by Harlow Cole
At least, that’s what I told myself.
A blush blossomed across my chest before I could stop it. The strapless maxi dress was a dumb idea. I should’ve worn a damn turtleneck. And tinted eyewear.
“Uh, so I just need to take a few shots to check the light. Can you . . .” I motioned to the space in front of the backdrop.
Of course, it was all wrong. I had to move everything. Too many shadows hid one side of his face. Split light wasn’t what I had in mind. He stood, watching me, rubbing the pad of his thumb across his bottom lip in a way that made me want to replace it with my tongue.
As soon as I returned to my tripod, he did something that blew me away even more. He faced the camera and morphed into someone I’d never met. Sultry eyes, stiff posture, chin raised just the right amount, head perfectly level.
I didn’t have to move him an inch.
He just dialed in.
Of course. He’d done this a million times. He’d done shoots like this for big names. Shoes, cologne, sports drinks, athletic apparel. He’d been well-trained by professional photographers equipped with teams of the best people.
Watching him through the lens suddenly made me feel very, very small.
“What’s the matter?”
My head popped up as he broke out of character.
“Did you want something different? Just tell me what you’re looking for.”
“No. No, you’re fine.”
“But you’re not. Something’s off. You’re not . . . you.” He stepped out of position, walking forward to escape the haze of lights.
“What does that mean?”
“You’re not smiling. Or doing that little breathy-gasp thing. Ashley, you’ve photographed me enough times in my life, I know when there’s something you don’t like.”
He was closer now. I tried to look past him, but one bent knuckle pressed against my chin, forcing me to look up.
“I’ll do whatever you want, okay? You’re in charge. Just tell me what you want. I promise, I’ll make myself into whatever you need.”
His finger slipped away, but the heat of his skin was replaced by the heated words that slid through me like melted chocolate. Warming parts that needed to shut the hell up.
“Just be you,” I replied softly. “Not the superstar. Not the guy they think they know. Smile. Be loose. Feel comfortable in your own skin. Cocky, but sweet. Be . . . be my Brayden.” I didn’t mean for that last part to translate from my brain to my mouth. It just slipped out. Fueled by something smoldering between us. I could feel it. Building like smoke around the corners of the room. Pressing in on me.
I knew he could feel it, too.
His eyes already had me naked and facedown on a mattress.
Lord have mercy, if I could’ve captured them on film, those magazine editors would just use the test shot on the cover. Women would buy extra copies to keep under their beds.
“I can do that,” he replied in a husky voice.
We made it through five or six different positions. Back turned, profile, side view with arms flexed. Intense, no-bullshit gaze. The half-smirk, full smile, and full-fledged laughter.
We both knew what was coming. The anticipation grew. Something was passing between us. We fed off the energy crossing through my lens. The temperature in the room kept rising, heated by the bright lights and our own scorching wattage.
“Okay, I think we’re ready to move on,” I said, lifting my face away from the camera and tilting side to side to crack my neck.
“So, uh, this is a little awkward, but can I have a minute before the next set?”
My brow furrowed. “Of course. Are you okay?”
He nodded and went to his bag for a bottle of water. I started flipping back through my shots, watching a dozen versions of him zoom past on the camera’s small screen.
His sudden movement had me almost pushing over the tripod, knocking everything over under the force of my shock. He’d dropped down to the floor, positioned perfectly on his left arm, right arm tucked behind his back. He was pressing up and down, doing single arm push-ups that made the muscles in his shoulders and back scrunch up. They strained against the microfiber shirt that formed a second skin. Tattoo ink stretched angrily around the top of his biceps.
I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. Every muscle in my lower half spasmed. Muscles in places long neglected. I watched like a voyeur, wondering why calisthenics porn wasn’t already a thing.
He did a couple sets and then rolled over in one swift motion before doing hammer crunches at lightning speed. I bit my lip and didn’t even pretend to look away.
He smiled sheepishly when he finally stood up. His cheeks warmed a touch by exertion and embarrassment.
“Don’t make fun of me, okay? I’m not trying to be an asshole. I’ve neglected a few too many workouts since the surgery, and I’ve got about ten pounds of soft right now.” He rubbed a palm across bulletproof pecs. “If I’m gonna take this shirt off, I gotta jack up what I have left.”
He put his hand behind his head and started slowly pulling the neck of his shirt, exposing his abdomen a sliver at a time. Ripples against rib cage. The crazy cleft at the top of his hips. A dusting of hair that teased down toward his belt.
I’d seen him on display plenty at the marina. But the unveiling striptease, when my nerve endings were already unraveled, left blood pooling in my own cheeks.
“I think you look fine.”
Fine? Seriously?
Fuck that word. It never applied to anything. Certainly not to what stood in front of me.
He didn’t look fine. He looked like a freaking god. My own vagina clenched in anger at my understatement.
He smirked again.
“First shoot I ever went to, the stylist spent thirty minutes reaming me in front of the crew ’cause I showed up without doing a pre-workout. I didn’t realize it was a thing.” Shoulders shrugged. “Promise, before the real shoot, I’ll workout beforehand, and I’ll have kicked my habit for the coffee-shop cinnamon rolls.” He sucked in a breath, hollowing out his cheeks. “That’s gonna be harder than I want to admit.”
He repositioned himself in front of the lights as I tried to collect my fine motor skills and keep all remaining saliva inside my mouth.
Luckily, capturing his beauty didn’t take much work. The camera loved every delicious inch of him. The shutter growled like an animal in heat.
I took some with him fingering a ball and thrusting it out toward me before I zoomed in on fuzzy laces with him looming sharp in the background. Then, I switched up to his jersey barely hanging over his shoulders, unbuttoned down the front, exposed underneath.
Every shot got sexier.
A fine sheen of sweat built up on his skin, pooling between ridges of hard muscle. Perspiration cascaded down my spine, teasing the top edge of a thong that was already soaked in more ways than one.
Every angle I snapped felt like foreplay. He stood fifteen feet away, but I felt him all over me. He stared into the camera like he already had the tip inside and was ready to bury himself deep.
“Can you . . . I want to try something,” I murmured. “Can you take off your belt?” I asked, keeping my face hidden behind the camera.
He didn’t question me. His gaze never left my lens as he slowly undid the black buckle and started tugging it free. It took seconds that felt like a goddamn century. He tossed it to the side, out of the frame.
“What kind of . . . do you have on . . .” I couldn’t say it. I knew he was wearing a cup. Knew he’d come with a complete uniform. I could see the telltale bulge. “Does the waistband have a brand? Are you allowed to show . . .”
I swallowed.
Am I asking him to do this?
* * *
Brayden
My hand was already stationed on my zipper.
Fuck yeah. Let’s do this.
“You want me to unzip?”
I adjusted myself to the side a fraction of an inch.
Women have no idea what
it’s like to get a hard-on inside a jockstrap. It hurts like a motherfucker. Unzipping would free the poor bastard up a little bit. Dude was ready to drill right through the plastic to get to her. Ashley’s body was his favorite drug, and he’d given up fighting his addiction.
That dress she had on . . . damn. Women thought they had to show skin to be sexy. She’d wrapped hers up in long, flowing cotton. It stretched across her tits and clung to her hips and the top of her ass. When she walked, it swirled around her legs. My palms burned from the need to rub my hands across the material and watch it bunch up in my fists. She might as well have tied a little bow around herself and hung a sign around her neck, begging me to dream about every hidden inch.
The inches I kept thinking about the whole time I stared into the camera.
I could feel her eyes on me, studying my body through the glass lens. The whole room filled with an electric charge that left the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up. When she had me turn around and look over my shoulder, I was afraid she’d be able to tell.
Unzipping for her? Yeah, not a problem.
My zipper lowered an inch at a time. The only sound in the room was her breath and the metal casing coming apart. I lifted my hands and let the front flaps of my pants fall slightly open, exposing the top of the bulge that cried out for sweet mercy. I let my hand slide down, roughly cupping my crotch to adjust myself further.
She couldn’t quite camouflage the sharp gasp my action inspired.
I’d never been aroused during a shoot before. Last year, I’d posed for a cologne ad with three buck-naked models half-climbing my body. Bare breasts pressing against my back and my side. Sets of hands clinging to my thighs. One of the stylists there had offered to tape down my dick in case I got wood.
Didn’t fucking happen.
I’d felt nothing.
That shoot had taken forever though. The photographer got a bug up his ass and kept saying the chakras on the set were all wrong.
I didn’t know what the hell he kept yammering about at the time, but now, I got it. My chakras were alive, well, and quickly falling victim to the tractor beam pulling me across the room.
She thought she was hiding, coy and protected, behind her black metal tripod. She forgot how well I knew her body. Didn’t realize that, after all those years of watching over her, I knew exactly how to read every expression. Her face and skin always betrayed her attempts to hide emotion.
She was sure as shit turned on, too.
“How do you feel about showing your scar?”
My brow wrinkled in question. I turned my arm to stare down at the five-inch red mark that curved around the inside of my elbow.
“Uh, that’s fine, I guess.” I shrugged. “It’s pretty ugly.”
“I don’t think so. It’s no different than the tattoo really. It’s a part of you now. Tells who you are.”
My fingers rubbed across inked skin.
If you only knew.
“I just think . . . I mean . . . you’re all hulked out and perfect. But what if you show just a little bit of the real you? Everyone reading this article has things about themselves they don’t want the world to see,” she added softly. “Why not show them you have scars, too? Sort of Superman with human skin.”
My arm instinctively went up, palm flattened against the back of my head so that my bicep swelled and my scar lay on full, trusted display.
I’d been covering it up as much as I could. Not necessarily because I didn’t want the world to see the ugliness, but because I didn’t want to. I had to live with it for the rest of my life. It would either become the trophy of my greatest victory or the parting gift from my greatest defeat.
But I didn’t mind showing it to her. I’d never had to hide any of my scars from her. She knew every single one of them.
The ones I had inside and out.
As her motor drive whirled, I knew she didn’t get the significance. I didn’t let my guard down easily with anybody else. I could always tell her stuff—since those days huddled in the library or cuddled up on the futon in the boathouse. She saw a side of me no one else ever got the chance to see.
Her Brayden.
A version of myself I’d missed, almost as much as I’d missed her.
“God, that’s amazing. Don’t move. Totally blank expression. You’re not happy. You’re not sad. You’re just determined. You’re not gonna let this scar mean anything. It’s not gonna stop you. Lex Luthor had better not think you’ve gotten soft ’cause you’re coming back, and you’re gonna knock the shit out of him.”
My nostrils flared at her words.
Photographers all did it. They fed you lines of bullshit. Forced you to snort their compliments till they got inside your head and got what they wanted to see. I was used to it. Usually, I ignored it. Prayed they’d press the shutter button and shut their mouths.
This time was different.
Her words struck at those things I was worried about in deep, dark places. Things I’d only shared with my inner demons.
Would I be as good again? Could I get back to where I’d been? Was this scar a memento to mark the end of my career? What would I be without baseball?
No Soot and no baseball.
How would I do life without them both?
Pressure built behind my eyes. I sucked in against my cheeks to hold it at bay. The shutter whirled faster. She exhaled between parted lips, completely lost in the world behind the glass.
When her head finally popped up, I was still standing there with my fists full of feelings my shrink would love.
“I think we’re all done. You did great.”
She came around the tripod, dress swishing around ankles and bare feet. She snapped off one of the bright lights, eliminating one heat source while turning up another. The room was bathed in the muted glow of one small lamp and the lust that still pressed in between us.
I was drawn to her. Couldn’t stop myself. I never could. I had to be as close to her as possible.
Always.
Her back was to me. Her neck exposed as her hair cascaded to the side. I drew the side of my index finger over the curve of her shoulder.
“You were incredible,” I said, my voice thick and raspy like I’d just fucked her hard and enjoyed a cigarette.
I’d said I wouldn’t kiss her again without permission. I never promised I wouldn’t touch her.
She inhaled sharply and turned slowly toward me, pulling herself away from my finger but bringing the rest of her closer to my naked chest.
“You feel it, don’t you?”
“Brayden, don’t.”
“But you want me to. You do.”
Our eyes locked. Something I saw in hers bolstered my confidence. Ashley wanted to give in. Her body just needed to supersede her mind. She was teetering on the edge; I needed to give her one big push.
“What you really want is for me to pull the front of this dress down and press my chest against those cotton-candy nipples. You want me to slide all this material up the backs of your thighs and wrap my hands around your ass till I can feel how wet you are against that thong.”
Her lips flattened, pressed together, and quickly parted again, desperate for air.
Give in to it, baby girl.
“You wore the thong for me ’cause you know it makes me insane when I can see that little strap. When I know I could slide it to the side and press my fingers up into your cunt. Snap that strap against your ass while you’re riding me.”
She spun back around, her back to me again. The diversion couldn’t hide the way her chest heaved now, filling up with need in place of oxygen.
We both want this . . .
My hands ghosted over her hips. No real pressure, just enough so she could feel me. “You know it’s gonna happen, baby girl. How long are we gonna play this game? How long are we gonna keep pretending we don’t both want it? Let yourself remember. Remember how good we are together. How tight you fit around me. How good it feels to explode around
my cock.”
“I can’t . . .” Her voice wavered.
“I promised I’d wait for you to come to me.”
“It’s not gonna happen, Brayden. You’re gonna have to wait a very long time.”
“I’ve already waited too long.” My hands slid away as I took a step back.
She shivered, unconsciously chilled, as the extra space soaked up the combustion between us.
“You just gotta come to me, Soot. I’m right here, but you gotta take that last step.”
“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”
—Babe Ruth
Baseball Hall of Fame,
Inaugural Class, 1936
9
Breaking Point
Ashley
I rang the doorbell. For the first time . . . ever.
I stared at the brass door knocker, counting my breaths and the number of reasons this was a monumentally bad idea.
The front porch light flipped on as the door swung open.
“Ash? Are you okay?”
Brayden’s whole face measured my disheveled appearance—worried eyes, wrinkled brow, pursed lips.
A yellow cotton nightgown, edged in frayed white lace, skimmed halfway down my thighs. I’d hastily pulled an old raincoat over top it. The belt hung uneven and forgotten by my sides. My hair still felt damp from the cold shower I’d taken hours ago. It lay parted into two thick braids that rested against my shoulders.
Nothing about me looked sexy.
I was less Victoria’s Secret, more Salvation Army.
Maybe I’d come that way on purpose. I stood before him, wrapped in the rags and hope. Hope that his Clark Kent laser vision would see I was too fragile for this misbegotten idea and toss me back out into the night.
As grand plans went, this one rated epically dumb.
I’d lain in bed for hours. Staring at the ceiling. Feeling the old memory of him against the sheet beside me. Allowing the mere thought of his hands to coax me near climax. In a moment of violent weakness, I’d thrown on the coat and padded barefoot to my car.
A ghost drove me here.
A ghost of a girl I used to be.
