Chapter Seventeen Saylor
Chapter Seventeen
Saylor
Though he wasn’t being pushy about it, Cash Donovan had made it clear he wanted me.
Ever since I started dating in high school, other guys had made it clear they wanted me too, but none of them had ever slipped under my skin—until Cash.
Though I tried to tell myself he was just another guy—another football player for the Wildcats, no less—something about his competitiveness, his quiet authority, and the sizzle in his eyes when he rested them on me—called to me in a way no other guy ever had.
It terrified me.
And it thrilled me, which was even more terrifying.
When we left the finals party at the Sigma Chi Rho house shortly after the impromptu Hearts tournament, Cash was quiet. Yet our uncharacteristic lack of conversation wasn’t uncomfortable. For whatever reason, I felt more myself around him than I did even with my closest friends.
I’d straight up told him I didn’t want to date a football player, and he’d acknowledged that and then proceeded to show me he was so much more than his preferred sport.
When we were on our one and only date, other than his competitiveness in the splash war my frat brothers initiated, he was a regular guy.
Being with him wasn’t the same experience as being around Callahan or Wyatt or Finn, Cash’s teammates who had a real shot at the NFL—and focused goals to make their shot happen.
From my perspective, everything they did fed into that singular purpose of playing on Sundays after graduation.
Cash didn’t come across that way. We talked more about my future plans than his.
He wanted to practice medicine, albeit with a pro team someday, but that was different from being out on the field with the adulation of thousands of fans and a base of groupies who made themselves available wherever the team landed.
His plans didn’t include the probability of having to uproot every few years when he and his current team decided to part ways.
The fact we barely talked about football at all was a point in his favor.
Except I wasn’t being fair. My friends’ football-playing love interests didn’t spend all their time talking football either.
Plus, I truly loved the game—watching it, talking about it with my fraternity brothers, cheering for the Wildcats on Saturday afternoons.
If I were being honest with myself, I was hiding behind Cash being a football player as a way to pretend I wasn’t into him.
Sneaking a glance at his chiseled profile, I puffed a tiny sigh. The guy could make a killing as a model.
“You’re thinking awfully hard over there,” he said. “I hope your thoughts are about how you want to go on another date with me.”
“That sounds like your thoughts.”
He pinned me with his megawatt grin. “See? Brilliant minds think alike.”
Though I was shaking my head, I couldn’t help but grin at his silliness.
“How ’bout tomorrow? You got anything going on?”
“No.” I dragged the word out to four syllables. “What did you have in mind?”
Putting his finger to his lips, he played at mulling over something big.
“I was thinking I’d pick you up at noon, take you to lunch, then maybe whack some balls around the back nine at the public course.
” Turning in his seat, he added, “Unless I’ve read you completely wrong. You have golfed before, yeah?”
“Yeah. But I warn you, my sport is skiing. Golfing only nine holes could take until sunset.”
“Excellent.”
I burst out laughing. “I didn’t take you as a glutton for punishment.”
“Spending all day with you sounds like a reward.” The sincerity in his tone sobered me right up.
Luckily, we were in front of his house.
“Huh. It still kinda throws me that you already knew where I lived. But I’m going to need an address for picking you up tomorrow.”
I rattled off my street and apartment number, which he promptly put in his phone.
When he glanced up at me, his eyes intensified from their usual gunmetal gray to the intense blue-gray he’d trained on me the first time he kissed me, and again on the raft.
Before I had a chance to prepare, he’d already cupped my cheek and tugged me halfway across the console separating us.
He met me with a barely-there kiss that shouldn’t have even registered, let alone sent a cascade of sparks through me.
“Thanks for the ride. See you tomorrow, Saylor.”
“You really do kinda suck at golf,” Cash said, laughing as I whiffed yet another ball on the tee.
“I did warn you,” I shot over my shoulder at him.
As I stood over my shot once again, I sensed a warmth on my back that had nothing to do with the perfect blue-sky day.
“Mind if I help you?” His gravelly voice resonated through me as he wrapped his arms around me to cover my hands on my driver.
“Keep your head down, eyes on the ball, and rotate back like this.” He guided my swing back and stopped at its apex.
“It’s right at this point you sneak a glance up at your stick. Don’t do that.”
I’d turned my entire head to gaze up at him, catching his grin as I did so, my body tingling with awareness at him holding me so close.
“Keep your focus on the ball and swing through.” He guided me through the swing, though we were a foot back from my ball, so all we shot was air.
After a beat he let me go and stepped back, taking his delicious warmth with him.
Yet when I positioned myself over the ball, the phantom sensation of his body over mine guiding me through the swing clung to my skin.
When I connected with the ball and sent it sailing off the tee, I wasn’t sure who was more excited: Cash or me.
Jumping up and down, I dropped my club and leaped into his arms. “Did you see that? I sent it!”
His laughter rumbled deep in his chest, the vibrations echoing through mine where our bodies pressed together. “I did. Nice shot, Ace.”
For a long minute, we smiled at each other. Then his eyes turned to molten silver as he slid his big hands over my ass and gave my cheeks a squeeze.
“Um, you should probably put me down now. I doubt the ladies in the group behind us will consider this proper decorum on the links.”
“Proper decorum is overrated.” He smirked. “But for a kiss, I’ll set you back on your feet.”
Knowing how his kisses affected me, I shot him a dubious look. Then I leaned in and kissed the edge of his sculpted jaw before feathering a trail of kisses to his ear. “Thanks for the mini lesson. You can put me down now,” I whispered.
With one more caress over my ass, he let me go, though not without making me slide all the way down his front in the process. I sensed every ripple of his abs and the semi at the apex of his thighs. The wicked delight in his eyes told me he knew exactly what I’d noticed.
“Expect paybacks,” he said, running his palm over my ass one more time when he stepped past me to pick up his clubs.
His threat shivered a thrill through me as I collected my driver and slid it into my bag.
We’d made it to the fifth hole where my drive had landed my ball in the rough near the fairway, while his ball rested in the middle of it about a mile closer to the green than mine—as usual.
At least this time I hadn’t just dribbled my drive off the tee as on my previous attempts.
Again, he gave me pointers that helped me play within three strokes of par—an enormous improvement.
By the ninth hole, I was one over par and pretty damn pleased with myself.
“You’re far more patient than I expected for a serious athlete,” I said as we returned our rented clubs to the pro shop.
“With the exception of football, no one should take sports too seriously.” Cash’s eyes danced as he led me back to his Jeep, its best days clearly behind it.
“I dare you to say that in front of the guys on the basketball team—at a party during flip-cup,” I said as I buckled myself in.
“I’m not scared of some basketball player. Now, those girls on the track team…” His eyes twinkled as he fired up his Jeep. “After all that walking, I’m starved. You hungry?”
The rumble of my stomach answered the question for me.
Cash laughed and said, “How ’bout you order what you want and have it delivered to my place?”
“Or we could eat without an audience and have dinner delivered to my place,” I suggested.
“Even better.”
His wolfish grin probably should have worried me. Instead, a surge of adrenaline shot straight to my core, and I clamped my legs together against the sudden throbbing at the promise behind that look.
“Mexican okay with you?” I managed to ask.
“I’ll eat pretty much anything, babe.”
I pulled up the number of my favorite local Mexican restaurant and placed an order Cash augmented as he listened to my side of the conversation.
Passing a liquor store on the drive to my apartment, he swung in and picked up some beer to complement the meal I’d ordered.
When our dinner arrived, we were sitting on my front deck enjoying a Corona, which earned us a grin from the delivery guy.
“Why hasn’t anyone told me about this?” Cash complained as he downed a second beef enchilada. “This is the best Mexican I’ve ever eaten.”
“The owners are first-generation Americans. They brought their recipes with them from Mexico. Everything they cook is made fresh in house. If not for the fact I’d gain fifty pounds in a month, I’d eat their food every day.
” I licked green chili sauce from my fork—the last remnants of my to-die-for burrito.
Like a tractor beam, Cash’s eyes zeroed in on my mouth, so I teased him by dragging my fork through the last of the sauce in the container and making a show of enjoying the end of my dinner.
“Killing me here, Saylor,” he growled.
With an innocent batting of my lashes, I said, “What? I told you La Comida was my favorite Mexican food.”
“Have I mentioned what I’d like for dessert?”