Page 3 of Endurance
But all of that was before my brother decided to fall in love.
A few months ago, Cam and I were at a pub called Old George with Belle and Indie, and just when I was about to seal the deal with the crazy hot Dr. Ryan, I saw Camden dancing with Indie. And it wasn’t the kind of dancing I’d seen him do a thousand times before with a thousand other birds at various clubs around London. It was the kind of dancing you feel ashamed to be watching because it was such an incredibly private moment. It was like they were Greek gods atop Mount Olympus and we were all watching from the lowly human plane. I couldn’t bring myself to turn away, but what I saw between them made me horribly uncomfortable.
It was love.
My brother—the knicker-dropping, smirking sod that is Camden Bloody Harris—was in love.
A Harris Brother doesn’t toss out that emotion freely either. We only have two loves in our lives. Our sister and the gorgeous game of football. Nothing more.
So, Indie Porter becoming a permanent fixture in my brother’s life pretty much puts a NO ENTRY sign on Belle Ryan’s sausage warmer. I’m a “shag ‘em and bag ‘em” type, and doing that with her would get my arse kicked by both my brother and Indie. My sister would be there at the end to finish the job.
But, bloody hell, it’s not for lack of wanting. Belle Ryan is hot enough to resurrect adolescent wet dreams. She’s tall and curvy in all the right places. Her body is the kind of shape that hourglasses are inspired by. As it is, I’ve never been one for the skinny birds. They just seem too frail. Too weak. Too breakable. Belle, on the other hand, looks like the type that could give it as good as she takes it. She has gorgeous muscled legs that I’ve fantasised wrapped around my face; a trim waist that accentuates the perfect swells of her arse; and tits that make me want to cry over the fact that I’ll likely never see them. I’m a proper boob bloke, too, so it really is a shame because she’s sporting a lot more than a handful. Top her off with long, nearly black hair and dark eyes to match, and Belle Ryan is a sexy, crazy-hot mystery that my body begs to uncover.
But I can’t uncover her because, as soon as I did, I’d be done and that would hurt Indie. And I never want to hurt Indie. I’ve become close to her the last couple of months. Since the start of our season, she’s been shadowing Bethnal Green F.C.’s team doctor. She used to be a surgeon with Belle at The Royal London Hospital, but after everything erupted in the media over her snog with Cam, she decided to leave there and shift her focus to sports medicine. She’s good at it, too. The entire team loves her and not in the perverted way that Camden was worried sick over. He asked me to look after her and make sure the guys treat her with respect. Now I see her like a younger sister, and the aftermath of hurting her best friend is a place I intend to avoid.
So, after mine and Belle’s flirty moment at the pub, I flipped the switch on her. I turned off the Harris charm and backed off. Since then, she’s been hostile toward me. It’s a bit of a nuisance because Indie is constantly with my brother, so Belle and I have been thrust together a lot. And it’s not the horizontal thrusting that I excel at. She gives me a look like she wants to use my balls for a rousing game of Yahtzee.
The problem is that her acting like a raging bitch toward me every time we see each other doesn’t ward me off of her. It only pours fuel on my fire. I’ve always liked the crazy ones, something my brothers give me a lot of shit about. It’s that fire in their eyes that erupts when you least expect it. The unpredictability. You never fully know how they’re going to react. It could be great, or it could be fatal. I guess I have a fetish for that sense of danger. On top of all of that, Belle’s a surgeon so she’s crazy smart along with all that hot anger.
I’m a striker with a wide open net.
ISHOULD GO TELLINDIE.
I should go tell Indie.
I should go tell Indie.
Bugger it.
I’d rather torture Tanner Harris.
Plus, Indie’s exhausted from the match today. It was a miserable autumn day and she sat out on that pitch the entire time, tending to all those sweaty footballers’ whiney needs. It’s nearly eleven already; she’s off the damn clock. And I’m quite certain Camden wouldn’t want her going out at this time of night to help his git of a brother. I may be a tad overprotective, but Indie’s my family and she’s the one person I try to look out for. Between having her first real boyfriend and all the travelling she’s been doing with the Bethnal team, she’s a walking zombie these days. I never realised how late she stays up studying at night until she moved in with me a few months ago. I suppose changing professions like she did is what’s prompted the extra work.
I’ve been pretty knackered, too, since I started my fellowship with Dr. Miller at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Operating on foetuses in-utero is fucking mind-blowing work. It’s intense and terrifying and heavy, but so bloody incredible. Nothing makes you feel closer to God than holding a developing baby’s tiny hand while they remain inside the uterus, breathing in amniotic fluid and still attached by the umbilical cord. It’s like waffling between two worlds, standing over a border, or going toward the white light. It’s an adrenaline rush like no other.
But right now, my best friend is my concern and she has earned some time to herself. Yet somehow, Tanner Bloody Harris seems to find a way to put his needs above everyone else’s. Him calling for her help tonight pisses me off. He doesn’t deserve her generosity. Indie is wonderful. It’s just my luck that she would fall for the twin brother of the one man I loathe with every fibre of my being. Tanner Harris is a knobhead spunk bubble who runs around like a dog with two dicks. And my hatred toward him is not because he’s rejected me.
The real reason I detest Tanner Harris is because the minute he turned me down, he started his personal mission to shag the entire city of London, paparazzi be damned. I’ve lost count of the number of seedy pictures that have popped up in the papers and on social media. All of them include him and a football groupie flavour of the night. A few weeks ago, some paparazzi got a shot of Tanner naked from the waist down inside a limo with two women. Then last week he was running barefoot through Yorkshire, obviously on the run from someone, most likely a husband. He’s a bloody pig, and he’s turned into a paparazzi’s dream come true with as many situations as he has got himself stuck in.
Yet he turned me down as if I was some kind of demotion for him. As if I didn’t check all the appropriate boxes for him to shag. Oh, sorry Tanner, I do have a job. Oh, sorry Tanner, I don’t need your bleeding money. Oh, sorry Tanner, I don’t have a wide-set vagina like the kind of girls you’re used to.
Maybe I’m still a bit cross.
But it wasn’t like I asked to marry the sod. I wouldn’t marry Tanner Harris if he was the last tosser on Earth, especially now that he’s been sleeping around like he’s got a terminal disease and he’s trying to live out his last days permanently buried inside the Republic of Labia. I’ve got some indication from Indie that Tanner is on pretty thin ice with his dad because of all the horrid publicity he’s causing for the team, but he just keeps going. It’s ridiculous. I’m all about sowing wild oats, but not publicly. After everything I saw happen with Indie and Camden, I’m staying the hell away from that train wreck. My family and my career would not tolerate a scandal.
However, there’s a dark, sick, masochistic part of my soul that wants to know what muck he’s found himself in tonight. So for that reason, I grab my keys and the sticky note where I jotted down his instructions and head out. Let’s see what kind of floozy he’s pissed off tonight. He’ll hate that it’s me turning up and the thought brings a cheeky smile to my face.
I drive to the street corner he directed me to that’s only minutes away from my flat. As I approach, I slow to a crawl in my white Mercedes to get a good look around for where Indie is supposed to be picking him up. He wasn’t very specific so I turn in to park. I pull out my mobile to text back the number he called her from when, suddenly, flesh hits the hood of my car. Panic erupts as I worry about what kind of animal I’ve just ploughed in to or if we’re finally being invaded by zombies like I’ve always suspected. The flesh sack falls off the other end of my hood and pops up again by my passenger side door. All I see are bare abs and a fist that begins rapping on the window like a psychopath.
“What the—” I start and quickly unlock my door.
The flesh sack yanks it open and folds himself inside. “Fucking hell, drive!” he shouts, making no move to cover himself as he swerves his head around to look behind us like a maniac on the run.
I am frozen. Completely gobsmacked as I take in the sight before me. Tanner Harris is sitting on my black leather seat, naked as the day he was born. And as much as I hate his every fibre, I can’t help but admire the impressive human in front of me. It’s loads of stunningly inked, smooth skin covering mounds and mounds of tight, roped muscle. A half-sleeve decorates one arm and a full sleeve decorates the other. I’ve caught glimpses of his ink before, but nothing like this. His eight-pack is bunched and rippled as he twists in the seat and crouches down a bit. He looks enormous in my small car. All six foot three of him is evidently too large for my Mercedes A-Class.
My eyes are completely unapologetic as they glance down to his package.What a package it is.As far as penises go, it’s impressive. For a beardy, long-haired, grizzly sort of fellow, you’d kind of expect the carpet to match the curtains.
It doesn’t.
