Strike Out: Mustangs Baseball #6 (2 page)

“What’s so funny?”

“You. You think you can spank me?”

“I know I can.” What was he saying? He’d never spanked a girl before, and he’d damn sure lose his job if he touched this one. She belonged to someone—someone important in the organization—or she wouldn’t be interning here.

“No, you think you can. Trust me, if you try, you won’t like the outcome. Not only do I have advanced degrees in Sports Medicine, Anatomy, and Neuro-Biology, but I have a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, too.” She had the nerve to smirk at him. “Still think you can spank me, Royce?”

Royce.
His name on her lips stunned him.
Royce. Royce. Royce
. When she said it, it sounded like an invitation or maybe a challenge. He didn’t give a good goddamn which. He wanted to hear her say it again, preferably while she was lying across his lap, accepting punishment for…. He shook his head to clear the rapidly degenerating images.

He nodded. “Oh, yeah. But I want to hear you beg me, first.” He didn’t know what had come over him to be goading her like this. She couldn’t be who she said she was. He let his gaze roam over her body again, stopping at her breasts. They were small, perhaps because she was still a child.

“Eyes,” she said, “up here.” She gestured with two fingers for him look up. He forced his gaze to move north. “I don’t know what kind of women you’ve been dating if you expect me to beg you to do anything.”

It didn’t take much imagination to see her beneath him, begging, but he kept the thought to himself. “I don’t date.”

Her eyebrows rose at his harsh response. “You don’t date, Royce?”

There it was it was again, his name spoken as if she were daring him to come and kiss it off her lips. He opened his mouth to correct her, but she didn’t give him time to respond to her provocative statement.

“Since you don’t date, then I will assume you’re married. Okay. Fair enough.” She waved his marital status away. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

The more she talked, the more his body betrayed him. He hated that he wanted her more than he could remember ever wanting a woman before, even Hannah. Even though the divorce had been final for nearly a year, wanting another woman felt like a betrayal and tasted bitter in his mouth. The one thing that hadn’t been messed up in their marriage was their sex life. He might have neglected her other needs, but physically, she’d been satisfied. But, as she had pointed out to him with a wide expanse of a conference room desk between them, sex wasn’t enough.

“How old are you? Twelve?” He instantly regretted his words. All playfulness in Dr. Reed disappeared faster than beer at an Octoberfest. She narrowed her eyes so her gaze became an uncomfortable laser aimed straight at him.

“I’m twenty-five. Old enough that I don’t have to put up with any kind of shit from you or anyone else.”

She’d defended herself plenty, he could tell.

“I graduated from high school when I was fourteen. I got my first bachelor’s degree when I was sixteen and my first PhD when I was twenty. I have six advanced degrees, and did I mention the black belt?”

“You mentioned it.”

“What about you, Einstein?”

“Stryker. The name is Stryker. I have a bachelor’s degree in Marketing.”

“Then you can read and write. Good. I was worried about I might be working with illiterates.” She reached for a worn canvas briefcase on the corner of the desk, drew out a sheaf of papers then held them out to him. “Fill these out. Don’t skip any lines. If you don’t know how to answer, ask me. I need all the information to establish a base line for you.”

Torn between apologizing for asking a simple question and responding to her last insult, he took the papers from her. She was worried he wouldn’t be able to read and write? What the fuck? Almost every player he knew at least had a bachelor’s degree. And most of the ones who didn’t were young and still working on theirs. Everyone needed something to fall back on in case of injury or if they simply couldn’t cut it any longer against the new players coming up.

He looked around for a pen, found one in a coffee cup turned desk accessory, then sat in the desk chair. Dr. Reed, age twenty-five, dragged a pile of wires out of the way so he’d have a place to write.

“What are all those?”

“Electrodes and sensors.”

CHAPTER TWO

The blood drained from her subject’s face leaving him pale and visibly shaking. If Tricia hadn’t been so pissed, she might have found the situation funny. Who knew a healthy male could pale so quickly? And, God, was he healthy. Why couldn’t they have sent her a guy with a pot-belly and stained teeth? Royce Stryker was six-foot-something of pure perfection. If she’d had one of those build-a-body books where you flip pages, choosing face, torso, and legs to put together your ideal man, she would have ended up with Royce. Dark hair, lean face with eyes the color of a deep, pure lake. Straight, even teeth and lips that would probably send her into a swoon if they ever smiled.

She couldn’t let him see her attraction. Like a physician, she needed to keep a professional distance from the people she worked with. Doing so would have been so much easier with a tobacco-chewing, beer-drinking slob.

“You have a problem with wearing sensors?”

He shook his head, but the color of his skin said otherwise.

Great. Just great.
The last thing she wanted to do was babysit a grown man with phobias. “Look.” She picked one of the tiny electrodes up to show him. “It’s like a Band-Aid. Peel and stick. Nothing punctures the skin, I promise.”

“No needles?”

He was talking again. Color was returning to his cheeks, but his eyes were still glassy and distant. Not good. “No needles, though I would like to get a blood test before we begin. It’s part of establishing the base line I talked about. You know, in case there are factors that could influence the results of the experiment.”

At the mention of the blood work, his skin paled again
. Of all the players in the Major League, I got the only squeamish one. Just my luck.
Nothing about this project had been easy thus far, so she had no reason to expect this part to be any different, yet, she had hoped. It had taken nearly a year of meetings to convince the national organization her research could be valuable, and almost as long to reach an agreement with the Mustangs’ management to allow her to use a sampling of their players as subjects. Now this. Her first subject was a wimp.

“You’ve had blood tests before, right?”

He nodded.

“And you survived them or you wouldn’t be here now.”

Another nod.

“Then you’ll survive one more.”

His head swiveled from side to side.

Tricia blew out a breath. “When was your last physical?”

“Spring Training. March.”

Four months. Unacceptable if she wanted her results to mean anything. She shook her head. “Nope. Won’t do. I need more current data, or any conclusions I reach will be subject to question. I need a clean base line.”

“I didn’t agree to be poked with needles.”

His color was returning along with his spirit. This she could deal with. “Look. Why don’t you fill out the paperwork first? The team doctor agreed to draw the….” He was turning pale again. She changed tactics. “He said he would do the test.”

She picked up the pen he’d dropped and held it up, inviting him to take it. “I’ll hold your hand through the whole thing. I promise.” She’d do anything, including babysit a grown man to get this project underway.

He lifted his chin, and Tricia found her gaze captured by his. No longer glassy, his eyes smoldered with determination and resolve. She might have jerked the rug from under his feet with the whole blood-test thing, but he’d undoubtedly found the inner strength to overcome his fear. Damn. That was sexy.

“I don’t need you to hold my hand.” Said appendage closed around hers, and for the span of a heartbeat, Tricia felt lightheaded. Searing heat liquefied every muscle in her body and vaporized the air in her lungs. She gasped and jerked away from his touch.

“O-okay.” She schooled her expression to the professional façade she’d worked hard to cultivate. “Today. You’ll do it today?”

“As soon as I finish this mountain of paperwork.”

Tricia took solace in his brusque tone, an indication he had recovered his equilibrium. She only wished she could say the same herself. She could still feel the imprint of his palm over the back of her hand, could still feel the lingering warmth low in her body. It was nothing more than a primal response—as old as mankind, but new to her.

She untangled another wire while silently thanking the thoughtless assistant who had tossed the expensive equipment into the case without taking the time to properly store it. While carefully working another snarl loose, she studied the man sitting at the desk. Whatever she’d felt when he touched her must have been one-sided. He’d reacted strongly to the mention of a blood test, but touching her? Nothing. Nada. Not even a flicker of awareness on his part for something that had sent her heart rate into the stratosphere.

Tiny tingling sensations still danced on her skin. Yet, he continued to mark down answers as if nothing had happened.

A trained observer, she noted the return of his normal coloring. Though tanned from hours in the sun, his natural coloring, judging from the band of skin she’d glimpsed below his collar when he bent forward, looked to be a light shade of gold. She’d know for certain soon enough. In order to collect all the data needed, she would have to attach sensors to almost every part of his body.

He wouldn’t be the first man she’d wired, but none of the others had elicited any sort of physical response from her through casual physical contact. A few had tried out their wittiest pickup lines while she attached sensors to various parts of their anatomy, but they’d laughed with her when she rolled her eyes and tugged to make sure the adhesive held.

Concentrating on a pesky knot, she let her mind wander further afield. If merely touching his hand had elicited such a primal response in her, what would happen when she touched his biceps? Or his pectorals? Or his abdominals? Would she feel the same overwhelming feeling, or would it be business as usual?

“Why do you need to know this?” Royce’s baritone snapped her out of her thoughts.

“Hmm?”

“Number forty. How many times do you have sex in a week? What does my sex life have to do with anything?”

“Sexual activity can be a marker for overall health.”

He tapped the clicker end of his pen on the form in a jittery rhythm while he reread the question, presumably considering it in a different light, thanks to her explanation. Tricia resumed her task, hoping and praying he’d write something down and move on to the next question. She didn’t want to think about him having sex. After her reaction earlier, imagining him having sex with her wasn’t much of a stretch, and that was the
last
thing she needed to be thinking about.

“Does masturbation count? Or only sex with a partner?”

Tricia’s fingers tightened on the thin wires in her hand.
He didn’t really just ask about solo sex, did he?
Her ears had to be playing tricks on her. “What?”

“Does masturbation count as sex? That’s all I want to know.”

“Uh. I….”
Does it?
Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Why hadn’t any of the other men who’d answered the questions asked? “No.” She closed her eyes. “Yes. I don’t know.”

When she opened her eyes, Royce Stryker was looking at her, a giant smile transforming his already handsome face into a work of art. The same heated rush she’d experienced when he touched her consumed her once again. The cartilage in her knees softened. She placed her hands flat on the desk for support.

His embarrassment at the prospect of writing a big, fat zero in the space provided, unless masturbation counted, was nothing compared to the entertainment value of watching Dr. Tricia Reed grapple with his question. Since his wife left him, his only sexual companion had been his right hand. For most of those months, he’d admit, the woman on his mind had been Hannah, but as time moved on, so had his imagination. More and more, the female on his mind was someone he’d recently met, or the occasional actress in the news. No doubt, tonight a certain scientist with big eyes, small breasts, and tanned legs would star in his private musings.

The author of the infernal questionnaire hunched forward, using her hands to support herself over the desk, giving Royce a perfect view down the front of her V-neck shirt. He almost swallowed his tongue.
Jesus.
Her breasts weren’t small. They were perfect. His palms itched to feel their weight, to lift them to his lips.

He shifted, trying to relieve the pressure in his jeans. Not even the threat of a blood test could make him not want her. Hell, she could make a dead man rise. And wasn’t that what he’d been for the last few months? Dead?
Not anymore.

“Well? How should I answer the question?”

“Maybe you could average the two over the last year?”

“Okay.” He wrote a number in the blank space. “Seven it is.”

“You have sex seven times a week?”

Royce smiled at the disbelief in her voice.

“No. I masturbate seven times a week. On average.” And, he knew without a doubt, the number was going to increase, now that he’d met Dr. Reed. His mind was already coming up with fantasy scenarios to accompany the hand action. “Do you have a lab coat?”

“What? Why?”

I’ll take that as a yes
. Royce smiled. “Nothing.” He turned his attention to the next question, which, thankfully, asked about his eating habits.

***

The team’s medical staff, having dealt with him before, understood his limitations when it came to needles and blood. The nurse practitioner, Mary Alice something-or-other, let him lie on the exam table during the procedure, so if he passed out, he wouldn’t end up on the floor. While she searched his arm for a suitable place to drain his life force, he turned his head and closed his eyes. Immediately, his mind conjured fantasies of the fabulous Dr. Tricia Reed draining him in a much more pleasant way.

He saw black the instant the needle pricked his skin, coming to when Mary Alice patted his cheek with her latex-clad fingers.

“All done?” He tried to sit up, but a firm hand on his shoulder was all it took to keep him on his back.

“All done. Just lie there for a few minutes.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anyone as weak as you when it comes to blood work. Boggles the mind.”

Royce blanched at the sound of her removing her gloves. He hated that sound.

“Let me get you something to drink.” For a woman in her mid-fifties, she had a nice ass. As she walked away, he pushed to a sitting position. The room spun once or twice, but by the time she returned with a glass of orange juice, he was feeling better.

“Thanks.” He took a sip. “Let’s not do this again anytime soon.”

“Hey. Wasn’t my idea this time. But you know how I enjoy seeing you suffer….”

“Wasn’t my idea either.”

“Who’s Tricia?”

The name hit him like a sucker punch. “Huh?”

“Don’t play stupid with me. You always talk when you’re out of it. Used to be you talked about Hannah, but today it was Tricia.”

Royce frowned. Why didn’t he know this about himself? He resolved then and there to avoid blood work for the rest of his life. “Nobody.”

He mentally patted himself on the back for pulling the lie off with such ease. Tricia Reed, in the span of an hour, had wormed her way into his life and, apparently, his subconscious, too. But she wasn’t going any further. He’d done the relationship thing, had the divorce papers to prove it. Not to mention, he was supposed to be keeping an eye on her research.

“She wouldn’t be the researcher I heard about, would she?”

“Mind your own business.” The words were meant as a warning, but his delivery insured Mary Alice wouldn’t take offense.

“You are my business, Stryker. I love you guys. Why else would I hang around this place?”

He slid off the table. Finding his feet steady beneath him, he headed for the door, calling over his shoulder as he went, “You know you stay because of the hot bodies you get to touch. Don’t think we don’t know it, too!”

A rather unladylike word followed him from the room. He might not like what she did, but he loved Mary Alice like a mother. They all did.

***

Tricia thumbed through the questionnaire, checking to make sure Mustangs Test Subject #1, MTS1, for short, had answered every question. The second time around, she glanced at the answers to confirm his understanding of the question and appropriateness of the answer. With previous subjects, she’d never had a single qualm about reading their responses to the highly personal questions, but somehow, reading Royce’s neatly penned answers made her feel like a Peeping Tom.

By the time she reached the end of the document, she knew more about him than he probably knew about himself. She’d bet he didn’t know his weekly alcohol consumption was well below the average for men his age or his usual six hours of sleep nightly could be a contributing factor to his on-field problems. She’d have to talk to him about those issues. In order for her data to be meaningful, he’d need to be well rested.