STUFFED (The Slate Brothers 2)

Desi doesn’t slow, pushing into the locker room with total confidence and, to my dismay, letting my arm slide away so she can bound over to her boyfriend. I’m left standing at the entrance, looking around, unsure what exactly I’m supposed to do. It seems like most of the players are still in the showers— other than Steven, who is now holding Desi up against the lockers to kiss her— there are only a few younger players in sight, and all are still grimy from the field. I bite my lip, unsure where to go—

“I wondered if she’d bring you down here,” a voice— Carson’s voice— says from somewhere off to my left. I spin around to look at him. He’s still wearing his jersey, his pads, still sweating and smeared in grass and dirt. The pads exaggerate his breathing; each inhale lifts his already broad chest up. His arms look even more muscular slicked in sweat, and there’s an intensity to his eyes, like he hasn’t yet come down from the rush of the game. Like so many things about Carson Slate, it’s equal parts arousing and frightening.

“Should I not have come?” I ask hesitantly.

Carson tosses the bag he’d been carrying down on a bench, and while he keeps his eyes hard on me, he doesn’t move forward. “I’m glad you did.”

“Oh,” I say.

Carson takes a few more long, steadying breaths, then casts his eyes off to the side as he considers something. He finally looks back to me, and there’s a strict determination in his eyes, not entirely unlike the look I saw when the cameras zoomed in on him during the game. “Come over here,” he says, tilting his chin back.

I lick my lips and walk toward him, unable to keep my eyes on him as I do— he looks too intimidating, and I know I’ll lose my nerve. When I’m a few feet from him, he speaks again. “Spin around for me, Astrid.”

“What?”

“Turn around, in a circle. I want to look at you.”

It’s not a request— it’s a command, and I obey so immediately that I almost laugh at myself. I turn, spinning on the ball of my foot, moving as slowly as I can manage. Carson inhales deeply, appraisingly, and his eyes are on the hem of my dress when I complete the turn and am facing him again. He steps toward me, and my nerves leap to attention. Then he reaches out and, with ease, takes the hem of my dress between his fingers.

“Longer than the others,” he says.

“I didn’t think I’d be seeing you. Up close, I mean,” I stammer.

Carson’s mouth curves into a smirk. “You’d have worn something shorter for me?”

I bite my lip, then nod quickly, because it’s true. Carson still has hold of my hem, and the nearness of his hand to my pussy is making me tremble, as is the fact that at any moment, the locker room could fill up with his teammates. He tugs lightly on the hem of my dress, then steps even closer to me. When he does, the fact that I’m so much shorter them him becomes almost comical; I barely reach his chest, and this close, I have to tilt my head up just to find his eyes.

“I’ll owe you a question,” he says under his breath. “Deal?”

“Okay,” I say shakily, and Carson then uses his free hand to take one of mine, and guides me to standing on the bench beside him. With the bench, we can make straight on eye contact; I’m marveling over this when I realize that the hand Carson had on my dress hem is now on my thigh.

My lips part; I gasp as it begins to climb, his palmed pressed against the front of my leg, his thumb sliding along the inside and fingers pressed tight to the back. I grab hold of his shoulders without thinking— but I need something to hold on to, or I might collapse. I can’t look away from his eyes, but a worried whimper escapes my lips as Carson’s hand stops millimeters before his thumb would brush up against my panties.

“I make you so nervous, Astrid,” Carson says in a way that tells me this isn’t really a problem. “Trust me.”

I struggle for breath, for words. “I do,” I pant as my core clenches and releases over and over, desperate for him to close the difference, to feel his hands on me— to feel hands on me, period, for the first time. I open my mouth again— do I need to tell him I’m a virgin? Surely I should say something now; it’ll only be more difficult later. I close my eyes, trying to muster up the courage to say the words out loud—

But then Carson Slate’s mouth is on mine. He kisses me like he’s been waiting to do it, like he’s been planning it, and when he slips his tongue into my mouth and runs it across my lips I’m hopeless; my knees actually go weak, and I have to hold on tighter to him to keep from tumbling down. He’s just tasted at my tongue again when suddenly he moves the hand that’s beneath my dress.