“Stay,” she whispered.
LAKE
“If you ever tell anyone Idid this, I will have my man card ripped away in exchange for a pussy. I’ve never heard of a guy doing this, and if I’m honest… my balls are shrinking a bit with each stroke.”
I smirked. “I won’t tell anyone.” That meant I wouldn’t tell anyone that couldn’t keep it a secret from him. “On a scale of one to ten, how sore were you this morning? I mean, youshouldn’t have been too bad. You never got sacked yesterday, but the kitchen sex… standing… with an encore performance, also standing… that had to have a residual effect.” I grinned at Cage’s reflection in the mirror.
After my bath, he asked if there was anything he could do to ease the tension of the day, I opted against requesting a massage since his body was probably much sorer than mine. Instead, I asked him to brush my hair. I loved, loved, loved having my hair brushed.
He gave me a challenging look in the mirror as he stood behind me making repeated strokes with the brush.
I grinned, perched on my vanity chair in my Angry Bird tank top and shorts.
“On a scale of one to ten, I was maxed out and leaning toward elevenbecausewhile I did not officially get sacked yesterday, I was on the ground after nearly every pass I made. Out of probably five hard hits, only one was called as a late hit. But I wouldn’t expect someone whohates footballto understand or notice what happened in the game.”
There it was. I’d been waiting for it. A small part of me held out hope that in the larger scope of our fight, the football comment would get buried beneath Jamie’s testicles—figuratively of course—and kissing Flint. I was wrong.
“Kids say the darnedest things.”
“Kids repeat what they hear grownups say. So who told Shayna that ‘Lake hates football?’”
“Jamie. He’s trying to break us up so he can whisk me away to London,” I said in my best—which was the worst—British accent.
“I’m going to beat the living shit out of him.”
I shook my head. “Can’t… your hands are worth too much money to waste them on the nose of that bloke. Besides, he may have come to the hating-football conclusion from something I said. Which…” I held up a finger and he exhaled slowly instead of butting in with an argument “…by the way, I never said ‘I hate football.’”
Cage paused with the brush at the top of my head, brows raised. “Then what did you say that he may have misconstrued?”
“I think I said something about needing to get in the mood for your last game, and he took it the wrong way.”
“I see. Well, I’m in the mood to have sex with you, or watch you talk in your sleep, or listen to you baby talk to Trzy, or really anything in life that involves you.” He smirked. “Even brushing your hair or buying you tampons.”
Turning, I took the brush from him, twisted my lips, and exhaled a slow breath. “Truth?”
He cocked his head to the side and crossed his arms over his chest. “Always.”
“I followed you, sort of stalked you after we met. I followed most of your senior year at Nebraska. I watched the games.” I grinned. “I watched you.” With the next breath my grin faded. “But what started out as complete nostalgia over seeing the man of my dreams—the guy who kissed me and made me want to wear pretty shoes again—it just started to make me sad and depressed. Seeing you just made me miss something I thought I’d never have. Missing you began to feel like missing my leg. Then I met Thad and he gave me a reason to believe in new dreams. I let go of the dream of you. And football? Watching it was like looking at photos of myself before I lost my leg.”
“And now?” He scooped me up and carried me to my bed. I was sonothelpless, but even if I hadn’t lost my leg, I think I’dhave wanted to be carried around by my muscly man.
I kept myself monkey-bound to his torso when he sat on the bed. “Let’s just say the second I spotted you on the field I became fanatical. Now everything about it makes me… happy. Nervous, as in I’m scared to death that you could get hurt, but when I watched you walk off the field in one piece after the game yesterday, I was so damn happy and giddy.”
He released me and I slid under the sheets while he shrugged off his shirt and pants then slipped in beside me. I nuzzled my face into his chest taking a deep inhale.
“So you no longer hate football. You no longer have to get in the mood for it?”
I smiled, tipping my chin up and pressing my lips to the crook of his neck as he pulled me close. “I’m in the mood to have sex with you, or listen to you snore, or watch you yell at yourself when you watch old game footage, or really anything that involves you. Even going fishing with you or playing in bounce houses with you at eight-year-olds’ birthday parties.”
He reached over and turned off the light on the bed stand. “Sorry… I didn’t hear a thing you said after ‘I’m in the mood to have sex with you.’”
CHAPTER THIRTY
A LITTLE TOO LATE FOR LOVE
Aweek later,Jamie was fully broken out with chicken pox, although supposedly not on his testicles. Shayna’s were all scabbed over enough for her to move back in with Everson. I needed to catch up on work, so Everson asked Judy, Shayna’s ne-ma’s sister who originally dropped Shayna off, if she’d come stay a few days to watch Shayna until Jamie was over his rough stage and no longer contagious or until I got home, whichever came first. Judy agreed to come; she’d wanted to visit anyway.
Cage stayed with me every night until I left town. The truth was, I did sleep better with him. My nights without nightmares outnumbered the ones with them. I felt like he was serious when he said heneededme. Sex was extra, a true icing-on-the-cake. Just being together was all that mattered. There was something uniquely mind blowing about needing someone so much and them needing you back just as much.
