The Player and the Single Mom

ChapterFive

Sera

My salad was delicious, but it was just a salad. Lots of lettuce. Since Cash wasn’t coming back, I ate the French fries off of his plate and pulled the bacon out of his sandwich and ate that too. It was called balance.

He’d told me to relax, and what I was discovering was that I didn’t know how to relax. I felt restless and jittery as I laid on my chaise and tried to read. I never had free time to just lounge around and it felt so foreign that I felt guilty and uncomfortable.

It was pretty clear to me that once I got home I needed to give some serious thought to how I was living my life, because this was a little ridiculous.

Telling Cash I was a lot of fun was a bold overstatement. I wasn’t fun. It was buried somewhere deep inside me, under the layers of parenting, bills, health insurance concerns, and a nagging reminder that my husband had died with a whole bunch of secrets he’d kept from me.

Teen Sera had been a hell of a good time. Not a care in the world.

Adult Sera was quick to get frustrated, overwhelmed, and saw no end out of the financial mess her lying husband had left her with.

Talking with Cash, running into the ocean with him, was fun and freeing and I had already laughed more than I had in quite some time. But left to my own thoughts, I was jittery and restless again.

As I put on my cover-up and swiped one last fry, I looked around me. I wasn’t exactly sure how fate had landed me on a beach in Mexico in a luxurious suite with a man who knew how to please me. It was crazy and I didn’t want to squander it by worrying about the reality waiting for me back at home. I wasn’t teen Sera but I wasn’t at-home Sera either.

I was on hiatus from the real world, allowed to enjoy what was honestly a fantasy come to life.

Then, as I stood up and slipped my feet into my sandals, I realized that it wasn’t just sand and surf and having meals brought to me, it was Cash that allowed me to relax. To just let everything go and enjoy myself. He was patient, he was impossible to make angry, he was goofy and funny, and he was really, really good with his hands.

He also had a romantic side.

I opened the door to our suite and stepped inside. The doors to the patio were open and I could see that outside there was champagne chilling in a bucket and the table was set. I could hear the ocean. But no Cash.

Needing to change, I went into the bedroom and I gasped. The entire room was filled with burning candles. The drapes were tightly drawn and the room was dim, save the glow of at least two dozen candles, randomly placed on various surfaces.

Cash came out of the bathroom in a pair of shorts, hanging low on his hips. He didn’t have a shirt on. There were a couple of bottles of what looked like massage oil in his hands. “You’re back. Just in time,” he said.

“What is all this?” I asked, setting my beach bag down onto the floor and turning around in a circle to get the full effect. “This is magical.”

Cash hit a button on his phone and soft music started to play. Spa music. Soothing and, in this setting, maybe a little seductive. “The concierge and the spa staff did an amazing job of putting this together.” He shook the bottle in his hands. “Massage oil, as promised. Get on the bed.”

“I need to take a two-minute shower,” I said. “I’ll be super quick.” I didn’t wait for an answer but dashed into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I remembered what else he had promised and I was really looking forward to that.

Showering as quickly as possible, I stepped out and dried myself off. I tied the towel tightly around me and brushed my teeth. I finger combed my hair and blotted my nose. Deodorant on and I was finally ready. I shook my hair back, took a deep breath and exhaled, and unlocked the door. I went back into the bedroom. Cash wasn’t in the room but he had pulled the covers back on the bed and laid towels down, so I climbed in and laid on my stomach. My feet and calves were covered by the sheet, leaving only the backs of my thighs and my shoulders exposed. His phone was on the nightstand, emitting soothing sounds of flutes.

It took me several adjustments to figure out what to do with my hair, my arms, my head. At one point I face-planted into the pillow trying to sort out what went where. “Damn it,” I murmured, yanking my hair out from under my cheek.

I was grateful I was alone for all my awkward shifting around. I had left the towel on but had undone the knot between my breasts for easy access. I focused on breathing and looking casual and natural. There was no telling how I actually looked. Probably stiff enough to land myself in a wax museum.

When Cash came back into the bedroom he didn’t say anything. He shut the door to the bedroom with a soft snick. I was grateful that we weren’t in glaring sunlight, but also that it wasn’t pitch-black darkness either. I could see the shadows from the candles dancing on the headboard, and see the one burning on the nightstand.

I felt his presence when he reached the bed. But he surprised me by flicking the sheet back and exposing my feet. Then I heard the cap open on the oil and a second later his big, strong hands were running up the arch of my left foot. I groaned so loud they probably heard me in the lobby.

He rubbed back down the arch and encompassed my heel. Over and over he used deep, repetitive movements on one foot, then the other. Then he eased the sheet back down over my feet and climbed onto the bed with me. Feeling the weight of his body as he positioned a knee on either side of me shifted my mood from pure bliss at having my feet rubbed for the first time in, oh, ever, to sensual awareness.

Cash put more oil in his hands and then he eased over my shoulders, gently. I sighed, letting my eyes close.

“There is a lot of tension in your shoulders,” he said.

That felt like an obvious statement to me. I had the weight of financial ruin and the well-being of three children resting on shoulders that hadn’t been built to carry that load. But Cash didn’t know the full extent of the bullshit in my life, nor did I want to talk about any of it when I was getting such glorious attention. So I said, “You can go harder.”

“You want it harder?” His voice had gotten lower. A little rougher.

“Yes. Harder. Please.” My own voice was breathy.

The towel draped over me shifted down lower so the majority of my back was exposed. He gave the same attention to my shoulders, neck, and back that he had to my feet. Slow, steady, repeated strokes over tired muscles.

“This is amazing,” I murmured. “It’s the nicest thing anything has done for me in a long time.”

He shifted my hair to the side and his lips brushed over the back of my neck. “It’s going to get even nicer.”

“I’m not sure how that’s possible.”

The towel covered me from my lower back to just above my knees. Cash shoved it up from the bottom so that my thighs were exposed. He worked his way up from my calves to my thighs, his thumbs constantly drifting between my legs, closer and closer to my pussy. His breathing had changed, his touch still intent on massaging me, but more teasing. It was instinctive to shift my legs just a little further apart.

When his hands shifted under the towel and squeezed my ass, I felt a little vulnerable, but I barely had time to feel any sort of self-consciousness because he raised my hips ever so slightly and then without warning his tongue was sliding along my slit, startling a shocked groan from me.

I didn’t even know that particular angle would allow him access, but he’d found a way. My fingers gripped the pillowcase. I arched my back, wanting more. My skin felt heated, nerve endings alive. After a minute of teasing attention, where the stroke of his tongue was featherlight, he retreated and kissed the inside of my thighs, then the back of them, fingers caressing the underside of my ass.

My body had gone from fully relaxed to tense with sexual need. Every touch made me shiver, made me a little hotter, a little wetter, nipples tighter. The room was hushed, the candles flickering, the music low, my breathing getting more ragged. I couldn’t see Cash, I just felt him, felt every single brush and touch and kiss.

Suddenly, without warning, he rolled me over. He kept the towel in place, so it covered my stomach, my scar, and most of my pussy. Then his tongue was dipping under the fabric and tasting me. I cried out, overcome with hot, pulsing pleasure.

He had told me he’d go down on me until I was totally relaxed, until my back arched, and he was one-hundred-percent right. His skill was impressive, and he kept bringing me to the edge, then retreating to lavish attention on my chest. He sucked my nipples while cupping the roundness of each breast.

After the third time he went back down over the towel to make me insanely close to coming with his tongue, the fabric bunched up over me was annoying. I wanted to be fully naked, I wanted to feel his bare flesh against mine.

“Get naked,” I demanded.