Mess Me Up
Page 25

“What?” I asked quietly.
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “I’m just looking.”
“You’re making me have a complex,” I told her, running my hand over my beard. “Do I have something in my beard?”
Other than her?
“No,” she said, letting her eyes trail up and down my body. “I guess I’m just surprised that someone like you would want anything to do with me.”
I yanked her closer to me, and my dick flared to life.
It was more than obvious how I felt about her.
“Who wouldn’t want you?” I asked. “You’re hot, honey.”
She snorted and reached up to remove the haphazard ponytail from her hair. “Sure. We’ll go with that.”
Then she tossed it in the vicinity of the sink and stepped into the shower, leaving me trailing behind her like a puppy.
“You don’t believe me?” I inquired.
She brought her thumb and pointer finger to her side and pinched some of the fat. “I don’t need to be told that I’m overweight to know that I’m overweight. I have a pretty face, but pretty faces don’t matter when you’re ugly everywhere else.”
I would’ve laughed had I not known that she was a hundred percent serious.
“You’re not fat,” I told her. “You’re shapely. Curvy. And sweet. I want to eat you up and never let you go.”
She blushed and shifted her legs, her thighs rubbing together as she did.
I watched her nipples stiffen.
“I think we’ll have to try cunnilingus again,” she teased. “Maybe I was just being a big baby.”
I dropped down to my knees in the shower and threw her leg over my shoulder. “Sure.”
But, unlike before, she wasn’t on a stable surface, so when she screamed and jumped as my beard tickled her naughty bits, she fell straight to the floor.
“Owwwww!” she cried and laughed all at the same time.
I looked down at her sprawled indelicately on the ground and smiled. “So…note to self. No more doing that in the shower. Stable, soft surfaces only.”
Chapter 14
Whoopty fuckin’ do.
-Coffee Cup
Rome
I wasn’t sure what day would bring as night disappeared, and the sun replaced the moon in the sky.
What I hadn’t expected was for her to take very thorough care of me as she sucked me to orgasm, and then demand to go with me today.
Why did she want to go with me?
Because I was meeting a slew of my old teammates at the local stadium for a pick-up game of ball.
Which led me to now, feeling the wound in my chest that retiring had left me with.
Being back out on that field made me want to throw caution to the wind and play.
To be who I was before Matias became sick and I became so involved in attempting to find a cure.
But, I could never go back to who I was then.
For one, I didn’t have my son with me any longer, and I wasn’t the same person now as I was back then.
Two, I hadn’t played in well over a year. This was a young man’s game. At the age of thirty-three, I was well and truly on my way to being old in the game of football.
Being back on that field had a surge of adrenaline running through me, though.
I hadn’t felt the likes of it in a very long time—too long to remember.
I couldn’t tell you when it was that I started to play.
My parents had signed me up for Peewee Football League when I was just a five or six-year-old, but it wasn’t until I was a freshman in high school that I really started to play the game as it was intended to be played.
See, at first, I hadn’t wanted to be hit. Honestly, I’d been scared.
Tyler? He hadn’t cared one bit. But, then again, he had been a running back the years that he’d played and was fast on his feet. Skilled with holding the ball? No. But fast? Yes.
When he quit during our sophomore year, I’d been terrified to go it alone.
Coach Truby had seen my potential, though, and didn’t let me give up.
And I had him to thank for all my success.
How did he help me?
By putting me out on the field, full pads, and letting senior after senior sack my sophomore ass until I was so tired and weak, I couldn’t stand up.
It had worked, though.
From that point on, I was no longer scared of the ball.
“Who’s the hottie, Ro-Ro?” Truck Mathers, one of the lineman, asked as he looked over my shoulder.
I didn’t have to turn around to know that he was looking at my Izzy.
“That’s Isadora,” Linc drawled, spinning the ball up in a spiraling ascent and catching it once it came back down again. “She’s his woman that he says isn’t his woman but actually is. The only thing that’s missing between the two of them is the actual title.”
I turned my glare on the younger man.
He was the quarterback and in his prime. But, I was a lineman—or at least had been—and I’d taken down bigger pricks than him for my entire career.
Plus, big I may be, fast I was.
“How about you shut up about my Izzy, and you go fuck yourself,” I suggested.
Linc’s lips twitched. “’Your Izzy?’”
Linc had seen us together last week in town and had immediately latched on to the idea of Izzy and me. He’d sent me a text that night telling me that he was happy I’d returned to the land of the living and that he’d see me at the pick-up game.
He also threatened that if I didn’t come, he’d find a way to make my life hell.
I knew he would, too.
Linc was a big part of my life and the reason that I had the MC at my back in the first place.
He’d also been on the team with me and was one of the only ones in the world that knew that Matias had cancer. He knew why I’d really quit and he’d been the one to show me a way to deal with my separation from the team in a healthy way—by prospecting with the MC.
I swallowed hard, trying not to get emotional with the stupid kid.
He had a good head on his shoulders, and I was happy that I counted him as a friend.
I flipped said friend off as a few of the other guys started to laugh. “Want to play a pick-up game, old man?”
I shifted to see another former teammate, Joe Hoyt, a running back, toss a ball at my face.
I caught it like I hadn’t stopped holding a football for over a year and shot it back at him like a missile.
Joe caught it and grinned, tucking the ball under his arm.
I’d honestly never intended to play the pick-up game, but I’d worn shorts and a tee just in case they happened to talk me into it—which they were attempting to do.
I wanted to play.
“I’ll go ask if Iz minds.” I paused. “We were supposed to go grab food after this.”
“Tell you what,” Joe said, smiling wide. “I’ll go ask her myself.”
Joe was off before I’d even told myself that it wasn’t a good idea.
“Joe Blow isn’t going to be nice,” Linc teased.
I sighed and turned, heading off to intercept the man that I knew damn well wasn’t going to let me leave without playing a game.
But he must’ve fuckin’ sprinted there after he’d left our huddle, because he was already hanging off the railing, talking to her.
Izzy was staring down at him like he was a worm, though, making me chuckle as I started to jog lightly toward them.
When I arrived, it was to hear the tail end of Joe’s conversation.
“…my mother’s going to be alright, but I’m really sad. I need my friend to play with me to make me feel better,” Joe finished.
I rolled my eyes heavenward.
Joe was the biggest pain in the ass on the entire team, and every one of the guys liked him.
He was around thirty, but he acted like he was fifteen at times.
And man, the outrageous stories he came up with were sometimes works of art.
“So, what I’m understanding is, your mother was hurt last week in a fall, and you need to play a game of football with Rome to make you feel better,” she said.
Joe nodded down at her. “Yeah!”
“But I’m hungry, Joe,” she teased. “If I sit here for another minute more, I’m going to die of starvation.”