Caught by You (15 page)

He was inside her. Heat clung to him as he pressed forward, inch by inch, as if claiming his territory.
I belong here
, the crazy thought surfaced.
She belongs to me
. All the way in now, his cock seated completely within her, a sword in its scabbard, a hand in its glove. Exactly where he belonged.

He pulled out so he could plunge in again, feeling the expansion of her passage accommodating his thickness.

“Mike,” She sighed, her eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks. “That feels crazy good.”

He couldn't answer; he was too immersed in the feel of her, his encased flesh sliding against her slick tissues, her thighs trembling against his hips. He pumped into her, her spine pressed against the wall, her legs tight around him. She might be getting tired holding this position. She didn't spend vast stretches of her life building up her thigh muscles, the way he did.

Another thrust, then another, the pressure building in his spine, the pleasure shorting out his brain. And then . . . the explosion rocked through him, paralyzing him. A groan left his mouth, long and primal, echoing in a distant way, as if it came from someone else.

Euphoria. Release. Happiness. As soon as the spasms stopped, he swung her around and walked her to the bed, then lowered her down. He removed the condom and climbed next to her, cuddling her body next to his.

“You okay?” she whispered.

He nodded. “Give me a minute.”

He'd had sex. Broken the vow. He waited for the guilt to swamp him. Instead the image of Donna prancing around naked with his baseball glove flashed into his mind. He relaxed back on the bed and let the laughter roll out of him, free and deep and easy. “You are something else, Donna MacIntyre.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

He rolled over and skimmed his hand across her belly. The little muscles along her torso quivered. Letting his fingers saunter up the slope of her breast, he realized it wouldn't take him long to be fully hard again. “What made you come up with that glove idea?”

She shrugged. “It seemed like you were getting awfully serious putting that condom on. Thought I'd lighten things up a little.”

“You're good at that, aren't you? Lightening things up.”

Another shrug. “It's my thing.”

He reached her nipple, which stiffened with gratifying speed. “I'm a little worried what will happen the next time I use that glove.”

“Really?” Breathless, she shifted under his touch.

“I'll think of you. And this. Here.” He gathered her breast into his hand, the plump warm flesh filling his palm. “And here.” Shifting his hand to the thicket of curls between her legs, he squeezed lightly. Her eyelids flickered closed, and without warning, he was completely hard.

“Ready for the second inning?” he whispered as he moved on top of her.

“How many innings are there again?”

“Nine. Unless the score is tied, then we go to extra innings. Longest game in history lasted thirty-­three innings. Eleven hours and twenty-­five minutes.”

“We can break that record.”

 

Chapter 15

D
ONNA CAME BACK
to awareness with a start. The sun was slanting through the window blinds, casting long slices of lemony light across the room. She lay on her back, diagonally across the bed, one arm flung sideways, the way Zack always slept, and one leg draped across Mike's thigh. His powerfully muscled thigh, strong enough to bear her weight while he screwed her against the wall.

Holy Sex Marathon. After Mike had broken through his hesitation, they'd made love over and over again. She'd brought only two condoms, so for the “third inning” he'd taken a break and unpacked several boxes to locate his condom stash. After that, nothing held them back from their all-­nighter. Sexual satisfaction hummed through her body, along with a slight ache in her private area, which hadn't had much to crow about lately.

She extracted her leg from Mike's thigh and leaned over the bulk of his shoulder to peer at his face. Slack-­jawed and deeply asleep, he looked like an innocent choirboy with those black curls tumbling over his forehead. Like an Italian painting she'd seen in an art book at the library. It was only when he opened his eyes, those devil-­green eyes, that his mischievous side was revealed. His body sprawled loosely across the bed, magnificent in relaxation, pure masculine perfection. His penis curled against his legs, his heavy balls loose and flaccid under their covering of black curls.

Oh, the things that penis could do. The things it could make her feel, along with his rough, clever hands and greedy tongue.

She shivered and lay back down. The air was still and slightly stuffy, and a hint of sex still tinged the air.

They'd done it. They'd had sex. She'd wanted it, as a way to call his bluff and make sure he was serious about getting married. And because she'd
wanted
it.

Anxiety tightened her throat. Had she pulled her usual routine and acted without thinking things through? She hadn't anticipated
this
feeling, this hopeless, cursed
emotion
nagging at her. Before last night, she'd considered herself to be infatuated with Mike. Now her feelings had shifted. They'd settled into her bones, infiltrated her circulation, like some kind of virus. As if every beat of her heart sent more of it pumping through her body. She loved Mike. Utterly and completely.

Cr
ipes
. What had she done? Yes, things were real now.
Too
real. They were going to get married, which meant she'd be tied to someone she was hopelessly in love with—­but who didn't love her back. Torture.

He'd had sex with her to prove he wasn't still hung up on Angela. Maybe he wasn't—­but that didn't mean he had real feelings for Donna. He'd definitely never mentioned anything like that.

Did it matter?

Mike would get called up sooner or later. He'd leave Kilby. She would stay. She had to stay because of Zack. No way would Harvey or the Hannigans let her leave, and she wouldn't want Zack to be without his extended family anyway. She and Mike would have a long-­distance relationship, and everyone knew those didn't work. It would fall apart, they'd end the marriage, and she'd begin the process of rebuilding her peace of mind.

At least she'd have Zack, which made up for everything else.

Mike's phone buzzed from the floor somewhere. One of his arms shot toward it, feeling along the edge of the mattress. Donna rolled out of bed, skipped to the other side, then put the phone in his hand.

“Yeah,” he mumbled into it, once he'd plastered it crookedly to his ear. Silence ensued while he listened to whoever had called. Donna took the opportunity to find her own phone and check the time. Six-­thirty. She had to be at work at nine. Who would call Mike at six-­thirty in the morning?

When she turned back, he was sitting up, rubbing the sleep grains out of his eyes. “Yazmer? That dickhead. Where?” He swung his legs over the side of his bed and strode from the room. Donna couldn't help watching the way his ass muscles flexed with each step. Sweet Lord, he was a sexy, sexy man.

But this wasn't the moment for lust, since clearly something bad was in the works. She untangled the top sheet, which looked as if it had gone through the washer too many times, and wrapped it around her. In the living room, she found Mike bent over a small black-­and-­white TV that sat on a box in the corner.

“I don't even know if I get any channels,” he was saying. “Hang on, let me get to my laptop. Don't hang up.”

Donna spotted a laptop on the butcher-­block island next to her. Obligingly, she opened it for him and turned it on. Naked, powerful and magnificent, he walked toward her, brushed a kiss across her lips, and leaned over the laptop.

Her lips tingling, she watched as he pulled up Twitter. He searched for @TheYaz, which brought up a profile picture of the pitcher about to kiss a baseball.

Mike scrolled through a series of tweets, in which Yazmer was making some kind of announcement. Slowly, he read aloud. “
Searched my conscience. The dear Lord showed Yaz the way. Crush Taylor gotz to go
.”

Next tweet. “
Tried to get him in on petition to keep locker room sacred. Told me no politics in the clubhouse
.”

Next tweet. “
Want to use my fame to do the Lord's work. Lord told me, Crush Taylor's got to go. Let
's make this shit viral. Hashtag CrushIt. RT, baby.
”

He glanced at Donna. “RT? What's RT?”

“Retweet,” Donna told him, apparently at the same time his mystery caller did.

“Retweet? This is nuts. Who cares what some rookie pitcher thinks? I gotta go, Caleb. This is too much bullshit first thing in the morning. Catch you later.” He tossed his phone onto the butcher-­block countertop.

“Retweet?” he repeated to Donna. “What is going on here?”

“You don't spend much time on social media, do you?”

“I post stuff to Instagram now and then. Facebook. I'm just a dude who plays baseball. What am I going to put on Twitter?” He ran a hand through his thick curls, then along his jaw, which was studded with black stubble. He blinked at her. “Donna.” He sounded surprised to see her.

“Remember me?” Still clutching the sheet, she gave a little wave.

“Um, yeah. I'm not about to forget a night like that. I just wish the morning hadn't started with this bullshit. I'd rather be under your sheet with you.”

He reached for her, but she took a step back. She wasn't quite ready to surrender to the tug of lust that had already sprung up between them. “So Yazmer's starting a campaign against Crush?”

“Yaz wants attention. He needs it like oxygen.” He went to one of the boxes occupying the living room and knelt down to rummage through it. After a short search, he pulled out a bath towel. Rising to his feet, he wrapped it around his waist. Donna was a little sad to see him covered up, but at least his torso was still on display, with its rippling muscles and light sprinkling of springy curls.

“He's been passing this petition around to keep gay reporters out of the locker room. It's not like we even have any in this town, as far as I‘ve heard. And how would we even know if they were? What does he want to do, make them wear a big LGBT label on their foreheads? Of course, if it was a hot lesbian reporter he'd be all over it. The dude's a straight-­up homophobic hypocrite.”

He ran a hand across the back of his neck. Donna was riveted by the way his biceps bunched from the movement. If only Mike wasn't so physically appealing. It just wasn't fair. Even first thing in the morning, after being woken up by a surprise phone call, sleepy-­eyed and a little grumpy, he looked beautiful to her.

“Well, I hate to say this, but he's not the only one. We have some close-­minded ­people in this town. When the owner of the Smoke Pit came out as gay, some ­people boycotted it. But most folks didn't care, so long as they still ran their burger and a beer five-­dollar special on Tuesday nights.”

A broad grin spread across Mike's face. “I don't know how you do it, but you always make me look on the bright side of things.”

“You know my motto. Laugh so you don't cry.”

He took a few steps closer and put his hand under her chin, tilting her face up. “I never want you to cry.”

She answered solemnly. “Then you have to make a sacred promise to never let me cut up an onion. Those things wreck me.”

He laughed, then released her chin and went to check the laptop again. “He just sent out a new tweet.
Don't Can the Catfish. Can the Crush. Hashtag CrushIt. RT, baby
.”

Slamming shut his laptop, he shoved it aside. “How does he even have time for this crap? Last I heard, he was designing a Yazmer action figure and a line of underwear.”

“Seriously?”

“Who knows? He talks about a lot of things. You never know what's real. The guy has an imagination almost as big as his ego. We had him pegged all wrong, you know. At the start of the season he was spouting off to the press all the time, and we figured he had no experience dealing with the media. I think we had it backwards. He knows exactly what he's doing. He wants press attention and he'll say all kinds of offensive shit to get it. Anything about gays in sports always gets the reporters going.”

“Won't he make the reporters hate him? At least, the gay ones?”

“He doesn't care if they hate him. Any attention is good attention. He'll probably become a hero to the anti-­gay crowd.”

Finally, the light dawned. She couldn't believe it had taken so long to put the pieces together. “Joey. That's why you're so upset about Yazmer.”

“Yeah, my brother's a big part of it.” Mike circled around the kitchen sink, pulled a ­couple of plastic stadium cups from a cupboard, and filled one of them with water. He handed it to her over the island. “Drink up, you need hydration after a night like that.”

He winked, giving her a glimpse of the playful, mischievous Mike Solo she was more used to. Not that she didn't like this serious version of Mike as well. She did. Too much.

He filled another glass with water for himself and took a long swallow. “Joey is used to this kind of thing. He'd probably just laugh it off. He has bigger things to worry about, like whether or not his kidneys will hold up. But it drives me crazy. Joey is
Joey
. He's my brother, and one of the best ­people on this planet, and when I think about Yazmer having a problem with him coming into the locker room, it makes my blood boil. That hypocritical, self-­serving, ambitious little snot. He's not fit to breathe the same air as my brother.”

His voice vibrated with anger, his eyes blazed deep green, like the sun lighting up a quarry pool. As if embarrassed by his own intensity, he lifted a shoulder, then turned back toward the sink for more water. Donna dragged her gaze away from the sight of the muscles flexing under his tan skin. This man had a knack for taking her breath away.

Which was trouble, big trouble.

She gathered her sheets around her and climbed onto one of the stools at the kitchen island. “So why don't you do something about it?”

“Like what?” He propped his towel-­covered rear against the edge of the counter. “Yazmer is the way he is. I've tried to get close to him. They wanted me to help settle him down, show him the ropes. I tried, but all he got from it was a selfie. ‘Me and the Kilby catcher. Can he handle the Yaz?' He's like the Kim Kardashian of Triple A.”

Donna propped her elbows on the counter and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. “So you can't change Yazmer. There's no point in trying. But there's got to be something else you can do.”

He snapped his fingers, eyes gleaming. “I know. I could get up on the bar at the Kilby Roadhouse and give him a piece of my mind. Maybe get another brawl going, since the last one was such a hit.”

“Ha ha. I'm serious. He's a baseball player. You're a baseball player. Maybe you should go on TV. Do a PSA or something. Why should he get all the attention?”

“Because he wants it. He's a camera hound. Some ­people can't get enough of the camera, but I'm not one of them.”

“Well, I think you're very photogenic.” She picked up his phone and pretended to snap a photo, aiming at his groin, where the towel clung to the bulge of his privates.

“You'd better delete that,” he growled, advancing around the island toward her. “I don't need my junk ending up on Facebook.”

She hopped off the stool and backed away from him, still pretending to take snapshots of his body. “How about Twitter, then? Hashtag OMG.”

“Hand over my phone or there's going to be trouble, girl.” He was only a few strides away from her now. She tripped over the sheet, which had gotten tangled between her feet, and let out a shriek as he lunged for her. Abandoning her covering, she skipped away, so he was left with a handful of bed sheet and a frustrated expression, and she was left completely nude.

He still wore his towel, which was now expanding over a quickly growing hard-­on. Spinning around, she aimed his phone at his groin. “Looks like
someone
loves the camera.”

“That has nothing to do with the camera,” he informed her, wrestling the sheet into a ball, then casting it aside. “That's all you, baby. Might as well sign your name on it.”

“With what, my tongue?” She tossed the saucy words over her shoulder just before she slipped into the bedroom and flung her weight against the door. She shouldn't be teasing him like this. She had to get to work soon.

But the door didn't close. Somehow, he managed to get his chest between the door and the jamb, which meant he was able to snake one arm through and tickle her ribs.

She was insanely ticklish, always had been, and immediately shrieked in hysterical reaction.

“My girl's a little ticklish, is she?” He wriggled his fingers under her armpit. She squirmed madly, then gave up and jumped out of reach. The door fell open and he burst into the room, all bulging muscles and black curls. He advanced toward her. “Now I know how to get you back. Tie you up and tickle you until you scream.”