Grid Iron Bad Boy: A Football Romance (12 page)

“
A
re
you sure you don’t want any more to eat, Cammie?” His mother dotes on him sweetly. In a lot of ways, she reminds me of my own mother. His father on the other hand, is nothing like the man my family lost years ago. My dad was proud as a peacock about everything my sister and I did. He was always making big deals about every little thing. Whether it was singing in the Christmas choir or learning to drive, my father was the first to call up all the grandparents, aunts and uncles and brag about us. He was a good man.

I gaze across the table to Don, Cameron’s father. I’m not saying that he isn’t a good man too. I’m sure he is. It’s just hard to see it when he seems to take every opportunity he can to knock his son down a few pegs. I never had any brothers, so I’m not sure if that’s just how things are between fathers and sons, but I would be crushed if either of my parents treated me that way.

“No, Mom. I’m stuffed,” Cameron runs his hand over his flat belly and pushes his plate away with his other hand. “It was delicious, but I couldn’t eat another bite,” he smiles at her.

“Oh, OK. If you’re sure.” She looks over at him and he nods back. Cameron’s mother Beverly stands up and begins to clear the table.

I hop to my feet and begin to pick up the empty plates and cutlery to help her out. “Here, let me give you a hand with that.”

“No, dear! You are my guest. You go relax and enjoy your time. I don’t need any help,” Beverly insists.

That’s not how I was raised though. I follow her into the kitchen with a handful of dishes and place them next to the sink.

The phone rings and Cameron’s father loudly slides his chair across the floor, “I got it,” he calls out excitedly. “That’s probably Jake, I bet.”

Cameron follows us into the kitchen and stacks some more dishes on the counter.

“You two get out of here. I won’t have my guests doing my cleaning,” Beverly gently scolds us.

“It’s no bother at all,” I insist.

“You’re not gonna win this one,” Cameron grabs my hands. “Mom is the only woman I know more stubborn than you. Besides, I want to take you somewhere,” his eyes twinkle. I’ve got to say, that look he’s giving me is a lot more intriguing than dishes.

“Jake! Where are you?” I can hear Cameron’s father exclaim into the old-fashioned landline in the other room.

“You two get going now,” Beverly waves us out of the kitchen like she’s shooing away a couple of stray cats from her garbage cans. “Go enjoy yourselves,” her eyes sparkle. I can see where Cameron gets his deep blue eyes from. Looking from his mother’s eyes to his, they’re identical.

“Oh, no! You won’t be here tonight?” Don keeps yelling his conversation into the phone in the other room. “Well that just blows the whole night!”

Cameron’s lips edge down into a straight line and his shoulders tense up. His eyes come back into focus on my face and he jerks his head toward the door. “Come on, let’s grab our coats. I want to go for a walk,” he says.

“OK,” I let him lead me to the front hall where we put on our jackets and shoes and head out into the chilly night.

“Hey,” I finally interrupt the silence, “are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he’s lying. I can hear it in his tone. “I just needed some fresh air, that’s all. Besides, there really is something I wanted to show you,” his voice picks back up and he threads his fingers between mine.

His hand is so warm compared to the air around us. I follow him as he leads me around the back of his parents’ house and down over the hill. The property ends where a creepy forest begins. The shadows of the night fall on the trees in ways that make my overactive imagination fire off a million scary stories about what lives in them.

“Uh, where are we going?” I slow my walk as we approach the scraggly trees, some still clinging onto leaves that haven’t fallen off yet. The wind rustles the pine needles and forgotten leaves, knocking a few more down to the ground triumphantly.

“You’ll see, just trust me. I’m pretty sure it’s still here,” Cameron tugs my hand and heads into the treeline.

“Um, I’m pretty sure I watched a horror movie that started this way. It didn’t work out well for them,” I half joke as I let him lead me a few steps into the forest.

“Oh, come on. I promise, there’s nothing scary about it. Besides, you’ve got a big, tough guy with you, remember? Do I have to tell you about my big win on the ‘suicide slide’ again?” He teases me.

“No, I’m good,“ I laugh.

Cameron stops in his tracks.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Nothing, we’re here.” He smirks.

I look around me, we’re only a few steps into the trees so I can still see the house clearly at the top of the hill. The lights shining brightly inside his parents’ home look warm and welcoming. Much warmer than it is out here.

“We’re where?”

“I’ll show you,” Cameron reaches up into the tree we’re standing under and pulls down something. A rope ladder uncoils and swings in the light wind. I peer up and in the darkness can make out the shape of a treehouse above us.

“Uh, no way. There is no way I’m climbing that. I’ll break my neck,” I begin to protest.

“No you won’t. I’ll go up first and help you up.” He doesn’t wait for my reply. He quickly scrambles up the ladder and disappears above me. Seconds pass as I hear him shuffle around and lie down on the treehouse floor. “OK, just grab my hand and I’ll pull you up,” his arms are dangling from the door.

I shrug and reach up. I do trust Cameron and if he wants to show me his old treehouse, then I guess I’ll check it out. My fingers grasp his wrists and his hands circle mine. He easily plucks me from the ground and I can’t help but kick my feet a little as I’m swallowed inside his old fort. Cameron pulls me up until solid ground is beneath me again. Well, to be honest, I’m not that confident in how solid it is, but at least I’m not dangling like a fish on a line anymore.

Cameron pulls out his cellphone and uses the screen as a flashlight. I look around, impressed by how much room there is in here for a couple of adults. This place must have been kickass for him as a kid.

“Nice hangout,” I soak in the makeshift couch along the back wall, constructed from a pile of foam cushions. The walls are lined with tattered and badly water damaged posters of women in bathing suits. “Love the art,” I nod to the nearly shredded pictures still clinging to the boards.

“Yeah, Sports Illustrated was the closest thing to porn a young boy had. These kids don’t know how lucky they are growing up with the internet now. Bastards.”

“I’d like to think the internet brings more than just porn to their lives,” I begin to argue, but I stop talking when my gaze falls on the telescope in the far corner. “Wait, is that real? Can we look through it?” I get excited at the idea.

Cameron slides over across the floor and moves the telescope around. He adjusts it slowly and then pats his lap for me to join him. I snuggle down between his thighs and lean back against his hard chest as I line the eye piece up and look through. An explosion of stars greets me, closer than I’ve ever seen before and I gasp.

“It’s so beautiful!”

“I know. I’ve looked at them my whole life,” he wraps his arms around me, fighting off the chill in the air.

“What got you into astronomy anyway? Obviously you’ve been into the star thing for a while. And don’t give me that line about studying stars in case you can’t be one.” I pry my eye away from the telescope and look at his face.

Cameron is looking through the window at the sky. The sadness in his eyes is undeniable. “Well, I first started taking a real interest in them as a kid. Back when I watched that movie, Pinocchio. That whole ‘when you wish upon a star’ thing really stuck out to me. I, uh, I spent a lot of time wishing on stars, I guess.” He looks down at his hands.

“Why?” I whisper.

“I guess when you’re a kid you wanna believe in magical solutions, you know? I thought if I wished on some balls of gas in the sky hard enough that I would finally figure out how to make my father proud of me. Like, if I could wish for just the right thing, he would love me,” his voice is thick with emotion. “It’s not hard to tell that didn’t work out too well,” he shrugs it off as quick as it overcame him. “At least I learned a lot about the constellations though,” his voice returns to normal.

“Hey, do you want to talk about it?” I try to stop him from shutting the door on his feelings. I don’t want him to be afraid to be vulnerable with me, but I can see by the way he sets his jaw and flicks back his hair that it’s a no-go.

“Nah, I’ve spent enough time feeling shitty about that stuff. Right now I’ve got a beautiful lady between my legs, so the last thing I want to do is think about my old man.” He runs his hands down my arms. “Look through the telescope, here, I’ll show you some constellations,” he instructs me. I won’t push it. He’ll talk to me about those other things in good time. Right now, I’m happy to enjoy the perfection that is being in his arms.

“There, you see that star, the brightest one in the sky?” He moves his head away from the eye-piece and I look through.

Shimmering bright, like my mother’s favorite diamond teardrop earrings that she used to wear when my father took her out for date nights, is the star. I remember how I used to watch her earrings dangle from her ears, awestruck by their beauty and thinking how she looked like a queen on those nights. I stare through the telescope with the same reverence now, fixated on the fractured beams of light streaking across the velvety sky.

“I see it. That’s the North Star, right?”

“No, that star is called Sirius,” he informs me.

“Like, the satellite radio stations?”

“Yep, they named it after the star.”

“Oh, I always thought the North Star was the brightest,” I lean back against him and feel the heat of his body wrap around me.

“No, the North Star is the most important, for navigation especially. But Sirius in the brightest. Anyway, here, I’ll adjust the scope,” he fidgets a bit with the knob and looks back through. “Now look.”

I squeeze one eye shut and place the other against the telescope. I can see a broader view now, but the bright star is still in my lens.

“You can still see Sirius, right?”

“Bright as day,” I answer.

“OK, now if you look at the line of stars that form off of that one, you’ll see a stick figure. It kind of looks like a badly drawn dog. Do you see it?” He waits for my wandering eye to draw the invisible lines between the stars.

“I do! I see the dog,” I’m way too excited by my discovery.

“That’s Canis Major. It was supposed to be one of Orion’s hunting dogs. Some people say that the bright star on its face is a rabbit it caught. Others say its his nose.” His story relaxes me. I feel like I’m being read a bedtime story. All tucked in and cozy in his arms.

“That’s cool,” I pull my eye away and smile up at him.

“Yeah, and you see that one up there?” he points further up in the sky. “You don’t need to use the telescope; you probably recognize it. That W-shaped one up there,” I follow his finger to the constellation.

“I see it,” I nuzzle back against him.

“That’s Cassiopeia. The story was she was absolutely stunning, but she was also vain. She went around bragging that she was prettier than the sea nymphs and as a punishment for her vanity she was placed up in the sky. I always thought that it was a weird way to punish her, to let her be admired by everyone in the entire world, but that’s how the myth goes.” He shrugs.

“Sounds like she got what she wanted then,” I smile at the twinkling lights above.

“When I was a kid, I used to hate that story though. I thought it was terrible that a beautiful woman had been banished to the sky, lonely and cold. So I used to pretend that Canis Major down there, the stick dog, was resting at her feet. That he was there to protect her and keep her company. It made me feel better about the whole thing,” he chuckles.

“That’s sweet,” I murmur. I love when Cameron opens up to me like this. These rare glimpses into who he really is inside. Underneath the bravado and the football padding is a heart searching for the same love we all are.

I twist my head and he leans into me, his lips quickly covering mine in a kiss. Our tongues flicker together and my skin prickles with longing as his mouth lingers on mine. He pulls away from me, breaking our kiss and pulls my earlobe into his mouth. A white flash of desire bolts through my body and I tilt my head toward the overwhelming sensation. Cameron kisses a wet trail down my neck as his fingers find the zipper on my jacket, sliding it down.

“I can’t wait to taste you,” he whispers and my pussy clenches with anticipation.

“No,” I whisper.

“What?” He sounds completely confused and I can’t blame him.

I turn and face him. Kneeling between his legs, I look into his eyes, “I want to do something for you instead,” I pull the zipper of his jacket down and slide my hands under the shoulders to help him inch it down his thick arms. “Lie back, I want you to get comfortable,” I demand.

Cameron gives me a look, but doesn’t argue. He’s not used to me taking charge in the bedroom or, you know, the treehouse either.

He lies back on his forearms and watches as I hover over the bulge in his jeans, quickly opening his belt, then his button and zipper. He helps me tug the denim down until his hard cock springs up, swaying under its own weight. Fuck he’s big. When I first met him, I was nervous about taking him. I’ve never been with someone so thick before. Now, I’d be disappointed by anything less.

I shimmy back on the floor a bit and lean over him. Bringing my mouth to the base of his shaft, I drag my tongue up his rigid cock to the very tip and swirl my tongue over the sensitive head.

Cameron moans and watches me open my mouth wide and slide his member in past my lips and over my tongue as deep as I can manage. I hold him in my mouth and let my tongue surround him, using my saliva as lubrication.

Bobbing my head back up, I relax my jaw and slide him in over my tongue, deeper this time. I feel his hand rest gently on the back of my head and I push myself to take even more.