Hardball (19 page)

“Just your mouth,” he growled.

Just my mouth. I’d never done it that way. Never been anchored by a man’s grip on me. This must have been the control thing. I let myself fall into it, giving up power, surrendering to his grasp.

Yes. I could do this. I was free to do it, and I was free to like it.

I shifted, opened up, and let him guide himself along the flat of my tongue. I pressed down the back of my tongue as if I was at the doctor’s office and pushed forward.

He breathed an
aah
then groaned an affirmation, pulling out. “I underestimated you.”

Looking up, his face toward me, framed by his pecs, his forearm cutting my vision as he held my hair. I turned back to his cock. I’d taken all of it. I could do this. He guided it into my mouth again, and I took it again, holding my breath, nose catching the tickle of his hair. He pulled out quickly and pushed back in.

“So tight and sexy,” he said through his teeth. “I’m not fucking you tonight. I’m coming in your hot little mouth. I’m going to fuck it. Are you ready?”

I nodded as much as I could.

“Breathe,” he said.

I breathed, leveraging myself against his rock-hard thighs. I took his length again in long, fast strokes. He pushed. I opened my throat, let him in. I breathed when he let me. He thrust down my throat in increasingly urgent rhythms until his body went rigid, fingers hooking and tightening in my hair, groaning loudly as he came hot in my throat.

He smiled down at me. I swallowed.

“Lie back,” he said, brushing the hair out of my face. “You were saving this for last.”

Little white butterflies took flight in my tummy. He pulled my knees apart.

“I’m nervous,” I said.

“I know.” He ran his face along the inside of my thigh and up to the center, where he kissed gently. “But trust me. I love this, and you will too.”

This was a first. I’d never had a man’s mouth on me, and I bundled nerves and expectation in my chest, waiting for it. I felt his tongue on me as a slight flutter I could barely discern, but it was the thought of it that made me gasp. As the pressure increased, I could barely hold myself together. Nothing I’d imagined had prepared me for this direct line to an orgasm. He pulled it out of me. Licked and sucked away the layers between myself and my climax, changing his motions as soon as the payoff reduced. I threaded my fingers in his hair and pulled his head into me, and just when I thought I’d come for sure, he pulled back.

“You all right?” he asked, smiling.

“I’m good,” I squeaked.

He readjusted himself and put two fingers in me then flicked my clit with his tongue. I bucked. He flicked again. I squirmed against his fingers.

“Do you want to come?”

“Yes.”

“Is that how we ask for something, Miss Foster?”

“Yes, please.”

He gave me a little suck. “Ask again.”

“Please let me come. Please.”

“That’s my sweetapple.”

He laid into me, sucking, licking, and biting until I tried to push his head away. He moved my hand and kept going until the pleasure subsided, regrouped, and flooded me again.

He collapsed on top of me. I kissed him, tasting myself on his mouth.

I was delicious.

Dash

She left in the morning, while it was still dark and pouring winter rain. I drove. She wasn’t getting in a cab in the rain, in the dark. Those people didn’t know how to drive when there was any kind of precipitation, never mind at night.

“Thank you,” she said. I could barely hear her over the windshield wipers. “Last night was pretty amazing.”

The previous night had been a warm-up. I hadn’t even fucked her. Hadn’t blindfolded her or tied her up. She only came three times. Her ex-boyfriend had apparently fucked as if he was driving in the rain.

“Never settle for anything less, Vivian. I mean it. You’re a sex goddess.”

“Oh, stop!”

She was beet red. I couldn’t see her face in the dark or with my eyes on the road, but I knew it was true, and it made me want her all over again.

I rattled around the files in my brain, trying to find the right words to convey how beautiful and sexy she was because words like beautiful and sexy were overused and generic. She was unique. But I came up with nothing. I gave my attention to the road and holding her hand. No mean feat considering I hadn’t taken my meds since the day before.

We got to her house. It was still pouring, and the clouds kept the street dark.

“I forgot an umbrella,” I said.

“It’s not that far.”

I got out and went around, opened her door, and put my jacket over her head. We ran to the door. She jangled her keys out of her purse. My jacket was a shitty covering, and drops of rain ran veins of hair over her face. She swung the door open and looked at me with those porcelain-blue eyes.

“Thank you, sweetapple.” I kissed her quickly. “Go in. You’re getting wet. And the heat’s getting out. You don’t have stock in LADWP.”

She laughed harder than I deserved and went in.

I dashed to the car and sat behind the flooded windshield.

I knew what I wanted to say.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May

Then more stuff about how summer isn’t long enough and it’s hot and shitty sometimes

And then the thing I wanted to say in the car

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Some other stuff I forget…So long as men can breathe or eyes can see: So long lives this and this gives life to thee

That’s the nicest thing. You’re going to spoil me

A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. I’m driving, so we’ll talk later

I shut off the phone and pulled away. The rain let up on the way east. Los Angeles rain always shuts off like a faucet when the sun comes up. When I got home, I went out front. The air was usually clear after a rain, and I could see all the way to San Pedro.

Which was fine.

What wasn’t fine was what the rain had done to the slope in my south-facing yard. It slid downward. The steps were covered in mud, and when I say covered, I didn’t mean it was messy. I meant the steps would have to be excavated by a crack team of archaeologists to prove they ever existed.

Cancel Youder.

Where would we work out? What hill would we climb? I was too tired to deal with another change. I was going to bed for a few hours, then I’d cope with the general state of collapse.

And her.

The one thing that wasn’t collapsing. She was unsustainable but necessary. I’d given her flowers and poetry. Another break in my routine. Another mistake. But I wanted her to feel good. Compulsively almost. I couldn’t help but build her up even if I knew I’d fail her.

The sheets smelled like her. I got five hours.

Vivian

Back to the coffee shop on Olympic. I didn’t even have to ask Francine where to meet anymore. When I’d called her at the crack of dawn and said I’d just gotten back from Dash’s place, she said she’d meet me in ten minutes and hung up.

It had taken her thirty minutes to get there, but I never worried that she was bailing on me or that I hadn’t identified the meeting place. The coffee shop with the black umbrellas out front and no name.

She came back with a latte for herself and an espresso for me and stacked our phones behind the napkin holder to let me know we weren’t to be interrupted. Leaning forward in her chair as if she wanted to open my head and peer in, she said, “Tell me everything.”

“Okay, so he came to the house—”

“Did you do it? Go all the way? Home run? Do the deed?”

“No, but… other things.”

“Skip to those. Then work back.”

Francine also ate dessert first whenever possible. She didn’t believe in postponing joy. So I started at the end and worked backward as best as I could. It wasn’t easy.

“He shaved you? Why? God, please say he’s not another Carl with the hang-ups.”

“No, it was me. I wanted him to.”

“Really? And? I’ve never let a guy do that before.”

I shifted in my seat. “It was fine but…” I dropped my voice and got as close to her as the table would allow. “The rubbing. It’s like I can feel everything. I’m so aware of it.”

“Aware of what? Your pussy?”

“
Shh
.” I looked around. The place was dead, but there were photographs of people with ears behind me. “Jesus, Francine!”

“Totally normal,” she whispered. “You’re going to be horny all the time now.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“You didn’t ask.”

A bleeping rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” came from behind the napkin holder.

“Are you serious?” Francine asked. “You gave him his own ringtone already?”

“He put it in this morning.”

I wasn’t supposed to take the call, but I reached behind the chrome box and grabbed the phones then passed Francine hers and tapped the green circle on mine. “Hello.”

“Hey, sweetapple. Did I wake you?”

“No, I’m having coffee with a friend.”

Francine smirked at me and bit her lower lip then fanned herself with her hand as if she knew how his voice made me feel.