Quarterback's Secret Baby (Bad Boy Ballers) (5 page)

I was no virgin at that time. In fact, I was probably more experienced than most thirty-something men. But what I could feel in Tasha, that unstoppable hunger, was new. She shifted her body forwards at one point, so my hard-on was pressed against her thigh, and the sound that came out of her throat, I swear to God I almost came in my pants.

"Kaden," she whispered, pulling me against her, grinding down against me as if she was trying to merge her body with mine. "Kaden, take me back to out to the hills, OK? Right now, let's-"

It was at that moment that we both heard the front door opening - and the front door was only feet from the kitchen. Tasha jumped off me and frantically started trying to smooth down her clothes as I made a clumsy attempt to push my stiff cock down one of my pant-legs.

"Hey Tash, I-"

A male voice. Probably her brother. He walked into the kitchen, looked back and forth from Tasha to me a few times and then shook his head slightly, more than aware of what he'd walked in on. Thankfully, he didn't seem to be the type of older brother to get all macho and confrontational. After questioning me on how old I was and where I went to school he visibly relaxed.

"So I suppose you're responsible for eating my cornbread?" He asked. "Alisha texted me. You're lucky my sister's here to protect you because I don't take too well to other men eating my cornbread."

He was friendly, as I said, but he made a point of sitting down with us at the kitchen table and whether Tasha picked up on it or not I don't know but the message was clear: there would be no more alone time with his sister. Not that night, anyway. At least I finally managed to get her number before leaving - and a little kiss on the cheek when her brother wasn't looking.

When I got home I had to sit in the Suburban in the driveway for about five minutes, willing my cock to stand down and forcing myself not to remember how goddamned good her curvy little body had felt pressed up against mine. I'd eaten her cornbread, though. All of it, even though she'd meant to use it to feed her family. And then I'd left without getting the whole story on her mother. I had to do something to make it up to her, to show her that the evening hadn't just been about me trying to get into her pants.

I knew what I had to do. I, Kaden Barlow, was going to have to bake. Just the thought of it made me laugh out loud at myself as I sat inside the Suburban, trying to figure out just what it was about Tasha that had me even considering stepping foot into a kitchen. When I finally cooled off enough to go into the house my parents were sitting in the living room, watching TV.

"Hi honey!" My mom said when she saw me. "Did you have a good time?"

I'd told her I was going to a friend's house for dinner. I had not told her who that friend was. "Yeah," I replied, "I did. Mom? Can I ask you a favor?"

"Sure, Kaden. What is it?"

"Can you teach me how to bake cornbread?"

Both my parents looked up at me when that sentence left my mouth. A few seconds passed before my dad told me they could just pick something up from the bakery if I needed a cake or something for school.

"No," I told them, enjoying the looks of bafflement on their faces. I think my parents were even more surprised by my sudden interest in baking than I was. "I need you to teach me. I need to make it myself."

My mom, confused, picked up her phone. "Sure, Kaden, we can do that - we can try, anyway. I'm going to need to find a recipe online but how difficult can cornbread be?"

"It has to be excellent," I told her, a little more vehemently than I'd intended to. "I mean - I just ate some really good cornbread tonight and I need to, uh, I need to make some in return."

"Just what exactly have you been up to tonight, son?" My father asked, getting up out of his chair and walking over to sniff me ostentatiously for the smell of weed.

"Calm down, dad," I told him, laughing. "I'm actually telling the truth right now - no joke. A friend made me the best cornbread I've ever tasted tonight, and I kind of made an ass of myself, so I need to make up for it."

"A friend, huh?" My mom chimed in, giving me that I-know-you're-talking-about-a-girl look.

I shrugged. "Yeah, a friend. And yes, she's a girl."

"That same girl you took to the game? What did you say her name was - Natalie?"

"Natasha," I corrected her. "Well, Tasha. And I need to go have a shower."

I left my parents to gossip with each other about my romantic life alone, partly because I just didn't enjoy talking about it with them but also because I knew that they had already sensed that something was different with Tasha. That she wasn't one of the girls I usually spent time with.

In the shower, which it took me about ten seconds flat to get into, I was hard again instantly at the memory of the way Tasha had kissed me. I looked down at my cock, standing straight up under the warm shower water. She'd felt me against her thigh, I knew she had. And the sound she'd made when she felt me...

I wrapped one hand around my cock and stroked it down to the base, closing my eyes and gritting my teeth against the urge to let go. What would she look like kneeling in front of me? Would she have that same expression in her eyes, like the only thing she needed on earth was me? Would she put her lips on the very tip of me and let me watch her eyes widen as I pushed slowly into her warm, wet mouth?

Once wasn't enough, either. Ten minutes after stroking myself to an orgasm so hard it made my ears ring I was in bed, hard again, thinking about how warm she'd felt, even through her clothes. Wondering about how wet it made her panties when I ran my fingertips over her tight little nipple. Wet panties. Tasha's wet panties. I came again, all over my belly, and barely managed to clean myself up before falling asleep. Cornbread recipes were going to have to wait until the next day.

I almost didn't go to school the next day. Even without whatever it was that had happened with Kaden the previous night, I didn't want to go. My sister was at school, my brother and Alisha at work and Rosa was with Alisha's parents. I didn't want my mom to be alone, but she had our phone numbers and she practically kicked me out herself.

"I'm fine, Tash! Get going. I'm not going to drop dead today, you know."

"Mom-" I turned around in the doorway, on the verge of tears, "please don't say that - please don't say you're-"

"Go!" She yelled, waving me off. "You're going to be late!"

So I left. Kaden messaged me while I was on the bus and just the sight of his name on the screen made my belly do a giddy little flip.

"Are you OK?"

"I'm fine." I texted back before adding a smiley so it didn't look so abrupt.

"Good. Have lunch with me."

I was tempted to tell him to ask nicely but that might have given him the impression I didn't want to eat lunch with him. Which I did. I very much did. Two things had been on my mind since the previous evening. My mother, of course. And Kaden Barlow. I didn't dare to even think about what would have happened if Ray hadn't come home when he did. If Kaden and I had actually driven back up to the hills in his ridiculous SUV. Was that all it took? I'd never even kissed a boy before what we joking came to call the Night Of The Cornbread. Kissing boys had been something I was secretly quite worried about. Doing it right. What if our teeth bumped into each other? What if I drooled?

I hadn't even had time to think about it. I still wasn't sure what had happened, why I'd suddenly pounced on him like a cat in heat. It was probably because I was already feeling so emotional about my mother. But it wasn't like me to lose control like that and no matter how gorgeous Kaden was (and trust me, he was gorgeous) it bothered me that I could act so out of character. That wasn't what I did. I was the one who kept herself - and everything else - together.

We met in the school cafeteria for lunch. I could feel eyes on me as I sat with him at one of the long, plastic tables - people were looking. And why not? Kaden Barlow was a football player. Not just a football player but the quarterback, most likely to make it pro and the most popular guy at Reinhardt High. What was he doing with me? I wasn't unpopular, but I wasn't a member of the social elite, either. Everyone was curious about what was going on and I knew the halls would be buzzing with the news all afternoon.

"Hey," Kaden said, smiling when he looked up and saw me.

"Hey." I sat down and neither of us said anything for a few awkward moments. It was Kaden who broke the silence.

"How are you feeling?"

I wasn't sure what he meant - how was I feeling about making out with him last night or how was I feeling about my mom? He was wearing a grey t-shirt with our school logo on the chest and just being close to him made me think about how big and strong his hands had felt the previous night, when they were on my body.

"I'm OK," I told him. "I'm, uh, I didn't mean for things to get so out of hand last night. I'm not usually like that but I was just really emotional about my mom and-"

"Yeah," Kaden said, cutting me off. "I get it, Tasha. I understand if you want to take things slowly."

Take things slowly? What did that mean? The way he was talking it was like we were already in a relationship. Were we? I didn't have any experience with those - is that how it happened? You make out with someone and then you're together? Did I even want to be in a relationship with Kaden Barlow?

Yes. I did. That was what was bothering me so much, making me so awkward. The instinct to hide my true feelings - and the vulnerability that came with them - welled up inside me.

"You're leaving after we graduate, right?" I asked. "I mean, for college? Have you decided where you're going to go yet?"

Kaden probably knew what I was getting at. "Yeah," he said, running one of those big hands through his messy, golden hair. "Probably State. Full scholarship and I'll only be a few hours away from here - hell, it's one of the best programs in the whole country. Where are you going?"

I looked down and took a deep breath. I'd already had the same conversation with a few of my friends and I braced myself for the reaction. "Actually I'm not going," I said quietly. "Not right away anyway. My mom's health is really bad and my brother can't support the family on his own. Maybe in a couple of years, it's not really a big thing."

To my surprise, Kaden didn't instantly start trying to convince me to go to college, anyway. Instead he just nodded his head. "Yeah, your mom. Family's more important than school, right? And you've got time."

We spent the next couple of weeks in an odd limbo, not just friends - at least, not that it seemed - but not boyfriend and girlfriend either. It was my fault. There was the constant background worry about my mom, the little jolt of dread every time my phone made a sound. There was also my own natural aversion to risk. He was leaving. Even if he went to State - and it wasn't confirmed he would - that was three hours away and I didn't have a car. I also knew how college went for people from small towns. I'd seen it happen to cousins and the older siblings of friends. No matter how badly they wanted to maintain connections to home, they always fell into a different lifestyle, a different crowd. And underneath all of it was that same old fear of trusting someone - a man, and one I didn't know very well.

The limbo-state ended the day Kaden brought me the 'cornbread' he made for me. I was sitting outside in the sunshine with Lena when he strode up with an earnest look on his face.

"Hi Kaden," Lena said, "what's up?"

"Oh," he replied, shrugging. "Not much. I actually - Tasha, can I talk to you? Privately I mean?"

Lena got up and made a 'call me' motion with her hand before leaving me alone with Kaden. He sat down. Did he look nervous?

"Is something wrong?" I asked. Kaden wasn't the nervous type. "Did something happen?"

"No, no, nothing like that," he chuckled, reaching into his bag. "I just - I made you something. Actually I made you four somethings, but this is the only one that worked out."

I opened the cake tin he handed me and immediately started to giggle. It was the saddest cornbread I had ever seen. For one thing, it was white. It was also flat and rather hard.

"Aww," Kaden groaned, "come on, it isn't
that
bad. Is it?"

I looked closer. There were little yellow chunks of...was that corn?

"Oh my God," I said, unable to stop laughing. "Kaden, is that corn? Like, is that pieces of actual corn?"

He was embarrassed - and completely adorable - rubbing his forehead with his hand and shaking his head. "Yeah," he replied, finally. "Yeah, it's pieces of corn. I looked up a bunch of recipes online! And they all said to use cornmeal, but we didn't have any and I don't really know what that is so I just figured I could use more flour and add a can of corn instead."

I took a small bite of Kaden's strange little corn-cake and that was enough. It was awful. He knew it, too.

"Aw dammit," he chuckled, not quite able to keep his face straight. "I thought that might work. Shit."

"Did you even taste this?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Nope. I just thought the corn from a can would make it - you know, corny."

"Corny?"

"Yeah. I thought it would make it taste like-"

I burst out laughing all over again and Kaden joined me, even though I could see he was genuinely disappointed. It took a few minutes for me to regain my composure but when I did I reached out and rubbed his shoulder.

"Hey," I said, still smiling. "Kaden, hey."

"What?"

"This is one of the sweetest things anyone's ever done for me."

"Don't." He told me. "It's awful. I don't even know why I brought it. I'm such a dumbass."

"No," I said, more insistent now, turning towards him. "I'm not going to lie, it doesn't taste good. But you made it, didn't you?"

"Yes I did, Tasha. Yes I did. I think you can tell I made it."

Every time I was alone with Kaden he did something to me. I don't know how he did it, but he charmed me. I looked over at him - the big, burly, blond quarterback with a jaw like a superhero and a big, sheepish grin on his face. The cornbread
was
bad. But Kaden wasn't. Neither of us even noticed when he leaned in to kiss me, sending the container and its contents tumbling onto the ground.

When we came up for air, my heart was pounding and the blood was rushing in my veins.

"Fuck, Tasha..." Kaden whispered, running his fingers down the side of my face.

"What?"

"You're so pretty. I love that dimple - there, that one - the one that shows up on your cheek whenever you're smiling hard."

He bent down for another kiss and I felt a little sliver of control slip away as his tongue slid between my lips.

"Natasha Greeley! Kaden Barlow!"

We both sat straight up as the voice of vice-principal Ward boomed across the field towards us.

"Come on, you two! Not one school grounds! Let's go."

Kaden turned to me and whispered: "Busted." But he didn't get up. Mr. Ward started across the grass towards us and I stood up.

"Kaden!" I said. "Come on, we have to go."

"I can't." He said, making no attempt to stand up.

"What?! Why not?"

"Because I have a huge fucking hard-on and I'm wearing sweatpants, that's why not."

I covered my mouth, stifling a giggle, but not because what Kaden had said was funny. I just didn't know how else to react to the matter-of-fact way he'd just told me he was hard. It was shocking. It was also exciting.

"Come on, Mr. Barlow. Back inside." Mr. Ward barked as he got to where Kaden was still sitting on the grass. "You too, missy. Don't you have class? I'm willing to let this slide because it's the first time I've seen you involved in any of these...shenanigans, Natasha. But don't let me catch you again."

"Thank you, Mr. Ward." I said, trying to distract the vice-principal from the fact that Kaden was still refusing to get up. It didn't work.

"Barlow! Back inside! Now!"

Kaden looked at Mr. Ward, shrugged, and got up. "OK sir, if you say so."

It could not have been more obvious. I saw Mr. Ward notice and turn his head away in disgust. As for me, I couldn't take my eyes off the obvious, thrilling bulge in Kaden's sweatpants. He looked at Mr. Ward and gave him a 'what can you do?' look.

The vice-principal rolled his eyes. "Jesus, Barlow. Really? Right. You stay out here until you've cooled off. And you, Natasha, come on, let's go."

I allowed myself to be led back into school by Mr. Ward, but not before bending down to retrieve the container of cornbread and stuff it in my backpack. It tasted bad, but Kaden had made it for me and that meant it was important.

An hour later, in math class, a text from Kaden arrived.

"Sorry about that. Didn't know bad cornbread had such an effect on me. Meet me after last class?"

My head was spinning too much to text anything except a smiley back to him. For the entire rest of the class I thought about Kaden Barlow. And as soon as the bell rang I made my way to my locker, where I knew he'd be waiting, doing everything I could not to break into a run. Everything inside me was in a kind of sweet, hot turmoil.

And he was there, waiting for me, leaning against the wall and smiling. Did he know what he was doing to me? Did he know what that smile did? What those massive, muscled shoulders did?

"Hey, Kaden," I said, trying to make it not-completely-obvious how desperate I was to see him.

Five minutes later we were in his SUV, all over each other. He didn't have to tell me how much he wanted me. I didn't even have to look down to see it. I could feel it in the way he was kissing me, something demanding and hungry and completely male.

"Kaden," I gasped as we paused for a second. "I - I have to tell you something."

His hand was on my thigh, right up at the top. Less than an inch away from where it felt like all the neediness inside me was concentrated.

"Yeah?" He asked, his voice gruff and slow. "What is it, Tasha?"

I waited a few seconds, trying to calm down. I wanted to go with it. Every cell in my body was screaming at me to just let go, but there was another part of me that sensed how close I was - and how deep the consequences could be if I let it happen.

"I'm-" I started, unable to meet Kaden's gaze. "I'm, uh, ha ha, sorry, this is kind of embarrassing."

He squeezed my thigh and lifted one of my hands to his mouth to kiss my fingertips. "I think I know what you're going to say, Tasha. It's OK. Most of us are still virgins, you know."

So he did know what I'd been about to say. I looked up quickly, hoping against hope that I was interpreting what he said correctly. "What?" I asked. "You're a-"

"No," he replied, shaking his head a little ruefully. "No, not me. Just - you know, a lot of people."

"Ugh!" I groaned leaning back against the seat as images of Kaden with others girls took over my head.