by Alice Ward
“What are you in the mood for?” he asked.
“Pork,” I answered way too quickly and with more enthusiasm than was needed for the protein.
His eyes lit up. “Really? Do you have a preference in the package in which this pork is to be delivered to your mouth?”
“Nope.” I licked my lips, thoughts of BBQ swirling in my head.
Apparently, he was thinking of something else because he adjusted his jeans. “This is getting me hot.”
“Easy boy, is there a barbecue joint in this town?”
“Of course,” he pointed across the street to an orange and red brick building.
“Perfect. The less time I have to travel to get food, the more time I can spend enjoying it.” I laughed.
I licked my suddenly dry lips again, noticing him watching the progression of my tongue. “Are you ready?” I asked and turned away to grab my bag and jacket.
“Fuck, baby,” he growled, the sound so sexy coming from his throat. “You have no idea how ready I am right now.”
“Good. Let’s go eat.” I gripped his hand, grabbed the key from my table and led him down the hall to the exit.
The smell of smoked pork wafted across the street and under my nose as we waited to cross the street.
Inside, a waitress named Sue took our drink orders. Ace ordered a beer, nothing more, just a beer. I was impressed. “Sprite please.” I smiled politely at the weathered and exhausted looking older woman.
“No alcohol for you?” he asked.
“It’s been messing up my stomach. The last few times I’ve drank, I end up sick.”
He looked concerned. “Have you seen a doctor?”
I blushed. “No. I don’t have insurance right now, so I’m just grinning and bearing it.”
His hand moved to my cheek. “Holly, go see a doctor. I’ll pay for it.”
Unable to resist, I turned my head and kissed his palm. “Thank you, but I’ll be okay. Promise. I should probably just join a yoga class and do some stress management instead.”
He was going to say something else, but the waitress interrupted, taking our order.
Shrugging my jacket off my shoulders, I turned to see Ace watching me again. I looked down to see my nipples still betraying me.
“You know you’re an evil little shit, right?” he asked. “And so damn sexy.”
“Whatever do you mean?” I batted my eyelashes in his direction, trying to force my body to obey my commands to settle down.
“I’m rock fuckin’ hard under this table, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart? That’s new.
“Sorry, babe. All I wanted was some pork. I don’t know why your mind went to the gutter.” I smirked and took a sip of my drink.
Dinner was delicious, but with Ace watching every bite of food that entered my mouth, the sexual tension between us was growing quickly. Why did this man weaken me so easily?
My phone vibrated on the table, Jack’s face glaring between us. There’s a quick mood killer.
“Go ahead, answer it,” Ace said, his jaw popping as he took another bite.
“I don’t really want to talk to him.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, do I smell trouble in paradise?”
“No, you smell smoked pork.”
His lips curled into the crooked smile I loved. It was both cocky and seductive. It was nice sitting with him, enjoying a meal, flirting a little. I missed that Ace.
The phone finally stopped, and Jack’s face faded away.
“It’s okay, Holly.” Ace’s voice was surprisingly sweet and gentle when he spoke.
He reached across the table and took my hand in his. It was sticky with sauce, so I took one of the pre-packaged baby wipes out and tore it open, and very slowly, wiped his fingers clean. When I looked up at him, his pupils were huge, his hunger for me evident.
“I want you to be happy,” he spoke softly.
Tears welled up in my eyes. Why was I so damn emotional?
“I want that for you too.”
He threaded his fingers through mine. “Don’t cry. Please.”
I wiped my eyes with the napkin from the table. Ace’s eyes danced, and an amused smile played on his lips.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, feeling unsure under his scrutiny.
He released my hand, pulled a clean napkin from the dispenser and reached across the table, gently wiping my cheek. I looked down at the napkin in my hand. It was smeared with my mascara. I wadded it up and tossed it at him. “I need to buy waterproof,” I said with a pout.
He was still smiling when he grabbed another napkin and reached over to wipe my mouth. I grabbed the napkin and noticed a glob of barbecue sauce this time. “Oh good lord,” I said, embarrassed. Opening another towelette, I scrubbed my entire face with it before looking at him. “Better?”
His smile made something inside my stomach twist. “Perfect.”
The atmosphere had changed between us, and it felt like most of the oxygen had been sucked from the room. “It really does mean the world to me that you’re here,” he said.
I stretched my hands across the table and worked them back into his. His flesh was warm, the callouses on his hands rough, like a man’s hands should be. The grip they provided was strong and secure, making me feel protected while they held me.
“It means the world to me to be here.”
It surprised me when Ace started talking about his family, sharing more about them. His mother had been the glue. She held everyone together, even with their differences, their resentments, and their competitions. She sounded like a lovely woman. The mother that everyone adored, trusted, and feared at the same time. I loved the look Ace got in his eyes when he spoke about the woman. It was evident that she meant a lot to him.
“I always wanted to make her proud,” he said.
“I’m sure you did.”
“The only thing she ever asked of me was to always take care of my family.”
I thought about the house we visited earlier, modest and outdated. Ace had earned millions of dollars while in the major leagues, but to look at his parents’ home, you’d never know it.
“Did you?” I asked gently.
“Did I what?” he asked.
“Take care of the family.”
He leaned back into his booth, pulling his hands from mine and staring down at his empty plate. “I tried, but I failed,” he admitted.
I felt the pain flowing through his veins, yet another reason he called himself a failure. He was a great baseball player. At that, he didn’t fear failing, it was just everything else that scared him. It was life that scared him. Getting older scared him. I knew he was close to ancient in baseball years, and I’m sure retirement loomed like death’s angel to a man like Ace.
“How’d you try?” I asked.
He sighed, gripped his beer bottle and took a long swig. “Well, I started by buying my parents a new house. Dad threw a fit, told me to shove my pussy house up my dick hole.” He laughed as he repeated the rantings of the now tired, dying old man.
“Why didn’t he want it?”
“He’s a proud man. He’s the provider. I think he wanted us kids to be great, that’s why he worked us so hard. When he saw I had talent, real talent, he pushed me even harder. The better I got, the more he seemed to resent me. Maybe he thought he could handle having successful kids, but when one did succeed, it just shone a light on his own failures.”
“That’s pretty damn insightful.” I leaned back in the booth and looked at the man across from me in an entirely different light.
He wasn’t just this wounded little bird, this object for sexual pleasure, a great baseball player. He was so much more than that. He had depth, soul, real character that I’d never recognized before.
“So what happened after the house?” I asked.
“I set up a college fund for Eve. The old man laughed, saying she didn’t need to go to school, that she was a pretty girl and would find a good husband. Brady, now
he was a tough one. I didn’t know what to do for him. He didn’t like to work, and when he did, it was at jobs that required very little physically or intellectually from him.”
He paused and took another drink of his beer.
“I told Brady I wanted to sponsor a little league team in his name, make him a coach, and then buy him a house when he had a child of his own.”
“What was wrong with that?”
That smirk crept up on his face. “Brady told me he didn’t want his name on any baseball jersey, and that baseball was for losers. He did say he’d take the money I was gonna spend on the house to do what he wanted with. I laughed. I told him to kiss my loser ass.”
I laughed and watched Ace’s eyes light up as he talked about all the good things he’d tried to do for his family. “In the end, I just gave them both a lump check to do with as they wanted. I paid off my parents’ house then set up a bank account that automatically paid all the bills for Dad.”
“I’m sure your mother’s proud of what you’ve accomplished, and what you’ve tried to do to help your family.”
He shrugged the comment off. “I donate money every year to my mother’s favorite muscular dystrophy charity. Her brother was inflicted, and she always saved whatever she could to send to the charity group in hopes they’d help someone else live a more vibrant life.”
“What about homeless vets?” I asked, and his chin jerked up, surprised.
“What do you know about that?”
I leaned forward. “The bartender in Florida told me about how you helped Charlie.”
He looked embarrassed and stared at his beer. “I’m working on a foundation to help homeless vets,” he finally admitted. “It kills me, you know, to see men who were once so damn strong and brave get thrown away by the system.”
Tears pricked the back of my eyes.
“You know what else kills me?” he asked, and I shook my head. “It kills me that I have everything any man could ever want, and I still carry all this toxic shit inside I can’t get rid of.”
“Have you ever sought treatment, Ace? Like a therapist to help you sort through everything.”
He laughed. “Yeah. I hired this shrink and ended up fucking her on the little couch.”
I rolled my eyes. “Maybe you should try a guy next time.”
His grin grew bigger. “Don’t swing that way.”
I tossed another napkin at him, hitting him square in the chest.
“Can I get you anything else? Dessert? The check?”
I started, not noticing the waitress approach.
“Check is good, thanks,” Ace said and took out his wallet. He tossed a hundred down. “No change needed.” When the elderly woman’s eyes watered, he pulled out another and pressed it into her wrinkled hand. “Hope you have a good day.”
He slid from the booth and the waitress wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you. I wasn’t sure how I was going to buy my medicine this month.”
I watched Ace’s jaw tighten. “How much is your medicine each month?”
The old lady sniffed. “The part my insurance doesn’t cover is still eighty dollars, can you believe that?”
Ace reached for his wallet again and pulled out a folded piece of paper I realized was a check. “Can I borrow your pen?”
The lady shook her head. “No, you’ve done too much already.” She was backing away.
He looked at me. “Gotta ink pen on ya?”
I pulled one from my purse and watched him write a check for two thousand dollars, and my heart squeezed. Did he help strangers because he couldn’t help his own family?
He wrote Sue, then looked at the waitress. “What’s your last name? If you don’t tell me, I’ll just ask around until somebody does.”
I stood and wrapped my arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Let him do this for you,” I told her.
“Johnson,” she said after several long moments had passed. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
Ace finished up the check. “You promise to cash it?”
She nodded and took it in her trembling fingers. “I promise, and I’ll say a prayer for you every day.” She looked at the check. “Ace Newman.”
He kissed her wrinkled cheek. “Thanks, I need all the prayers I can get.” Then he grabbed my hand and pulled me from the restaurant.
We walked across the street. He gripped my hand tightly in his as we crossed the busy street. When we were just outside of our rooms, his phone vibrated. He took it out of his pocket and frowned at the screen.
“Yeah, Eve, what do you need now?”
I watched his face changed, watched it crumble with emotion. I slid my key card through the door and pulled him inside my room. He sat down on the bed, his face in his hand as he consoled his sister, telling her not to worry, that he’d pay for everything.
When he disconnected the call, he looked up at me, and a lone tear slid down his face. I went to him, holding him in my arms as his entire body shuddered through his grief.
“I’ve hated him for so long. Why do I miss him so much now?”
I just shook my head. I didn’t have any answers. I didn’t know how our hearts could hate and love with the same beat. I wondered if it would be like this when my own father died.
I’m not exactly sure when our lips met. One moment I was holding him, then I was kissing him, then my hands were under his shirt, feeling his warmth.
We didn’t speak. We didn’t say a word, just undressed each other with a reverence that felt holy. Our mouths worshiped the other’s skin, taking and giving with each touch. His lips on my breasts, sucking as if seeking nourishment, then lower, his tongue lapping at me between my legs, his fingers plunging into my depths.
Each time I came, he murmured something I couldn’t understand, but he didn’t stop until I came a third time. I was weak, exhausted, by the time he climbed up my body.
“I got tested in Florida,” he told me as his cock nudged my entrance. “I’m clean, I swear, but if you want me to wear a condom, I will.”
Anxiety twisted through me, not because I didn’t believe him, but because of something else. “I’m not on any birth control, Ace. The hormones make me sick.”
We’d never had this discussion before. It was always a given that we’d use condoms every time. We’d never questioned the use of one before.
But I saw the question in his eyes now, as our sexes touched, skin on skin for the first time. The muscles in his jaw popped as he fought for control. Then he pulled away and grabbed his wallet, taking out a foil package.
He laughed. “No kid wants me as a father,” he said as he rolled it on.
I didn’t say anything, just watched his long fingers secure the rubber over his dick. Then remembered the time the condom failed. Remembered how sick I’d been lately.
No. Surely not.
“What’s wrong?” he said as he lowered himself on to me.
I forced a smile. “Nothing. Just make love to me, please.”
His grin was back. “Yes, ma’am.”
Then he was inside me, stretching me, filling me, and nothing else mattered in that moment.
“I’ve missed you so much,” he growled when he was balls deep inside me.
I looked up into his blue eyes. “I’ve missed you too.”
He began to move, long, slow strokes in and out of me, our mouths connected as our bodies rocked together.
He was so powerful and yet gentle as his speed increased, his long, thick cock driving me wild. I wrapped myself around him, my nails digging into his flesh as he impaled me over and over, our love making lasting for hours.
We were both slick with sweat, panting hard when I felt his cock swell, grow even larger inside me. The muscles tightened in his arms as he let out a loud, powerful groan, thrusting wildly now as my body milked his, filling me with warm satisfaction that could only be pure joy.
“I love you, Holly,” he whispered in my ear, his breath still harsh against my skin.
I held onto him tighter. “I love you too.”
There was something powerful about hearing those words while he was buried deep inside of me, our bodies connected so intimately.
He slipped out of bed, and I heard the sink turn on and the toilet flush. He was back with a warm rag that he used to wash me.
When I was in his arms again, held tight against his chest, I allowed my eyes to close.
I didn’t worry about tomorrow; it was an entire a day away. I didn’t worry about yesterday; it was no longer here. I allowed myself to enjoy the now. This man lying beside me for however long that would be.
As I drifted into sleep, I prayed that I could have this moment for the rest of my life. Even if it was only in my dreams.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ace
Something was stalking me through the woods. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t hear it or smell it, but it was there. The touch of its gaze burning my skin.
I ran, branches slicing my cheeks.
“Leave me alone,” I screamed when it’s hot breath caressed my neck.
There was a rumble, like thunder after a lightning strike. But this was a laugh, the evil in it causing gooseflesh to break out on my arms. One word followed. Never.
The earth opened up beneath me and I tumbled down into a darkness deeper than black. I screamed but no sounded rebounded around me.
“Someone help me,” I yelled, reaching out into the inky surrounding. I screamed when something reached back.
Claws sank into my hand, digging into the bones, and I was pulled in the monster’s direction. But it wasn’t a monster anymore. The woman before me was beautiful. Glowing.
She opened her palm, revealing a pile of white powder.
“I can help you, Ace. Just give me your soul.”
Before my eyes, the beauty melted away, like wax from a candle. My dad stood before me now, throwing the powder in my face.
“See, I knew you’d fuck up,” he said. “You can’t even play ball without stuffing something up your nose. You’re a phony. The worst kind of liar. You’ve fooled everyone so far, except me.”
His eyes changed first, then his teeth, then his skin. His bones lost their flesh as his hand reached for me. Closer. Closer.
