Next Man Up (Making the Score Football Romance Book 2) Read online

  “It sounds great.” He smiled, his eyes steady on me. “Do you ride the horses? Do you know how?”

  “Of course,” I laughed, drinking more. The booze didn’t burn so much anymore, and I was beginning to feel more relaxed. “I’ve been on horses for as long as I can remember. Longer. All of my cousins and my aunts and uncles ride. Most of our friends do, too.”

  “I’ve never been close to a horse,” Eli confessed. “When I was in grade school, they used to take us on field trips to farms, and sometimes we were allowed to pet the colts, but I never, like, actually sat on a horse’s back. That’s pretty badass.”

  “I’m sure there are a ton of things you’ve done that I’ve never even thought about doing.” I tipped the cup back and finished the drink. “Like scoring a touchdown. Never done that.”

  “Good to know there’s at least something I have in my favor.” He spoke so seriously that I couldn’t help giggling.

  “Okay, so I told you a little about my life. Tell me about yours now.” I jiggled my cup. “And could I have some more, please? That was yummy.”

  “Sure.” Eli stretched one long arm over to get the bottles and refill my drink. “Um, something about my life. Well, mostly it’s football. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, so it pretty much consumes all my time. When I’m not practicing or playing, I’m conditioning or reading plays or studying tapes—or I’m doing school work so that I can maintain my grades. I want to get a full scholarship to a college that has a championship team. Then after I graduate, I’m going pro. And I plan to stay in the game for a long time.”

  “That’s very . . .” I’d lost the word I was going to use, which wasn’t at all like me. I frowned, trying to remember what I’d been about to say. “Oh, ambitious. It’s very ambitious of you.” I accepted my filled cup back from him again. “But I bet you’ll do it. Someday, I’ll turn on the TV and hear the announcers say your name, and I’ll think, damn, I once drank . . .” I tilted my head. “What’re we drinking?”

  He laughed softly. “Captain and coke.”

  “Oh, okay. I once drank captain and coke with that guy on some stranger’s bed at a party. And I’ll think that was really cool.”

  Eli studied me in silence for a few seconds. When he spoke again, his voice was rough and low. “Come here. Come sit next to me.”

  I gave my head a brief shake. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I just want you to be comfortable. You look like sitting there is hurting your back, without anything to lean against.” He patted the pillows. “These are really soft and comfy.”

  I considered it—and him—for another couple of minutes. Finally, I shrugged.

  “Okay.”

  His eyes widened. “Seriously?”

  “Yes, seriously.” I rolled to balance on my knees and one hand. “Here, hold my cup until I get up there. I don’t want to spill anything on this pretty quilt.”

  “Good idea.” Eli took the drink from me until I was sitting alongside him. I reached for my cup, grinned at him, and lifted it in a salute.

  “Bottoms up.” Before he could say anything, I tipped my drink back and drained it, noticing absently that the sweetness was stronger and the burn less now.

  “You know, I’m not sure that was a great idea.” Eli wrested the empty plastic cup from my hand, crumpling it easily and tossing it onto the floor. “I get the feeling you probably don’t do a lot of drinking out there in Lancaster, on the farm with all the horses.”

  “Really?” I was noncommittal, unwilling to talk about my experience or lack thereof in any area of life. But it occurred to me that Eli might have a point when a wave of total relaxation crashed over me. I crawled into the pile of pillows, dropping face-down into the blissful softness.

  “Oooh, you were totally right. This is much more comfortable.” I snuggled down. “I could sleep.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I heard the wry humor in his voice at the same time that I felt a feather light touch running up and down my spine. It was teasing and relaxing and intriguing all at the same time, and I made a happy noise.

  “Mmmmmm. Keep doing that, and I’m totally going to sleep. When I was little and I couldn’t settle down at night, my grammy rubbed my back to get me to sleep. So you’ve been warned.”

  “Then maybe I need to do something to wake you up instead.” His fingers brushed from my back up to the back of my head, sweeping the weight of my hair out of the way. I waited in thrilled anticipation, and a moment later, I felt the warmth of his breath against my neck . . . and then the gentle pressure of his lips on my jaw.

  “What’re you doing, Eli?” I sounded breathless and drowsy, but my senses had gone on full alert. I was hyperaware of him, how close he was to me, and of the way his body was angled over mine.

  “I’m trying to find your mouth,” he murmured into my ear, making me shiver. “But I’m getting sidetracked along the way with all these other parts of you.” He sucked my earlobe between his lips, and gasping a little, I rolled to my side.

  “Oh, there you are.” Eli laid one hand along my cheek, his fingertips stroking my hairline. “Look at how beautiful you are. You’re like a little piece of perfection.”

  “I’m not at all perfect,” I protested. He was so close to me now that I couldn’t focus on his face. I curled my fingers around his broad shoulder, just to have something solid I could hold onto.

  “You’ll never convince me of that.” His lips lowered, covering mine in the sweetest first kiss. He was soft and asking and tentative, and I sank into him.

  With a groan, Eli deepened the kiss, coaxing my lips to open and making insistent forays into my mouth. I’d French kissed before. It had never been something I particularly liked, having a boy stick his tongue down my throat, but now, with Eli, it was different. It was intimate and erotic. I opened up to him and even was daring enough to touch the tip of my tongue to his.

  His hands slid from my face, trailing down my neck and to my ribcage. I held my breath; he was so close to touching my boobs, and I hadn’t decided yet if I was going to allow that. I’d never gone that far with any boy.

  Before I could make up my mind, his palm curved up to cup one breast. I felt him shake a little, his breath coming out in a shudder.

  “God, you’re so gorgeous.” His thumb swept over my nipple, and the most incredible sensation swept over my body. Want surged like a tidal wave through my body, driving out any lingering doubt about what we were doing. Suddenly everything in my world centered around that spot where Eli’s thumb teased my nipple and the possibility that he’d touch me there again. I wanted to grab his wrist and show him what I needed, but I wasn’t sure if that was right, or if that would make me seem too . . . aggressive.

  As it turned out, I didn’t need to get pushy. Eli circled the peak with his finger, and then, watching my face, he pinched lightly.

  I couldn’t help myself. I arched my back, urging him on, silently begging him to do more, to take more. He gave a hoarse chuckle and tugged down the neckline of my dress, baring the swell of my breast to his eyes and his lips. I held my breath, watching his face, rewarded when his eyes widened at the sight of me.

  He brushed the slope of my boob with the back of his fingers and lowered his mouth to suck my aching nipple through the silky material that just barely covered the rosy peak.

  “Oh, God.” Blindly, my hands groped up to clutch at the back of his head, while a small part of me was shocked in equal parts that a guy I’d just met had his mouth on my boob and that I’d just taken the Lord’s name in vain. But all of that was driven from my mind as Eli eased down the top of my dress and took my other nipple between his lips.

  The sensation was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I knew that touching my nipples could bring me pleasure, but my own curious caresses were nothing like what Eli was doing now. His mouth was relentless, and each tug, each scrape, added to the maddeningly carnal desire surging in me.

  “Zelda.
” He kissed across my chest, his hands stroking my boobs. “How drunk are you?”

  “Hmmm.” I wriggled a bit. “I’m not drunk, Eli. I mean, I got a tiny bit buzzed on the captain and coke, but I’m not about to pass out. And I know what I’m doing, if that’s what’s worrying you.” Even as I said it, the room spun a little. A faraway part of me knew that I wasn’t really all that sober, but an even bigger part was terrified that if this gorgeous boy thought I was wasted, he might walk me back downstairs and hand me over to my cousin. I so didn’t want that to happen.

  He raised his head, lifting it up from between my breasts as he studied me. “I don’t take advantage of girls who can’t say yes or no. We don’t know each other very well, but that’s the truth. If you’re not sure about what we’re doing here, we should stop.”

  “What if I don’t want to stop? What if I don’t want to go back downstairs?” I drew my elbows alongside my body and stared back at Eli. “What if I want you to keep kissing me?”

  He traced the edge of my cheekbone. “Then . . . I guess that’s what I’ll do.” He lowered his face and claimed my mouth again, pushing his tongue between my lips with more need than before. I was painfully conscious of all the places where his body pushed up against mine. His hands cradled my face, his mouth covered mine, and along my hip, I felt a curiously hard ridge. It took me a minute to figure out exactly what that probably was.

  But I was distracted by the movement of Eli’s fingers over my breast again, teasing my nipples and then making their way down my stomach, where my dress was bunched. He began to gather the material as if to get it out of the way, revealing the wispy black panties I wore.

  “What are you doing?” I mumbled, intoxicated beyond reason on his touch—and maybe slightly inebriated from the rum, too.

  “You said you wanted me to keep kissing you.” He brushed over the pulse at the base of my throat and kept moving lower. “I’m just following directions.”

  “But . . .” I squirmed, but I couldn’t quite come up with a strong argument, particularly not when his hands bracketed my thighs and eased them apart.

  “I promise, this is going to be good.” He paused, and then his eyes flickered up to meet mine. “You can trust me.”

  I swallowed over the lump in my throat. “Okay.”

  He smiled, and there was something intimate and warm in it. Some of my reservations melted. “Just . . . let me take care of you.”

  My nod was barely perceptible, but it must have been enough to give Eli the green light he needed. He dipped his head between my legs and brushed a soft kiss—right there.

  “Oh, my God.” Even through the silk and cotton of my underwear, I could feel the imprint of his lips. “That’s—are you sure—this is, um, right?”

  Eli laughed softly. “If this is wrong, I so don’t care about being right.” With his finger tip, he eased the material of the panties out of his way and licked me, which very well may have been the only thing that could’ve shocked me more.

  I’d heard allusions to certain aspects of the sex act—it was impossible to be in high school and not have some inkling about what sex was about. I’d gone through health class, and I’d snuck peeks at some of the naughtier books at the library, so I knew the basics. I’d picked up enough from my classmates’ jokes and whispered stories to have a vague idea about what blow jobs were.

  But the truth was that I’d been raised in a protective family within a fairly old-fashioned community. I was sure most of the people in my school were sexually active, but I wasn’t. I’d never even been tempted to sleep with any boy I’d dated—not that there’d been many of them. We didn’t have a television at home, I rarely went to the movies, and that was the norm among my friends’ families, too.

  So maybe it wasn’t so surprising that I hadn’t ever heard of any guy doing to a girl what Eli was so busy with between my legs just now. It hadn’t even occurred to me that a boy would want to do this.

  Eli, though, seemed to be enjoying himself, if I could judge by the small sounds coming from deep in his throat. I, on the other hand, was struggling to push down my panic far enough that I could see if I liked the way his tongue, teeth and lips were assaulting my . . . well, down there.

  He slid the tip of his finger into me, and I sucked in a deep breath, my legs instinctively trying to close against the intrusion.

  “Shhhh, baby, it’s okay.” He whispered the words, his breath hitching slightly. “Just relax.”

  “Yeah.” My body was tense with the effort not to shy away from him. My legs began to shake.

  “Hey.” Eli pushed himself up to sit, frowning down at me. “Do you . . . are you not enjoying this?”

  My frantic and slightly numb brain tried to come up with an answer that didn’t make me sound like a hopelessly inexperienced moron. “Um—it’s just that—I want to touch you.” I blurted it out before I could stop and think. “I want to make you feel good.” Somehow managing a tremulous smile, I sat up and pushed at Eli’s shoulder. “Lay down. Let me . . . take care of you.”

  I had no idea in hell what I was doing, but something my aunt Norrie had once said popped into my mind.

  “Men don’t care if you’re doing it right or wrong, or if you’re the best or the worst at it, as long as they believe you’re doing it for them—to make them happy.” She’d been talking about making pies, of course, but I kind of thought the same rules applied here.

  And really, how hard could a blow job be?

  Apparently, Eli was easy to convince, because he didn’t argue with me. Instead, he stripped off his shirt and tossed it aside. I sat in awed silence for a few seconds, just appreciating the hell out of his chest.

  He was defined without being too muscled. A light smattering of hair ran down the center of his flat belly into the waistband of his jeans, which, as I watched, he unbuttoned and eased down his legs, kicking the pants away. What that move revealed was longer and bigger than I’d expected.

  “Holy moly,” I breathed. Clearly, I wasn’t going to be able to do what I’d pictured myself doing with that thing. But I’d give it a try.

  Taking a deep breath, I scooted closer to Eli’s side, leaning over to touch my lips to the center of his chest. His hand came up to cup the back of my head, threading his fingers through my hair.

  “That feels good,” he murmured. “Keep going.”

  “That’s the plan.” I brushed my hand over him experimentally, tracing the lines of his pecs and then lower to his abs. He hummed and shifted a little, folding his hands behind his head as he watched my progress.

  My head was still spinning more than a little, and I was aware that I was in way too deep now. Oddly, I didn’t really care. I had a feeling that there was some reason I should be worried about what I was about to do, but I couldn’t get a handle on why.

  The part of him that was my destination had tented his boxers. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the top of it was sticking out through the slit in the underwear. Tentatively, I crept my hand down and wrapped my fingers around the shaft.

  I was immediately rewarded by Eli’s groan. “Oh, baby, that’s good.”

  Okay, then. I guessed I was on the right track. Moving so that I sat cross-legged next to his hip, I licked my lips and stroked him gently, taking care not to grip him too tightly. The last thing I needed to do was to break his . . . thing.

  I knew that part of my mission had to do with using my mouth, but honestly, I wasn’t sure exactly . . . how. I had a vague memory of something referencing sucking—I’d overheard an older girl in school talking about sucking off her boyfriend—but that couldn’t be right. Could it?

  Bending over, I started the same way Eli had with me—with a kiss. I dropped a chaste, gentle kiss on the side, just below the belled head. Using just the tips of my fingers, I ran them up and down his length, glancing up to his face to see how this was going over.

  Eli was watching me with an odd expression on his face. He seemed to be enjoying what I w
as doing—maybe—but he was also frowning. That probably wasn’t a good sign.

  “Uh, hey.” He gave a little cough. “Um . . . have you done this before?”

  Heat suffused my face, and I was sure I looked red as a tomato. “Not really, no.” I waited for him to call me out as the fraud I was and haul me back to Hannah and Becca.

  Instead, Eli reached down to caress my cheek. “Do you want me to tell you how to do it? I mean, you don’t have to, but—”

  “Yes!” I blurted out the word quickly. “Yes, tell me what to do. I feel like . . .” I shook my head. “I want to do whatever I can to make you feel good.”

  “You are, but there are, ah, other ways.” He took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling under my hand. “So—don’t be afraid to hold me a little tighter. A little rougher, even. I’m not going to break.”

  I nodded, tightening my fingers around him and moving them up and down, rewarded when his mouth dropped open. “Okay. Like that?”

  “Exactly like that.” He sounded slightly strained. “And then . . . with your mouth. Take the head into your mouth. Suck it a little. Rub your tongue over the slit.”

  “The slit? Oh—you mean the opening?” I wrinkled my nose before I could stop myself. “I mean, yes, I see. All right.” Leaning over, I parted my lips and guided him to me. It felt foreign and more than a little weird. I mean, who invented this? Who decided it was a good idea? What was going on in the mind of the first woman who thought, hey, I think I’ll take this man’s penis into my mouth?

  “Yeah, that’s it.” Eli rubbed my head. “Oh, yeah.”

  Remembering what he’d said, I used my tongue to touch the center—the slit, Eli had called it—recoiling slightly in surprise when I realized that there was some kind of salty liquid seeping from it. I recovered enough to stop myself from jerking backwards, instead circling the head with my tongue, hoping that was enough.