by Anthology
“Dodged a bullet with that one,” I said quietly, mostly to myself, but his head turned to face me again.
“You think so?” His smile was a little fuller, but his question was sarcastic. “She was a setup. Someone my dad wanted me to date. Thought it would be good for my image.”
“You have an image?” My eyes roamed over him; he was still good-looking, but not someone I would peg as worried about his outward appearance. Then he thrust his hand out toward me.
“Camden Rogers. Son of Andrew Rogers.”
My eyes couldn’t have grown any wider. “You’re the mayor’s son?”
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s impolite to refuse to shake someone’s hand?” His eyes darted down to his hand which was, in fact, still held out toward me and still very empty. I placed my hand in his, still a little shocked to be sitting next to a celebrity. Well, not really a celebrity. A political celebrity. The North West of Portland royalty. He called me on my gaping mouth, which was still silent. “And your name is?”
“I’m Riley. And you’re the mayor’s son.”
He laughed as he released my hand. “He’s my stepdad, but yeah.”
“Well, your girlfriend is a lot dumber than I was giving her credit for.” I hitched my thumb over my shoulder.
“Ex-girlfriend,” he corrected.
“Yeah, good for you.” I pumped a fist in the air for good measure.
He gave me another smile, but then Hadley dropped in the seat next to me, handing me the beer she’d gotten for me when halftime started.
“Did I miss the drink tossing?” Hadley whispered this to me, but not quietly enough that he didn’t hear her.
“I was sure she was gonna toss her drink. But she went instead, for the ‘You’ll never find a girl like me’ speech.” I fluttered my eyelashes and pressed a dramatic hand to my chest.
“How’d she know about the breakup?” He leaned forward, his gaze darting between Hadley and me.
“Camden, this is my best friend, Hadley. I was live texting her your breakup.”
“Nice to meet you,” Hadley said, shaking his hand. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
I couldn’t hold in my laughter. “It was her loss.” I turned to look at him, trying to include him in my joke, but his eyes were on me, and now he was really smiling, all the way up to his eyes. My laughter died, but his eyes didn’t leave mine, neither did the gorgeous smile.
“So, do you come to these games often?” Hadley’s question broke us out of our gaze-lock.
“Uh, yeah,” he answered, running hand over his chin. “I’ve got season tickets.”
“Big Blazer fan?” Hadley asked, her voice polite and curious.
“Yeah, I’ve grown up here so it’s hard not to be. Plus, these last couple years they’ve been doing incredible. Do you guys come to a lot of games?” He asked us both, but the question was directed at me.
“I usually watch the game at a bar down the street from my apartment, but I got a promotion last week and this was kind of a splurge.”
“Ah, congrats. What do you do?”
“I’m an event planner.”
“Don’t let her fool you, she plans parties for a living. And she’s fantastic at it,” Hadley threw in for good measure.
“You know, I met you five minutes ago and I can already tell you give good party.” His smile was still sparkling and I could feel myself blush at his goofy compliment.
“What do you do?” I asked.
“Ah, it’s pretty boring. I’m a lawyer.” He could have told me he was a wizard and I wouldn’t have been more surprised than I was to learn he was a lawyer. And I was not an actor, so my shock was evident all over my face. He laughed and continued. “It was sort of a familial expectation for me to go into law. But I’m not, like, a stuffy lawyer. I’m in entertainment law, actually.”
“I don’t care how you dress up a pony, it’s still a pony, and you don’t look like you give good lawyer. No offense.”
“None taken,” he said, still laughing. “The day someone tells me I look like a lawyer is the day I have my first life crisis.”
My eyes fell to the court where a man who didn’t look at all familiar with a basketball was trying to make a half-court shot to win five thousand dollars. Halftime wasn’t my favorite, but only because I liked to watch the game. At least if I was watching the game on TV I could listen to commentary and stats. But in person halftime was filled with lame competitions and the BlazerDancers shaking their asses. I’d have gladly gone to get our beers, but Hadley insisted since, technically, this was my celebration.
“Riley loves basketball, but hasn’t been able to find a guy who likes it as much as she does, thus creating a divide between her and all her ex-boyfriends.”
I turned to look at her with wide what-the-hell-are-you-doing eyes. She just smiled at me.
“Their loss,” he said, smiling brilliantly.
I just lifted my cold beer to my lips. That was my only requirement for watching basketball games. Widmer Hefeweizen had to be on tap—my favorite beer. However, being there in person and getting to watch Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum in action was a perk too. I cheers’d myself for getting my promotion, and took another drink.
“Ugh,” I groaned. My least-favorite halftime event was starting: the kiss cam. Sporting events and kissing didn’t go together at all in my opinion, so I never understood why the kiss cam had become popular. Watching people kiss was uncomfortable for everyone. A lot of the time it was an awkward kiss, or a gross kiss, or a kiss that was more suited for a soft-core porn flick.
“Riley’s favorite,” Hadley chimed in.
“Not a fan of kissing?” Camden asked, his voice a little heavier and thicker than my pulse would have preferred. His words were punctuated by the image of a fifty something couple giving each other a polite peck on the lips as the lights around the Jumbotron flashed in time with the music playing.
“I don’t mind kissing in general, I just don’t understand how it correlates with basketball.” I turned to him, trying to make my point.
“Really? You don’t see the correlation?”
I gave him a skeptical look. “There is no correlation.”
“Basketball is just like sex,” he said, matter-of-factly. I heard Hadley choke on her beer next to me, but couldn’t pull away from Camden’s eyes to check on her. He leaned closer to me, our faces just inches apart. “Dribbling the ball, passing it back and forth between players, it’s exactly like sex. You get all excited, just teasing the basket, then finally, when the ball finally goes in, it’s the climax.”
I swallowed and never had my throat been so dry, even though I’d been drinking my beer. “And where does the kissing fit into all that?” My voice was just an echo of its former self; I was all raspy whispers.
“It’s foreplay, Riley.”
“Oh, shit,” Hadley said from next to me, and I heard a buzz begin in the crowd around us. “Um, guys, you’re on the kiss cam.”
“What?” I looked toward the giant television screen floating above the basketball court and, sure enough, Camden and I were two giant heads with hearts floating around our faces.
“Looks like they want you to lay one on me,” he said, not sounding disturbed at all by what was happening. I whipped my head back to face him, panic coursing through me.
“We can’t kiss. I don’t even know you,” I exclaimed, the panic now tingling in my fingers.
“Kiss her!” Someone yelled from a few rows behind us.
“Get it, girl!” Another enthusiastic person screamed from the seats surrounding us.
Camden wasn’t bothered by any of it at all. He just sat there, smiling at me, as if he were waiting for me to just agree to being kissed by a complete stranger.
“Riley, just kiss him and get it over with,” Hadley said with a sigh. We would have to discuss her lack of sisterly solidarity later.
“Kiss her. Kiss her. Kiss her. Kiss her.” The chant started slowly with the people
in our section, but in just a few seconds, the entire arena was demanding we kiss. I was blushing so hard I was sure my face would melt off at any moment. I was looking around at all the traitorous spectators surrounding me, silently willing them to shut the fuck up, when I felt a warm hand on the side of my neck.
“Riley,” he said gently, making it impossible to not look back at him. “They’re not going to stop until we give them what they want. I’m going to kiss you, okay?” His hand was slowly moving up my neck to cup my face, but his eyes were searching mine, looking for an answer to his question.
I nodded slightly, then watched as he closed the distance between us. My eyes closed out of habit, but also because I didn’t want to watch the train wreck that would be our kiss on the Jumbotron.
I’m not sure what I expected, but I’d never, ever, been kissed like that before.
His lips pressed softly against mine, but captured my bottom one. He held my lip ransom between his own for a moment, and I thought he’d pull away, that the kiss would be over, but he didn’t. It wasn’t. Instead, he pulled back just a fraction, only to dive back in again, this time with more enthusiasm than I was prepared for. And for the record, he wasn’t just kissing me with his lips; his hand was cupping my face, his other arm slipping around my back, and dammit if his head wasn’t tilting at just the right angle to kiss the hell out of me.
When I felt the wetness of his tongue teasing, I had two options—pull away and end the kiss, or get lost in it, in him. I opened for him, whimpering as I did, and I immediately wondered how they were going to scrape me off the floor of that arena because it. Was. Over.
His tongue swept in, tangled with mine, and then he went back to paying special attention to my bottom lip, and then went on and on in an endless cycle of the sexiest kiss I’d ever had.
The entire arena was hollering at us, whistling loudly, yelling obscene things in our direction, and of course the camera operators couldn’t pull away—we were practically fucking with our mouths for everyone to see.
But I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered in that moment was his mouth against mine and the way his hands were gripping me like he owned me, as if he wanted to take a piece of me and keep it forever. If we’d been alone, in private, my hands would have automatically tried to remove his shirt, I would have been in his lap, and it didn’t matter one bit that I’d just met him or that he’d literally just broken up with his girlfriend not fifteen minutes before. All that mattered was his mouth and the way he was using it on me.
But it did end eventually, to the dismay of everyone in the arena. He pulled away, but just his mouth; his hands remained on me and mine on him. We were just panting, staring at one another, and the entire crowd started with a round of thunderous applause. But I might as well have been deaf, because all I could see and feel was him.
“You have an extraordinary mouth,” he whispered, his eyes darting down to my lips.
“Ditto,” I breathed, unable to utter any other words. He’d kissed me stupid. He smirked at me, but then pulled away fully, leaving me wobbly and unsteady. He moved back into his seat and I into mine, both of us resuming our normal basketball-watching positions, but there could have been any number of things going on down on the court and I wouldn’t have been able to process any of it.
“Hey,” Hadley whispered, nudging me with her elbow. I turned to look at her. “Did that kiss feel as sexy as it looked?”
I blinked at her. She cracked up laughing. I turned back to the court and in my periphery I saw Camden’s hand slyly come up to swipe across his lips, and every man within arm’s reach gave him a pat on the back. Meanwhile, multiple women surrounding us squirmed in their seats. It was, quite honestly, ridiculous.
Finally, after a few dazed moments, my faculties returned, along with a normal heart rhythm. I leaned just to my right a little, keeping my face forward, and whispered to him, “Where did you learn to kiss like that?”
I felt his shoulders shake with a chuckle, then he leaned into me, whispering his response. “I don’t think I’ve ever kissed anyone that way. I must have been inspired.”
“Basketball really does it for you, huh?”
He let out a real laugh that time. “I told you, it’s like foreplay.”
“Right.” My eyes rolled but my lips smiled. The lights in the arena started flashing and the Blazers returned to the court. The most epic halftime of my life had come to an end and, truthfully, I was a little glad. I didn’t know what to do with the man I’d had mouth sex with, who was still sitting next to me. How do you just go on after something so damn arousing? So, when the game started back up, and I had something to pretend to be interested in, I was happy for the distraction. That did not, however, mean I wasn’t acutely aware of him. Conscious all the time of how far away he was, or how close, where his hands were, whether he was looking at me. I caught him a few times, eyes not on the game but on me instead. I only caught him because I was stealing glances at him too. But as the game continued, the tension eased. I was able to enjoy the last quarter of the game, finding that he and I had very similar complaints and suggestions for the team, agreeing when fouls were ridiculous, when players were being dumbasses, and that was something else my brain grabbed hold of and tucked away, surely to be brought out again late at night when I couldn’t sleep.
After much yelling, the players finally saw it our way and decided to win their game, making my night even more exciting. It would have sucked to spend all that money on celebratory tickets only to watch the Blazers lose—kiss or no.
But the kiss was a perk, right? And that’s all it was. A silly halftime game that got way out of control and way too hot for anyone’s good.
The buzzer sounded, the crowd erupted in yells and applause, and the great migration out of the arena began. Hadley and I stood up and turned to shuffle down the narrow aisle that led to the stairs. I tried not to notice if Camden was behind me or not, but somehow my body knew he was following. We moved onto the stairs but then were stalled as all the people above us slowly filed out.
“So,” I heard Camden’s voice say, but also felt against my ear, his breath feathering over the shell of it. “If I asked for your phone number, would you give it to me?”
“What would you need my phone number for?”
“First you didn’t understand kissing, and now you’re confused as to why I’d want your number?”
My cheeks pinked at his words. “I know why you’d want it, I guess I’m just confused by this whole situation.”
“It’s not rocket science, Riley. That was an amazing kiss. I’d like to do it again sometime. Possibly after a meal. Or a drink.”
“You want to go out on a date?”
“Even I can tell he wants to take you out,” groaned Hadley from in front of me, giving me an epic eye roll.
“Thanks, Had,” Camden said, as if he knew her well enough to use her nickname.
“No problem, Cam,” she replied sweetly.
“What the hell is going on?” I was terribly confused. “Do you guys know each other? Is this some sort of poor man’s punk’d?” They both started laughing, but I was still looking between the two of them.
“Is she always this hard to date?”
Hadley shrugged before climbing the few empty steps ahead of her. “She doesn’t date much.”
“Okay, don’t talk about me like I’m not standing right between you.” I turned to Camden, a fierce look in my eyes to tell him I meant business. I was thwarted, however, by the way his eyes were moving up and down my body—appreciatively. I swallowed hard and wished I still had some beer left; my throat was like the Sahara.
“Then give me your number,” he said, his voice lower and deeper somehow. “You already kissed me,” he argued.
I followed Hadley up the stairs, trying to get as far away from Camden Rogers as possible. He made me nervous, and he made me feel like it was okay to just date guys I kissed at basketball games. He wasn’t having any of it, though. He wa
s hot on my heels when we exited into the giant hallway that was the perimeter of the arena, and then he fell into step right next to me.
Hadley, who was on the other side of me, leaned closer and whispered, “He’s persistent.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“You ladies are forgetting that I’m a lawyer. I can argue my point until we all die or you give up.” He said the words with a smile, and something gnawed at my insides, telling me he was being truthful—he was going to pester me to death. That was as good a reason as any to keep denying him.
“Listen, it’s nothing personal, I’m just not looking to date anyone.”
I felt a warm hand on my elbow and then I was being turned to face him. People kept walking right past us, a few grumbling about us blocking the walkway.
“Riley, you can’t tell me you aren’t even a little interested, given how much you participated in that kiss.” He raised an eyebrow, and fuck me if it wasn’t sexy.
“So, because I kissed you, now I have to date you?”
“I like your mouth, Riley. I like the way you use it and the words that come out of it. I’ve only spent one half of a basketball game talking to you, and I know with near perfect certainty that I would never tire of hearing you speak.”
I couldn’t help but smile at his response. “Not like Sophia the princess?” I batted my eyelashes at him.
“Come on,” he urged quietly. “Give me your number.”
Something about Camden Rogers felt dangerous. Not serial-killer dangerous, but the kind of dangerous that made me want to keep my heart safe right inside my chest and not offer it to fantastic kissers who could argue their way out of anything.
“I’m really just not looking to date anyone. Sorry.” I gave a sincere smile and shrugged. Then I turned back to Hadley. I could tell by her expression she was annoyed with me.
He followed us out of the arena, down the steps at the street entrance, and all the way across the street to the MAX station. We were surrounded by hundreds of people who’d also taken the light rail train to the arena, and I wasn’t looking forward to cramming myself inside the small train car with all of them, but I couldn’t help but pray the train came quickly.
