He shut off the car and pointed to a footbridge I hadn’t noticed in the darkness. “Let me grab some stuff out of my trunk, and then we’re heading that way.”
It was quiet in the unlit parking lot. I shouldn’t want to be here with him, but when I forced myself to forget the jersey he wore was yellow and blue, he morphed into a guy I wanted to know more about. I stood beside the car and listened to its faint settling noises while Jay went to the trunk, got whatever he needed, and came to me. He carried a rolled-up blanket and a cooler bag.
“Did you . . . cover up the logo?” I asked. There was a duct tape X on the front, but a corner of yellow peeked out beneath.
He acted indifferent. “Maybe.”
I grinned widely. He really had planned this, even making an attempt to put me at ease. Maybe I was naïve, and this was all just an effort to get him laid, but I doubted it. I hung out with the football players at OSU. They couldn’t step out of their room without running into a girl willing to take them for a spin. It had to be the same for Jay. So why was he putting in this effort to be with me?
Our feet made soft thumps across the wooden slats of the footbridge, which was wide enough for a golf cart to drive through, but not a car. The water in the small creek below looked black in the moonlight.
Once we’d cleared the trees, there were three youth soccer fields side-by-side. Jay walked into the center of one, set down the cooler bag, and unfurled the blanket.
“How’d you know about this place?” I asked.
“One of the guys I worked with at ARC is from around here. He told me about it.” Jay sat down on the blanket and gazed up at me. “Care to join me? I can sweeten the deal by telling you I have beer in my cooler.”
He was lit by silvery moonlight and was the most inviting thing I’d seen. I sat down beside him, only for him to lie on his back, his eyes turned up to the sky. I did the same, staring up at the stars and the bright moon.
It took a moment to get comfortable on the blanket beside him, and we were close enough our shoulders touched. When I set my palms flat beside me, my fingertips inadvertently grazed his wrist, and his breathing picked up.
It was quiet, and peaceful, so I felt compelled to whisper. “Are we seriously out here stargazing right now?”
“Yeah.” His voice was low as well. “Hey, you know what I just noticed?”
“What?”
“There’s a lot more room out here than there is in the backseat of my Charger.” He turned and propped himself up on an elbow, while his hand slid over my belly and came to rest on my hip. My gaze went from the stars to him.
His eyes were intense, and he stared down at me with an expression of longing. Or desire. I couldn’t tell because it was getting hard to think about anything but the way his hand on my body made me feel.
My mission of purging Jay from my thoughts burst into flames.
I should get used to the fire. I was clearly going to hell for having such impure thoughts about a guy from Michigan. OSU football was religion in my house, and we worshipped on Saturdays at the Horseshoe.
So why did I love the way his strong hand held my hip and pulled me close? As his head dipped down, I focused on his lips, staring at them until they were too close and my eyes fell shut. The contact of his mouth on mine wasn’t what I expected. It was sweet, and slow, and tame. He brushed his lips gently against mine, like a caress. As if we had all night.
But we didn’t have all night, because now I wanted him so badly, need made the bones in my body vibrate. I curled my hand up into his hair and locked him into my kiss. It’d been four days since I’d agreed to meet him, and I’d spent every one of them anticipating what was going to happen. I wasn’t sure if I was now in a worst or best-case scenario.
A sigh slipped out of me when Jay answered my kiss, layering on a new level of heat and seduction. His thumb crept beneath the hem of my tank top, but his palm stayed in place on my hip. The pad of his finger swept over my skin, and although it was a simple touch, goose bumps broke out all over me.
His tongue slipped inside my mouth and moved in time with his thumb. Deliberate and unhurried. When I inhaled, I breathed him in. His cologne was noticeable but subtle, like leather and pine. It was a potent combination.