kind of excitement out of women who knew their own worth. Not that I shared that kind of information with Sean—he wouldn’t keep adding to my music collection if he thought I was actually enjoying it.

  I felt a presence return and tensed. A cramping, tight chest and clenching hands—symptoms of want and curiosity—tried to sway me to give in to the urge to take a peek.

  Was Catharine back with the drink? Would she smile my way again? Would I be able to keep my loose tongue from running away and saying something embarrassing?

/>   It was serious battle, a war waged with nothing but desperation and self-preservation on my side, but I managed to keep my eyes closed. Just barely.

  I did turn the volume down on my music so I could listen in, though. I was only fucking human.

  The voice I heard surprised me. It was hard, to the point—and it definitely wasn’t hers.

  “Your drink, sir.”

  I opened my eyes then, seeing Mr. Bloomingdale’s leaned over, the offensive drink offered up to Luke like a trophy. My brother’s almost-boyfriend was the picture of poise, his face fixed into an almost-smile—but make no mistake, there was nothing friendly about it.

  Just as I’d suspected, I wouldn’t be seeing too much of the pretty flight attendant from before. Even through my disappointment, I was glad for it. Glad she had the intelligence to avoid a guy like Luke despite his obvious money, and glad she had friends who were willing to help her do it.

  I could feel my face settling into a grin just as the male flight attendant looked over—and winked.

  My smile deepened.

  He looked surprised for the barest hint of a moment, and then turned to hustle back up to the front of the plane. He spoke rapidly to Catharine, and I watched raptly, unable to stop myself. Her eyes flicked up in surprise and landed right on mine.

  All I could do was hold them.

  Moments passed as time slowed, her surprised gaze opening up a virtual tether between us where she tried to infiltrate my mind and I tried everything I could think of to be superhuman enough to let her.

  Fuck being only human. I could Clark Kent the shit out of this moment and open up my mind.

  Just as concentration started to feel a little more like constipation, my abilities to let her mind meld with mine officially limited by the constraints of something called science, the speaker crackled, breaking the connection. Released from her grasp, I moved my scrutiny to the male flight attendant standing at the front of the plane, right in front of the cockpit doors, an old-style beige phone to his ear.