Page 17 of Tumbling the Cornerback

"I think you might be getting the wrong kind of handjob," he said, voice the tiniest bit gravelly. "They can be very satisfying."

How did we get closer? His leg pressed against mine, his hand close enough all I had to do was stretch my pinky one iota in order to touch him. To feel the sinew and ridges of the back of his hand, the vein between the bones, how warm his skin would be...

"Bait!" I blurted, sitting up straighter. Cooper jerked back, huffing a breath, both relived and frustrated. "We'd use you as bait."

"So first I'm an unsatisfying handjob and now I'm bait?" he asked skeptically. "You really know how to flatter a guy, Lucas."

A small smile tempered his words, but it didn't reach his eyes. I licked my lips, heat prickling my neck as his eyes tracked the tip of my tongue. Get it together, Ortiz! "I just mean we can use your participation in this set of campaigns, between now and December, as an example for other athletes, to attract them to the programs and hopefully get their support."

Cooper eyed me thoughtfully, his gaze no longer hyperfocused on my lips. "So I act like a good boy for you and you’ll be happy?"

My voice came out a rasp. "That’s... that sounds a lot different than what I intended."

"Does it, though?"

I don't know which of us moved first. One moment we were leaning and the next, his lips were so close to mine I could feel the ghost of his breath across them. "What are you doing?" I whispered—barely whispered, really. The words were more sigh than sound.

He shook his head minutely, denim-blue eyes fixed on my mouth. "If you don't know, I'm not sure how to explain it," he said, throaty and low. "I can show you, though."

The kiss was butterfly-fast, a bare brush of lips before he withdrew only enough for us to say we weren't touching. The tiniest shift would bring us together again.

"Are you still mad at me?"

I shook my head the smallest bit. "Maybe."

His smile filled my vision, transforming his face, making my heart lift and take flight. "Which is it?" he murmured, leaning slowly, slowly, slowly nearer. "No or maybe?"

"Do we have to talk about it?" I whined. Giving in, I reached for him, one hand going to that hard thigh I knew would feel like granite under my fingers. The other crept up to his shoulder, almost touching the copper-gold strands escaping from his low ponytail.

This was ridiculous, I scolded myself. Giving in to attraction—not even lust just attraction! —and putting my plans, my professional standing in jeopardy...

Remember Jimmy?

He leaned in. "Soon. We'll talk soon," he promised.

Then he was kissing me, or I was kissing him, and it was nothing like I expected, nothing like I'd even remotely thought it could be. For long moments, we were only connected at those few points: the kiss, my hand on his thigh, on his shoulder, the tentative brush of his fingers on my wrist.

Then I sighed. Or maybe it was him.

With that soft breath, everything shifted. He moved, leaning back and pulling me with him, startling a laugh and gasp out of me. He seized the moment, dipping the tip of his tongue just past my lips. Deepening the kiss, we settled back, me on his chest and him against the arm of the sofa. I pulled away enough to take a breath, letting him nose against my jaw, working tiny kisses against my chin, my throat, down to the curve where my neck met my shoulder.

Any remaining rational thought dissolved like sugar in the heat of his attention. "Fuck, Lucas," he muttered against my skin. "Fuck."

The single syllable, so rough and low just below my ear, sent that remaining bit of reason soaring out the window.

CHAPTER 6

COOPER

Lucas tasted like sweet tea and a hint of mint toothpaste and warm and sweet and ugh... My heart was racing a mile a minute, hands shaking. I hadn’t felt this riled with a guy since I was fourteen and made out with Tommy Benson behind his parents’ garage during the Fourth of July block party.

Lucas made a tiny, desperate noise into the kiss, the sound a fiery dart straight to my groin. Without thinking, I arched against him, relishing the way he tensed, then melted against me. Lucas pulled back again, a soft gasp as we broke for air. Eyes squeezed shut, he tucked his chin to his chest. “What are we doing?” he asked again. “I know what we’re doing, but... What are we doing?”

“Well, I might be a little bit rusty,” I admitted with a smile, “but I think the kids call this making out.”

He opened one eye to glare down at me from his perch astride my body. “You’re not funny.”

“I’m fucking hilarious.” I ran my hands up his thighs to his hips, giving him a squeeze. Lucas didn’t moan or sigh, but he definitely whined, rocking against me for one second before he stopped himself. “Come back here. We’re not done.”

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