by K. Bromberg
The elevator jerks and then surprises me when it begins to descend. I glance over at him, but he’s just staring straight ahead—jaw clenched, hands fisted, face intense.
So damn handsome.
I want him.
In more ways than let’s have fun ‘til it ends.
Because I want to take a chance on this. On him.
Sure, we’ve known each other for a couple of months, but when I look at him now, when I think about him when I’m alone, when I anticipate seeing him, it makes me want to push all fear out the window. It makes me want to step into him rather than step away. It makes me realize it’s okay to want more, when before, I’ve never even allowed myself that chance at all.
And I get it now. What he said the other night about making your own happily ever after. His implication that it’s not easy. That sometimes it takes time and patience and shutting up instead of shouting louder. That it might be the hardest thing in the world, but it can also be the most rewarding.
We just fought in the parking lot. He walked away, and I chased, for the first time ever. That should tell me something . . . but it’s bigger than that. There is the notion that, even though he was livid, even though he told me he wasn’t doing this, he still stood in the elevator with his finger on the open-door button and gave me a choice to be with him. The idea that he was mad at me, but still wanted me. That he walked away, but that didn’t mean he was leaving me.
This all hits me in the few seconds we have during the elevator ride down—it’s suffocating and invigorating.
When the doors open to the private field, I follow as he steps into the lighted entry, the rest of the space still in the muted dark. The elevator dings, the doors close behind us, the silence returns.
“Easton.” It’s a plea. A question. A “talk to me.”
“Don’t ‘Easton’ me,” he says as he turns to face me, eyes alive but posture guarded.
So we stand and stare but don’t speak. My heart is in my throat. My emotions a train wreck inside of me.
I expect him to tell me to leave.
I expect him to shake his head and say no more.
Wouldn’t that be fitting, considering I now want more?
But he does neither. We just stand there as the air around us shifts and changes, reacts and charges. It’s hard to draw in a breath, and yet I know damn well it’s not the air that’s making me feel that way but rather the look in his eye.
Then in the space from one beat to the next, he has me against the wall, his lips on mine, his body pressed against me in the most delicious of ways. Our hands grab and pull and squeeze and feel.
He wages an all-out assault on my senses with his lips alone. There is nothing gentle about the kiss. There is nothing passive. It’s packed full of greed and need and hunger and a violent desire that ignites every nerve inside my body.
I react in kind. My anger at his accusations earlier, my sadness over Ford’s birthday, and the realization of my feelings—they all curl into an explosive ball of harbored energy that gives just as good as it gets.
There are sparks of hunger on his tongue when it brushes against mine. Each connection is like a livewire hitting water—evocative, incendiary, inescapable.
And just when I feel like I can’t catch my breath—when I’m drowning in everything that is Easton Wylder—he tears his mouth from mine, hands fisted in my hair, knee between my thighs, and eyes a burning kaleidoscope of colors.
“Fucking Christ, I’m so mad at you right now.”
And that’s all I get—the growl of his anger—before I taste it on my tongue as he dives back in, catching me off guard and taking what he wants, what I offer him, once again. His stubble scrapes my skin, his fingers tighten in my hair, and his teeth nip my lips, swollen from his.
I fight against him. Not because I don’t want more, but because I need to explain.
“I wasn’t there for Santiago,” I pant as he lets us resurface for air. His eyes narrow, his tongue darts out to lick his bottom lip, and his fingers twist in my hair so he can pull my head back.
He struggles with words. I can see them form, then fade, and so he speaks with his lips again, but by putting them back on mine.
But it’s not enough. As much as there’s no hesitation in his actions, I can still feel it from him and know he doesn’t believe me whole-heartedly.
As hard as it is to stop him again, I can’t do this without him understanding the truth. “I was there for my brother,” I explain between kisses.
His lips move for a few seconds more, but as soon as the words sink in, his hands still in my hair he leans back to look at me. “You have a brother?”
I swallow loudly and realize there’s hurt in his eyes that I never expected to be there. I don’t understand it. Moreover, I choose not to because if it’s there, then I’m responsible for it being there.
So, I lean in to kiss him again. To try and pretend like I didn’t see it, or the confusion in his features. To absolve myself of being the asshole I suddenly feel like I’ve been.
“No, Scout. No. You don’t get to hide behind your sweet fucking kiss. You don’t get to hide your life from me when I keep giving you more of mine. Jesus fucking Christ.” His growl of frustration echoes around the concrete walls as he paces a few steps away from me, shoves his hands through his hair, the distance between us reinforcing how far away from me he feels right now. “You don’t get it, do you? This. You. Me. This. It goes both ways.”
His words fade and die in the space around us. The look on his face—resigned, uncertain, disappointed—causes the panic to flood full force through me. And the panic this time isn’t because he’s getting too close, but rather because I fucked up. Because I didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt and just assumed he’d run.
“What do you want from me?” I’ve never spoken a truer statement and been more afraid of the answer.
“More than I think you can give me.” His voice is even, but it feels like he just shouted at me at the top of his lungs. The rejection is blindingly real and scary and overwhelming to a point that fear speaks for me this time. Shame carries the tune.
“What do you want to know, Easton? That I had a brother who was two years older than me? That he was my best friend, my everything, and three years ago he died? That I had a mother who went to get milk when I was five—left my dad washing the dishes and my brother in the bath and me in my Strawberry Shortcake pajamas waiting for her to come back and read me my bedtime story—and never came back? That we were too much work for her? That we weren’t worth coming back for?” I yell, each word escalating in pitch, my body vibrating from the words I hate to admit but now can’t stop from tumbling out. “Or let me see . . . What other juicy secrets can I tell you that no one else knows? What can I confess to prove to you that I really am trying to let you in instead of push you away?”
“Scout. Please. Stop so—”
“Nope. Just giving you exactly what you want.” The catharsis is real and frightening and feels like a thousand-pound boulder is being lifted from my chest with each word. “Like how my dad is sick. He’s dying, Easton. Is that what you wanted to know? Or how it’s taking everything I have to get this goddamn contract with the Aces that I don’t give a fucking rat’s ass about, but have to get because that was his one request? And once I do, he’s going to leave me, too? Is that what you want to know?” I scream the last words at him, tears sliding down my cheeks, anger burrowed in my heart, and all of me laid on the line. “Is that enough for you? You now know that every single person I’ve ever loved, who I’ve ever let in to know the real me, has left me. How I’m cursed, and petrified that if I let you in, I’m just dooming myself because you’ll leave me, too?”
My voice is hoarse. My heart bared. My fears exposed.
My shoulders shudder with the sobs I won’t allow to come. My mind reels with my confession as the dust settles, and I realize everything I just said.
Oh. Shit.
Those two words
are the only thing running through my head like the tears running down my cheeks as Easton just stares at me, his face a picture of shock, his eyes a sea of compassion.
“Scout.” His voice is broken when he says my name, much like how I feel.
“Don’t. Please don’t,” I beg of him.
I can’t do this right now. I don’t want to hear the sympathy in his voice. I don’t want any pity. But more than anything, I just can’t take the hurt anymore. There’s a reason I’ve locked all this emotion up and not touched it for years. This is the explanation for my hard heart.
So, I shut it out to shut him up and step into him. With my hands in his shirt, I yank him down to me and bruise my lips on his, needing to feel him. Needing to feel wanted. Needing to know that, even though he knows my fears, he still wants me.
He kisses me back, but I can feel his hesitation, sense his discomfort, his wondering what in the hell I’m doing. My heart falls, and his hands lift to frame my cheeks. He holds my face still as he leans back. “Scout.” Our eyes meet, and I see honesty so raw I can’t handle it. I also see the pity. The sadness.
And I can’t see any more of that.
I shake my head back and forth, and he leans forward and brushes his lips tenderly against mine, almost as if he thinks I need nice and sweet right now, to go along with my sadness.
“No.” I need the exact opposite from him. “No,” I reiterate, gripping the back of his neck, not allowing him to back off, adding some urgency to our kiss. And he lets me take the reins again. Allows me to pour my unsettled emotions into the kiss until I’m breathless and the tears have started to dry on my cheeks. “Make me feel, Easton. I don’t need sweet. I need real. I need to know you’re here. I need to know you want me. I need to forget. But more than anything, I need you.”
He leans back again. I watch his Adam’s apple bob, see the clenching and unclenching of his jaw, and watch the realization sink in.
“I need you,” I mouth the words to him, and it’s like I’ve just thrown kerosene on a lighted match.
We meet each other in the middle, a mass of hands and tongues and commands and haste. We move to our own music: shirts over heads and bra unclasped and jeans unbuttoned and shoved down while he pulls my skirt up and his fingers find their way beneath the lace of my panties.
“God, yes.” His fingers part me, play with me, enter me. There’s no niceties. There’s no seduction. There’s just him doing exactly what I asked him to do—make me feel. Push my mind into the free fall of orgasmic oblivion so I can’t think.
He’s everywhere at once, hands and teeth and lips and skin, and it’s nowhere near enough. We shift backward somehow, our feet moving as our hearts race, until I bump into the net of the batting cage behind me. My feet tangle in it until I fall against it, leaving my body supported by the net itself. My laughter at the predicament shifts into a moan as his teeth nip at my jawline and his thumb slides over my clit.
“Mmmm, hold tight, Kitty,” he orders as he pulls his fingers from within me and moves my hands to hold onto the woven rope above my head. “You holding on?”
My eyes flash up to meet the salacious look in his, and I nod and try to comprehend why he’s asking; he shakes his head in warning and slides his fingers into my mouth. I taste my own arousal, suck on them, as he slides them back and forth between my lips.
“Don’t talk, Scout,” he murmurs. “Don’t question. Don’t move your hands. Just do. Just let me. Just feel.”
I nod as my breath grows shallow. His teeth are biting into his bottom lip as he watches, his free hand working back and forth over his cock. But it’s the look in his eyes, desire personified, that makes my back bow and beg for more.
“You want me to touch you?” He leans in and murmurs against my ear, his body close enough that I feel the crest of his cock bump against my lower belly as he strokes it in his hand. Talk about the sweetest torture, knowing the havoc that cock can wreak on my system, having it just within sight, and being told not to touch it.
I moan when he rubs it against my clit, and push my hips forward to get the feeling again. He half laughs, half groans as I take his dick between the tops of my thighs and show him what I want.
“Mmm, that feels good,” he says as he pushes between my thighs and adds to the friction on my clit.
But it’s not enough.
Nowhere near enough.
And he must agree because, unexpectedly, he lifts my hips and sets my ass back in a framed alcove of the netting. The moment my butt is settled on the shallow shelf, Easton drops to his knees, spreads my thighs, and looks up at me.
“You want to feel? Well, I want to taste you. Hold tight, Kitty.”
Without another word, and with his eyes fastened to mine, he uses one hand to part me and then licks a line from my clit all the way down to my opening and then back up. And with the perfect amount of pressure and frequency, he begins to flick his tongue over the hub of nerves there. Soft and slow at first, and then faster and a bit harder.
I writhe beneath his touch. I sink into the pleasure and soar in its haze. Every sensation works my nerves—the warmth of his tongue, the tickle of his breath, the pressure as he slides his fingers inside me to give me the one-two punch of tongue on my clit and fingers rubbing my G-spot.
I moan and buck and pull on the netted ropes, all to ease the mounting pressure inside of me. To hold off my orgasm so that the pressure can build even stronger. I’m a mess of contradictions, and yet every one of them feels so damn good that the moan from my mouth can’t even express how incredible they are.
I’m aroused. Needy. Greedy. Desperate for more. Selfish. Eager. And every single one of those feelings is amplified by the hunger in his eyes as he looks up at me with his tongue buried between my thighs, my arousal glistening on his skin, and his fingers buried deep within me.
A lick of his tongue. A rub of his fingers. The groan from his lips. The carnality in his eyes. The rope biting into my skin.
My breath grows faint. My body pulls tight. My head grows dizzy.
And then lightning strikes—from my center, out to my toes and fingers, and then all the way back in until the reverb slams back for a second, more powerful wave.
My cry fills the room as he laps at the wetness between my thighs, his groan of pleasure sounding as good as the orgasm feels. He milks it out for me, the licks of his tongue grow softer, and his palms slide up my belly to cup my breasts, gently tug on my nipples, and sustain the ecstasy pulsing through my body.
And when he stands, when he brings his mouth to mine and takes my lips with as violent a desire as when his tongue brought me to climax, I’m immediately desperate for the feel of his dick sliding into me.
I can’t speak, even if I wanted to, and so, with my taste on his tongue, I suck on it. His groan, broken and begging, is all I need to hear to know I’m going to get my wish.
“Fuck me, Easton.”
I broke the rules. I spoke. But I don’t give a damn because when he lines his cock up and dips the tip inside of me, my head is already rolling back against the net, and my lips are already falling open into a garbled sound of yes, please, now, and thank you.
He fists his hands in the net beside my hips and pulls it to him so that he stands still but I slide slowly onto his rock-hard shaft. When he’s sheathed root to tip, our mutual groan is the only sound in the room, as he lets me enjoy the feel of him filling me before he pushes the net back so he slides out.
And then, without warning, he yanks the net back toward him, and I slam against him, and him into me. The action sends shockwaves through my already hypersensitive nerves.
This time, when we’re as close as can be, his lips find mine and devour them, murmuring, “Hang on, baby.”
“Please.”
And before the plea is even finished, he already has me pushed back and then pulled back into him again. He sets a bruising pace by manipulating the net around me to control the depth and the angle of his thrust. All I can do is hol
d on and watch how damn sexy he looks as he works himself up to his own release.
Those biceps of his flex and release with each pull and push. The tendons in his neck grow tight. His teeth bite into his bottom lip, and his nose scrunches up as he concentrates. But his eyes stay steadfast on mine. All the way up until the very end, when his head bucks back as his hips thrust forward, his hand holding me as close as I can be to him as he grinds his hips against mine and loses himself.
Completely.
And I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything sexier than Easton Wylder come undone. I can’t take my eyes off him. I can’t stop thinking how I did that to him.
With my words.
With my confession.
With my body.
And when he lowers his chin and meets my eyes, everything I was fighting against the past few months dissipates.
I surrender.
Heart.
Body.
Mind.
Fear.
“We can go upstairs, you know.” Easton’s voice is murmured satisfaction as he speaks a full sentence for the first time since we moved from the nets to lay naked atop our discarded clothes on the turf baseball field.
“I kind of think this is fitting,” I muse, grateful to hear his laugh. His silence has been eating at me, because I know I unloaded a ton on him, and now that our tempers have cleared, I must explain more, but need a few more minutes before I do.
I appreciate his patience. I am grateful for his silence. But with both of those also comes the unsettled quiet in my head that riots around on how to begin, since this sharing thing is all new to me.
“It would be more fitting if we were lying on home plate,” he chuckles as his finger trails lazily up and down the length of my spine, pausing to smooth over the curve of my ass before starting the whole process all over again.
“So, why did you bring me down here, anyway?” I ask to buy more time. His hand pauses, then continues.
“Because, if you were going to walk away, I didn’t want you in my place. Memories are a bitch, and the last thing I needed was to make more of them there on the kitchen counter.”
