Page 81 of What if I Told You

I lean in and connect my lips with hers, tasting the cotton candy I know she had earlier. “Babe, you just guaranteed that’s all I’ll be thinking about for the rest of the night.”

She cocks her head and gives me her best fake sympathetic look. “Aww, you poor thing.”

“Yeah, yeah. Keep that up and I’ll be spanking that tight little ass tonight.”

Her eyes grow wide and playful and her smile widens. “Ooh, don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep, Auggie.”

“Ella Montgomery, I have every intention of keeping that promise.”

“Bodhi Roche?”Colby asks when his name is brought up in conversation. “Yeah we’ve been watching him too.”

We’re all seated around Oliver and Scarlett’s backyard enjoying the warm weather of a California evening in November. Knowing both teams have tomorrow off from game play, Oliver and Scarlett invited the Red Tails to hang with us for the night and Oliver’s sister, Charlee, brought up the idea of game night. Apparently this is something the Red Tails do often, which I think is kind of rad as I gaze around the room at these big burly men about to play games.

Although if I’m being honest, the only real thing on my mind right now is what’s coming later tonight when I get Ella home. I don’t even care if it’s not straight up sex because I know whatever we get ourselves into, it’s going to be out of this world. Every now and then she gives me a look that says she’s thinking about it too which will make a few hours from now that much hotter. Anticipation is everything.

“He’s garnered quite the following on social media,” Carissa says. “Apparently he’s quite the player.”

“Probably in all senses of the word.” I roll my eyes. “We’ve heard he’s a bit of a pompous little dick. You guys can have him if they move him up to the big boy leagues.”

“I don’t think it’s a question of if,” Zeke adds. “More like when.”

“I thought I heard somewhere that the Bay Scrapers were looking into grabbing him,” Milo says before taking a sip of the beer in his hand.

“I heard maybe the Grizzlies.” Harrison shrugs. “So, I guess only time will tell.”

“Okay so teams!” Charlee announces, wanting to steer the conversation away from hockey for the night. She holds up her game night cheat sheet. “Team one will be Dex, Barrett, Ella, Rory, and Zeke. Team two is Tate, Kinsley, Harrison, Milo and Scarlett. Team three is Quinton, Carissa, Ledger, Hawken, and Griffin. And Team four will be Colby, August, Ada, myself, and Oliver.”

Ella gives me a swift kiss on my cheek and whispers, “You’re going down, Blackstone.”

I merely smirk back at her and lick my lips before saying, “Damn right I am.”

I give her a pat on the ass like she did me earlier tonight and then watch proudly as her cheeks pinken immediately. Then I simply smile and enjoy the sway of her ass as she walks away from me to join her group.

Yep.

Flirting with her is going to be fun.

“We’re going to play Mad Gab, completely NSFW addition and we’re going to make up our own phrases because I don’t really have the game with me. So, everyone takes a couple slips of paper and a sharpie. You want to write the actual phrase on one side and then on the opposite side, you’ll write out that phrase by using other words or word-soundings. So, for example if you were saying ‘a paper jam’ you might write ‘ape ape purge am.’ Get it?”

Everyone nods and passes around the paper and markers. After a few minutes of subtle and not so subtle chuckling, because of course most of us are in our middle school boy eras right now, Charlee collects the folded phrases and mixes them up in her black bag.

Shaking the bag as she speaks, she explains, “So, one of us will pull the phrases out of this bag and someone from each of your teams will say them out loud. You’ll get one minute to get your team to figure out as many sayings as possible and the team with the most phrases completed wins.”

“Easy peasy,” Dex says, rubbing his hands together and fist bumping Ella. “We’ve got this in the bag.”

I pass him my most mischievous smile and tell him, “Yeah that’s probably what you said before tonight’s game.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AUGUST

“Thumb max chicks dick. Thumb max chicks dick. Thuuumbmaaaaxchicksdick. Oh my gosh! The Magic Stick!” Rory exclaims. She and Ella give each other a high five and clap their hands excitedly.

“Yay! Next one!” Ella says as Tate flips over the next card to show them.

Zeke furrows his brow and mumbles, “Ace. Crow. Dumb.”

Dex repeats, “Aaaace crooow dumb.”

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