Chapter 27 #2
The entire situation made me so prickly, I felt sweaty.
When I got home, I immediately took a shower.
I didn’t know when the car was coming to get me, but I wanted to be ready when it arrived.
My body was oiled up and moisturized. My perfume was wafting through the air. All I needed to do was get dressed.
Jazmyn Payne: Hey! What time should I be ready?
Lamar Anderson: I’m pulling up now.
I stared at the phone for a second. “What?”
I had just stepped into my G-string when there was a knock. I pulled on a pastel pink T-shirt dress just to cover my body. My heart thumped in my chest as I headed toward the door. I took a deep breath before I opened it.
Just seeing him created a warmth inside me. “Hi.”
“What’s up, Jazz?” He leaned down and placed the sweetest, softest kiss against my lips. He handed me a gift bag. “It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you, too.” I stepped back, opening the door wider. “Thank you. Come in. I thought you were sending a car.”
Lamar walked in with gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt that stretched sexily over his chest. His cologne lingered in the air, and I inhaled deeply.
The back of him was just as appealing with his strong shoulders, cute butt, and long limbs.
He dropped his bag on the couch and then turned back to face me.
He remained standing. “I came straight from practice. I didn’t want to wait to talk.”
I’m not necessarily prepared to talk right this second, I thought nervously.
My eyes danced over his body, momentarily distracting me from my nerves.
I felt like I hadn’t seen him in weeks, even though it had been only a few days.
Just in case the conversation went poorly and it was the last time I was going to see him, I let myself appreciate the sight.
From the defined waves on the top of his head to the defined outline of his package in those thin sweatpants, he knew exactly what he was doing.
Touché.
We were several feet apart.
“I, um…” I dragged my gaze from his dick. “You didn’t have to get me anything.” I peeked into the bag and then gasped, taking it out. “This is your jersey! In purple!”
“Yeah. Angel had some jerseys done up, and I wanted you to have one.”
I held up the cropped purple jersey with the number ninety emblazoned on it. Clutching it to my chest, I smiled. “Even though I want one of your jerseys in Monarch green, I love this. Please thank her for me.”
“I will.” His eyes searched my face. “Now talk to me.”
“Okay.” I took a breath. “I don’t like a lot of attention on me.”
“I know. After you said something about social media and the comments, I went back to look at the post that was sent to me, and I saw some ignorant bullshit. But they don’t matter—”
Hearing that he’d seen it made me wince, and I interrupted. “I can’t do it…” My voice cracked, so I let the sentence trail off.
I’ve come too far and healed from that period in my life. I will not let the general public drag me back there.
His thick brows furrowed, and he stepped forward. “What are you trying to say?”
Holding my hand out, I took a step back. “Wait, let me get this out.”
If he touched me, I wouldn’t be able to speak.
He took two steps backward, and his brown eyes softened. “Okay.”
“I don’t know if I explained what it was like for me in Chance, but it was bad.
I was the center of attention a lot, and it was never a good thing.
It was a lot of mean-girl behavior and groupthink.
And it started because a cute popular boy liked me, a cute fat girl.
My parents believed that I should rise above it, continue to strive for perfection and I’d show them.
Because that’s what they did growing up.
But it was a different time, and what I was going through was different than anything they had experienced.
There were no allies. There were no support groups.
I was being specifically singled out, targeted, and terrorized.
For five years. And they would bully others out of a relationship with me.
” I chewed my bottom lip. “Reading those comments and watching the commentary surrounding you and me brought all that back up, and I don’t want to go through that again. ”
“I’m sorry for what happened to you then.” He ran his hand over his beard. “I’m sorry for what’s happening to you now.”
“I appreciate that,” I murmured. “I really do. But I…”
“You what?”
“I can’t do the negative attention, and I can’t go back to how I felt in Chance.”
“And you don’t have to.”
“I’m having nightmares. They’re saying…” I can’t tell him I’m the reason he may not get Defensive Player of the Month.
“The focus should be on you and your career, not dragging me down. And the only way to avoid all this is to avoid the spotlight.” My eyes started stinging.
“And the only way to avoid the spotlight is to…”
“Is to what?”
I dropped my head and covered my face with my hands. “Is to not be in the spotlight.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you should put it out there that we’re not together.” I let out a huff of air before lifting my head and looking at him. “If you told them that we’re just friends, they’d leave me alone. They’d leave us alone.”
His face was stoic and still. The tension in his body made him closed off and guarded. His eyes were different though.
He looked at me, and I couldn’t tell if he was mad, hurt, disappointed, or confused. But he was clearly affected. The way his gaze burned into me felt hot. We were an arm’s length apart, but I could feel the confliction radiating off him—and maybe he was feeling it from me, too.
Because on one hand, it was the truth—we weren’t together. But on the other hand, I wanted us to be. I still wanted him in my life, even if we had to be just friends. I didn’t want to lose him entirely, but I needed to protect my peace and my heart.
“And that’s what you want?” he asked. “You want me to tell people we’re not together?”
“Well, I mean, we—we’re not,” I stammered.
He took another step forward. “So, what are we then?” His voice was softer, deeper.
“I mean…” The rest of my sentence died on my lips. My heart was in my throat, so even if I wanted to speak, I couldn’t.
He stared me down. “Say it.”
My throat tightened around the words that were lodged there.
“I don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable situation,” he said. “I’ll say whatever you want me to say, do whatever you want me to do. Publicly. But privately … I need you to answer my question. I need you to be real with me.”
He was too close, too intoxicating, and I was too weak in such close proximity to him. I headed across the room, toward the hallway, so I could breathe.
He grabbed my arm and twisted me around so fast that I gasped.
Suddenly, Lamar had pinned me against the wall. His body was pressed against me, and his face was mere inches from mine. My eyes fell to his lips and lingered before traveling back to meet his gaze. He was so close. And despite wanting space, I burned in anticipation of his kiss.
“It hasn’t even been two weeks since you said you wanted to be with me, and then you said forget it. And now you’re saying you can’t do this, and you want me to tell the world that we’re not together.” He dipped his head so that his lips were right up against my ear. “Which is it?”
Taking a deep breath, I exhaled audibly as his breath tickled my neck.
He brought his forehead to mine and waited. His intense eye contact, his cologne, his touch, and his voice all worked together to ignite a fire inside me.
“Which is it?” He repeated the question so sexily that I shuddered.
“Both.” My voice was barely audible as I shook my head.
“You said you wanted to talk.” He looked me up and down.
“So talk to me.” He reached for the hem of my dress and lifted it slowly.
Seeing the tiny strips of fabric that barely covered my mound and didn’t cover my ass at all, he let out a groan deep within his chest cavity.
“Or did you wear this so I’d have no choice but to fuck it out of you?
” He let go of my dress and met my gaze again.
My stomach fluttered and my heart raced. “Lamar,” I murmured shakily.
Cupping my face with his hands, he parted my lips with his tongue. I wrapped my arms around him as he kissed me hard. When he attempted to pull away, I whimpered and pulled him back into me, holding him tighter. He groaned in response and kissed me deeper.
I slipped my hands under his shirt, and when they skated across his bare skin, he pushed himself firmly against me. I could feel how hard he was, and that only turned me on more.
He trailed kisses from my lips across my cheek and down my neck. “Talk to me, Jazzy.” As he was nibbling on my collarbone, one of his hands worked its way under my dress.
“I want everything to be okay.”
“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” When I didn’t respond quick enough, he ran his fingers against my thighs. “Do you trust me?”
Spreading my legs a little wider, I closed my eyes and nodded. “Mm-hmm.”
He put one hand on my ass while the other skated along my inner thighs. “Look at me.”
Opening my eyes and looking into his, I was overcome with desire.
He traced the panty line before sliding over the scant material. “Say it.”
“I trust you.”
“Now say how you feel.”
My breathing changed as his fingers approached, but when they reached the apex of my thighs, I moaned his name.
“I love how your pussy gets so wet for me,” Lamar whispered as he rubbed me through the damp material.
Planting slow, teasing kisses against my lips, he made the sexiest noise from the back of his throat.
“When I say you can get anything you want from me”—his mouth hovered over mine—“what do you think I mean?”
“That I can get whatever I want,” I answered quietly.
“I mean that you can get anything you want from me,” he said, just as he tore my G-string from my body.