Hardball (25 page)

And why should she? She deserved the best a man had to offer.

An hour later, I got a taste of it. I went to the kitchen to drop my plate in the sink, and her dad was there, pouring himself a glass of water.

“I didn’t get a chance to wish you a happy birthday,” I said. “My timing was terrible.”

“Thank you.” He popped open a clear plastic pill box and emptied it into his palm. I started back into the living room, where I had been having a great conversation with his brother on pitch counts and foul balls, when he stopped me. “She’s not a plaything.”

“I realize that.”

He looked as though he didn’t believe me, and I didn’t blame him.

“I don’t want to be that dad who gets in his daughter’s business where he’s not wanted…” He tossed the pills back and took a big gulp of water. “But don’t be a fucking
putz
anymore.”

“I won’t. I don’t know what a
putz
is, but I’m sure I can stop being it.”

“It’s a man who takes women for granted is what.”

“I won’t. Not Vivian ever again.”

“Good. Now stop making eyes at her and ask her if she needs anything.” He winked.

That was a relief because I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with Vivian if her father wasn’t on board.

Vivian

I’d used paper plates, but on the buffet, I put out the good serving trays. None fit in the dishwasher, so I stood over the sink, washing them by hand. The water was near scalding, and my hands were wrinkly. I could see the yard from the window in front of the sink. The remainder of the guests were around a table outside.

Dash drank from a water bottle and laughed at something my uncle said. He’d talked baseball with anyone who asked, took some pictures, signed some stuff, but had become part of the furniture in the first hour.

That was, if whenever I looked at the furniture, I had to check to make sure my buttons were fastened. He managed to catch my eye from across the room, over cake, while telling the story of his game-winning hit in game four of the World Series, and every single time, he didn’t break the flow of whatever conversation he was having. Not a millisecond. Yet I could feel his thoughts tracing lust all over the surface of my body. He was an exceptional multitasker.

I hadn’t mentioned the
Spring Training Report,
and I wouldn’t. I didn’t yearn for his stats. I craved his touch and his laugh, his Shakespeare quotes and his attention. Even his awkwardness. Everything.

I turned away from the window to dry the oval serving tray and stack it. When I turned back to the sink and looked out the window, Dash wasn’t at the table.

I saw him in the glass’s reflection and felt his lips on the back of my neck. With a reaction that was no less instinctive than breathing, I tilted my head to expose my skin to his kiss. He let it linger, moving to my shoulder, warming me with his breath. Every cell in my body vibrated for him, and every sinew of my heart cried foul.

“My body says yes,” I said, “but I want you to listen to my voice.”

He drew his lips along the edge of my ear, and I leaned into him.

“Stop,” I whispered, hoping he’d ignore me.

“Stop what?” He slipped his hand under my dress.

“Messing with me.”

“I’m not.” His finger curled under the edge of my underwear.

I was wet, soaked, and he was a quarter second to feeling it.

“I want you. I want to watch you come.” His face was so close to me I heard him swallow. “I miss you.”

Just those three words said softly, with his fingers between my legs, opening my heart and body to him, and the lump that had been wedged in my throat all night nearly choked me.

I turned to face him. He removed his hand from my underwear. I put my hands on his chest, keeping a barrier between us. “Dash—”

“No.” He pressed two fingers to my lips. “Let’s do this fast before I take your clothes off. I made a mistake. A big mistake. When you drove away, you took my destiny with you. I felt like my future was pulled out of me.”

I leaned back on the sink and crossed my arms.

He took his fingers from my lips. “I know what you’re thinking, and there are no other women. None. There’s only you and the ways I’ve failed you. You don’t have to give me a second chance. I know that. But I want you to. I’m going to beg you if I have to.”

I’d thought the tinfoil over my heart would crumble, but it didn’t. In the flame of his words, it was blown open, charred black, and turned to flakes of ash.

“You can’t do this again,” I said. “I’m fine without you. I want you, but I won’t be hurt repeatedly while you figure yourself out.”

“I’ve figured it out. It’s you. You’re the end of all the figuring.”

“That all you got?”

“‘The very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly to your service.’”

Shakespeare. He was full of shit. He had to be. But my mouth and my tongue found his, colliding in a crush of need. My arms uncrossed and went around him, embracing the fresh-cut grass scent, the attention of his lips, the fire that dropped down the base of my spine and settled between my legs in an explosion of desire that was close to painful.

Dash hitched my knee over his hip and pushed his erection against me, and my pussy remembered what my brain had tried to forget. I gasped and groaned, eyelids fluttering, body shifting into him, his breath on my face a reminder of how close he was.

I was going to say something about the people outside. How they could come in any minute. It was getting late, and someone could walk in and see me putting my legs around him so I could feel the length of that gorgeous cock against me.

But I didn’t have time. Not a second. He got a hand under my ass and picked me up. I wrapped my legs tighter around him.

“Which way?” he asked.

Which way?

Down, of course. Inside. Hard.

I heard a chair scrape outside and the rhythm of voices.

“Down the hall.” I pointed. “Through the den. Door to the right.”

By the time I said “den,” he was already carrying me through it. He threw me on the bed. Tape and wads of wrapping paper and ribbons bounced with me as he shut the door.

Was I breathing? Yes, I was. So hard and fast I couldn’t even feel it.

He stood over me, pants tight in the front where his dick was hard, and yanked his belt open.

I asked myself if I trusted him. If I let him in and he hurt me again, the wounds would be in a different place. He’d open me where the hope lived—the hope that he’d come back, that we’d have a second chance, that what we had was meaningful and real. I couldn’t imagine the pain of it.

I sat up. He pushed me down. Kept his hand just above my sternum, leaning against it as he got his hand under my skirt. He hooked his finger around the crotch of my underwear and yanked them down and off. He was so dominant. So in charge. Every worry dropped off me and my defenses went with them, replaced by a vibrating desire. He folded his lips inside his teeth when I groaned.

“I don’t have anything.” I pointed at my dresser as if that meant anything. “No condoms.”

He pulled me up, turned me onto my stomach, and pulled my hips toward him.

“I’m taking care of it.” With that, he put two fingers in my soaking pussy and pressed against the place where pleasure lived.

I swallowed a scream.

“No, no, sweetapple,” he whispered. “There’s a full house.”

“Sorry, I’m just… it’s so good.”

His fingers left me, and I was disappointed for half a second, exhaling, getting myself together to have the quietest orgasm in history. Closing my eyes. Steeling myself.

Fabric against my lips. Pushing. Lace. The smell of my pussy.

I opened my mouth to complain, and what the heck?

He was shoving my underwear into my mouth.
Holy what?
I turned around to tell him this was my good underwear. The La Perla’s. Hundred fifty dollars. I didn’t want to eat a hundred fifty dollars’ worth of lace. French panties didn’t come halfway around the world to get ruined by my teeth.

Too late. Looked as if that was exactly why they’d made the trip.

He had the birthday ribbon around my head in the split second, and he was knotting it, securing the underwear in my mouth.

Didn’t he say something about being an Eagle Scout? Because the knot went in quick, and his fingers were back in my pussy, which found ten new reasons to be wet.

He leaned against me, the skin of his dick and the fluttering touch of his shirt on my ass. “Today. Now. You’re mine, you beautiful thing. No one else is going to have you.”

I made some vowel sound against the lace that was thirty percent complaint and seventy percent give-it-to-me.

He only heard the seventy percent, sliding his dick in as though he owned the joint and setting my pussy on fire. I was close before he entered me. Once he was buried inside, I went someplace else. A place with no words, only colors.

Heaviness on my back, between my shoulder blades, and I fell under it. He pushed me against the bed. I lost myself in his thrusts. Unable to speak or move, I was only made of vibrations. I didn’t think the promise of pleasure could expand further until I felt pressure against a place that had never been touched, and I squeaked.

“Hush,” he said, pressing a wet finger against my ass.

I had to obey. I wanted to. His thrusts shifted to a painfully slow pace. Every inch of his finger in my ass, every inch of his dick inside my pussy.

Gradually and deliberately, he filled me. I hadn’t known it would be good. I’d had no idea. It was too much. I couldn’t hold it. I was on the left side of an orgasm, pushing against the membrane to the other side, but he wouldn’t let it break.

Outside. Dishes. Laughter. The other side of the door. People.

“Where’s Vivian?” someone called from the hallway.

I was pushed closer to the edge, almost caught with my underpants in my mouth and a finger in my ass. Fear buzzed and amplified the pleasure.

“I’m going to fuck you hard,” he whispered, pressing me down. “Don’t make a sound.”

Pain shot through my ass and transformed into something else when he stuck two fingers in. Not pleasure necessarily. A presence. Another anchor.

I came with a sob. I felt my ass pulse against his fingers. My body tightened like a guitar string and broke. I cried. Just cried into my hundred fifty dollar panties. My ass was released, and he was above me, lips at my ear, breathing staccato as I felt a warm liquid on my lower back.

We breathed together.

Well, he breathed. I was still sobbing.

“Vivian? Are you in there?”

It was Aunt Bette. Dash fumbled with the ribbon, biting back a laugh. It wasn’t funny, but it was, and I couldn’t help but laugh myself.

“Vivian, are you all right?”

My underwear expanded, and Dash plucked it out, his lips on my cheek.

“I’m fine,” I said from under him then whispered, “You owe me a hundred fifty dollars, mister.”

“I owe you a cleanup back here too. Jesus, did someone jizz on you or something?”

I wished I had the underwear back because I had to cover my mouth I was laughing so hard.

“Are you coming?” Aunt Bette said from the other side of the door.

“No, I—”

Already came.
I stopped myself mid-sentence before I blurted it out. As if he could read my mind, Dash bit back his own laughter.

I swallowed mine long enough to answer. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

I pushed up, but he wouldn’t let me go. “I want to make you come again. And again. And again. You’re magic, you know that?”

“I’m about to be a family spectacle.”

“Please tell me I can get to a sink without going through the hall.”

I pointed at the bathroom door.

“Don’t move,” he said.

He kissed a butt cheek and went to the bathroom. The water ran, and I let my body sink into the mattress. I didn’t know how stressed I’d been until the tension went out of me.

The sink ran, and he came back buttoned up, carrying a white washcloth. He straddled me, and I felt the warm roughness of the cloth on my back.

“I have to be back by Monday, early,” he said.

“I have to clean up tomorrow.”

“I can get a staff of people in here to make this place sterile while I fuck you dirty.”

He got off me and patted my back, indicating he’s gotten me clean.

“That’s a great offer, but…”

But what?

But I had plans.

But it’s weird.

But a part of me is just flat uncomfortable with it.

Which part? I searched the hallways and doorways of myself, looking for the words to describe my unease. Feminism, adulthood, personal responsibility—all were perfectly fine with him getting people to clean up the party.

“And then,” he said, putting his nose to mine, eye to eye, filling my vision in a way I had been convinced would never happen again until he’d shown up in my driveway with roses. “And then we have to talk about when you’re going to start traveling with me.”

There. The unease was there, and it exploded like a land mine.

There was a knock at the door again.

“Peanut?” It was dad.

I pushed Dash off me.

“Give me a minute.” I opened my drawer and rummaged around for new underwear. I hopped into a plain cotton pair.

Dash was standing in his suit, watching me, looking at me in a way that only hinted at his delicious depravity. I checked the mirror, straightening myself until I didn’t look as if a man had just had his fingers where the sun didn’t shine. He was visible in the mirror, hands in his pockets.

He wanted me to travel with him. What did that even mean?

Another knock.

“Dad! I said one minute!” I snapped.

“Is Mr. Wallace in there?” It was Jacob.

He and I looked at each other. I guessed there was no denying it. Jacob continued without pause while our gazes were locked.

“I want to say good-bye, and my mom said not to bother you, but I am anyway.”

Dash didn’t look away. “I’m here.”

I opened the door. The room probably stank of sex. I could only hope Jacob wouldn’t recognize it or notice the crumpled panties on the bed.

Dash went to the door and patted Jacob on the back, said something encouraging, and headed out. I caught myself in the mirror one last time before I went to be a good hostess.