Page 80 of Most Valuable Player
But I saw the strength behind his fist. The way it nearly flattened that football player. Cameron is a reactionary person. He’s big, too—not as looming as Liam because of the age gap, but stronger than a typical high schooler, thanks to his incessant training. And I’m still learning the ins and outs of his real personality. What if there’s a dangerous part of him I haven’t seen yet?
“Mason?”
I blink, and suddenly my face is framed between Cameron’s hands, and he’s massaging beaded tears from my cheeks with his thumbs. When did I start crying?Why?
“Fuck,” I whisper, wrenching back so I’m sitting upright on his navel, smearing my hands over my drippy eyes. “Sorry. I don’t mean to keep crying in front of you.”
Cameron’s shifting off his back, though, drawing himself up to sit propped against the headrest. “Did I make you uncomfortable?” he asks.
“No, of course not…Sorry…”
“Don’t apologize.” He taps the backs of my wrists, which are still sprawled over my face, hiding my humiliation. “Can I help?”
He sounds so sweet and supportive. Am I allowed to say it? I toldhim I’m comfortable being alone with him, so won’t he get angry if I suddenly change my mind? We’ve been kissing for so long—isn’t it ridiculous how out of nowhere this feeling is?
Cameron plucks my trembling hands away from my face, then draws both to his lips and kisses the divots between my knuckles. He sprawls one of my palms over his mouth, kissing along the engraved lines, then shifts farther down until he’s at the veins of my wrist. He moves to my other hand and treats it with the same care.
“I’m…I just…” It’s all I can manage to croak.
“You can say it.”
His voice is encouraging. Even so, my heart burns with terrified anticipation, and it only causes my face to become wetter and splotchy. Bile stings my throat.
“I’m scared of you,” I breathe.
Cameron doesn’t react to this. His mouth is still grazing the base of my palm.
“Sorry. I’m sorry. I just d-don’t want to get h—” I wrench my shirt over my face so he can’t see as the weight of a thousand hands curl around my heart, wringing it. “If you get mad, what am I supposed to do? I can’t…”
The panic closes around my throat. Slowly, Cameron’s arms curl around my waist, and he collects me into his chest, wrapping me against him. For several seconds, he strokes my hair, his grip never relenting. Eventually, he says, “I know promises probably won’t reassure you. The truth is…I don’t know what to say.”
He pauses. I lie limp against him, forehead buried in the crook of his neck.
“You’ve been hurt over and over by someone you love,” he whispers, breath fluttering the hair around my ear. “Even if you know I won’t hurt you, that fear might never leave. It’s okay. I’ll never be upset with you for feeling that way.” He fans his palm up the back of myneck, eliciting pleasant tingles. “I’ll do anything I can to make you feel safe. And I’ll try to remember that sometimes, it may not be enough.”
My tears stain his skin and roll down the curve of his shoulder. He’s speaking so softly, it makes my chest ache. “Lot of baggage,” I mumble into his neck.
Cameron snickers, to my surprise. “Good thing my shoulders are so muscular.”
I tug my face back to look him in the eye. I don’t miss the way he goes to catch my tears with his thumbs again, like he can’t help himself. “Sometimes you say the sweetest things,” I murmur. “And sometimes you make me want to shove those painted rocks in your mouth. There’s never a happy medium.”
“Love me for who I am, water boy.”
“Who said anything about love, quarterback?”
He narrows his eyes, and I smile sweetly, to which he scowls in defeat. “Can I kiss you again?” he demands. I know why he sounds irritated—it’s not because I interrupted us. He’s annoyed that hewantsto keep kissing me, even after I’ve sassed him.
“If you must,” I say with a drawling sigh. “Though my mouth kind of hurts.”
“Doesn’t have to be your mouth.” He twists, upsetting my balance and nudging me onto my back. He props himself over me with one arm, using the other to stroke my hair away from my face. He kisses the center of my forehead. His lips graze a path to my temple. Then to my wet cheekbone. The flat of my chin, the line of my jaw. Each kiss lingers sweetly, and when he finds the arch of my neck, a sense of warm calmness washes over me.
It’s nice, being kissed like every inch of me matters. Like there’s not a single part of me that doesn’t deserve attention. He’s at the hollow of my exposed collarbone, and I feel the surprising, hot scrape ofhis tongue against my skin. My breath noticeably shortens, and so he torments that spot a little longer, pouring his heat into me, until I’m appropriately flushed and he moves along.
He nudges my shirt up and continues kissing, gentle and slow yet deep and deliberate. I feel like I’m being worshipped. It seems strange, letting a boy I only partially know do something like this. Would Liam have kissed me like this if I had asked? Maybe, but I don’t think he would’ve done it with Cameron’s level of care.
Cameron makes his way to my rib cage before making the jump to my thigh. He pushes the bottom of my pants up over my knee, then kisses me there, carefully moving up my skin until his lips are against my ankle. “You have cute feet,” he says, setting my left leg down and scooping up my right. He sprawls my toes back and kisses my foot, which sends more pink hues climbing into my face.
“You have a foot kink, don’t you?” I ask in dismay.
