The Player and the Bookworm (The Legends #2) - Erin McCarthy

Chapter One

Sydney

I had nailed sex education. No pun intended. Because I’m an amazing student, always have been. The anatomy of sex isn’t hard. In and out. Not exactly rocket science, right?

Understanding logistics apparently doesn't mean you can have a positive sexual experience though, and my recently ex-boyfriend had made it super clear I failed to make the grade. Two years of giving it the old college try and he had told me I was terrible in bed. I think the word he had used was actually “sucked.” Sucked in bed. Ironic, huh? You’re supposed to suck in bed, at least according to porn, but Curtis had said I’d even done that wrong.

Is there a wrong way to suck a cock?

The answer is yes, and I had done it.

So now I needed hands-on sex education. Instructions on how to be a better lover, so I didn’t wind up with yet another boyfriend who cheated on me like Curtis had.

With a lesson plan in place, I knew I would be able to excel and make sexual leaps and bounds, because I was in my last semester of law school at Columbia, and I knew how to study.

Cramming all night? Oh, hell yeah.

I also love a great pun, if that wasn’t obvious already.

“Which of these players will be at the party?” I asked my cousin, Eloise, as I stared at the photo on my phone of her on Bourbon Street in New Orleans with five professional football players. Just hanging out with ballers, that was what my cousin did now.

It defied the rules of nerd logic, given Eloise liked to wear cat sweaters and speak Klingon. But her new boyfriend, Dak North, was absolutely crazy about her and they were throwing a spontaneous New Year’s Eve party in just a few hours at some swanky hotel with a view of Times Square.

“All of them,” she said. “Why?”

Because who better to ask for sexual advice than a man who probably had more sex in a week than I had in a year. In two years. In all the years of me having sex. “I’m going to get one of them to teach me how to have sex.”

Eloise, who had been holding up a dress in the mirror in her bedroom, while I was lounging on the bed, turned and gave me a look. “When you word it like that, it sounds really bizarre, Syd.”

“How was I supposed to word it?” I made the image bigger and studied my options. “They’re all single, right?” They were all huge. Muscles and broad shoulders and height that would have them towering over me. Big hands for grabbing… things. I mean, I don’t know what they would grab actually, but that was the point. They would show me.

One had a really nice, friendly smile. “How about this one?” I said, tapping the screen as I turned my phone toward Eloise.

“That’s Cash. He’s really nice. I don’t think he’s much of a hookup kind of guy. He’s more the guy who meets a girl at church and takes her home to mama.”

“Hmm.” Maybe she was right. The bad-boy type would be more up for a challenge like I was proposing. “This one?”

She glanced back over and shook her head. “No. Definitely not. That’s JJ. He is way too much of a playboy. You wouldn’t be able to keep up with his flirting and signals and subsequent quick dumping of you.”

Well, I wasn’t worried about being dumped. This wasn’t a relationship. But I couldn’t argue that my flirting skills were not exactly top-notch.

I bit my lip and moved on down the line in the photo. “Okay, this guy looks like he would make me laugh and feel comfortable. Plus, he has a great smile.”

“He’s not a bad option,” Eloise admitted, tossing the red dress she’d been holding onto the bed. “Miles is fun and super intelligent. He has a math degree.”

All of that should have bumped him to the number one spot, and he was really good looking, very reminiscent of Shemar Moore on Criminal Minds, but it almost seemed like he was too much of the perfect package. I didn’t want to accidentally fall for my sex tutor. That would be bad.

Nope. I needed kind of a jerk.

Like the guy standing next to Dak looking like he wanted to punch whoever was taking the photo. He looked surly and brooding and exactly like a man I would never enjoy spending time with. “Who’s this?”

“That’s Oleksander. Olek. The Ukraine Train. He’s