Cam

 

This was the longest Reese and I had been around each other…alone.

I felt so strung-out, it was like I was coming down off a five-day bender.

At this point, I couldn’t smell anything but cherry vanilla. She was wearing this blue dress that clung to her ass like Saran wrap, and I hadn’t been able to look anywhere else for the last hour and a half. Plus, she had on these black tights that made her legs look impossibly longer and were quite possibly the sexiest things I’d ever seen.

I’d been hard from the minute she’d gotten me onto her exam table. They say that when someone has severe hypothermia their body eventually goes totally numb until they die. That was exactly what I’d been feeling like, only my numbness was concentrated in my dick. Severe arousal had caused my member to become so hard that I’d lost all feeling from the waist down about an hour ago. The thing could have fallen off by now for all I knew.

“It looks like the tendon hasn’t been further torn,” Dr. Kowalski said, looking down at his clipboard. “You’re in the clear for now, Cam.”

I could finally breathe again. I hadn’t been lying to Reese earlier about the sharp pain I’d felt when I’d landed. It’d been bad for a few seconds, but it started going away pretty quickly. And I also hadn’t been lying when I’d said it’d freaked me out.

Well, I sort of lied.

In truth, it had scared the shit out of me.

Even after the pain had stopped, I was afraid to stand up and walk on it. I was just waiting to hear that sickening pop I remember so well from four years ago. In a matter of seconds, I saw my entire basketball career flash before my eyes and a panic like I’d never known consumed me. It was only after Reese did those stretches in the training room that I really began to calm down and determined it wasn’t what I feared.

“I’m sorry, did you say ‘further torn’?” Reese asked.

I’d introduced her to Dr. Kowalski as my trainer, and he was more than happy to let her stay and be involved in the process.

But hearing the disbelief in her voice as she asked that question, I was starting to think that had been a bad idea. Saran-wrap-ass-dress or not.

Dr. Kowalski looked from her, to me, and back to her again, uncertainty growing in his eyes. “Cam has a partial tear in his right patella tendon. This injury occurred back in October. Luckily, the pain he experienced tonight was not the tendon rupturing. He likely just tweaked something in the muscle.”

Reese’s head whipped around to me. “Are you serious? You’ve been playing all these months with a partial tear and didn’t think to tell me or Gus? Or my dad?”

“And get benched?” I retorted. “Your dad wouldn’t let me play if he found out and you know it. I wasn’t about to throw away my entire senior year before it even got started. Besides, it’s been feeling fine, and I think even you can agree it hasn’t affected my game.”

She stepped closer. “Cam, playing on it like this is dangerous. You’re overworking it, weakening it. And the weaker it is, the more susceptible it is to injury.”

She was acting like she was the first person to ever tell me these things.

“You think I don’t know that?” I cursed myself when she winced at my harsh tone. “I know all the risks, Reese. But you don’t understand. I didn’t have a choice.”

She must have heard the desperation in my voice because she didn’t respond. Having been watching our heated exchange, Dr. Kowalski cleared his throat. “Well, I’ll go ahead and give you the all-clear for now. But I really think you should start wearing an actual knee brace during practices and games, rather than just the sleeve.”

I opened my mouth to protest but Reese beat me to the punch. “Agreed.”

Her expression dared me to refuse. I didn’t.

I liked my balls too much.

“Have you been doing those physical therapy exercises I gave you?” the doc asked.

I lowered my head in guilt. “Sometimes.”

“I’ll take that as a no,” he said disapprovingly. “I’d still be happy to put you in contact with one of our therapists here at the hospital, but I thought you said you had a guy.”

“He’s got a girl now,” Reese interjected. My eyes snapped up to hers, my heart pounding at the double entendre in those words. “I can help him with a regular therapy routine from here on out.”

Tension filled the room as our gazes clashed. That meant we would be spending more one-on-one time together. Did she know what she was doing? Shit, did I? Could I really handle it? I thought I’d been making progress with wearing her down since the party, but the girl was so hard to read. At the party, she’d acted like it wouldn’t have made a difference to her one way or another if we ever spoke again. But then we had these other moments when it felt like we were both about to combust if we didn’t get our hands on each other.

At least, that’s what her body language said.

She did a hell of a job acting aloof around me. But there were other times when she just couldn’t hide it. You couldn’t bury attraction like ours. The question was, what were we going to do about it? I was past the point of caring what Coach thought about it. Being around her was too much torture for any man to endure. And I wasn’t a fucking masochist.

“I’ll leave you two to figure out the specifics, then,” Dr. Kowalski said. “Just make sure to come back and see me immediately if anything changes, Cam. Or if the pain gets worse.”

I kept my gaze on Reese as I said, “Will do, Doc. Thanks.”

After he quietly left the room, Reese went on the attack. “What the hell, Cam? Do you not trust me at all? Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“It wasn’t about not trusting you,” I shot back. “The fewer people who know about this, the better.” I climbed off the table and approached her, moving slowly. “Which is why you can’t say anything to anyone about this. Especially your dad.”

Looking conflicted, she shook her head. “I don’t like this. It goes against all of my training and every ethical principle I’m supposed to stand for.”

I took both of her hands in mine and squeezed, imploring her to understand. “Please. I need you to keep this between us. It’s already January, which means we have two months of the season left. Just keep this secret for me for two months. That’s all I’m asking.”

Her eyebrows knitted. “And what if you hurt yourself again? I don’t know if I could live with myself if something happened that I could have helped prevent.”

“Which is why you’re going to help me with my physical therapy exercises. You tell me what to do and I’ll do it. As long as you don’t tell anyone.”

She was quiet for several seconds, clearly fighting with herself.

“I need this, sweetheart.” I think that was the first time I’d ever used the term as an actual endearment, rather than a condescending moniker. I think she noticed, too. “I’ll never ask anything else of you ever again. Just do this one thing for me.”

She bit her lip in thought. “You’ll wear the knee brace?”

I grinned. “Every practice and every game.”

“And you’ll take the exercises seriously?”

“As a heart attack.”

She hesitated. “I’m just worried about you.”

She acted as though that was a heavy confession for her. And I had to admit, the words cut me deep. Because I knew she was being sincere and quite frankly, I didn’t know how to react to that.

“Reese Bradley actually cares about me?” I teased. “Did I hit my head, too, when I fell? Is this the concussion imagining this?”

She laughed under her breath. “Smart ass. I meant that in a strictly platonic, friends type of way.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “Are we friends?”

Her eyes sparked with amusement. “I figure we should be something, seeing as how we’ve had our tongues down each other’s throats on two separate occasions.”

Something twitched in my shorts. Oh, there’s my dick. Long time no feel, buddy.

I lowered my voice. “Want to make it three?”

She smiled reluctantly as she put a hand on my chest, pushing me away. “Be at the training room tomorrow morning at ten. Will that be enough beauty sleep for you?”

“Sweetheart, I don’t know if you’re aware of this. But I don’t need beauty sleep.” I waved down at my body. “This is all natural.”

“Yeah, well.” She mimicked me and drew my attention to her luscious little body. “This isn’t. So, I’ll see you at ten.”

My hungry eyes raked down her dress-clad body, zeroing in on those damn tights. I almost asked if she could turn around so I commit her backside to memory. She looked a little flushed when my gaze lifted back to hers.

“I highly doubt that. I have a feeling that every part of you is natural.” My gaze dropped to her breasts. “I know for a fact that at least some parts of you are.”

There was the full blush I loved to see. I wondered how far down that pink color spread…

“How do you make the raunchiest stuff sound charming?”

“Just using the tools I have,” I answered, repeating her own words back to her.

She scoffed, though it wasn’t in anger. “Tool is right.”

“Oh, don’t act like you don’t love it.”

I swear those hazel eyes of hers pierced right through me. “I’m finding it more and more tolerable.”

I threw my head back and laughed. “See? I’m not the only charming one.”

And damn it if I didn’t spend the entire time lying in bed that night thinking about all the different ways Reese could use my tool.

I just had to convince her that it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world.

Right after I convinced myself.