Listen Pitch

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  That was about the extent of my knowledge.

  “Stryyyyyyyy!”

  I swallowed.

  “Oh and two,” my sister whispered.

  My sister was also the reason for my limited baseball knowledge. Her baby daddy used to be a college baseball player and was the reason she’d slept with him in the first place.

  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with a weakness for baseball pants in this family.

  While Rhys was busy taking a few practice swings, my eyes had strayed to him and his ass. Each time he swung, his pants pulled tighter on that scrumptious butt of his, showing it off.

  Today they were wearing white pants, green socks, and a green baseball jersey.

  Where some of the players wore their pants down to their ankles, Rhys raised his to rest just above his calf.

  “Hutt.”

  Ball.

  I looked back in time to see the catcher toss the ball back to the pitcher.

  I squeaked as Rhys took another swing, and then brought my finger up to my lip to chew uselessly on my nail.

  I bit my nails when I was nervous.

  They’d likely be bloody stubs by the time I was finished.

  Crack!

  I gasped when Rhys hit the ball—and hit it he did.

  It went so far out into the outfield that it bounced off the back wall between the center fielder and the right fielder.

  That’s when I saw why they called Rhys the “Jet.”

  A man like Rhys you wouldn’t expect to run fast. He was big. Tall and stocky, but not fat stocky. Muscular stocky. He had meat on his bones, but that didn’t make him look like a ‘roid user like it did with some people.

  But still, a man as big as him? You wouldn’t expect him to move fast…but he did.

  God, did he move fast.

  He was on third base before the ball was thrown in from the field, and I was staring open-mouthed at the man in shock.

  Holy crap!

  My excitement must’ve shown on my face, because when his eyes met mine, he started to laugh.

  I pointed at him, and then mouthed, You’re in trouble.

  He wiggled his hands and said, “Ohhhhh.”

  I snorted, then drew my finger across my neck.

  He grinned, then turned to pay attention to the game once more.

  I just shook my head and regained my seat.

  My mom started to chuckle as I got comfortable once again.

  “I take it that you didn’t know he was going to play?”

  I shook my head. “Negative.”

  She started to laugh. “Let me just tell you something now. They don’t ever do what you think they’re going to, nor do they follow directions really well when they’re injured or sick.”

  That, I at least knew. Well, in fact.

  Rhys’ recovery had been an uphill battle for sure. I knew without a doubt that he hated being in a weakened state, and he shared his unhappiness with others.

  I watched him carefully as he played for the next two innings, looking for any signs of a headache or weakness. There was none.

  I wasn’t a fool. I knew he was hurting.

  One didn’t suffer a traumatic brain injury like the one he’d suffer and not have anything to show for it, despite all the healing he’d done.

  But, he hid it well.

  It likely was due to the fact that I was watching him so closely that I saw him wince at his next at bat when his bat connected with the ball. The loud ‘clack’ of the two forces meeting.

  Though he hit it solidly, he was a little slower to run around the bases this time and was held up at second base despite hitting it in nearly the identical spot as the time before it.

  Luckily, his run drove in one more, and the inning finished with him left on second base.

  All the while the stadium around me celebrated the win, I kept watch over Rhys.

  And I knew that he wasn’t feeling all that well, despite putting on the blank face that let almost zero emotion through.

  I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I had to do something.

  What I hadn’t planned on doing was standing up and nearly breaking my face on the wall in front of me—stupid high heels.

  I never wore high heels. What made me think that it was okay to wear them today?

  I caught myself on the concrete barrier, but the force was great enough that I skinned my arm and wrist.

  It wouldn’t be complete if blood didn’t start pouring everywhere.

  I gasped and raised my arm, looking at it in horror. I was deathly afraid of blood. So much so that even my own blood freaked me way the fuck out.

  My mother and Alana both hissed out a breath and rushed forward.

  Unfortunately, the only thing I had to staunch the flow was a single napkin from my mother’s beer she’d gotten earlier.

  She placed it on my wrist, but it was saturated in a matter of moments.

  Before I could do much more than contemplate what exactly I was going to do, Rhys was just suddenly there, standing in front of me and pulling my arm to rest between his two large hands.

  I gasped, looked up, and saw his sweaty face inches from mine.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Shit,” he said, surveying the damage. “I saw you fall. You ruined your dress.”

  I looked down and moaned. “This was my favorite dress.”

  “It’s your only dress,” Alana supplied.

  I flipped her off with my good hand, and she laughed.

  “I have one dress because this is my favorite, and I don’t like the way any of the other ones feel,” I countered.

  My dress was ruined.

  There’s no way that much blood was going to come out of my gray dress…

  “No, don’t!” I cried, trying to stop him.

  But before I could get my hand up, he was shrugging out of his jersey and wrapping it around my arm in a makeshift bandage.

  I moaned. “It’s definitely not going to come out of the jersey…”

  Rhys grinned. “We have a guy that gets out blood, grass, and dirt stains like it’s nothing. Trust me when I say, he can handle this.”

  Then, without another word, he hopped back over the barricade.

  But before I could tell him thank you, or even admire his body in that second skin shirt he was wearing that molded to his every bump and curve, I was up in his arms and going with him into the dugout.

  “Rhys!” I whispered fiercely. “What are you doing?”

  He grunted. “I’m taking you to the trainer so she can fix your wrist.”

  Then, he proved that fact as he carried me straight down a tunnel-like hallway, up a flight of stairs, and into a wide-open room where some of the other players were still loitering.

  “Whatcha got there, Rhys?” a tall man called out.

  “None ya business, Manny,” Rhys grumbled as he passed.

  “Hey, do you think you can stay a little late and talk to that reporter about your comeback?” someone called.

  “Not right now, Coach Siggy.”

  I whispered fiercely to Rhys, “That’s your coach. You really shouldn’t talk to him like that. And it won’t hurt for you to talk to the reporters.”

  Rhys’ eyes tilted down to catch my gaze. “They’ll wait.”

  I bit my lip, and his eyes watched.

  Something flashed in them, and I had a moment of surprise before he banked whatever had just crossed them. “How did you manage to fall, anyway? I was watching you. It was like you just tipped forward.”

  I held up my feet and showed him my heels. “I’m better in tennis shoes.”

  He snorted. “I think everyone would be better in tennis shoes, to be honest. I’ve never understood why women liked those things.”

  I didn’t, either.

  Chapter 19

  When the beast went human, I cried. I just wanted to screa
m, ‘you lost all your gains, bro!’

  -George to Rhys when explaining that he was forced to watch Beauty and the Beast

  Rhys

  The moment I sat her on the trainer’s table, she shifted restlessly, trying in vain to tug the short, gray dress down past her knees.

  My dick, which had been hard the moment that she’d walked out with that dress on this morning, pulsed.

  She’d been driving me insane for eight hours straight, and I was fairly sure she had no clue.

  She also had no clue that that dress had sealed her fate.

  She’d been mine for a long time, but today had hammered that point home.

  She was mine. The money was ours. And that was how it was forever going to be.

  Tonight, I’d make it official—I’d take her, and make her mine in all ways.

  “What’s going on?”

  I looked up to find Sway, the personal trainer, making her way to us.

  I gestured with my head to Henley. “She fell and cut her arm up pretty bad. I was hoping you could wrap it up…I don’t think it needs stitches, but there was too much blood to really tell.”

  Sway swiped up a pair of gloves off the rack next to the sink and slipped them on.

  Once they were in place over her hands, she sidled up beside me and gently removed the uniform from around her wrist.

  Henley hissed in pain.

  “Sorry,” Sway murmured. “I’m not a doctor but—”

  “But she needs stitches,” I guessed.

  Sway winced. “Yeah. I think you’re going to need stitches…unfortunately.”

  I was hoping that wasn’t the case.

  All my plans for the night were slowly sliding downhill at a fast pace.

  “I don’t want to get stitches. Maybe just steri-strips?” Henley asked hopefully.

  I grunted. “Negative. We’re going to get it fixed up. Then we’re going home. No arguments.”

  Henley sighed, looking so forlorn that I wanted to kiss the hell out of her.

  “I really do hate going to the hospital with something that concerns me…it freaks me out.”

  “I don’t think you really have a choice,” I apologized.

  “Actually,” Henley smiled. “I know a nurse. She knows how much I hate having things like this done to me. She can stitch me up. She had a doctor show her how when she was in nursing school. She’s stitched me up twice now.”

  Then she pointed out a place on her thigh, right above her knee, then a place on her chin, right below her jaw.

  I felt my belly clench.

  “Henley…”

  “Please?”

  It was the soft way that she pleaded, and how her eyes went all soft, that swayed me.

  “Fine,” I said. “But if you cry, I’m never going to allow this again.”

  Henley winked. “I have a solution to that, too.”

  Her solution was to get drunk.

  On our wedding night.

  Fuck. Me.

  ***

  At one point in time, I likely would’ve woken up when a woman was grinding her pussy into my cock well before I got to the point as the one I’d found myself in…but I blamed that fact on Henley.

  I trusted her implicitly.

  And that trust extended to acts of sex, apparently.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t let her continue without knowing if she was completely sober.

  I did not want to take advantage of her. Not one single bit.

  And, sadly, she’d been drunk the entire night.

  I’d had to head off multiple advances from her since then, and I quickly realized that my wife was a happy drunk—and a horny one.

  She was also the cutest thing in the world.

  I just hoped that she didn’t freak out when she remembered what she’d done the night before.

  Instead of doing what I wanted to do, which was shift so that my cock was at her entrance, I stilled her hips instead.

  When I did, she sat up, and I realized that I could just barely make out her face thanks to the rising sun outside my window.

  And she was not under the influence any longer…unless you counted sleep.

  Because then she’d definitely done what she’d been doing inadvertently because as she sat up, the sleep cleared from her eyes, and then horror replaced it.

  She was up and out of my lap faster than my mind could process, and I called out to her but realized that was futile.

  She didn’t have her transmitter on. She didn’t sleep with it in, like many with hearing impairments didn’t.

  As I watched her dash into the bathroom, I realized that my half of the duplex was unequipped for someone like Henley.

  I’d have to remedy that immediately.

  And, while my mind was on the subject, I texted my sister and asked her if she would send me everything that she had in stock supplies wise. She texted back immediately, but I ignored the text and moved until I was sitting on the end of the bed.

  There I stood, waiting for her to come back.

  Then I heard the shower turn on, and I grinned.

  It was twenty minutes later when I made the discovery.

  She was hiding in the shower when I finally realized that she was waiting for me to leave before she came out.

  Something that I wasn’t going to be doing.

  Instead of getting dressed like I’d been intending, I walked into the bathroom—surprised when I found it unlocked.

  Instead of contemplating that too hard, I walked straight into the shower and didn’t stop until I was crowding her, my dick leading the way.

  The first thing I saw when I entered the steamy shower was the long, shapely expanse of her back.

  The line of her spine was intoxicating, and her ass? Yeah, I wanted nothing more than to feel that pounding against my thighs as I took her from behind.

  I moved up behind her before I even realized what I was doing.

  She froze when my hard cock prodded her in the ass—her hands lathering shampoo into her long locks.

  She hadn’t startled, though, and for that, I knew it was due to her trust in me.

  When she didn’t say anything, I turned her around by grabbing her by the hips and then tugged her close so that the water was only running down her backside, instead of into her hair.

  When her eyes finally found the courage to meet mine, I spoke slowly so she could read my lips.

  “How do you expect to have a baby, if you don’t let me touch you?”

  She licked her lips. “I…I…ummm….”

  I found my lips twitching at her stuttered words.

  “You may think that you’re not attractive.” I reached for her hand, which was still covered in suds. “But you are.”

  When she would’ve protested, I enclosed her hand with mine and then brought it to the long column of my cock.

  “My dick doesn’t lie,” I told her bluntly, letting her see the truth in my eyes as well as read it off my lips. “Trust me when I say, I want you.”

  She swallowed.

  “The only reason I stopped you earlier was because I wanted you completely and utterly understanding about what you were about to get yourself into.”

  She widened her eyes, and a small dollop of shampoo slipped from the top of her head, trailing a white line down her forehead.

  I lifted my hand from hers, ran it up from her hip, to her side, and farther up to the long column of her back then neck. Once I reached her hair, I fisted it, and then yanked it backward so that her hair was in the water.

  The suds swirled down the drain, and I lifted my other hand to wipe the bubbles off her forehead.

  Then, while she wasn’t prepared, I dropped my mouth onto hers.

  She gasped into my mouth, and I used the surprise to my advantage by allowing my tongue to sweep inside.

  Her hand on my cock clenched, and I very nearly came right then and there.

  The only
thing that stopped me was the sting of shampoo in my eyes.

  I didn’t stop to wash it out, nor did I care that the water was pouring down her face and into my open mouth. What I did care about was that it was happening to her, so I let her up to breathe.

  Her eyes were wide and filled with lust, as they connected with mine.

  Her breaths were coming in shallow pants.

  “Can I have you?” I mouthed the words.

  She nodded, then said one single word. “Yes.”

  The next moment, I bent at the knees, hooked my arm around the back of her thighs, and picked her up.

  Her legs wrapped around my hips, and I moved until her back was pressed against the cool tiled wall, and the water was running down my back.

  She arched the moment that the cool tile met her back, her nipples rubbing deliciously against my skin.

  I rolled my hips, dragging my thick cock against the lips of her sex.

  She moaned and closed her eyes.

  With her eyes closed, she could no longer read the words on my lips…but it didn’t matter. She’d given me her trust. She’d given me her, otherwise she would’ve never said yes. She would’ve never trusted me enough to look away. She would’ve been watching my every move.

  The sheer amount of faith she had in me was soul shattering.

  This woman, with her beautiful eyes and soul, her heart-shaped mouth and sweet tongue, as well as her confidence in me—someone who didn’t deserve a man like me tying her down—had made herself permanently mine. She’d given herself over to me, heart, body, and soul.

  I felt something stinging in the vicinity of my heart and couldn’t help but drop my mouth down onto the soft spot of her throat as I tried to breathe through the emotion burning through my chest.

  She had no idea, none, how much this meant to me. She didn’t know that I’d been struggling for my entire life to find someone like her. Someone that didn’t care who I was, and only wanted my best interests at heart.

  She was giving me that. She was going to give me a child. She was going to give me the protection that I needed.

  All of that was accomplished the moment that she said, ‘I do.’

  I dragged my tongue up the column of her neck, tasting the water droplets that slid down from her drenched hair.

  She moaned low in her throat but didn’t say anything more, and I realized that I couldn’t wait any longer.