To say I’ve been antsy is an understatement, but I have doggysitters for tonight, and I plan on taking my girl back to our place.
“Quiet, quiet,” Marcy says as she switches off the light to the shelter. Herman comes up to me in his tailored suit. Yes, I got it tailored for him. Took him on a day off and was judged harshly by a local tailor, but I got the suit to fit him properly. He nudges my hand and I pet him behind the ear. Marcy took Herman last night and brought him in this morning, claiming an early morning appointment for his mandatory checkup, and since Kinsley is watching Taco and Bella, Marcy said she’d take care of it. All foster dogs must be checked to make sure they’re healthy and thriving, so Kinsley didn’t even bat an eyelash.
Through the front window, she appears. She has her ear pods in, and she’s staring down at her phone.
Perfect.
The minute she opens the door to the shelter and Marcy flips on the lights, we all shout, “Surprise.”
Her phone flies out of her hand.
She tumbles back against the door.
And her hand clutches her heart as she looks up at all of us.
I quickly walk up to her and clutch her to my chest. I remove her ear pods, stick them in my pocket, and whisper, “Happy birthday, baby.”
She’s nervously laughing and clutching on to me. “Oh my God, I think I peed myself.”
I chuckle and kiss the side of her head. “Do you need to go to the bathroom?”
She shakes her head and I pick up her phone, sticking that in my pocket as well. I reveal her to our friends and they quickly pull her into hugs, offering her up happy birthdays. I watch as that beautiful smile of hers shines, so excited to have our friends and family here.
I called her mom up, offered to fly her down here, but she couldn’t make it happen with her schedule, but she’ll be here this weekend to spend some quality time with Kinsley while I’m out of town. She’s still cautious about my relationship with Kinsley, but I also believe she’s starting to trust me with her daughter’s heart. Trust in me. Thankfully, Kinsley never told her mom what happened. She relied on Marcy for advice, and I couldn’t be more grateful for that decision. If Kinsley’s mom knew what went down, there’s no way in hell I’d be dating her daughter again.
Once the hugs are done, I pull Kinsey into my side and say, “Before we get to the food, I’d like to bring Herman up here.” I squat down and call him over. He hobbles up to us, and Kinsley squeals as she squats as well.
“My handsome boy, you look so dapper.”
“He wanted to dress up for your birthday, but I told him he needed to get his suit fitted if he was going to be walking around in it.”
“I’m going to need about a million pictures of this,” she says while rubbing Herman behind the ears.
“We will get to pictures, but first your present.”
“I told you, you didn’t need to get me anything,” she says.
But I don’t listen. I take her hand and have her stand with me. “Marcy, will you do the honors?”
She smiles and has tears in her eyes as she walks up to us with a folder. “Everything is in here, we just need one final signature.”
“Here’s a pen,” Jason says, from out of nowhere. I take it from him and hand it to Kinsley who looks so confused.
Then I part open the folder and I hear her gasp, and then quickly look up at me.
“Happy adoption day, babe. We just need your signature and Herman is ours.”
“Are you serious right now?”
I nod. “Dead serious. I couldn’t imagine a better scenario than us three being a family.”
Happy tears stream down her face as she signs the paper and everyone cheers. Marcy takes the paperwork from me and Kinsley jumps up into my arms, legs wrapped around my waist, and kisses me deeply. Our friends cheer around us and when she pulls away, our foreheads connected, she says, “This is the best gift you could ever give me.”
I could think of some other gifts that would be better, one that sparkles, but we’ll get there.
“I’m glad you like it.”
She climbs down and then hugs Herman. “You’re officially ours, buddy. Are you excited?”
Zero emotion in his face as he just stares at Kinsley, jowls drooping, unfazed.
Looking to our friends, she announces, “He’s overjoyed.”
We all laugh, and then we spend the next five minutes taking pictures as a new family of three.
* * *
“I owe Marcy so much in life,” I say as Kinsley strips off her shirt, revealing her perfect breasts, breasts that I haven’t fucking seen in weeks. Hell, more than weeks.
Because she’s a saint, Marcy’s watching Taco and Bella tonight so Kinsley and Herman could spend the night at our place. We tucked Herman in, each gave him a kiss on the head, and then retired to the bedroom where Kinsley made me strip down for her and then sit on the bed.
She didn’t even have to strip down for me to get a hard-on. The minute I took my clothes off, I was showing my excitement.
Giving me a show, she slowly peels her thong off and tosses it to the side. Goddamn, she’s gorgeous.
“I’m pretty sure Marcy is my fairy godmother,” Kinsley says, climbing on the bed and then onto my lap. My dick falls right against her pussy and she wastes no time rocking over it.
A sharp hiss escapes me as I say, “What do you want, baby?”
Hands on her hips, I help rock her back and forth.
“Everything,” she says. “I want everything with you.”
“Everything?” I ask, a raise to my brow. “Does that mean you’re going to move in with me . . . again?”
“Do you want me to?”
“If I had it my way, you’d be here now, with Taco and Bella.”
She chuckles and runs her hands up my chest. “They’re skittish, so I don’t want to change their environment one more time.”
“I know. But you get what I mean.”
She nods and then bites her bottom lip. “Would you ever want to make this official? Between us?”
“Like marriage?”
“Yeah, like marriage.”
Why the hell does she look so nervous asking that question? I’d think it’s pretty obvious at this point what I want.
I want normal.
I want the cliché.
I want what I didn’t have growing up: a loving household, a silly marriage with my best friend, kids, pets . . . I want it all.
With my index finger, I tilt her chin up and say, “Baby, I want everything. I want you, forever. I want kids. I want a house with a backyard where I can teach our kids how to play ball. I want to bitch about picking up dog shit on a Saturday morning, and I want to be able to crawl into bed with you every night, knowing I’m the luckiest man in the world to have you by my side.”
“You do?”
I nod. “I really fucking do.”
“So”—she draws a finger over my chest—“does that mean you’ll propose at some point?”
“That’s usually how it works.” I chuckle. “Why? Fishing for a proposal?”
“No.” She smiles and circles my nipple with the tip of her finger. “Just making sure we’re on the same page, that’s all.”
“Admit it.” I squeeze her side. “You’re desperate to marry me.”
She rolls her eyes and scoffs, “You’re so full of yourself.”
I flip her to her back and hover above her. Spreading her legs with my knee, I lower my cock to her entrance and push in. We both let out a satisfied moan, and when our eyes connect there’s a promise that passes between the both of us.
Growing serious, I thrust into her while I say, “It will happen, baby. I’ll make you my wife, but for now, I’m going to relish having you back in my life.”
She smiles up at me. “I can be happy with that for now.”
Do you want to find out what the future holds for Maddox and Kinsley? Click HERE
THE END
Thank you for reading
The Change Up! You can read all of my books for FREE on Kindle Unlimited! Keep flipping to read an excerpt from Jason and Dottie’s story, The Lineup, and you can read more about the other baseball boys here:
Cory and Natalie: The Trade
Jason and Dottie: The Lineup
Carson and Milly: The Dugout
Knox and Emory: The Locker Room
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Standalone, Laugh Out Loud, Romantic Comedy
The Modern Gentleman
Standalone Sports Romances
(Baseball Romances)
The Locker Room
The Dugout
The Lineup
The Trade
The Change Up
Millionaire Romances
The Secret to Dating Your Best Friend’s Sister
(A friends to lovers contemporary romance)
Diary of a Bad Boy
(Sassy and sweet romance with an Irish rebel)
Boss Man Bridegroom
(A romantic comedy intertwined with an office romance)
Port Snow Series
(Small Town Romances)
That Second Chance
That Forever Girl
That Secret Crush
That Swoony Feeling
The Duets
(Complete Box Set compiling The Blue Line Duet and The Perfect Duet in one place)
The Duets
The Romance Novelist Chronicles
(Hilarious, laugh out loud romantic comedies)
**The Virgin Romance Novelist, The Randy Romance Novelist, and The Parenting Romance Novelist are all combined into one book The Virgin Romance Novelist Chronicles**
The Virgin Romance Novelist Chronicles
The Virgin Romance Novelist
Co-Written with Sara Ney
(A sexy, smart, heart swooning office romance with the boss)
Love Sincerely Yours
The Perfect Duet
(A heartfelt romance that will leave you breathless)
The Left Side of Perfect
The Right Side of Forever
The Blue Line Duet
(An epic romance with many twists and turns)
The Upside of Falling
The Downside of Love
The Dating by Numbers Series
(Adventurous dating series full of laugh out loud moments and very heated scenes)
Three Blind Dates
Two Wedding Crashers
Back in the Game
One Baby Daddy
The Binghamton Series
(Full of heart, humor, and heat and some HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKERS)
Co-Wrecker
My Best Friend’s Ex
Tangled Twosome
The Other Brother
Standalone Novels
(Full of heart, humor, and heat and some real laugh out loud moments)
The Mother Road
Newly Exposed
Dear Life
The Stroked Series
(HOT sports romance with plenty of humor)
STROKED
STROKED LONG
STROKED HARD
The Jett Girl Series
(Sassy, erotic romance with a gorgeous, protective alpha male)
Bourbon Sins
Bourbon Deceit
Bourbon Kingdom
Bourbon Truths
The Love and Sports Series
(New Adult, Football sports romance with plenty of twists)
Fair Catch
Double Coverage
Three and Out
The Hot-Lanta Series
(My first series ever. Baseball sports romance with lots of drama!)
Caught Looking
Playing the Field
Warning Track
Hit and Run
Excerpt - The Lineup
JASON
It isn’t in my nature to cry over burnt ham, but here I am, tearing up like a jackass, because the meal I’ve been reluctantly slaving over for the past four hours is two shades away from charred dust.
I had it all planned out. The timing was right, the recipes perfected, the table decorated with impeccably folded napkins that impersonated angelic swans, and polished silver that I scrubbed for an hour until I could see my balls in the reflection. Nothing says polished silverware like a spoon that gives you a clear upside-down view of your gonads.
But even with countless hours of preparing this feast, naked as the day I was born with only an apron to cover my man-loins, I still ended up with a scorched ham doused in fire extinguisher agent because somehow, the damn thing caught on fire.
Imagine this, a grown-ass man—no, not just a grown-ass man, but a man at the fresh age of twenty-eight, built like a linebacker with buttocks you can bounce rocks off . . . thanks to squatting for a living—dancing around the kitchen on his twinkle toes, arms flailing with pink and white potholders attached to his hands, screaming like a banshee, as flames light up the Jenn-Air double oven where the brown sugar and pineapple ham resided.
Are you seeing it?
Add the imagery of said man naked, dick and balls harmoniously bouncing in panic while the apron his “girlfriend” got him that says Eat my food, Lick my dick, unravels in the fit to unleash the fire extinguisher.
That was me . . . a minute ago.
Frantic, screaming, and all in all losing any last shred of my man card I had left.
It’s why I’m currently weeping like a nitwit into the flaps of my apron, wondering where I went wrong.
If we’re going to be honest with each other—and I would like to establish honesty with you—I’ll admit, I’ve always leaned toward the sensitive side. You know, the cuddly grizzly bear. Big and intimidating but a fucking gooey butterball heart on the inside.
Tell me a love story. I’ll listen the crap out of it.
The Bachelor? Why yes, that’s one of my favorite shows.
Do I smile when sharing a candlelit dinner with myself, followed by a nice long soak in a bubble bath while Enya—the fucking goddess of all voices—plays in the background? I sure as shit do.
But if some ignorant asswipe gets in my face on the ball field, stirring up trouble, I’m the first to lay a fist across his jaw and the first to be thrown out of a game.
And I’m not even sorry about it.
People are arriving in an hour. I’m vulnerable as fuck with my bare ass resting against the cold white-oak floor of my girl’s apartment, while a lonely tear streams down my freshly shaven cheek. I have no main dish, and the apartment smells like burnt rabbit turd.
Why am I in this hopeless predicament?
Because of one person.
One single person who flipped my life upside down.
A bombshell in a suit, a ravenous sex-fiend in the sheets, a classy and sophisticated tight-ass in the boardroom. She’s a knockout who’s always on my mind. She’s the girl you do things for, that you never thought you’d ever do . . .
Like cook a fancy-as-fuck four-course meal for her and her business associates while practicing interesting conversational starters to ensure the night flows smoothly.
Back in college, I might have been referred to as the mother hen of the boys. I might have cooked at least two meals a week for the guys in the loft, and yeah, I was the ironing wizard, the one everyone turned to, to get out the most stubborn wrinkles. The title has carried on over the years, but my creativity in the kitchen has dwindled with the lack of time, my ironing is now done by my apartment keeper once a week, and the fresh flowers scattered around my place? They’re more dead now than alive.
My point—I’m not the lady of the house I used to be. But I’ve been getting back into the swing of it.
But nooooooooo, I had to attempt to be a goddamn hero and try to cook everything myself.
And all for what?
For one girl?
No. Not just one girl. The girl who owns my balls, who has a grip so tight on them that if she asked me to bellow out my ABCs in soprano while swirling my finger around my belly button . . . I would.
Who is this girl that has brought me to the brink of boo-boo smush bear insanity and caused me to weep like a schoolgirl in the corner of the apartment?
There’s only one lady with more than enough ovaries to buckle the knees of the mighty Jason Orson.
The one and only Dorothy “Dottie” Domico.
Keep reading HERE
The Change Up Page 37
