Scoring With Him by Lauren Blakely

Grant

My phone rings a minute later.

I answer it faster than I can swing a bat at a cutter.

“Rookie,” he rumbles, and my chest flutters.

“Hey,” I say, giving him my chillest voice. Can’t let on I’m a mess of nerves.

“Did you think that would turn me off? That you’re a virgin?” He dives right in, and the thoughtful tone settles me somewhat.

“Or freak you out? I don’t know. Maybe one or the other. Maybe both,” I say, the words pouring out in a rush. “I mean, you asked if I was vers, and I said same, and I don’t want you to think I’m a liar, now that you know I haven’t topped or bottomed,” I say in another fantastic display of blurt-dom. I’m a master at that with him, it seems.

“You think you have to have had sex to know? You know you like men. But you didn’t need to sleep with a man to figure that out, right?”

“Right. True,” I say, because once I figured out for sure I liked men and only men, I knew I’d want to sleep with a man someday. “And porn helped. I’ve watched a lot of it.”

“Good. Porn is great for many things, including figuring out what turns us on. But real sex isn’t like porn.”

My stomach churns, but I’ve come this far, so I say the next thing. The hard thing. “I have no idea what real sex is like.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” he says, his voice warm, kind of inviting. He makes me want to open up more as he says, “You figure it out in your own time. What do you like watching?”

That’s easy. So easy. “I’m pretty simple. Hot guys, ripped bodies, blow jobs, rim jobs, flip fucking,” I say, and holy hell, that was like a ten-ton truck driving off my chest. I feel a million times lighter. I’ve never said that out loud to another person. Never told a man what I fantasize about. But I fantasize a lot. My mind is a very active land. “And when I watch, I can put myself in all the roles. But I don’t know if that means I’m vers. I mean, maybe I am. I think I could be. I just don’t want you to think I lied to you.”

“I don’t think you’re a liar for saying you’re vers even if you haven’t had sex. Sex is in the mind. Some men learn if they like to top or bottom or both from experimenting, and some men know it intrinsically.”

Relieved, I drag a hand through my hair. “Right. But . . .”

I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say.

Except, what I want to say is, will you please sleep with me? Will you teach me everything you know about pleasing a man and being pleased, and I’m dying here because I’m twenty-two and I’m ready, I’m so damn ready.

And I want it to be you so badly.

Instead, I wait. Something I know all too well how to do.

“But what, Grant?” he asks gently after a few seconds. “Am I turned off? I am not. Am I freaked out? I am not. Am I curious about you and your choices? You bet I am.”

A wave of relief washes over me. “Good.”

“I want to know you. I want to know why you held out. I don’t think it’s that you’re waiting to get married,” he says, laughing.

“Yeah, that’s not it,” I say, laughing too. But before I can open up the book and tell him my story, I want to know his. “I’ll tell you, but first . . . how old were you?”

“I was seventeen,” he says, in a voice laced with regret.

“You sound like you’re not crazy about that choice,” I say.

“I was drunk. It was stupid.” He inhales sharply.

His decision not to drink makes more sense. That must be when he stopped. “Did someone take advantage of you?”

“No. It was just me being an idiot.”

“I can’t picture you ever being an idiot, but I suppose we all are at some point,” I say.

“Definitely.”

“Did you lose it with a guy or a girl?” I ask, a little unsure if he's talking about gay sex or all sex, so it’s best to ask.

He’s quiet for a beat. With a sigh, he says, “Both.”

It’s like someone just banged a cymbal. I scoot up in the bed. “Whoa. Not what I expected to hear.”

“Figured I’d surprise you,” he says drily, but not like he’s trying to amuse me by dropping that news. He’s simply sharing. “We were messing around, the three of us. A guy I knew and his girlfriend. They liked to . . . mix it up.”

“Wow,” I say, feeling so vanilla, so boring. “Was it . . . did you . . .?” I can barely finish my questions. I’m not bothered that he slept with a girl. I’m trying to wrap my head around how he’s so much more experienced than I am. “Did you like it?” I manage to ask.

“With her? Not really. With him? Hell yes,” he says.

“Then why did you say you were an idiot?”

“Because he wasn’t interested in me. He was doing it for her.”

“What?” I furrow my brow. “That does not compute.”

“It was her thing. He was bi, and she liked to get it on in threesomes, so they did. I was their . . . extra. Their plaything.”

I scrub a hand across the back of my neck, trying to understand what went down. “So, you had sex with both of them?”

“Yes. I fucked her, and he fucked me,” he says plainly, laying it out, and the image is weird. I can’t see the Declan I know doing that. Not that there’s anything wrong with it—people like what they like. Polyamory is cool, if that’s your jam, as long as everyone consents. But it doesn’t seem like it was his jam. Maybe because his focus on me at The Lazy Hammock was so single-minded. Maybe because he’s got a jealous streak—one that turns me on. That’s what’s odd. Declan seems like a one-man kind of guy.

Declan swallows audibly, then, in a voice brimming with vulnerability, asks, “Are you turned off now? Freaked out?”

I sit up straighter and answer from the gut. “No. God no. I’m not. I’m just trying to . . .” I trail off, searching for the words, then finding them easily. “Understand you.”

“Good,” he says, in a softer tone, like he’s grateful for my answer. “And honestly, I did it because I was attracted to him. I think I knew I was gay. I think I knew I was only attracted to guys. But we were all out one night, drinking. And they made me an offer. They said, ‘We’ve been wanting to do this.’ Her parents were out of town, and they asked me to come to her house, and I was so—I don’t know—intrigued by him that I said yes. So, I had sex with both of them.”

“Did you regret it in the morning?”

A long sigh is the first half of his answer. “I guess I could say I felt used, but honestly, I chose it. I said yes. I was into him, and I was very, very curious. But yeah, I regretted it when they went at each other right after and said I could leave.” He ends on a note of annoyance, but one of shame too.

“Jesus, man. That sucks,” I say, feeling a pang of sympathy for him and his less-than-great first time.

“It did. But I learned a lot too.”

“Like what?”

“That I liked touching him. That I liked it when he touched me. I’d been pretty sure I wasn’t bisexual at all, but that encounter solidified it for me. But the next morning, I did regret it.”

I relax, feeling free. Unjudged. He’s speaking so openly with me, and I’m into it. “I’m sorry you regretted it,” I say.

“Regret sucks,” he says, then pauses. “Your turn. Why did you wait? No opportunities in college or some other reason?”

I flash back to the way I grew up, to the noise and the fury, the moans and the groans. The things I overheard that went beyond sex. Now’s not the time to unload chapter and verse of the I had shitty parents saga, but he was frank with me, so I give him some of the same. “My parents had me when they were young. They were teenagers. And they fought all the time. And fucked all the time. And it was just . . . hard . . . really hard. I didn’t want that—the kind of relationship you wind up regretting.”

“That does sound rough.”

“I also didn’t know right away what I wanted. I fooled around with girls first, back in high school. Mostly because it was easy,” I say.

“Because that’s what society expects?”

I shake my head, picturing those days, those times. “Not really for that reason. Honestly, it was because I spent a lot of time with girls. I’ve always had a lot of female friends. My closest friend is Reese—she’s two years younger, and our grandmas are best friends, so we pretty much grew up together. Nothing happened with her, but I was friends with a lot of her friends and always enjoyed hanging out with them, talking to them. So, I thought, maybe I like girls. I mean, I could tell who was pretty, but I guess in the same way I could tell a sunset was pretty. So, I went on some dates to see if I was straight.”

“How’d that work out for ya?” he deadpans.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” I say, smiling, then I continue. “And after that, I thought maybe I was bi.”

“Are you?”

It’s funny that he asks. I want to say, “Dude, can you not tell how much I love dick?”

But that’s not the point. You can love dick and love pussy too. But I only love one.

“No. My dates with girls were pretty so-so. Fooling around with a girl always felt like a shoe on the wrong foot. Or like I was standing in front of a crowd and didn’t know what to do with my hands.”

He laughs at that last one. “Like Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights. ‘I’m not sure what to do with my hands?’” he says, imitating the movie star’s race-car driver when he does his first TV interview.

“Exactly.”

“And what does messing around with a guy feel like?”

That’s easy—so damn easy. “Like playing baseball. Like hitting a home run. It’s not at all like looking at a sunset.”

I can hear him smile. Hell, I can feel it. “Mmm. Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“And I figured out I was into dudes and only dudes at the end of high school. That’s why I got the piercing. Just kind of a personal marker, to honor what I’d learned about myself.”

“That’s a damn good reason.”

“But it’s not like I was showing it off to guys all the time. College was insane. I was on scholarship and wanted my degree before I entered the draft, so I was trying to finish in three years. I was either studying or playing ball. It sounds cliched, but I barely had time to breathe.”

“Let alone figure out how to breathe when a dick is lodged in the back of your throat,” he teases.

That brings on a smile. I fucking love his sense of humor. It keeps me sharing, wanting to hear more of it. “Then I went to the minors and then here.”

“Have you . . . done anything?”

“You mean did I lie about being good at sucking?”

“Listen, rookie. Being good at giving head is something I can teach you if you want to learn,” he says, and my pulse spikes from the offer. “So, I don’t care if you said that to flirt with me. I’m asking because I want to know you.”

My heart thumps a little harder over his last few words. Funny that talking so honestly about sex makes my chest warm. “I’ve done the whole blow job and hand job thing plenty of times. Yes, I like sucking cock, and I think I’m good at it, but feel free to be the judge of that yourself,” I toss out, pretty pleased with my flirt game.

Declan laughs. “Nice way to say you want to suck my dick.”

“You know I do.”

He hums, low in his throat. “I want to see you on your knees taking my dick between those lips. Want to see you crawling up on the bed and settling between my thighs to swallow my cock,” he rumbles, and my dick springs to life again.

“That’s where I want to be,” I say. I’m not turning back now.

“I know. And you know I want that too.” He breathes out hard, taking his time. “And everything else.”

Which is a perfect entry point. Or reentry point, I should say.

“So,” I say, circling back to my original question, girding myself to put my loins on the line. “Will you let me? Do that and everything else?”

I brace myself for his answer.