Atramentum

by MJ Duncan

  She need not have worried, though, because Maeve immediately smiled and said, “That sounds like fun, then. Sure. Will you pick me up?”

  “Sure.” Joss nodded, unable to keep from grinning. “If you want me to.”

  “God, you two are just disgustingly cute,” Scott muttered as he edged past them. “I guess I should go home to my wife. Here’s to hoping my dinner is as good as yours was since I see no leftovers coming my way.”

  Joss shrugged. “Sorry. I was starving.”

  “You can make it up to me later.” He fished his keys out of his pocket. “Have a good night. Maeve, it was nice to see you again.”

  “You too.”

  Scott winked and snapped off a quick salute as he spun on his heel. “See you tomorrow, boss-lady.”

  Joss rolled her eyes. “I can’t wait,” she grumbled as the front door swung shut behind him.

  Maeve laughed and whistled for George, who appeared a moment later from the kids’ section. She snapped George’s leash into place and bit her lip as she reached out to give Joss’ hand a quick squeeze. “I’ll see you later?”

  Joss nodded and gave George’s head a quick pet when Maeve’s hand slipped from her own. “Yeah. I’ll call when I’m leaving.”

  “Okay.” Maeve glanced around the store. There were murmurs of conversation floating toward them from the stacks, but the immediate area around them was empty, and she smiled as she leaned in to steal a quick, goodbye kiss. “I can’t wait.”

  Twenty-Five

  Joss smiled and closed her eyes as she relaxed back into Maeve on the blonde’s couch, letting herself be lulled by the feeling of Maeve’s fingers stroking up and down her arms. It had been a long week of trying to find time to spend together, and she was grateful that the crowds that had filled Atramentum all week had disappeared so that she and Scott could close up an hour earlier than usual. “That feels nice.”

  “Good.” Maeve brushed a gentle kiss over her temple. “What time do we need to leave for your game?”

  Joss shrugged as she failed to stifle a yawn. She had not gotten nearly the amount of sleep she needed over the last week. Though, really, the exhaustion she had been suffering from the last few days was a more than fair tradeoff for being able to spend time with Maeve every night after work. Given the choice, she would much rather stay and enjoy her first early night off since Wednesday with Maeve, but she knew that if she did, the team would have to forfeit since Brock’s paralegal could not play that night, and she could not do that to the guys.

  Not with only two weeks left to go in the season.

  Knowing that, however, did not stop her from wishing for a sudden rainstorm to show up so the game would be cancelled.

  A glance out the windows showed a cloudless indigo sky, and she sighed as and checked her watch. It was already a quarter after eight, which meant that she should have been at the field fifteen minutes ago. But, she figured, this was much more important than warming up for a stupid game. “I figure we've got maybe another ten minutes or so.”

  “Really?”

  Joss chuckled. “Are you trying to kick me out?”

  “No.” Maeve wrapped both her arms around Joss’ waist and squeezed her tight. “I’m just surprised. Don’t you need to get there early to warm up or something?”

  “Eh.” Joss leaned her head back on Maeve’s shoulder and looked up at her. “Probably, but I’d rather spend as much time with you as I can. The guys’ll understand, as long as I’m there before the ump checks us all in.”

  “You are too sweet.” Maeve kissed her softly.

  “Says the woman who brings me dinner when I have to work late.” Joss reached back with her left hand and pulled Maeve’s lips back to hers. The position was not ideal, however, and she smiled into the kiss as she rolled over, her hips fitting into the familiar cradle of Maeve’s open legs. “Much better,” she whispered as she braced her forearms on the arm of the couch behind Maeve’s head.

  “Mmm, yes.” Maeve grabbed onto the backs of Joss’ shoulders and pulled her down on top of her. “Much, much better.” She smiled against Joss’ lips. “Kiss me.”

  Joss flicked her tongue over Maeve’s lips, and moaned when an agile tongue swooped lightly around her own. Her nipples hardened instantly at the feeling of Maeve’s tongue stroking against her own, slowly, deliberately, pressing forward before retreating and forcing her to chase, and the taste of Maeve’s soft sigh of pleasure sent a rush of arousal crashing between her legs.

  It would be so easy to forget her responsibilities and lose herself in the softness of Maeve’s body and the slick heat she knew she would find waiting for her, and Joss groaned when the urge to strip Maeve bare and bury her mouth in the sweet crux of her thighs became almost too much to resist. Maeve’s whimper of protest nearly shattered Joss’ reserve to do the right thing, and she just barely managed to swallow the Fuck it, that was poised on the tip of her tongue.

  It was incredibly, impossibly unfair that she had to leave this beautiful creature staring at her with such open desire to go play a fucking game.

  “I know,” Joss whispered as she brushed a chaste kiss over Maeve’s lips. “I’m sorry.”

  Maeve shook her head. “Don’t be. I love the way you kiss me.”

  Joss blushed. She wanted to bury her face in the crook of Maeve’s neck to try to hide it, but she could not look away from the enchanting emerald eyes that held her captive. “How’s that?” she murmured, her heart beating a mile a minute.

  Maeve smiled and slipped an arm under Joss’ to cup her cheek tenderly. “Like you can’t get enough.”

  “I can’t.” Joss sighed and shook her head. “It’s…”

  “Amazing. And incredibly flattering. And exactly how I feel when I kiss you,” Maeve whispered. She smirked and shifted her hips under Joss. “And it’s also, you know, really, really arousing.”

  Joss dropped her head to Maeve’s shoulder. Yeah, she did know. “Fuck.”

  Maeve laughed. “Exactly.” She nuzzled Joss’ cheek. “Would it help if I reminded you that I was going to go to the field with you?”

  “Yes.” Joss kissed Maeve’s neck. “It definitely would.”

  “Good.” Maeve turned her head to the side so Joss could savor as much skin as she wanted.

  “Very good,” Joss agreed as she nipped at Maeve’s pulse point. She took a deep breath and forced herself to pull away. Later, she promised herself.

  George yawned loudly from her spot on the other sofa, and Joss laughed as she looked up at a pair of sleepy eyes that were watching them.

  “I forgot she was there,” Joss admitted as she regretfully disentangled herself from Maeve.

  “Because she wasn’t snoring for a change.” Maeve she sat up beside her. “Can we bring her along?” She waggled her eyebrows. “It’d wear her out so she sleeps better later.”

  “Oh, well, in that case…absolutely.” Joss pushed herself to her feet and offered Maeve her hands. A light tug had Maeve standing in front of her, and she shook her head as she just resisted the urge to kiss her again. She did not need to look at a clock to know that they would be pushing it to get to the field in time, and if she kissed Maeve again, odds were very good that they would never get there at all.

  “My car’s set up for her already, so I’ll drive.” Maeve pecked Joss’ lips and then turned to George. “You wanna go for a ride?”

  George shot upright with a bark and leapt from the couch to bolt down the hall toward the garage.

  “I guess that’s a ‘yes’,” Maeve laughed. “I just gotta run upstairs to grab a sweatshirt.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll go get her highness into the car, and then I can grab my stuff after I open the garage.”

  George’s excited barking echoed down the hall, telling them to hurry things along so she could go for her ride.

  “Pushy little thing, isn’t she?” Joss muttered.

  Maeve nodded as she started for the foyer. “Yep.”

  George barked
again.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Joss hollered as she stared for the hall. “We’re coming.”

  “God, I wish,” Maeve grumbled from the other side of the living room.

  Joss laughed and shook her head. Not going there, she thought to herself as she watched George bound back down the hall in search of them, clearly worried they had somehow gotten lost on the way to the garage. “Okay, you monster.” She gave George’s side a solid pat. “Let’s go.”

  Twenty-Six

  The sight of Maeve chatting with Brock and Scott’s better halves made Joss smile as she jogged out onto the field to take her spot at second base for the bottom of the third inning. Maeve was sitting on the lowest row of the small, aluminum bleachers behind home plate, and George was lying in the dirt at her feet, happily ripping the stitching from an old softball Herold had given her when she showed too much interest in the game ball.

  “Stop drooling over your wife and focus on the game,” Scott teased, bumping her with his elbow as he jogged past her to his position in center field.

  Joss smirked as she whirled in place and just managed to smack him with her glove, leaving a dusty print on the shoulder of his navy blue jersey. The guys had been giving her shit ever since she and Maeve showed up ten minutes before the game started and, while she knew it was their way of saying they were happy for her, it was still annoying. “I’m not drooling.”

  Scott laughed and turned around, continuing to jog backward into the outfield with outstretched arms. “You’re not exactly focusing on the game, either. What was with that K? You never strike out.”

  “I was distracted.”

  “By what?” Brock asked with a laugh as he took his spot at short.

  “Yeah!” Wesley Herold chimed in from the pitcher’s circle.

  Joss set her hands on her hips and shook her head. There was no way in hell she was going to tell them that she had been completely flustered by the sound of Maeve cheering for her when she stepped up to the plate. “I was distracted by your ugly ass.”

  “Ooh,” Brock laughed, pointing at Herold. “She got you!”

  “How do you know she was talking to me?” Herold challenged.

  “Because I’m too pretty.” Brock winked at Herold and emphasized his point with a dramatic hip thrust to the side as he snapped his fingers in an especially sassy Z in front of him.

  “Dude, that was so gay,” Joss chuckled.

  Brock grinned. “Thanks! You too, Miss-my-pretty-lady-friend-cheers-for-me-and-I-go-down-on-three-straight-pitches.”

  “Betcha that’s not the only thing she’s going down on tonight, though,” Paul Lennox chimed in with a laugh.

  Joss’ cheeks burned with embarrassment as everybody who had heard the jibe erupted in boisterous laughter, and she shook her head as she turned on their normally quiet first baseman. Part of her was proud that he managed the quip at all, but that pride had to take a backseat to her protecting her own. She arched a brow at him as her lips curled into a slow, dangerous smirk. He visibly gulped beneath her stare, and she chuckled under her breath as he took a small step away from her and almost fell onto his ass when his heel hit the base. “You jealous, Lennox?”

  He blushed and nodded and, just like that, he was that dorky guy who had sat behind her in AP Calc their senior year.

  Joss sighed, feeling bad about the way the guys were turning their attention onto him. She could handle the teasing, but she doubted he could, and she shook her head as she threw him a bone. “Herold is too, don’t worry about it.”

  “Hey!” Herold smiled and threw his hands in the air in playful protest.

  The guys could be brutal, but they all knew that Paul was to be handled with kid gloves, and Joss winked as she blew him a kiss. “Problem, Herold?”

  “ARE WE PLAYING BALL HERE, OR WHAT?” The batter for the other team hollered from the batter’s box.

  “OR WHAT!” The entire Brewer’s infield retorted in perfect unison, sending them all into another fit of laughter as they took their positions.

  They were still chuckling under their breath as Herold stepped up to the rubber and smacked the neon yellow game ball into the pocket of his glove. The batter was a big guy, and Joss took a step behind the base path as the ball arced high in the air to give herself more time to react. The familiar ping of bat on ball rang across the field, chasing away any lingering amusement, and Joss swore when she saw a streak of neon flying at her head.

  She ducked her head out of the way as she stuck her glove in the air, and blew out a loud sigh of relief as she felt it smack into her glove. That was close.

  “FOCUS, PERRAULT!” Scott sing-songed from the outfield.

  Joss tossed the ball to Herold and then turned and flipped him off. “SUCK IT, HEITZ!”

  “THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID!” somebody from the opposing team’s dugout yelled.

  That timely rebuttal ensured a solid two-minute game delay as everybody within earshot burst into raucous laughter—including the umpire, who laughed so hard that he had to take his mask off to wipe at the tears streaming down his face. Even Michelle was laughing in the stands, and Joss arched a cocky brow at Scott as she shrugged and held up her hands in a See what you started? gesture.

  Scott laughed and waved her off with his glove as he shook his head.

  “ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT!” the umpire hollered as he pulled his mask down over his face and stepped back behind the plate. He motioned the next batter up to bat as he settled into position behind the catcher and pointed at Herold to get the game going again.

  Joss bit her lip as she locked eyes with Maeve through the backstop. Even from this distance, she could see the amusement etched across Maeve’s face, and Joss smiled as she offered her a small shrug. Maeve’s answering shake of the head made her laugh, and Joss was so focused on her lover that she completely missed Herold winding up to deliver the next pitch.

  Ping!

  Joss’ eyes snapped back to the field as she tried to find the ball. “Shit,” she swore as she spotted it a flying right at her. She instinctively tried duck out of the way, but the ball still ended up smacking her where her collarbone and shoulder met. Tears immediately erupted in her eyes from the pain, and she groaned as she reached down with her good arm to grab the ball and lob it weakly toward first before she crumpled to the dirt, not really caring if they got the out or not. She cradled her injured shoulder as she rocked back and forth, her eyes squeezed shut to try to block out the pain that was radiating across the top of her chest and down her left arm.

  A gentle touch pulling her glove from her now useless arm told her she was not alone, and she shook her head. “I’m okay.”

  “Sure you are,” Brock said as he tried to pull her hand away from her shoulder so he could look at the injury. “Lemme see, Jay.”

  “I’m fine,” Joss choked out. “It’s just a stinger. Gimme a sec and I’ll be good.”

  “Bull-fucking-shit,” Brock chuckled. “And, while I appreciate the bravado, I’m going to warn you now that Maeve is like five yards away, looking like she wants to either kiss you or kill you.”

  “Awesome.” Joss groaned and forced a tight smile as she opened her eyes right as Maeve dropped to her knees in front of her. “I’m fine,” she assured her.

  Maeve rolled her eyes. “Bullshit.”

  Brock guffawed. “I like this one,” he told Joss in a mock whisper.

  “Me too.” Joss nodded.

  “Yes, well, this one,” Maeve declared as she reached for Joss’ hand, “wants to see the shoulder.”

  “Let her look,” Scott chimed in from somewhere behind her.

  “It’s not that bad,” Joss protested weakly as she allowed Maeve to pull her hand away. She grit her teeth as the loss of pressure sent a fresh rush of pain surging through her, making her head spin, and she focused on her breathing as Maeve gingerly pulled the collar of her jersey aside to inspect the damage.

  “Fuck, Joss,” Maeve breathed as her fingers hovered millimete
rs above Joss’ skin. “You’re gonna need x-rays on this.”

  Joss shook her head. The last thing she wanted to do was spend the night in the ER. “I just need an ice pack.”

  Maeve huffed and shook her head. “It’s already purple and swollen, and I can count the stitches from the ball on your skin. It looks like it hit right on the acromioclavicular joint, and while your deltoid might have softened the blow a little, there’s still a good chance you broke something.”

  Brock whistled. “How you know all that?”

  “She kills people for a living,” Joss quipped through gritted teeth.

  Maeve ignored Joss’ quip and looked at Brock. “Can you guys finish without her?”

  “Yeah,” Scott said. “Michelle’s here. She’s not the most athletically inclined—please don’t tell her I said that—but we can hide her behind the dish and basically play down a man for the rest of the game.”

  “Scott…” Joss started to argue.

  “What, Joss?” Scott scoffed. “You can’t move your arm. How are you going to play?” He shook his head and added in a softer tone, “Let Maeve take you to go get checked out, and call me later. I can cover the store all day tomorrow, and if it gets busy, Michelle’s on break for another few weeks before summer school starts and she can come in and help.”

  Joss shook her head. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “You’re not asking. I’m offering. This is what having friends is like, remember?”

  Joss took a deep breath. She had been on her own for so long that she honestly had forgotten what it was like to have people looking out for her. Helen had tried, but she had also respected Joss’ need to do things her own way and had never pushed. “Fine.” She looked at Maeve. “We’ll need to take George home first.”

  Maeve nodded as she pushed herself back to her feet and bent down to place a light hand under Joss’ uninjured arm. “I know.”

  Joss pressed her good hand into her shoulder as she allowed Maeve to help her to her feet. The blue wall of concerned teammates surrounding them broke apart as she stood, and she nodded her thanks to the other team that was politely applauding her efforts.