Hardball (18 page)

Stop being nervous.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“I’m okay. A little. I’m not sure.” I laughed nervously, and he smiled, plucking an orange from a bowl on the counter.

He dug a nail into the leathery skin and said, “Take the dress off, sweetapple.”

I paused. He didn’t say please. He didn’t even look at me as he peeled a chunk off the fruit. Then he glanced up. I should have felt threatened by the way he looked at me. He was being bossy. He expected me to just do what he said. But his expression was kind and gentle, and I wanted all the things he’d promised.

I undid the side zipper, pulled my arms free until the sleeves were inside out, and let the dress fall down.

He ate me alive with his eyes. Toes to head, he made a meal of me, then he split the orange open. “Open your mouth.”

I didn’t. Not until he faced me, then I remembered I was supposed to do what he said. I parted my lips, and he brought a wedge to them. I opened up more, and he slipped in the orange.

“You’re nervous.”

“A little.” I chewed.

“Why?”

“It’s been a long time.”

Another wedge. I took it in my mouth. It was delicious.

“That’s a crime.” He fed me again. It was nice. I let myself feel cared for.

“Thank you.” I was grateful for his sensitivity. I was willing to give up my power and take a few orders, but I wasn’t ready to go full bore into whatever the essence of his kink was.

“More?” he said when the orange was gone.

“No, thank you.”

He took my hands and looked at me in my expensive lingerie and high heels. I’d definitely gotten my money’s worth at La Perla. He stepped back into the hall and led me by one hand into his bedroom.

All the lights were out but a nightstand lamp. King bed. Very few pillows. Geometric bedspread made to hospital corners. Dark wood. A patio with two chairs overlooking the city. What else? I couldn’t even take it in.

He stopped me at the foot of the bed and took my chin in my hands, pointed it upward, and kissed me. His tongue filled my mouth, owning it, commanding it to respond. I gripped his lapel and tried to get his jacket off, but he took my wrists and pinned them behind my back with one hand.

He lost it a little just then. I felt it in the movements of his body and the way he breathed into me. Pinning my hands did something to him, and it did something to me as well.

“Take me,” I whispered.

“Oh, I will.”

Still holding my wrists together, he slid his finger inside the cup of the bra. It collapsed under the pressure, and my rock-hard nipple appeared. His mouth closed on it, licking and sucking, driving pleasure between my legs until I could barely stand. He let my wrists go and pulled the bra up, then he twisted one nipple and sucked the other.

I made a noise that was a word in some language, and he responded with a deep-throated groan. I wove my fingers into his hair and let my eyes flutter closed as he took my breast in his mouth. His hair was sticking up when he stood straight again and pulled my bra over my head.

“You ready?” he said. “I’m going to eat your pussy now, and you’re going to love it.”

My hands covered my crotch. It was a reflex. I wasn’t even thinking about it, but I was suddenly seized with the fear that he wouldn’t like it. That I was dirty and gross.

He pulled my hands away. “What?”

“I told myself that I didn’t want to, so…”
Deep breath.
“I didn’t shave or anything.”

“You’re supposed to have hair, sweetapple. You’re past puberty.”

How could I explain what Carl had said? Anyone would have thought I was crazy to even listen to it. But I didn’t want this first time to be burdened by my ex-boyfriend’s hang-up about unsanitary hair.

Dash didn’t miss a beat. My expression was enough.

“Come on.” He pulled me, but I resisted. “Trust me.”

He yanked me again, and I followed him into the bathroom. He flicked on the light. The room was twice the size of mine and gleaming white. I caught myself in the mirror, bare-breasted and gartered in black below the waist.

“What are you doing?” I asked when he reached into the cabinet.

“Making you comfortable.” He took a leather envelope from the shelf.

“Oh, no no no.”

“Oh, yes yes yes.”

“No. Really, we can just skip the oral satisfaction tonight.”

“Take those panties off, or I’m going to spank you, Vivian. And you’re not ready for that. Not if you want to get to work on time this week and sit still behind that cute little desk.”

He wouldn’t spank me if I didn’t want him to, but the threat of it got to me. I unhooked the garter belt.

He undid the string on the envelope.

I got the straps off the tops of my stockings.

He took out a shiny silver straight razor.

“Don’t you have a safety razor like a normal person?”

“If I can do my face, I can do you. Come on.” He patted the counter. “Get up here.”

I hesitated. He picked me up and plopped me on the vanity.

“Lean back.”

I was frozen. Simply frozen. One that he’d be so close to my most sensitive parts. His face. His eyes. Observing it so intently. Two, that he’d have a blade.

But his expression didn’t give an inch. Trust him or not. Surrender to doing things I’d never done before, just for a little while, or walk out.

Before I could do anything, he put his hands on either side of my face and brushed his lips with mine. “I want you to be comfortable, and I’ll make you uncomfortable to do it. I still promise you I’m going to make this as good as it can be.”

“I know.” My voice barely worked. “We’re just breaking through three comfort zones at a time. I feel off-balance.”

He leaned back, stuck the knife in his teeth, and picked up a mug and brush. “We are. Don’t make me go for the home run.” He said it around the blade, and it was as sexy as anything I’d seen.

He put a little water in the mug and swirled the brush around, still biting the knife like a savage. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, still in his button-down shirt and jacket, me nearly naked before him.

He put the knife to the side. “Come on. Open your legs.”

I couldn’t breathe. I relaxed my legs but didn’t open them. He did it with the slightest pressure between my knees. He inspected the softest, most vulnerable part of me. The ugliest part. The part where all the shame lived. My lungs got very small, and the insides of my legs tingled as if I were in free fall.

“Do you remember in
Eternal Joke
?” He drew his hand across my belly, down to the tuft of blond hair. “That scene where Captain Gastronome is on the Aegean?”

I flicked the mental pages of the book. There were a hundred barely connected stories in it. “The one that made me seasick? Yeah.”

He put the brush below my navel. It was soft and cool running down, down to where I couldn’t feel the touch of the brush against my skin anymore.

“Do you think he knew his wife was below decks, fucking what’s-his-name?”

He lathered me from clit to navel. My excitement came from inside, more at the idea of his attention than the touch of the soap.

“I think he only loved the sea.”

“Until he caught them.” Dash crouched down, razor in hand. “Then he loved her again. Because he’d lost control of her.”

“He was such an ass. Honestly. I hated him.”

The razor touched the line where the hair started, scratching the skin harmlessly.

“You’re hard on the guy. He had a club foot, you know. I can barely stand upright on a boat deck with two good feet.”

I couldn’t look. Between Dash’s inspection and the sight of the sharp edge, I was compelled to jump ten feet. If I did, the bloody gash and the ruined evening wouldn’t be his fault. The flat white ceiling was about to become my entertainment.

“No one asked him to be a ship’s captain.”

“Ouch,” he said, and inside I jumped a little because I thought he’d cut me.

I looked down, and all I saw was my near-hairless body and Dash Wallace an inch from my pussy, attention laser-focused.

“You don’t give a disabled veteran an inch.”

“He loved the sea more than his wife! And he told her to her face. What is that even? Who says something like that?”

His eyes flicked to mine. Was the blue warmer than it had been? Or was I seeing them differently? “She loved him for it.”

I straightened and put my finger up to make a point. “She
fell
in love with his sea-captain-ness. But that’s not sustainable. A girl can’t sit on the bench while the sea’s up to bat all the time.”

When his body jerked with a laugh, I shifted a little out of fear he’d cut me. But he wasn’t even close, and the laughter was so beautiful and real that my fear disappeared in a
poof
of my own delight.

“You’re right.” His attention went back between my legs. “I must have been caught up in the way he compared the color of the sea to wine.”

“Storm is burgundy; calm is chianti.”

“And us, the incompetent waiter’s cork bobbing.”

I laughed again because the passages were funny and the connection with Dash tickled my heart.

“Stay still now,” he said. “Just a little more.” He waved the knife.

I wanted to laugh, but I was trying not to move. Stillness was hard enough with blood screaming to the surface of my pussy as if getting three nanometers closer to him would get me off.

“Your pussy is gorgeous.”

The lack of seduction in his voice sent blood to my face. He said it as if stating a fact. The same way I was reciting meaningless facts to stave off the fear. The capital of West Virginia (Charleston), or the quadratic equation (X-equals-negative-B-plus-or-minus-the-square-root-of-B-squared-minus-four-AC-all-over-2A), entire pages from the LAUSD protocol handbook.

“You blush easy.” He stood and snapped a towel off the rack. “I like that.”

I sat up straight while he ran warm water over the towel. I had been shaved clean without a nick or a cut.

“I like that you don’t play a game at being experienced or naïve. You are who you are.” He wrung out the towel. “Lean back again.”

I leaned back but didn’t use my arms to prop myself up. I relaxed completely into the mirror. It was over. I felt as wrung out as the towel and as warm as the water. Tension flowed out of me. I could have gone to sleep if every nerve ending between my legs wasn’t begging for release.

Dash put the warm towel on my belly and wiped the soap away, then down, he pressed it against me. I drew a hard breath in and arched my back. The warmth and the rough texture was enough to set me on fire. I pushed forward into it.

He put his hand on the mirror and kissed my forehead, my cheek, my chin while rubbing me with the warm towel. “You’re right on the edge. I could see it. You’re so ready to come for me. If I wait until I eat you, it’s going to be half a second. I want it to last.”

I could barely see him past the red film of my orgasm. I held it back but wouldn’t be able to for long. “I don’t want to yet. I want to wait for mine.”

“Yours? Do you think you’re only coming once?”

I nodded because I couldn’t make a single word. Couldn’t even think or control my body. The towel on my clit brought all my sense to it, rushing to the surface, blacking out everything. My back stiffened and arched. One hand curled on the edge of the vanity and the other gripped his shoulder. I howled to the ceiling then collapsed like a flag in a dying wind.

His lips landed on mine like an avalanche. We kissed in a flurry of hands, tongues, lips. He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it. I reached for his buttons, but he moved my hands to his belt. We kissed while I yanked it open and he unbuttoned his shirt.

Pants open, I reached for my prize.

“Oh, Dash. I…” I looked down at it. I hadn’t realized how big he was when he’d pushed me against the railing of my front steps.

I didn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t know if I could get it down my throat, but hell if I wasn’t going to try. Before I could ask myself how I would do it, my feet and the floor parted company as he threw me over his shoulder and tossed me onto the bed. I landed with my legs open.

He stripped off the rest of his clothes. He was magnificent. An athlete. It was his job to be perfect, to tighten his abs, rip his biceps, work his thighs into powerful machines. I started to close my legs so I could turn, and he grabbed them and held them open.

“I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself.”

“I’m sure you did.” I put my arms out for him.

He grabbed my wrists and pulled me forward. I was tongue-close to his beautiful dick. I looked up at him and opened my mouth.

“Not yet,” he said.

“Please.” I wanted him to come. I needed it. “I’ll enjoy it so much more if I know you’re satisfied.”

“I think you’re stalling, sweetapple.”

“Stalling? I’m just moving this off my desk so I can enjoy myself.”

“You’re moving my dick off your desk? It’s like
paperwork
?”

“Well, no. It’s really nice paperwork. But a lot of paperwork. Like an eight-inch stack of cardboard.”

“Cardboard?”

“I didn’t want to imply floppy,” I said. “Rigid like corrugated. Or…” We were both laughing so hard I couldn’t even think of the word. “Something. Look, I’m really new at this.”

He was laughing, and I smiled. I liked this. Liked him. Liked that he was in control but we could talk. And with that laugh, he stopped being a baseball god. He stopped being the athlete, the performer, the graceful shape between the bases. He stopped being perfect batting form, and he stopped being the mysterious guy who never interviewed. I thought I’d been seeing just him all along, but I hadn’t. Not until he laughed, naked before me, did he become no more and no less than a man.

He got on his knees so he was just below my eye level, more or less, and we laughed together, kissing on the edge of the bed.

“Okay,” he said when he slowed down. “You want to suck my dick?”

“Get up to the plate.”

“One ‘bat’ analogy and you’re getting a spanking.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

He stood. I sat up straight and guided his cock to my lips. When I had it, he gently gripped the hair on the back of my head.