“What the hell are those?” he asked, turning his nose up at our alcohol selection.
“Flavored margaritas,” I explained. “It’s the only thing the guy at the bodega on the corner will let us buy with our shitty fake IDs.”
“Got anything stronger?” he asked, making my heart flutter to think he might want to linger and have nightcaps after all we’d already shared together.
“No,” I sighed, reaching for two. “And should you be drinking anything stronger if you’re taking painkillers?”
I handed him a cold orange bottle filled with mango margarita, chuckling as he blanched at the offense. “Who said anything about painkillers?” he asked. “Coach just rubbed on a double dose of Ben Gay and sent me on my way.”
I frowned. “Are you okay with that?”
He smiled, our eyes meeting over the kitchen counter as I clung tightly to a neon pink bottle of dragon fruit margarita. He didn’t say anything for a moment, just left us looking into each other’s eyes, the room growing silent except for the humming of the fridge at my back. “I’m doing more than okay ever since I met you,” he finally said, making me blush and roll my eyes at the same time.
“I’d ask if that line ever worked,” I said, turning to open my drink so he wouldn’t see the various shades of crimson making my cheeks burn from embarrassment. “But I doubt you’ve ever had to use a line to get a girl into bed before.”
An awkward silence followed so, sipping my drink, I turned to find him peering at me curiously. “You’re right,” he said softly, in a confessional tone, his eyes never leaving mine. Not even to drift down to the clingy sweater I’d worn as they had constantly throughout our time at the ice cream parlor. “I don’t have to work too hard to get girls into bed, but I have a feeling you’re different. Besides, I figure bed isn’t where we’re going to end up tonight anyway.”
“You’re right about that,” I snarked before I could stop myself. “My room’s a mess!” We both laughed. Nervously. I wasn’t sure why he was so nervous, but I had plenty of reasons to be. I was anxious as hell, for one. It had been ages since I’d brought a guy back to the apartment and even then, I’d been drunk enough to not give a rat’s ass about seducing them.
Now, aside from a few sips of bottled margarita, I was stone cold sober. I’d never been this close to a guy as handsome as Craig—let alone in the same room with him—and at my apartment no less!
I never did this—any of this. Never went to football games, never stood up and cheered, never ogled a guy for his physical beauty, never stopped to pick up strangers—handsome or otherwise. And I certainly never brought them home after flirting mercilessly with them at an ice cream parlor!
I really liked this guy. After I thought he’d be a total douchebag. For once in my carefully controlled life, I had no idea what the hell I was doing—much less where we’d end up.
“Well, not to sound ungrateful,” he said, already halfway through his drink. “But if we’re not going to bed, could I at least sit somewhere more comfortable than this godforsaken stool?”
More laughter followed, less nervous this time, more generous and shared. I put my drink down to help him. Using his left crutch to support one side, I slid his arm around my shoulders, helping him over to the couch, trying not to feel his skin against mine. His hand gripped my arm, steadying himself as we reached the couch then lowering himself gently onto the nearest cushion, he removed his hand, his fingertips lightly brushing my right breast as he did so—purely by accident, no doubt.
And even if it wasn’t, I knew in that moment I wanted more of Craig’s soft, lingering, accidental touches. More lips and fingertips, more chiseled cheekbones. Just more of him.
“Sorry,” he mumbled as he sank onto the cushion, looking up at me sheepishly.
“For what?” I asked, taking his crutch to hide it away behind the kitchen counter with its partner to keep him hostage even longer. “I didn’t feel anything.”
He seemed surprised. “That’s funny,” he mumbled as I slid onto the other end of the same couch. “I could have sworn I felt you stiffen when my hand brushed your, you know…”
I blushed, unable to hide my shame, or desire, any longer. “I guess, it’s been awhile since anyone’s… brushed… me there.”
He cocked an eyebrow, setting down his half-empty drink. “Bullshit,” he said as I turned toward him. Taking the hint, he turned to do the same, so our knees were almost touching on the long, leather couch.
I rolled my eyes. “We can’t all be big men on campus, Craig,” I sighed, a little angrier than I’d intended. “Some of us mere mortals don’t have members of the opposite sex jumping into our bed after every game.”
“Funny,” he said, ignoring my obvious pity party. “I don’t see you jumping anywhere. Except when I touched you.”
I sighed again. “Every woman likes to be touched,” I said, though I wasn’t sure why. I was stone cold sober, and after half-a-pound of ice cream and three sips of dragon fruit margarita, feeling fifty shades of frumpy.
He nodded, the leather beneath him creaking gently as he sat up a little straighter. “I suppose,” he said, wriggling out of his hoodie to reveal a tight, clingy Worthington Wildcats T-shirt that nearly—nearly—took my breath away. “I’ve never had to get very good at touching, if you know what I mean.”
“Don’t tell me your many, many conquests don’t require you to be good at foreplay,” I teased, the very word making my pulse race.
“Foreplay?” he teased back. “What’s that?”
“A few more of these,” I chuckled, wagging my margarita bottle at him. “and I might even show you.”
He didn’t laugh, or smirk, or even blush. He simply pinned me with those soft, warm eyes, and after a tense, quiet moment that made my heartbeat sound like it was going to break the windows, he asked, “Why wait?”
“What?” I blurted. “Right now?”
“Why not?” he asked, looking around the room before shrugging. “Is your roommate home or something?”
“Not… not until morning,” I admitted. “She’s working the graveyard shift at the Stop ‘N Go across from campus and won’t be home until tomorrow around noon. Why?”
“So,” he said, reaching for my bottle and placing it on the coffee table next to his. The movement sent a waft of cheap, probably locker room soap my way. It was more powerful, and hypnotic, than the most expensive cologne and instantly made me picture Craig, wet and lathered under a stream of locker room shower spray. I seriously couldn’t remember ever feeling more turned on than at that moment. That is, until I realized the seriousness of what he was suggesting—and what it might mean for the rest of the night. “Let’s strike while the iron’s hot.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, even as the look on his face and the way he was reaching for the hem of his shirt made it clear he absolutely was serious. About having foreplay.
With me.
Me. Avery Shoemaker. English major. Part-time campus bookstore clerk. Born again virgin thanks to the year and a half in between hookups since I’d been at college. With Craig Robinson. Quarterback of the football team. Total stud. Absolute male model material. And in my frickin’ living room. Reaching for his shirt!
“Sure,” he said, clinging to the fabric of his T-shirt with eager fingers.
Hardly believing my ears, I stopped him with a simple command. “Then… keep your shirt on.”
He frowned, as if I’d denied him. “Well,” he said, reaching for his drink. “It was worth a try, anyway.”
“No,” I said, meaningfully, enjoying the fact that he would listen to what I had to say—to anything I had to say. “I’ll show you what foreplay is, but first, you have to literally keep your shirt on!”
“Oh,” he laughed, nodding excitedly. “OH!”
His eyes were alive and wide, that soapy smell coming off him in waves as I turned to face him, subtly inching closer with every squirm and wiggle. “I can’t believe this is happening,” I m
umbled as he turned to face me as well.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because,” I said, looking at him with an obvious expression. “You’re you and I’m me. I’ve known you for a couple of hours.”
He took my hand gently, so close to his, he barely had to reach. “Listen, Avery, I’m here because I want to be. Not just because you were the girl who picked me up on the way home from the stadium. Just… forget about everything else right now and be with me the way I want to be with you.”
I nodded, hardly believing my ears—or my eyes—as I squeezed Craig’s hand back. “Then, if we’re going to do this,” I said, “some ground rules.”
“Like a safe word?”
He nodded eagerly, inching closer with one knee on the couch and his bad leg stretched out on the floor. “No. Nothing like that. We’re just doing foreplay,” I insisted, ignoring the look of disappointment on his face. “But I promise, it’ll all be worth it if you just do what I say. Can you do that?”
He nodded. “Wow. Can I have a safe word?” he chuckled.
“No silly. It’s not like that.”
“Okay, just one question before I answer,” he teased, nudging my knee with his own. “Foreplay still includes me seeing you buck ass naked, right?”
I snorted at his boyish charm, a pleasant cherry on top of the sexy sundae he already was. “Eventually,” I conceded, never more eager to bare myself to a man than I was at that moment. “But for now—I get to undress you.”
He chuckled nervously. “For real?”
I peered back at him, my fingers reaching for the hem of the same shirt he’d been so eager to yank off only moments earlier. “What, no one’s ever done this for you before?” I asked skeptically.
He shook his head earnestly, as if I was teaching him not just foreplay, but how to be seduced as well. “Normally we just rip each other’s clothes off in the elevator on the way up to my room.”
“How romantic,” I sneered as I toyed with the hem of his shirt, Craig’s skin warm and fragrant just underneath. “You’ve seriously never engaged in foreplay before?”
“I’m not kidding,” he said, watching me as I clung to his shirt. “I usually just hit it and quit it.”
I smiled, gently tugging up his shirt as he got the hint and lifted his arms, long, lean and muscular, above his head. “Not tonight you aren’t, playboy,” I purred, taking his shirt off so slowly, even I was squirming by the time it slid over his head, up his arms and onto the floor at our feet.
“If this is what foreplay feels like,” he said, softer than he’d spoken all night, his eyes searching mine as they searched his body, “then I won’t even mind not sleeping with you.”
I sat back, breathless at Craig’s beauty, somehow managing to murmur, “That’s the point, Craig. If we do this right, sleeping together will be the last thing on our minds.”
“At least, until my next lesson, right?” he asked, so hopefully I was sure he was teasing me. But when I peered up from his flat belly and hairless chest to meet his eyes, they were plaintive and quiet.
“See how much you like this lesson first, tiger,” I sighed, gently rubbing my hand across his belly only to feel it tremble and quake beneath my touch. It was a rare, even new, experience to have such power over such a beautiful specimen… and one so willing and eager.
He nodded, tight-lipped, remaining silent as I studied his bare torso, flawless in every way. His stiff nipples begged to be touched and teased. He winced the first time my fingertips gently glanced along his right nipple, then exhaled with delight as I circled it with first two, then three fingers.
I ignored him, focusing—for once—on my own pleasure. It was exquisite to gently run my fingertips around his nipple then spread wider to gently trace each rib cage as it led down to the defined abs that rested, like pale, white marble above the waistband of his jeans.
He was hard and taut—an athlete’s body. A jock beneath my fingertips—my first—and only—experience with a well sculpted man. That only made me want to savor every moment even more.
Craig remained still at first, watching me as I slowly untied the string that kept his sweatpants straddling his lean, narrow waist. Then he gasped and squirmed as I began to gently tug them from his hips until he had to help me slither them down and off his hurt leg.
“Are you okay?” I asked when he winced at an obvious twinge of pain.
“Never better,” he murmured as his sweatpants joined his T-shirt at the foot of the couch.
“I can see that,” I murmured, eyeing the bulge that had already begun to leak the front panel of his gray boxer briefs.
“Like I said,” he croaked, his voice low with desire, just like his leaking cock, “I’m not used to this. To waiting this long.”
“That’s the whole point of foreplay,” I whispered, as my fingertips tracked the inside of his right thigh on the way to his thick package. “Seeing how long you can wait—no matter how good it gets.”
I caressed him through his briefs, gently squeezing him for emphasis between each word as he squirmed and bit down on his lower lip, perhaps to keep himself from moaning. “If it keeps feeling this good,” he said, haltingly, as I tugged gently on the waist of his boxers, “I’m not sure how long I can last.”
“No worries, Craig,” I murmured, admiring the tuft of chocolate brown pubic hair that emerged as I tugged his briefs down, inch by inch. “Then we’ll just have to keep doing this until you can last all night.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” His eyebrow rose as I pulled his cock from his briefs. It was magnificent. I made quick work of removing his underwear until it, too, lay on the growing pile of clothing at our feet.
He opened his mouth to speak, but I quickly silenced him with the forefinger of my left hand as my right gently traced the veins of his cock.
“Just enjoy this, Craig,” I murmured as he opened his lips to gently glide my fingertip in. “Just… enjoy… this…”
Words escaped me as I lost control. Craig’s wet lips, around my finger, made me melt. I’d never had my fingers sucked on. It was sexy. Sensual.
“I am,” he said, his voice vibrating around my wet finger as he sucked it more greedily, forcing me to grip the base of his cock to give him pause.
“Please,” I said, just shy of begging him. “I can’t concentrate on you if you keep doing that.”
He paused, his tongue circling my finger once more before he gently bit down as I tried to slide it out. “I’ll stop,” he promised, “if you’ll let me do that later.”
“Just try getting out of it,” I grunted as I slid my finger out, wet and glistening. I focused on his cock, gazing on its beauty, marveling that it was all mine for the rest of the night and determined not to waste a moment focusing on anything else.
That is, until Craig found the time to take my finger—and perhaps even more—between his full, molten lips once more.
Six
Craig
I leaned back on the couch cushion, still tasting Avery’s sweet, young skin on my tongue even as she slid her fingers up and down my trembling cock. I watched her, entranced by her beauty, overpowered by her enthusiasm and sexiness.
I had never been seduced like this, so slowly and attentively. It made me eager to come then turn the tables so I could do the same for her. I’d never cared before whether a girl came or not, but now, with Avery, it had become all important to satisfy and pleasure her as much as she was pleasuring me.
Even that part was as unique as it was satisfying. Usually, I just banged some broad after the game for something to do. Another Friday night tradition like a dip in the locker room Jacuzzi after a big game, or my banana split at Frozen. Some chicks were nasty, some were less so, but all were as eager to lie down—or bend over—as I was to fuck them.
I neither gloated about these random, hot hookups nor denied them. We were both getting what we wanted. I was, getting off, and they were getting a story they could tell their friends the next mo
rning. “Guess who fucked the starting quarterback last night?” I doubt they even used my name, just my title. They were groupies in more ways than one, and about as unsympathetic and impersonal as a backstage blow job.
They were quick, quickly forgotten pieces of ass that paled in comparison to the slow, sexy attention Avery was paying to me now. But even as she toyed with my rock-hard cock—I could tell she was enjoying herself as well.
I sensed it in the swathe of hot breath that caressed my balls as she stroked me, in her hard nipples against the outline of her tight sweater, in the way her skirt was hiked up enough around her waist as she knelt between my legs to reveal the wet patch on the front of her almost laughably innocent pink cotton panties.
I couldn’t wait to taste her pussy, to savor it on my tongue and trace my lips along her lips. Pink, swollen and wet with desire.
The thought of her made me even more excited and I gripped the edges of the seat cushion as she leaned forward to lick a drop of pre-come just emerging from the tip of my cock. Was this foreplay meant to make you want a girl so bad you could only think of pleasuring her? Even as she was pleasuring you?
If so, it was definitely working—and I was definitely into it!
Avery’s hands went to the inside of my thighs, simultaneously gripping them for support and as she circled the tip of my prick with her tongue, spreading them slightly wider. I sighed at the blissful sensation, her soft tongue sliding along the slit in my tip, her hot breath bathing my cock as she moved her tongue to slide it around the crown.
My sensitive flesh tingled with desire and my entire body throbbed and swelled with anticipation. It was a bittersweet sensation to enjoy the thrill of the tease so much even as I mentally begged her to “Suck it!”
She peered up at me then, as if reading my mind, her eyes half-lidded and sultry as she interrupted her licking and teasing to ask, “Are you ready, Craig?”
There was no need to ask what I was ready for—or for that matter—to even speak at all. Breathlessly, I just nodded, gripping the couch cushions on either side of me like I was getting ready for a roller coaster ride.
Time Out: A Holiday Sports Romance Page 3
