Welcome Birthday Guest Mary Calmes!

First off, Happy Birthday to Amber, hope it’s a great one!

A birthday scene from Steamroller by Mary Calmes.

 

“Hi.”

I turned to the greeting, in midsip, glass lifted, and found Carson Cress. It was lucky I had swallowed already or I would have choked.

“Cress,” Kurt breathed out above me.

“Hey.” Carson smiled up at Kurt, leaning close to me so he could offer him his hand. “Happy birthday, man. Matt told me you were celebrating.”

“I—yeah, I… holy shit,” he said under his breath before he found his footing and his voice. “Do you wanna come in?”

Carson shoved both his hands down into the pockets of his jeans. “I’m kinda starving, and whatever you’ve got in there smells fantastic.”

“Oh yeah.” He laughed, tousling my hair. “Vinnie promised to cook for my birthday, so he’s been slaving over a hot stove for like five hours, and whenever he cooks everybody shows up, so… what can I get you?”

The smile Carson gave Kurt lit his face, and you understood why he was on the covers of so many magazines. He was simply breathtaking. I loved the jeans and the white sneakers, the pale-blue V-neck sweater vest with the striped button-down long-sleeved shirt underneath. He looked good, collegiate, and I noticed as I had not earlier that his shoulders were really broad and his forearms were roped with veins. He had the shirtsleeves rolled up, and when he took the steps, sliding by me, without thinking I reached up and grabbed hold of his wrist.

“You okay?” he asked me softly.

I let go, mortified at my action.

“Oh man, he’s so drunk. I’m gonna hafta let him sleep it off in my bed tonight,” Kurt said.

I focused on the chain-link fence six feet or so in front of me and tried to breathe.

“Drunk, huh,” Carson said, and I felt his fingers sink into my hair, massage my scalp for a moment before he took hold and tipped my head back just a little. “You don’t need to sleep here. I’ll take you home, all right?”

I nodded.

“Okay,” he sighed as I closed my eyes and let my head fall back into his palm so that he was cradling it.

After a second he scratched gently and let go, and I leaned forward against the doorframe. I heard him and Kurt talking behind me, and then several people came up the stairs to go in the house. The longer Carson stood in the kitchen, the more people came in, until I had to get up or get trampled. I walked around the side of the house toward the front yard and found a spot on the edge of the porch. Sitting there on the railing in the dark, I could breathe again.

What the hell was he doing there?

I had almost dozed off when I heard something above me on the roof, and when I looked up, I saw long, muscular, denim-covered legs before someone dropped to the ground beside me, into the grass. The smile I got when I looked down was brilliant.

“What are you doing?” I groused at Carson, looking up to where he had been. “You could have killed yourself doing that.”

“Jumping off a porch roof to the ground?”

“Yes.”

“In what alternate reality do I hurt myself dropping ten feet onto grass?”

“You could have rolled your ankle.”

“If I had the athletic prowess of say… you… then, yeah, I might’ve.”

I growled at him, leaned over to give him a piece of my mind, but lost my balance instead and fell down on him.

He caught me easily, hands under my armpits, and put me on the ground.

“I rest my case.”

“I—”

“You cook really well,” he cut me off, leaning forward so I had to walk backward to bump against the side of the house. “I loved everything I ate.”

“Why are you here?”

He reached out and cupped my chin in his hand, his thumb sliding over my bottom lip. “You promised you were gonna see me tonight.”

“Yeah, but I—”

“And I get why you had to bail, Matt told me. And you didn’t have my number, so it’s not like you could’ve called or—”

“So you tracked me down just so you could get laid?”

“That’s what I thought,” he said, stepping closer so I had to tip my head all the way back to hold his gaze in the darkness. “But now I’m not so sure.”

“You don’t want to fuck me?”

He swallowed hard. “Can I just kiss you first?”

My hands slid up his chest, and I felt the wild hammering under my right palm that was over his hard left pectoral. “I make you a little nervous.” I smiled at him.

“Way more than a little,” he admitted, taking a breath before he bent close, his lips hovering over mine. “I’ve never been kissed like you did today.”

And I realized as my arms locked behind his neck and I pulled him down that I actually had him under my spell. Me. I did. The rush of it, the knowledge, brought a deep, throaty moan from my chest.

He must have liked the sound, because I was crushed against him, his hand knotted in my hair, his lips slanted down over mine, and I was devoured.

I opened for him and his tongue met mine, reacquainting itself with my taste, my heat, and every other part of my mouth. There were soft whimpers and whines. He ground the hard bulge in his jeans against my groin, and when my hands tugged and pulled, getting under his vest and shirt to the hot skin, he jerked under my palms and tore his mouth from mine.

“Yeah… okay,” he panted. “So, uhm, no one has ever gotten me this wound up this fast, so I think, uh… bed. Let’s go to your house and go to bed.”

I licked my lips, and he lifted his finger to trace over the same spot.

“You like my tongue,” I teased him.

“I like all of it.” He was firm, taking my face in both hands. “But mostly your eyes are driving me nuts.”

My eyes? “What?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice coming out in halting rasps. “I just… they’re really dark and big and beautiful.”

“Baby,” I whispered. “I think you like boys.”

“I like you.” His voice bottomed out. “There is no doubt about that.”

 

***

Dreamspinner Press

About the last thing Vincent Wade expected was for Carson Cress to ask him out. Vince is a dedicated biology student and a bit of a loner. Superstar quarterback Carson is larger than life, and he lives under a public microscope. There’s no way they should work. But Vince is learning that sometimes people just come steamrolling into your life and all you can do is hang on for the ride or lose your heart in the process. If their relationship can survive the fallout when an injury derails Carson’s future plans, maybe Vince can finally find something to believe in.