Touch Me Not (Manwhore Series #1)

Chapter One

She scanned the crowd and sighed in relief when she spotted Adam heading her way. He looked so all-American, boy-next-doorish with his sandy blond hair artfully spiked, laughing at his friend Mike Craft as the two of them pushed their way through the crowd.

Lily smiled softly as they approached. Adam Roberts had been her best friend since third grade. She only wished he would wake up and realize how much more they could be, but she'd given up on that hope a long time ago. Now he was engaged to be married to Susan Williams, and she had to pretend to be ecstatically happy for him when all she wanted to do was cry. Or punch Sue right in the face. It sucked to be her, but then, that was nothing new either.

For two seconds, she wanted to growl in frustration. Sue and her little posse of sorority sisters were firmly attached. Adam had been so busy over the summer working for his dad and then spending what time he had left with Sue that Lily had been put on the back burner. She'd been busy herself, interning at a literary agency in New York most of the summer. While she didn't hold it against him—well, not much—she would like to sit down and eat one meal with him, just the two of them. She missed her best friend.

"Lily." Adam grinned and wrapped her in a bear hug, but only for a second. He knew about her phobia.

"Hey." She grinned right back at him. "Hi, Sue."

"Lils, you gonna be too busy to help me with my economics class this semester?" Mike asked.

She loved Mikey dearly. He was the only other person besides Adam who she trusted. Mike's curly brown hair and green eyes were always gentle with the people he cared about. Now, put him on the football field, and people ran from the terror those eyes inspired. It always made her laugh.

"Mikey, I've never taken an economics class."

"What? Why haven't you taken the class?" He frowned at her.

"Um, because I'm not a business major?"

"Well, hell, Lily, what am I gonna do?"

"Hell if I know." She laughed at his chagrined expression. Somehow, over the last three years, she'd become the unofficial football team tutor. She blamed Adam for that. It had started with him asking her to help out a friend or two, and before she realized it, she was tutoring most of them in one subject or another. Now she found it hard to say no. They depended on her. As a result, she was friends with the entire team, their frat houses, and several of their girlfriends and their sorority houses. She'd gained tons of "friends," but really, she could count her friends on one hand. Sad, but true. She had major trust issues.

"He can go sign up for a tutor." Mike's girlfriend, Janet, shook her head at him. Janet was a tiny little thing. She reminded Lily of Tinker Bell with her gamin features and pixie-cut strawberry blonde hair.

"Hey, can I borrow you for a sec?" That was the only thing Lily heard before someone grabbed her hand and she was running to keep up. What the hell?

She ran straight into him when he stopped. They stood about a hundred feet away from the crowd she'd just been in. Yanking her hand free and taking several steps backward, she turned furious eyes on him and nearly stopped breathing. The inky black depths she stared into were alight with amusement.

"That was rude," she told him in an attempt to regain a bit of her composure.

"I thought you needed rescuing, Lily Bells."

"That's not my name," she seethed. The nerve of him.

"I know who you are."

Lily knew exactly who he was too, and what his reputation was, but damn, why was his voice like silk with his sexy Russian accent? She had no intention of ending up on his list of one-nighters, though.

"And I know who you are, Nikoli Kincaid, so you can just march yourself back to wherever you came from. I'm not interested."

"Aw, now, Lily Bells, don't get your panties all in a twist. I never once asked you out."

Lily narrowed her eyes. She could see Adam and Mikey staring at them, a frown on both their faces. "I'm just saving you the trouble."

He smiled, which caused things south of the border to clench, and Lily gasped slightly. The sensation was one she'd never experienced, and it surprised her.

"What if all I wanted was a tutoring session?"

"Your GPA is as high as mine."

He reached up and traced the outline of her lips with a finger, and she flinched. She did not like to be touched.

"That's enough," she told him a little more forcefully than she'd intended. "I'm going back to my friends now. And even if you did just want a tutoring session, the answer is still no."

His words stopped her retreat.

"I don't give up that easy, Lily, and I always get what I want."

"Then get used to disappointment."

Nikoli watched her stomp back over to her friends and leaned against the tree, dumbfounded. No one ever said no to him. It was disconcerting yet fascinating.

Lily Holmes was a novelty.

He should probably turn his attention to the women eyeballing him, but the thought of a chase was too good to pass up. Lily presented a challenge, one he'd not faced yet, but one he'd definitely win.

She had no idea what was about to happen to her.

He grinned wickedly and walked away.