The Player and the Single Mom (The Legends Book 5), page 1
THE PLAYER AND THE SINGLE MOM
ERIN MCCARTHY
Copyright © 2022 by Erin McCarthy
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Erin McCarthy
Chapter One
Sera
“Everyone in this room is having sex on a regular basis except for me,” I said.
Blame it on the cocktail in my hand. Or the holiday blues. Maybe my unintentional three-year celibacy streak.
Because I didn’t say that to either of my sisters, Toni or Helena.
No.
I said it to Cash Young, who just happened to be standing next to me loading his plate with crab dip from the buffet spread at my sister Toni and her boyfriend Miles’s New Year’s Eve party.
Cash went very, very still.
I’d met him at least a half a dozen times, but for all he was generous and cool with my three kids, he was also quiet. No verbal vomit from this guy. He was the strong, silent type. Literally. He was enormous, his professional career as a left tackle requiring he retain an already large frame.
And he was a man of few words.
Even when he’d crashed through my front window, shattering glass in all directions, after catching a wild football pass from my twelve-year-old son, Johnny, Cash hadn’t had a whole lot to say. Just, “Sorry, ma’am,” which might have been worse than him saying nothing at all.
I hated being called ma’am. As if I didn’t feel old as dirt already.
When I glanced over at Cash it looked like he was having trouble swallowing a lump of crab. He thumped his fist on his chest and coughed. He was dressed the way he was on a regular basis, in jeans, a muscle-hugging T-shirt, and cowboy boots.
“Sorry,” I said, contrite but amused. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
He finally looked over at me. I couldn’t read his expression. “If it makes you feel any better, not everyone in this room is having sex on a regular basis.”
I raised my eyebrows and paused with my espresso martini halfway to my lips. “And how would you know that?”
“Because I know I’m not having sex.”
Interesting. I knew he didn’t have a girlfriend but I couldn’t imagine why an attractive professional football player wouldn’t have a bevy of hot young women rotating through his bedroom. “Why not?”
“Because hookups are messy. Why aren’t you?” he countered.
That should be obvious. “I’m a single mom of three kids, a bakery owner, and I’m enrolled in an undergrad business program. I have no time, and no way to meet men.”
“I don’t believe you don’t have a way to meet men.”
I frowned. That’s what he extracted from my list of how complicated my life was? “Oh, really? Where should I be meeting men, exactly? The grocery store?”
“Sure. Or at the bakery. Or at the university. Or at school functions for the kids. Out downtown for a once a month girls’ night. The park.”
Well, that was all true, and terribly rude of him to point out. I sipped my wine. “Those sound like places to meet men for relationships.”
“Oh, are you not looking for a relationship? If you just want sex that’s even easier. You don’t even have to leave your house to find that. Just pull out your phone.”
Was Cash drunk? “Yes, I just want sex. Theoretically, of course. Didn’t you hear everything I just said I have going on in my life? I’m not looking for a relationship when I can barely manage my life as is. Are you?”
He nodded. “Eventually. Soon. Ish.”
That made me give an ungracious snort. “And hookups are messy?”
“Yes.”
I made a face. “I’ve never had one. I wouldn’t know.”
“I don’t like having sex with strangers.”
This was more than Cash had ever said to me in the half dozen times I had met him. Given that I’d lost my virginity to my college sweetheart, John, and had never had sex with anyone but him since we’d gone on to get married, this conversation was actually interesting. My sisters and female friends liked to talk about dating and sex, but I’d never had a man’s perspective. “Why not? Isn’t that the way to go if you don’t want any entanglements?”
“One, you don’t know what you’re getting.” Cash gave a low whistle and moved his finger in a circle by his ear. “Could be nuts, you know?”
I pressed my lips together, thoroughly entertained. This was much better than standing in a corner by myself at this party, feeling sorry for myself.
“Two, when you know a woman you aren’t going in cold. You know how to approach her, how to please her.”
I reached for a canape off the kitchen island buffet spread. “Every woman requires a different approach?”
“Of course.”
We were both quiet for a second. Then I asked, “So you basically want, what, friends with benefits?”
“Something like that. What do you want?”
“I think I just want to get pounded.”
“Holy shit,” Cash said.
I had actually shocked him. I was definitely tipsy. I hadn’t meant to actually say that out loud. But I hadn’t eaten dinner and I hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before. Or the fifteen years of night befores before that one. “Holy shit, indeed.”
Cash eyed me like I was a bomb he needed to defuse. “When was the last time you had sex?”
For a second I couldn’t make eye contact with him, but then I realized I’d started this conversation. I needed to finish it. And I don’t like lying to anyone, certainly not to a man who had become a friend and who generously allowed my kids to go horseback riding on his ranch. I shifted in my heels. Unlike Cash, who was dressed super casually, as the invitation had indicated the party would be, I had taken the opportunity to put on tight jeans, a scoop neck satin shirt, and heels.
I spent ninety percent of my life in yoga pants and sneakers. At least I had since John had been killed in a car accident. It was a thrill, if not a little destabilizing, to be in heels.
“With my husband, before he died. Well, obviously before he died. But sadly, an entire two weeks before the car accident. I took getting laid for granted in those days. Stupid me.”
“So it’s been three years?”
“And change.” Three years, four months, and eleven days. Thinking about that day John died, getting that phone call, still had the power to make my shoulders tense and my teeth grind.
“How long were you married?”
“Almost thirteen years.”
“You were what, nineteen, twenty, when you got married?”
I nodded. “Twenty. We had been together since my eighteenth birthday.” I sensed what he was getting at. I wasn’t exactly an ideal candidate for jumping on a dating app, aka a hookup app, and navigating the waters of casual sex. I wasn’t and I knew it. It was why I hadn’t and why I was currently mildly drunk at my sister’s New Year’s Eve party lamenting out loud the lack of dick in my life.
Cash tossed his now empty paper plate into the trash at the end of the island.
For a second, I didn’t think he was going to say anything else, but then he put his large hands on my shoulders and looked down at me. It disarmed me. Given I’m six feet tall, not a lot of men tower over me like he did. But he had a good four inches on me.
“Sera.”
“Cash.” I fought the urge to giggle. He sounded so serious and he was close to me. I could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes and where he’d missed a spot on his chin when he had shaved. He was wearing a subtle aftershave.
“Promise me you won’t meet up with some random stranger. It could be dangerous, but more likely it will just be disappointing.”
I knew he was right. But Cash was easily seven or eight years younger than me and he sounded so stern. So fatherly. It added to my urge to giggle.
“I’m not going to meet up with total strangers. I can promise you that.”
He eyed me for another second, then nodded, like he’d decided he could believe me. Then he cocked his head and shifted his hand from my shoulder to my hair. He flicked the ends of it, making me shiver a little. What the hell was he doing? I didn’t think he’d ever touched me before tonight and now this was the second time he had in two minutes.
“Did you dye your hair? Weren’t you blonde before?”
Really? He’d been standing and talking to me for ten minutes and he had finally noticed I’d gone from a blonde to a brunette? “Yes, I was blonde. My whole life, mostly, aside from dying it pink once in high school. I just needed a change.”
After my teenage daughter had posted my photo on dating apps and given me the username TallHotBlonde. It was beyond mortifying. And nothing about my current state of
“It looks nice.”
That was a lukewarm endorsement.
“Blondes have more fun. I’m not having any fun so it seemed like false advertising.”
“If you get pounded, you’ll dye it back to blonde?”
Now I did laugh. “I guess so. I hadn’t thought it through exactly.”
“I prefer your natural blonde, I’m not going to lie.”
As if I had asked him. “And I would prefer to be having fun via getting pounded, but now we’re just trodding back over old territory.”
“What if you and me solved our mutual problem together?”
It was my turn to choke. I had been taking a sip of my martini and at his unexpected words, I coughed and sprayed vodka and liqueur over my own hand. “Are you suggesting… that we… that you and me… ” I couldn’t say it. I would start giggling again.
Me and Cash? Doing the dirty? It was a ridiculous, silly, impossible, intriguing, practical proposition.
“Yes.”
That’s all he said. Nothing else.
The idea hung in the room between us and I turned it over in my head. I trusted Cash, first and foremost. That was huge. He was a good guy and would be careful and considerate with me. He knew my history. Those were definite advantages. But it seemed unlikely that we would have the kind of chemistry required to get me where I wanted to go.
“You said every woman requires a different approach. How would you approach me?” I asked, more curious than I cared to admit. “Since you know me a little. You know, approach me theoretically.”
He gave me a look, one I’d never seen him wear before. It was intense, sexual. “Well, you’re a single mom running a business. You have very little free time and you’ve been out of the game for a long time.”
All true. I nodded.
Then he shocked the hell of me.
“The first time, I’d take you hard and fast. Skirt up, panties down, against a wall. Shake it all loose and remind you of what it’s like to feel like a woman. Not a mom, but what it is to be a woman. To feel a quick, hot satisfaction.”
His words went straight to the heart of the matter and to my inner thighs. I parted my lips, nipples hardening, imagery of just what he’d described floating across my mind. I was going to speak, ask him something, but then I couldn’t think of anything to say other than, “Oh yes, please.”
Not exactly playing it cool.
Cash kept going.
“You make a hundred decisions a day by yourself as a mom and a business owner. You need someone to make the decisions in bed for you. Then you can just let go, forget everything in your regular, everyday life, and just enjoy yourself. So after we have a quick, hard fuck, the second time I’d give you a relaxing massage, rubbing oil all over your body, listening to you moan in pleasure. Then I’d go down on you and stay there with my tongue until you were one-hundred-percent relaxed. Then you would come so hard that your back would arch and your nails would dig into my scalp and you'd forget how to breathe.”
His words painted a picture I had no trouble seeing. Massage, check. Tongue, check. Come, check. “Um, I’m actually getting turned on.”
“So am I.”
I glanced down at Cash’s jeans and saw the outline of a very hard, very large cock.
“Oh my God,” I blurted out before I could prevent myself.
“What’s going on, you two?” my sister’s boyfriend Miles said, coming up on us in the kitchen.
I took a step back from Cash so quickly that my ankle turned in the heels I was no longer used to wearing. I almost stumbled but Cash reached out and grabbed my arm, preventing me from falling.
“Nothing’s going on, what would be going on?” I said to Miles, even as I shook Cash off of me. My cheeks were burning and my voice sounded shrill and hysterical.
Miles studied me briefly and then said, “It was just a general sort of ‘what’s up?’ question while I grabbed some shrimp.”
“Right.” I put my finger out and pointed at him, which was a weird gesture, but I was already committed to it. “Gotcha. Of course. Welp. Nothing’s up. Bye.” I turned and fast-walked in the direction of the sofas and prayed the floor would swallow me up.
Miles hadn’t asked what was going on with us as a twosome, but asked us as two individuals. And I’d been so lost in a haze of arousal that when Miles had walked up, I’d felt like I’d been caught having sex with Cash buck-ass naked in the middle of the party. Things between us had felt intimate and dirty and very, very intriguing.
Now I felt confused and like I was going to need to go home and have a date night with Big Ben, my vibrator. Named for the fact that the clock was always ticking on my alone time. And my time with Big Ben would be spent replaying over and over those low, sexy as fuck words Cash had spoken. Who knew he had that kind of smooth talking up his sleeve? Who knew him saying the word “fuck” would feel so scandalous and dirty and like a hot jolt right to my pussy?
Sex with Cash Young.
I couldn’t think about anything else now.
Cash
Watching Sera rush away, I took in the sight of her small, firm ass in those tight jeans. I loved how tall she was, those long legs giving her gait a seductive sway. Well, normally. At the moment, she stumbled again in her heels and kind of fell onto the sofa, spilling her drink in her lap. I heard her swear from where I was still standing in the kitchen, fighting the need to adjust my very hard cock in my own jeans.
Miles was staring at me. I cleared my throat and picked up an olive off the island buffet and tossed it into my mouth. Then I lifted my beer to my lips and took a huge swallow. He was still staring at me.
“What?” I asked. “Why are you staring at me?” I knew exactly why he was staring at me. Sera and I had been standing really close to each other, heads down in conversation.
“I’ve never seen Sera like that. She looked guilty.”
I shrugged. “I think you just startled her.” One of my superpowers is casual nonchalance no matter the circumstances.
Miles didn’t know that I had been hot for Sera from the first second I’d laid eyes on her two months earlier in her bakery, Sugar Lips. She’d been covered in flour and flustered, her face naturally beautiful without makeup, and she’d gotten pissed off at me for calling her ma’am and accidentally making her feel old. Ever since that moment, I’d been watching and waiting for a moment when I could prove to her that I thought she was anything but old.
What she was, was smoking hot and I wanted to touch and taste every single inch of her from head to toe.
“Okay,” Miles said, picking up a plate and piling shrimp on it. “Let’s say that I don’t believe you, for argument’s sake. You do remember that Sera is my girlfriend’s sister, right? And that they’re really tight?”
“Of course I remember that. I see Sera almost every week when her kids go riding on my ranch. We’ve become friends.”
“Just friends?”
I nodded. Technically, that wasn’t a lie. “Just friends.”
“Because if you hurt Sera it’s coming down on me too.”
“Sera is not interested in me.” Then I deftly changed the subject. “I’m glad Dak canceled his party this year and we’re back in Nashville. You know I don’t like New York City. Too damn crowded.”
My best friends from our years playing football at LSU, aka The Legends, had just spent four days together skiing in Vermont. It had been a good time to catch up with all my buddies and celebrate their changing lives, but at the same time there was nothing fantastic about being the only single dude surrounded by couples all loving on each other.
I could handle the ribbing from the guys. It was all in good fun.
But crawling into bed alone in a fifteen-hundred-square-foot Moroccan themed cottage with a motherfucking hot tub on the screened-in porch while knowing full well all the other guys were getting laid was not exactly my idea of the perfect vacation. An idea was forming now how I could make up for those lonely nights in cold Vermont.
