twenty-six
Vivian
I’d never gotten the entire twenty-five-man roster from any winning year on a single baseball. It was a fan’s wet dream, yet as the shape of the ball in my tote pressed against my thigh, it had an uncomfortable memory attached.
“She blames herself for what happened,” I said in the car on the way home. It was dark, and the traffic was at that in-between place where it was open enough to go fast but too close to do it safely.
“Yeah, that’s pretty normal.”
“I think it’s crazy.”
“It’s baseball. Normal is crazy.”
“‘He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a man’s love, or a whore’s oath.’ Or baseball.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. If Shakespeare played ball.” He got off the freeway. “And it’s a boy’s love. Not a man’s love.”
“No, it’s man. I’m sure of it.”
He shook his finger at me. “Boys don’t know how to love. Men do. See Romeo and Juliet. The entire thing.”
I turned in my seat. “Are you for real? Romeo didn’t know how to love?”
“They both ended up dead. So no.” He headed up into the hills. We were obviously going to his place, and I was all right with that.
“You really need to stick to the sonnets, buddy. This is King Lear. It’s ‘man.’ And Romeo Montague is the greatest romantic hero ever in the world.”
He didn’t do more than tsk, shaking his head like a disappointed parent. “First you get the quote completely wrong, then—”
“You are out of your league on that, mister.”
He just nodded, but there was plenty going on in his head. I wanted to open it like a book and savor every line before using it to convince him of my personal Shakespearean truth.
His garage slid open, and he pulled in. The lights went on.
“You’re not getting any tonight until you see it my way,” I said, not meaning a word of it.
“I have all night, sweetapple.”
He got out, crossed in front of the car, and opened my door. He closed it behind me with a whup, and he led me up the stairs and to the front patio that overlooked the city. Before I could breathe, his lips were on mine, his hands were on my hips, and his tongue could taste my next sentence.
In the basin below, traffic hummed and bushes rustled. In this space, his kiss was the dark night and the full moon, the spin of the earth, and the slow, purposeful drift of the clouds against the charcoal sky.
He pulled back long enough to breathe. “It was boy.”
“Man.”
He kissed me again, softly, with the entirety of his lips, and even as I leaned forward to extend the touch, he pulled away.
“Boy. And, Miss Foster, this is your last chance.”
“Man. A man’s love is not to be trusted. And Romeo’s love was real. Are you going to kiss me again or not?”
“Turn around and look at the view.”
I paused before doing it. The view seemed harmless enough. From behind me, he took my bag off my shoulder and dropped it on the glass-topped table. He ran his lips along the curve of my neck, found a space, and bit down just hard enough to make my eyes flutter closed and my knees bend.
He pushed me to bend at the waist until my elbows were on the table and I felt his erection on my ass.
“I think we can look it up,” he said, drawing his hands down my back, “but first, you need to see it my way.”
“I do not.”
The first breath wasn’t out of me before he’d pulled my skirt up, exposing my white cotton underwear to the night air. He kept one hand between my shoulders, and the other stroked my ass over my underpants.
“You do,” was all he said before I felt his palm meet my bottom.
I gasped.
I groaned.
Something.
Both.
He did it again, and my groan mixed with a cry in a new kind of sound. He stroked and hit me again. The sting wasn’t half as powerful as the feeling that my pussy had exploded just to get closer to him so his hand would reach me a split second sooner.
His finger slipped under my panties and slid along the wet skin.
A long groan escaped me.
“You’re wet. So wet.”
He hooked his finger in the crotch of my underwear and pulled the panties down to mid-thigh, then he spanked my bare ass. The sting was sharper, more concentrated, and the pleasure stirring between my legs was fuller.
“Boy,” he said then smacked me again.
“Man,” I gasped. “Trust not a…” I couldn’t finish the sentence as he put two fingers in my soaking wet pussy.
“Romeo was a dopamine addict with no common sense,” he said.
“Well, of course not! He was ‘a boy’ in love. A man’s love.”
“You’re asking for it, sweetapple.”
“‘Trust not a man’s love or—’”
He got each cheek, spanking quickly on one side then the other then the backs of my thighs, which weren’t ready. I never thought I’d find such a thing pleasurable, but it was more than good, more than a turn-on. He was waking up every nerve ending between my legs as if they’d been sleeping.
He stopped long enough to stroke my pussy, my clit, to enter me with two fingers and stroke a hard nub inside me.
“What were you saying, beautiful?”
“Nothing. I wasn’t saying…” The words dropped into sucked breaths when another finger flicked across my clit over and over. “I’m going to come.”
“Yes, you are.”
I hadn’t thought he’d say that. I’d thought he’d stop and wait until I was on my back or until we were inside. But he kept going. Flicking and rubbing, holding me down between my shoulder blades as the view of the city blinked in the darkness.
My body stiffened and clenched around him, and I exploded in a cry I was sure the neighbors heard, hips pumping against his hand.
“God, you are so sexy,” he said, tenderly pulling me up when I was no more than a puddle of broken breaths and gelatinous bones.
“I don’t think I can stand,” I said, half joking.
“That’s not what I had in mind.” He picked me up and carried me to his bedroom.