We are absolutely thrilled to bring you the Release Week Blitz for Cora Carmack's ALL PLAYED OUT! ALL PLAYED OUT is a New Adult Contemporary Romance and is the 3rd book in the Rusk University Series, published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins.
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First person in her family to go to college? CHECK.
Straight
A’s? CHECK.
On track to graduate early? CHECK.
Social life? …..yeah, about that….
With just a few weeks until she graduates, Antonella DeLuca’s beginning to worry that maybe she hasn’t had the full college experience. (Okay... Scratch that. She knows she hasn't had the full college experience).
So Nell does what a smart, dedicated girl like herself does best. She makes a "to do" list of normal college activities.
Item #1? Hook up with a jock.
Rusk University wide receiver Mateo Torres practically wrote the playbook for normal college living. When he’s not on the field, he excels at partying, girls, and more partying. As long as he keeps things light and easy, it's impossible to get hurt... again. But something about the quiet, shy, sexy-as-hell Nell gets under his skin, and when he learns about her list, he makes it his mission to help her complete it.
Torres is the definition of confident (And sexy. And wild), and he opens up a side of Nell that she's never known. But as they begin to check off each crazy, exciting, normal item, Nell finds that her frivolous list leads to something more serious than she bargained for. And while Torres is used to taking risks on the field, he has to decide if he's willing to take the chance when it's more than just a game.
Together they will have to decide if what they have is just part of the experiment or a chance at something real.
On track to graduate early? CHECK.
Social life? …..yeah, about that….
With just a few weeks until she graduates, Antonella DeLuca’s beginning to worry that maybe she hasn’t had the full college experience. (Okay... Scratch that. She knows she hasn't had the full college experience).
So Nell does what a smart, dedicated girl like herself does best. She makes a "to do" list of normal college activities.
Item #1? Hook up with a jock.
Rusk University wide receiver Mateo Torres practically wrote the playbook for normal college living. When he’s not on the field, he excels at partying, girls, and more partying. As long as he keeps things light and easy, it's impossible to get hurt... again. But something about the quiet, shy, sexy-as-hell Nell gets under his skin, and when he learns about her list, he makes it his mission to help her complete it.
Torres is the definition of confident (And sexy. And wild), and he opens up a side of Nell that she's never known. But as they begin to check off each crazy, exciting, normal item, Nell finds that her frivolous list leads to something more serious than she bargained for. And while Torres is used to taking risks on the field, he has to decide if he's willing to take the chance when it's more than just a game.
Together they will have to decide if what they have is just part of the experiment or a chance at something real.
Dallas and Dylan toss the disk back and forth a few times, and I
groan when Carson and Silas make no effort to intercept or knock down the pass.
I’m pretty sure it’s a distraction, so I stick tight to Brookes, and I notice
Ryan edging closer to me, too. He must have the same idea.
Next thing I know, Dallas has sent the disk soaring
over our heads, and when I look, Nell is standing alone, completely unguarded
in the end zone.
She’s holding her hands out and staring at the disk
like it’s a missile instead of a piece of plastic. I take off toward her in
case she misses it. I want to grab the disk and get it back into play as soon
as I can.
As I sprint, the disk slips right through her grasping
fingers and nails her in the chest. She gasps; no doubt the air was knocked out
of her. The disk ricochets, and if I dive I might can manage to catch it, but I
can’t quite drag my eyes away from her chest. Her tits are practically spilling
out of the top of the tiny tank she’s wearing. I’d had a front-row seat earlier
with my arm around her. Now she’s clutching at herself in pain, but all I can
see are her smooth, delicate arms pressed against the curve of her breasts,
pushing them even higher.
I should look away before something very unfortunate
occurs in my baggy gym shorts, but now I’m picturing that shy girl loosening up
beneath me. It’s too easy to take those wide eyes she gave me when I draped my
arm around her and imagine them in the low light of my room, her head on my
pillow and her legs spread wide.
She makes a soft whimpering noise, and now the rest of
my senses join the fantasy, and I think of how she would feel, taste, sound. I
wonder just how low I could get her inhibitions. Enough to say my name? To
scream it?
“Damn,” I groan, and try to clear my head. “You all
right?”
She looks up at me, still clutching at her chest, and
pink spreads over her cheeks. She doesn’t say anything.
“Okay,” I say. “There is honestly no way to ask this
without sounding like a pig, so I’m not even gonna try. And really, in these
situations, I find you might as well go balls to the wall and throw it all out
there. So … at the risk of getting slapped, how are your tits?” I think about
offering to check them out for her, but I figure that’s probably taking it a
step too far.
Her mouth presses into a firm straight line. “It wasn’t
my ...” She trails off.
“Tits,” I finish for her. “You have them. You can say
the word.”
“It hit me in the collarbone, not the breasts.”
Breasts. I raise an eyebrow, and she rolls her eyes.
I take a step forward and say, “Let me see.”
“Absolutely
not.”
I take another step, until my shadow falls over her,
and take hold of one wrist. “As you pointed out, you weren’t hit in the breasts. Just let me have a
look. With the right strength and good wind, a disk can go as fast as twenty
miles per hour. I’ve seen them break fingers and noses.”
“Dude, Torres!” Silas shouts behind me. “What are you
waiting for? Grab the disk and let’s go!”
Hesitating, I ask, “You wanna take a break? Catch your
breath and let me see it?”
She shakes her head stubbornly. “I don’t want the game
to stop because of me.”
I turn around and shout back to Silas, “Nell and I are
taking a break. You guys keep playing with eight.”
Taking
her elbow, I pull her off the field toward the picnic tables. She protests, but
only mildly, and she still has one hand pressed just above her cleavage. And
looking down at her, I can see moisture clinging to long lashes at the corner
of her eye.
I sit her down so that her back is to the field, and go
down on one knee in front of her. She’s so small that it puts us eye level, and
I say softly, “Move your hand.”
“It’s
fine,” she says. “Just give me a couple seconds, and I’ll be fine.”
You don’t grow up with five sisters without learning
that sometimes with women, words are pointless. I reach out and move her hand
myself, pulling it away from her chest. The skin just below her collarbone is
an angry red, and the disk scraped through a couple layers of skin. Not enough
to bleed, but I bet it hurts. “Tell me how it feels. Still a sharp pain? Or
more of an ache?”
Her eyebrows slant over her pretty brown eyes. “The
pain was sharp and steady for approximately thirty seconds, but now it kind of
stings.”
“Like a slap,” I say.
She
gives a short laugh, her shoulders bouncing once before she stills in what I’m
guessing is pain. “I can’t say I know what that feels like. Though I’m not
surprised it’s a sensation you’re familiar with.”
I
shrug. “I don’t believe in censoring my thoughts. Some people just aren’t as
fond of freedom of speech as I am.”
She shakes her head, and I think she’s trying not to
smile.
I
reach up my left hand and as lightly as possible run my thumb over the red
mark. She sucks in a breath and I ask, “Hurts to the touch?”
“Um.”
She swallows and blinks a few times.
“Does
it hurt a lot?”
I brush my thumb over her skin again, even lighter this
time, wondering if the Frisbee could have hit hard enough to crack something.
There’s already a purpling around the center that tells me it’s going to bruise
pretty good.
She swallows, and my eyes are drawn to the graceful
slope of her neck, up to a small chin and full lips. And it hits me then … why
this girl caught my eye from the moment she walked toward our group, why I
can’t drag my eyes or my hand away from her now.
She
reminds me of Lina.
And the memory of the only girl I’ve ever loved packs a
punch so hard that it’s my turn to raise a hand to my chest to soothe an
all-too-familiar ache.
And don’t miss the first two books in the Rusk University Series…
ALL LINED UP, Book 1
Amazon ** Barnes and Noble ** iBooks
ALL BROKE DOWN, Book 2
Amazon ** Barnes and Noble ** iBooks
For more of what’s next in The Rusk University Series, go here!
Add Book 4, ALL CLOSED OFF, to your Goodreads now!
Cora Carmack is a
twenty-something New York Times bestselling author who likes to write about
twenty-something characters. She's done a multitude of things in her life--
boring jobs (like working retail), Fun jobs (like working in a theatre),
stressful jobs (like teaching), and dream jobs (like writing). She now splits
her time between Austin, TX and New York City and spends her days writing,
traveling, and spending way too much time on the internet. In her books, you
can expect to find humor, heart, and a whole lot of awkward. Because let’s face
it . . . awkward people need love, too.
Website ** Twitter ** Facebook ** Author
Goodreads ** ALL PLAYED
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