Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 30889 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 154(@200wpm)___ 124(@250wpm)___ 103(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 30889 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 154(@200wpm)___ 124(@250wpm)___ 103(@300wpm)
I get out of the car. To my surprise, Adam follows. “My place is a few blocks away. Seemed silly to have him make two stops.” He shrugs, like it’s obvious, even if most big leaguers generally treat drivers like an automated part of the car. “Which house is yours?”
I have to squint for a second to make out the numbers: a line of them, identical as if they came off a manufacturing line, with identical SUVs out front. “I think it’s that one.”
“My first night here, I tried my key in the wrong house,” Adam says, a little sheepishly.
“No one there to let you in?”
He shakes his head. “Nope.” He swallows, meets my gaze straight on. Then, like it takes some serious guts to say this, he adds, “There’s no one.”
With that, I’m suddenly a whole lot more intrigued.
It seems like he wants to say more—his hands are balled in his pockets, his shoulders curled in slightly. Different from the guy who just nudged my leg in the car. “I just got out of a long-term relationship.” Though it sounds more like, I just got my heart broken. “She and I were pretty serious…” He digs a toe into the concrete of the sidewalk.
Which might mean he’s down to experiment—I don’t mind, exactly, but I need to know what I’m working with here. “Have all your exes been women?” I ask. There. Blunt, even if he doesn’t look surprised.
He shakes his head again. “No.” A slight smile with that. “I’ve got a few ex-boyfriends who’d probably also agree that I, quote, let baseball run my life too much.”
Something I’ve heard from everyone I’ve ever dated—that baseball was my spouse and they were just my hookups. Because it’s hard to understand the demands of the season, or that when I say I’ll be on the road for half of it, I mean it. With that, the accusation I’m screwing around behind their backs, even though in recent years it’s been the opposite. Better to go into this with clear expectations. “Yeah, I feel that.”
A broader smile, one subtly different from the familiar Adam Chason commercial-and-endorsements grin, like it’s meant just for me, even if I’m offering myself up as a rebound. No fuss, no emotions, just two guys getting what they want and moving on. I ignore the voice in the back of my head that sounds strangely like What if it could be more than that? and say, “You wanna come in for a drink?”
“I probably shouldn’t drink. Early morning.” Though he doesn’t start walking in whatever direction his rental house is either.
“The drink was a euphemism, Chason.”
“I—Oh.” He looks surprised. A touch excited too. “Are you sure?”
“Do you think I don’t know what a euphemism is?”
He laughs. “Maybe I don’t know what it means.”
An invitation, one I take, stepping toward him. Maybe he needs someone to take the lead. Fine by me. He looks even better up close, the Phoenix night darkening his dark hair and eyes. We probably shouldn’t kiss, standing on the narrow sidewalk, in full view of other major leaguers likely snooping from the windows of their rental houses. But probably shouldn’t doesn’t mean much given how he’s looking at me and wetting his lips with his tongue.
“So about that drink,” I say.
“Yeah”—his voice is gratifyingly hoarse—“let’s go.”
4
Adam
We might as well teleport up the walkway from the sidewalk to the porch. The next thing I know, we’re shoving each other into his front hallway. Derek’s jacket lands…somewhere, followed by my own. He kisses me—hard, hands at my face, stubble catching the edge of my lips. Whatever euphemism there was is lost in the thrust of his tongue in my mouth.
It doesn’t feel particularly nice. Rough in a way that’s better for it. A bad idea all around—a one-night stand with a fellow ballplayer, even if we’re unlikely to see each other in the regular season—but fuck it. Fuck it. Or well, maybe not it.
Derek kisses me against the sparsely decorated wall next to his front door. Again in the living room. Again in the short hallway leading back to his bedroom. He makes casual work of my shirt, buttons impatiently undone then one or two sent skidding. I feel similarly unloosed. My belt comes unbuckled, my pants kicked off. Derek squeezes my ass appreciatively, before performing a close and thorough inspection of my chest and stomach, then pressing a slightly nicer kiss than I’m expecting at my waistband, followed by the scrape of teeth.
“Let me blow you,” Derek says, like that’s some kind of hardship.
I nod, maybe a little frantically, and Derek sinks to his knees then takes me in his mouth, fast, messy, distinctly un-nice. I thread my hand in his hair. The strands are tacky from product and residual humidity from being in a crowded bar. I pull his hair and get an affirmative grunt from his busy mouth. He strokes himself through his opened suit pants with a similar impatience, like he’s too turned on to wait.