by Selena Kitt
“You’d help me? Really?” He sounded like he doubted it, but she couldn’t blame him. She’d been nothing but hostile to him for two years.
“Sure.” She shrugged and looked back at him. His eyes were starting to glaze. She hoped it was because he was doped up and not because her particular brand of conversation lacked stimulation. Cordy made a habit of reminding Edy of how staid and dull she was.
“Maybe if I help you out, Pop will cut me some slack about the game schedule this year. Reedsville’s not an easy drive from Baton Rouge.”
Al’s wan grin went even weaker. “Well. I’d appreciate any help. Listen, I won’t hold you up. I know you want to get moving early. Before you go, though, can you find me the remote? Or tell me where it is? I’ll get it. I always end up rooming with someone who can’t sleep without the television on during the season, and I guess it takes me a while to adjust to it being off.”
“Oh.” Did I offend him somehow? She wouldn’t have thought that would have been such an easy thing to do with a guy like him, but his mood had gone flat so quickly. She had to have been the cause of that.
She found the remote half-hidden beside the television and handed it to him along with the channel card that had been beneath it.
“Thanks, Edy.”
“Yeah. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He depressed the power button on the remote, then closed his eyes and muttered, “Fuck.”
“What?”
“Gotta set an alarm and take a pill in four hours. I gotta take it with food. I’m gonna have to order something.”
“No, don’t call room service. I’ll go find you something that’ll keep for a few hours.”
“Really?”
“Sure.” She grabbed his key from the dresser top and headed to the door. She just bet if he called down for service, he’d get more than he bargained for, and she wasn’t going to let that happen on her watch.
Not that she cared if Al got his rocks off with some desperate employee of cheap hotel, but she had a schedule to maintain. She set out in search of the vending machines, which of course, had nothing in them.
“To the store I go,” she muttered.
The list of favors Pop owed her was getting longer and longer.
Chapter 4
“Goddamn motherfucking piece of shit.”
Swearing at the alarm clock didn’t make it stop buzzing, but damned if Al wanted to move. If he lay very still, his leg almost didn’t bother him at all. And he was so warm and the headboard was so soft and plush against the back of his head. He felt like he was being cradled by a cloud.
The bed moved, there was a smack, and then the alarm clock went off.
Al forced his eyes open. “Headboards aren’t soft.”
And mattresses didn’t usually smell like woman. Well. Maybe some mattresses did, but not his, generally.
“My legs are asleep,” Edy said. “Move so I can shake a pill into your hand and go to my own room.”
Al pressed a hand to the “pillow” beneath his head and found it slightly rounded with lots of spring. Edy’s thighs. “Why’s my head on your lap?”
“I brought you stuff to eat with your medication and you curled onto my lap like a cat. You don’t remember that?”
“No.”
She laughed. “You were so pitiful. When I came in, you were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and staring at the ceiling.”
“Shit.”
“Maybe you should try different drugs.”
“Or just wean off of them after this dose.” He turned his hand over and waited for her to drop the pill into his palm.
She didn’t.
“Come on, Edy.”
“Did you forget already that you need to eat something?”
He snuggled against her and let his eyes close. She felt nice. “Nah.”
“I got you a sandwich from the gas station. I hope you like ham.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers.” He turned his head and pressed his face against her soft belly. “Mmm. Comfy.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what a girl likes to hear about her problem areas.”
“I’m not seeing any problem.”
“Of course you don’t see it. Your face is pressed to it.”
“You smell good.” Good enough to eat, even. Too bad she was wearing so many clothes.
“Maybe you should switch to plain-old ibuprofen. It’d mess up your head less.”
“Maybe tomorrow. I hurt a lot.” He looped his arm around her hips and clung to her as if she were some kind of life-giving tree.
“Okay, so eat the sandwich and take the pill.”
“Don’t wanna sit up.”
“I’m not feeding you, Al. And what is Al short for, anyway? Every other player has their full name on their profile, and I find it hard to believe your birth name only has two letters in it.”
He snorted and inched her shirt up a bit so he could press his face to warm flesh.
“Your scruff tickles!” She tried to yank her shirt back down, but there was no easy way for her to stop him without jostling his entire body, and thus his leg.
Her skin was just as silky as he’d imagined, and maybe it even had some healing properties to it, because he sure felt nice being pressed to it. If a little goes a long way, a lot might be a cure.
He snaked his hand up the back of her shirt and accidentally loosened her bra catch. “Oops.”
“Get off me, Felton.”
“Just tryin’ to make you more comfortable.”
“And suffocate yourself with my tits in the process.”
“Doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.” He opened one eye and found she’d pressed her arm beneath her breasts to act as a sort of shelf for her bountiful assets. “Stop being so mean to them.”
“It’s kind of you to care about them, but they don’t really need you to advocate on their behalves.”
“I care about every part of you.”
“Some more than others, I’m sure.”
“Well, of course I have favorites.” He slipped a hand inside the waistband of her skirt and teased his fingers down toward her ass.
She swatted it away, but not without a long delay. “You’re so gross.”
“I’m not gross. I’m merely creative, and interested in exploring natural remedies for what afflicts me.”
“What remedy would that be?”
“I hear orgasm makes a hell of a painkiller.”
“Get off my lap, Felton.”
“Okay. I’ll move and eat the sandwich and take my pill. Chug down some water while I’m at it. You stay right there, though.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I meant what I said. I want to explore those natural remedies.”
“You’re high.”
“Nah. Perfectly lucid for the moment.” He tugged down the front of her skirt a bit and kissed her belly. “You sure you don’t need a little healing, too?”
“What are you going to do from that position? Talk me into coming?”
“I’ve been told I’ve got a pretty talented mouth, but I don’t think my skills go quite that far. Take off your skirt.”
“You’re insane.”
“And yet you’re still sitting here. You’re just dying to see what kind of shit comes out of my mouth next, right? Just like all the rest.”
“I don’t give a damn about the rest. I’m not—”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re not a baseball groupie, I get it. You’re not gonna spread your legs for me so you can make me one more notch on your souvenir bat. All I’m talking about is a little mutual itch-scratching. I’m hard as hell and I want your mouth on me. Sue me for being honest.”
Maybe too honest. Her jaw damn near hit the bed.
He couldn’t even blame the drugs for his loose lips, because he hadn’t swallowed the pill yet. Sighing, he sat up and reached across her body for the sandwich on the nightstand.
The moment he had his back against the headboard, she turned and
put her feet on the floor.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To my room.”
“You don’t have to leave.”
“I think I do.”
“Why?”
She stood. “I shouldn’t even be in here. I know better.”
He rolled his eyes and popped a pill into his mouth. “You’re a grown woman. There’s no chaperone here. You can do what you want.”
“And maybe I don’t want to be doing this.”
“What is the this? Being within five feet of me or actually having to talk to me?”
“The talking isn’t the problem.”
“So what is it?”
“That should be obvious. I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to believe you were different than the rest of the dogs on the team, but you’re exactly like them, aren’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ll chase anything in a skirt, in spite of who she is or what she looks like.”
“Say, what?” He unscrewed the cap from a bottle of water, and took a long swallow while holding a finger to tell her to wait right there. “First of all, I have it on pretty good authority that some guys on the team don’t like skirt.”
Her eyes went wide. “Who?”
“Doesn’t matter. Second of all”—he counted off on his fingers—“what do you expect of a bunch of athletes with all that damned testosterone? They’re gonna want to expend it on something, and nature being the way it is, oftentimes that something is wet and warm.”
Her lip curled up.
“Third of all, I resent the implication that I’m not at all discriminating.”
“Are you?”
“Is your self-esteem so low that you would think me coming on to you means I don’t have standards? What’s that say about you?”
“Good night, Al.” She stomped toward the door.
He ripped the plastic off his sandwich and scoffed again. “Coward.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Say it again,” she snarled.
“You heard me. I called you a coward.”
“Because I’m not falling for the crap you’re spewing?”
“No, because you’re running away from the discussion. Believe it or not, I can handle having a lady tell me no. Maybe my ego will be a bit bruised, but that just means I won’t bark up her tree again. I’m a big boy. Sometimes I don’t act like it, but I do have home training, and my momma taught me not to be a shit-stain as much as I can manage. If you don’t want to play with me, I’ll understand it, but don’t say you don’t want to touch me ’cause I’m a slut when you don’t even know if I am one.”
She didn’t say anything. For a long moment, she must have just stood there, but he didn’t look. Then the door creaked open and slammed shut.
She was gone.
“Fuck.” He took a bite of the soggy sandwich and snatched up the remote control.
He’d screwed that one up. He didn’t know what he wanted from Edy, really, but he liked her company. Maybe he wasn’t thinking quite right, but if he had to guess, he’d say he’d told her the wrong thing. Maybe she’d misjudged him, but he should have been used to that. He couldn’t treat her like she was any other lady just because she treated him like every other baseball player she knew.
“Maybe it’s time to clear the slate,” he muttered around a mouthful of sandwich.
They lived in the same damned city and were going to keep bumping into each other at games. He didn’t see a good reason why they couldn’t be cordial at the very least.
Maybe a little more than that.
Chapter 5
Edy was awake and up before the sun rose. She’d showered, dressed, checked out of her room, and gotten her luggage stowed in the trailer—which had gone blessedly unmolested during the night—and was about to head to breakfast, but she had to wait a while. They weren’t serving yet, and anyway, Al was nowhere to be seen.
Leaning against the coffee counter that held four containers that had yet to be filled, she twined his keycard between her fingers and ground her teeth. He’d better be up.
She’d texted him on her way downstairs, and then called his room phone to make doubly sure he’d been startled out of his slumber. He hadn’t answered, but she hadn’t let it ring enough times for him to. She’d just wanted to pull him from sleep.
He hadn’t responded to her text, but that didn’t mean anything—Pop rarely responded to the simple FYI statements Edy texted him—but now that the seed of doubt had set in, she couldn’t shake it.
“Dammit.”
She headed for the stairs. It was a good thing she’d reflexively grabbed his key on the way out of his room. She wouldn’t have to knock and stand there pissed in the hallway when Al didn’t answer.
She did knock, though, just to give him warning in case he was actually up.
When he didn’t respond, she slipped the key into the lock and let herself in.
The light was on and the television turned to news.
“Al?”
She moved farther into the room and saw his bag laying open at the bedside, but no Al.
She backtracked to the bathroom door and knocked on it.
“I’m checking out soon,” he called. “Shit, y’all get started early with the housekeeping, huh?”
She cracked the door a smidge and was bombarded with a lot of steam and the loud rattle of the fan. No wonder he hadn’t heard her. “It’s Edy.”
“Oh! Mornin’. Since you’re here, can you help me?”
“What do you need help with?”
“Can you scrub my back? Given how much I’ve sweated in the past day, I probably shouldn’t skip it, and I can’t get under the shower without wetting the cast. I’ve got my leg dangling out of the tub.”
She shifted her weight. “You’re naked.”
“Yeah, that’s usually the way I bathe. Your mileage may vary.”
Naked. Dear Lord. She let out a strained laugh and rubbed her eyes. Maybe he’s trying to scandalize me.
“Come on, Edy,” he said with a note of exasperation. “I’m an athlete. I’m used to people seeing my baubles and bits.”
“I don’t want to see your bits.”
“Okay, so, I’ll drape a washcloth over them,” he said.
“You’re not getting out of that tub until I wash your back, are you?”
“I mean, I could skip it, but you know…there’s that psychosomatic sense of grossness that makes ya itchy because you feel the dirt. It’ll make me antsy.”
“Kind of like how I feel after touching door handles at doctors’ offices. I’ve always got to scrub my hands right after or I get paranoid that I’m going to catch untreatable meningitis or something.”
“Exactly.”
Ugh. After hearing that, she couldn’t leave the guy hanging. He was probably a hypochondriac, just like her. She sighed and pushed the door open.
As he promised, he’d draped a washcloth over his private parts, but even that didn’t add very much modesty to the equation. He sat straddling the tub side, his broken leg extended toward the sink and his upper body damp from soap and bathwater.
All his glorious muscle was on display, from his strong shoulders, bulging biceps, and downward.
Ink.
Saucy tattoos ran from his hipbones down to his ankles. She was guessing there was an even amount of ink on both sides, but she didn’t know what was under his cast. One tattoo near his crotch challenged in very pretty calligraphy, “Try me,” and Edy thought she just might. She’d always had a thing for men with ink.
Ugh.
And maybe Edy’s gaze fixed a bit too long on the fine molding of his ass and the powerful thigh clenched as he balanced on the edge. How could anyone expect otherwise? She might have hated baseball, but the player in front over her was damn fine to look at.
He extended the bar of soap to her and a washcloth, nearly losing his crotch cover
ing when he reached frantically for the grip rail for balance.
She took his offerings before they hit the floor and drew in a bracing breath. The sooner she got it done, the better for her mental and spiritual health. She wouldn’t have to look at him and be tempted by the devil’s body.
