Pitching for Amalie

by Hayley Faiman

  I just look up, not seeing a damn thing but black.

  “Hold on to my neck, babe. It’s Marcus.” The beefy bodyguard from earlier today picks me up and cradles me like a child.

  I wrap my arms around his neck, still not seeing a damn thing, and I bury my head in his chest. The tears fall again as my body starts shaking yet again with sobs. I am so weak and so fucking pathetic.

  “Been lookin’ for you for two hours. Christ, girl. You scared the fuckin’ shit outta me.”

  I hear him pick up his walkie-talkie and bark into it.

  “Found her. Fuckin’ mess. No, ain’t hurt fars I can tell.” The man needs lessons in grammar.

  But who am I to tell him that? I am fucked up. That’s what I am. My light has been stolen, and I am wrapped in darkness. I can’t go to Jarrod like this.

  “He can’t see me like this,” I finally speak.

  “He don’t care, babe. Scared the fuckin’ shit outta all of us. Fuck,” he bites out that last word like it tastes like battery acid.

  I feel my body shift from Marcus to a set of warm arms, strong arms, arms that held me when he was inside of me.

  Jarrod’s arms.

  “You all right, Amalie? Talk to me, baby,” he whispers in my ear.

  I see a burst of blue flash before my eyes.

  “Eric,” I croak.

  I hear Jarrod hiss under his breath before placing me gently in his over-the-top red Ferrari.

  The ride back to his apartment is deathly and eerily quiet. He doesn’t let me walk to the building’s door, the elevator, or his front door. He carries me, and as he does, I see more flashes of color burst in front of my eyes. Jarrod is my color. Just his presence is fighting the blackness. He carries me all the way to the bed and sets me down. I don’t want to let go of him. With him, I feel safe.

  “He hurt you?” Jarrod finally asks, breaking the long silence.

  “No. Just threats,” I admit, my voice hoarse and scratchy from all my crying.

  “Enough,” he roars.

  I should be a little scared, but I’m not. Jarrod doesn’t scare me. He cares for me. He would never hurt me.

  “You go nowhere without me. I’m done with this shit. We go to Boston tonight. You file a report, and tomorrow, we go to Kentucky,” he demands.

  “Tomorrow night, we’re meeting with Paul and David,” I remind him.

  This causes him to glare at me in disbelief. It’s as if he cannot fathom how I could even remember that meeting, let alone want to go to it.

  “Fine. I’ll postpone saving your life for a day.” He sounds like a little kid.

  It causes me to giggle. God, but this man is sexy.

  “Jarrod,” I groan softly, trying to use my bedroom voice.

  I trail kisses up and down his neck, eliciting a groan from deep inside of him.

  “Fuck,” he hisses.

  I slide off the bed and to my knees, right in front of him. I grab his belt and start to unhook the buckle, keeping eye contact with him. He looks so sexy with his hair falling into his eyes, looking down on me. I slowly unbutton his jeans and slide the zipper down. Jarrod lifts his hips, so I can slide his jeans down his long legs.

  I want to do this, to take control. I need to control something in my life, and right now, this is what I can have power over, so Jarrod lets me even though I assume this is no hardship for him. One of his hands cups my cheek and then slides into my hair as he rounds my head, holding on to the back. He doesn’t push my face into him. He just holds me there, his eyes never leaving mine. I lean forward a little bit and roll my tongue around his head. Then, I lick the underside of him, from base to tip, before I open my mouth and take as much of him inside as I can.

  “Relax baby,” he moans, slowly pushing himself deeper into my mouth.

  I relax my throat and my jaw and take even more of him in. My fingers slide from his knees to his thighs, and I hold on to his hips. I slowly slide my mouth back and then take him in again, sucking my way back down. I hear him groan, and then he pulls my hair back a bit. I slide my mouth off of him and look up.

  “You don’t like it?” I ask as innocently as I can. I know he likes it. I can feel him on the edge.

  “Too much, baby. Come up here and ride me,” he growls.

  “I’m kind of liking what’s happening down here,” I admit.

  I’ve never liked blow jobs—ever—but with Jarrod, I enjoy getting him off any way I can.

  “Baby, fuck,” he groans. He lifts me by my armpits to straddle him. “Need my cock buried inside my pussy. Can you help me with that?” he whispers against my cheek.

  I can help him with that, and I do, sliding down on his hard length, taking him deep inside me.

  I wake up before Jarrod the next morning, and I chance trying to free myself from his tight grasp. He groans and rolls over to the other side of the bed, still sleeping. He had a hard long day of baseball. Then, he had to deal with my Eric freak-out, and then he buried his cock inside my or as he calls it, his pussy and made me come twice. He worked hard yesterday. He deserves some good quality sleep.

  My body feels like it has taken a beating, but I know it is all emotional. Jarrod swore to help me deal with Eric, and he doesn’t believe that he will hurt Niklas he thinks it’s all a bluff to intimidate and frighten me. Jarrod wants the guy behind bars, but the whole situation scares me. No matter what, I love my brother, and I don’t want him to get hurt because of me. The whole thing is so screwed up.

  I tiptoe to the bathroom. I do my thing and brush my teeth and my hair. Then, I find a faded, beat-up Yankees T-shirt in Jarrod’s dresser drawer. I slip it on over my naked body. I snatch up my e-reader, and I tiptoe to the living area. I am all snuggled in, brewing some coffee, and I am reading about this couple going at it, rough and hard. I think about, just a few hours ago, how lucky I was to have my man go at me rough and hard, I smile.

  Then, my phone rings.

  And I cringe.

  “Mor,” I answer.

  I haven’t spoken to her in years, and she calls me out of the blue. Well, I guess it’s not so much out of the blue since Niklas along with Eric were here this week. I figure she knows this, and she is about to light into me, involving one or both of them. This, I do not want to hear, but I answer anyway. Although I was defiant, I am not mean, and deep down, I love my mother through all her faults. I try to be a nice person. I answer the phone if a family member calls me. I put up with shit I really shouldn’t have to because that’s what you do for family.

  “What is the matter with you, girl? You let a perfectly good man go, and for what? To be on television? For your body to be on display for the world to see? You want to be famous? You want to ride the celebrity wave? You’ll end up alone and poor with no education, no husband. And all for what? To date some athlete and show your breasts to all the world?” my mother sputters off in Danish so freaking fast it makes my head spin.

  It’s hard for me to keep up, seeing as how I haven’t spoken Danish in years.

  “First, I do not want to be on television. I do not want to be famous. Yes, I model, but it’s just for fun. I did not know that they were going to plaster my work all over the television. I have an education. I’m sorry that a bachelor’s degree isn’t good enough for you, but I like my job. I help people. And the man I am dating is none of your concern. I like him a lot. He’s kind and sweet and nice, and it feels good to be appreciated and treated nicely by somebody since I’ve never had that before,” I say in Danish back to my mother.

  I’m not aware that my voice rose or that Jarrod is standing in the hallway, his hip and shoulder leaning against the wall. He is watching me with concern.

  “You are out, acting like a whore, Amalie. I did not raise you to behave like this. Eric is a good man with a solid career. Why do you push him away? You push all of us away. You are ungrateful and cruel.”

  I close my eyes and sigh heavily. This is one of the reasons I stopped talking to my mother. Her words are hurtful a
nd laced with disdain. She doesn’t listen to me and doesn’t understand me. She doesn’t respect any decision I’ve ever made for myself.

  “I am finished discussing this. If you would like to talk about anything else—other than Eric, Jarrod, Niklas, or my career—I am all ears. Otherwise, please do not call me anymore.” I end the call and feel like crying.

  “You all right, baby?” Jarrod asks me, his voice soft and filled with concern. He sits down next to me on the couch.

  “I just wanted to let you sleep. I was going to drink some coffee and read. How has all this drama bubbled to the surface at once? For three years, I’ve done nothing but work, sleep, and model. Now, it seems like I’ve found someone who makes me happy, and I’m being pushed and pulled in so many different directions that it making me crazy.” The tears are flowing like a river, and it isn’t a pretty sight.

  “You’ve been avoiding life and confrontations for three years, and now that your brother has started in on you and found out you are happy, he’s relayed that information to Eric and everyone else in your life. The drama bubbling at the surface has finally overflowed. You’ll get through this. We’ll get through this, and then we’ll live—hopefully, drama free.”

  He kisses my forehead, and I just look up at him, my eyes filling with tears.

  How did I find this man? How did I find someone like him in some crappy nightclub?

  I was never lucky. I’ve worked hard for everything I have, and I’ve done it all without the help of my family, but this man comes swooping into my life and makes it a better place. He makes me happy.

  “That was my mother. She saw the side-by-side of the Jumbotron photo at the game and called me a whore,” I blurt out. I don’t know why I said it. I just did.

  I watch as Jarrod’s face goes from concern to twisting with disgust and anger.

  “She said that to you?” he spits.

  I just nod for fear of more tears spilling down my face.

  “Your fucking brother and his fucking friend. I swear to Christ, if I ever fucking see them again, they are going to be breathing through tubes. Fuck.”

  That was a lot of F-bombs being thrown into the atmosphere, but I could understand the anger. If I had found out that Jarrod’s father called him a derogatory name, I would have been angry, too.

  “I told her not to call me again unless it was to discuss something other than Niklas, Eric, you, or my career, and then I hung up on her. I haven’t even spoken to her in seven years, and all of a sudden, she’s calling me and trying to berate me for my life’s decisions. I won’t take it from her, not anymore.” It is all true. I’m not putting up with it anymore.

  My therapist and I talked in lengths about my twisted relationship with my family, and she told me that I needed to set the boundaries of how I wanted our relationship to work.

  This is me, finally setting boundaries, and I’m sure it pissed my mother off to no end, but it’s not healthy, and I want to be healthy.

  “Sucks, but you did the right thing, baby,” Jarrod says as he leans over.

  He lifts me by my waist like I weigh nothing, and he sets me astride his legs. His hand slowly travels up my thigh to cup my ass, and his head shoots up in surprise.

  “No panties?” he asks as a wicked grin tugs on his lips.

  “I was trying to be quiet,” I retort.

  “In my shirt with no panties. Fuck, baby, you’re gonna kill me,” he says as his hand travels up my side to my rib cage. His fingers brush the underside of my breast.

  “Wouldn’t necessarily be a bad way to go, right?”

  “No, baby. Death by orgasm would be the best way to go.”

  I throw my head back, laughing, but I stop when my shirt is stripped from my body with one whoosh. My back is pressed into the couch before I can even wrap my head around what is happening. I feel Jarrod’s mouth on my breast, and his fingers lightly trace up and down my center, before lightly pinching my clit.

  Then, I come.

  Then, he is inside me, and he comes.

  When I come a second time, I think I might die.

  But I don’t, and he doesn’t.

  We sleep the rest of the day, naked and on the couch, tangled in each other’s arms and legs. We ignore the drama, the venom-encased words of my mother, and the danger lurking around every corner with Eric. When we are alone, just the two of us, none of that exists. We are just two people feeding off of each other, feeling each other, and falling for each other.

  Hours go by, and it is time to get up and get dressed for dinner and drinks with our two favorite photographers and lingerie company owners. I am so excited to see the photos from the shoot that I have to practically drag Jarrod into the shower and dress him myself, which is no hardship.

  Paul and David are hilarious. I mean, when Paul said he was going to longingly stare at Jarrod all evening, he wasn’t lying, not in the slightest. It makes me laugh because I like to stare at Jarrod, too, and since I am sitting by Paul, we just ogle him and giggle together.

  “Okay, proof time,” David calls out, handing Jarrod a large envelope.

  I scoot next to Jarrod to see the photos. I am excited and nervous, all rolled into one. The first picture is of us on the bed. I am straddling Jarrod, his bare chest in view, and I am looking at the camera with sleepy lowered eyelids. Jarrod is looking at my breasts, licking his lips. I can see just the tip of his tongue along his bottom lip, and he looks like he is really hungry, ready to devour me, with his hands wrapped around my arched back. It is hot, it is sexy, and it is too much.

  “Fuck,” Jarrod groans.

  “It’s too much,” I say.

  “Baby girl, that is beautiful and hot as hell. It’s shit hot. I bet some fancy-ass sports magazine would pay a mint for that,” Paul says, pretending to be bored and pretending to pick lint off of his perfectly ironed lavender shirt.

  As I thumb through the rest of the photos, I see that Paul is right. They are shit hot. Jarrod and I look freaking fabulous together. We match—my snowy blonde hair next to his medium blonde, his tanned skin with my pale. I even look slightly dainty next to him. It’s just like I feel from being next to him. The proof is in the photo. He is so big and commanding. His body is perfectly toned, and mine is curvy in all the right places. It is almost too sexy, almost too sensual. I love them.

  “What do you think?” I ask Jarrod after we look at the last photo.

  “Completely sexy. I don’t want to share them with anybody, yet I don’t see how the world could go without seeing them. We look good together, baby.” Jarrod slips his arm around my waist, and his hand gives me a little squeeze.

  “They are sexy. I mean, we do look shit hot. I doubt anyone would want to see them though.” I smile.

  I watch as Paul, David, and Jarrod just gape at me.

  “I could hand these to my publicist and get them in People or ESPN The Magazine tomorrow, if I wanted to,” Jarrod retorts.

  It is my turn to gape at him.

  “You do that, you put our name on it, sexy,” Paul chimes in.

  The rest of the night, we spend drinking and throwing hilarious banter back and forth. I have two new friends, and it is because of Jarrod. I am happy and drunk, so after my eighth cosmo, Jarrod puts me into a cab to take me home.

  When we arrive in his apartment, I am in a playfully drunk mood, but Jarrod is not.

  “Strip,” he barks as we walk into the bedroom.

  “Slow or fast?” I ask on a giggle.

  “Now.” His voice is low and commanding.

  I love it when he gets bossy like this. I am already wet with anticipation, so I strip as fast as I can.

  “Leave the shoes on.”

  A smile curves my lips. These shoes are tall, and the thousands of tiny little straps wrapped around, encasing my feet inside of them, are freaking hot.

  “On the edge of the bed, and spread your legs.”

  I should be embarrassed or a little uncomfortable maybe, but I’m not. I am too trashed to
be embarrassed. Jarrod is going to make me feel good, and damn it, I can hardly wait.

  Jarrod kneels down in front of me, still fully clothed. He lifts one of my legs and kisses my calf. Then, he kisses the inside of my knee, my thigh, traveling to the top of my pubis. He grabs the inside of my thighs with his strong hands and spreads my legs even farther apart. He licks me with one long stroke of his tongue.

  “Whose beautiful pussy is this, Amalie?” he asks, his voice husky with desire.

  “Yours,” I say on a whisper, falling back onto the bed. I’m waiting, anticipating, what is coming next.

  I feel Jarrod’s finger dip inside me for just a second. Then, I feel it caress my back entrance, and I jump.

  “Relax, baby. I’m gonna make you feel good. Don’t worry. Just relax. I got this,” he coos at me before his mouth is hot and wet on my center.

  His finger slowly slides inside of my back entrance as his tongue caresses my center. Initially, I feel awkward.

  This is taboo, isn’t it? Good girls don’t do these things, do they?

  About a minute later, I couldn’t give a shit what good girls do because it doesn’t matter anymore. This feels too damn good to care. My back arches off the bed, my head falling back, and not a single care is given because I am just feeling, and what I am feeling is magnificent.

  Jarrod is licking and sucking my clit with two fingers pumping inside my sex and one more slowly moving in and out of my back entrance. My head is thrown to the side, my hands grasping the sheets as tightly as I can. My back arches, and I am coming, hard. It’s harder than I have ever come in my entire life. My entire body is shaking with my release.

  Jarrod disengages his mouth and hands and then kisses his way up my body before landing on my neck, his weight resting on top of me. I am a limp noodle. I am drunk and sated. I am happy.

  “Holy hell. Nice boys don’t do things like that,” I whisper.

  “I never claimed to be nice,” Jarrod chuckles, standing up. “On your stomach, baby. I’m going to fuck your little pussy so hard, you’ll feel me inside you for fucking days,” he whispers, patting my hip.