by Regina Kyle
“And how’s that?” she asked, fastening the towel between her breasts and following him out of the bathroom.
“Horizontal. In bed.”
“I don’t know.” She bit her lip and pretended to study him seriously, but the playful glint in her eyes gave her away. “Sounds boring.”
“You. Me. Naked. One thing’s guaranteed, Duchess. It sure as hell won’t be boring.”
He took her hand and tugged her onto the bed. She settled in next to him and he pulled her close, front to front this time. She wiggled against him and gave a contented purr.
Definitely a home run in his book.
8
THREE QUICK RAPS at the door woke Noelle from the best sleep she’d had in months. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, unable to focus. What the heck time was it anyway? And who was banging down her door?
Three more knocks, then a young, male voice. “Mr....Jace?”
Jace?
She blinked again and rolled over, smack into a very hard, very warm and very naked body.
Jace.
The events of the night before came rushing back. His hands and mouth and that hard, warm, naked body all over her, and vice versa. She’d climaxed not one, not two, not even three but four times. More than she had with Yannick in an entire month, never mind a single night.
One single, glorious night that was supposed to end with her doing the walk of shame back to her room in the wee hours, when the halls were virtually deserted. Except that fourth orgasm had worn her out, and she’d overslept.
Way overslept.
“Jace,” she hissed, nudging his shoulder and trying to ignore how dead sexy he looked with his hair sleep-rumpled and the sheet bunched around his waist, leaving her eyes free to roam over his beefy biceps, sculpted pecs and washboard abs. She balled her hands into fists to stop them from following suit. “Wake up.”
“Ready for more?” He reached for her, his hand unerringly finding its target—her breast—and squeezing, his thumb grazing over her already hardening nipple. “What is this, round five? Six?”
“Try round nothing.” Semi-reluctantly and extracarefully thanks to her aching muscles—multiple orgasms would do that to a girl, even one who wasn’t already injured—Noelle rolled away from Jace and off the bed, taking the sheet with her and wrapping herself in it. “Someone’s at the door.”
As if on cue, the knocking started again. “Is anyone there? It’s me, Dylan.”
“Dammit.” Jace stood and pulled on his boxers. “I was supposed to meet him for breakfast.”
“He can’t see me here.” Noelle scrambled to pick up her clothes—shirt sticking out from under the bed, yoga pants in a heap by the dresser, underwear thrown over the television—her sore muscles screaming at her with every move.
“Don’t forget this.” Jace dangled her bra from his fingertips.
“Not funny.” She snatched it away.
“You can hide in the bathroom until I get rid of him.”
“Make it quick.” Clutching her clothes in one hand, she hoisted up the sheet with the other. “But be nice to that boy. He idolizes you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He gave her a mock salute. “I’ll tell him to meet me in the dining room in five minutes.”
He lifted his arm and sniffed, wrinkling his nose. “Make that ten.”
Another series of knocks, harder this time. “I can hear you in there. Are you okay?”
“Just answer the door before he breaks it down.” She stumbled into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Slumping against it, she blew out a relieved sigh.
“Hey,” Jace whispered through the crack, making her jump and almost drop her clothes and the sheet. “You missed something.”
She opened the door a hair and he shoved her leg brace through.
“Thanks.” She slammed the door shut the second his arm was clear.
“Is everything all right in there?” Dylan called.
“Be with you in a sec,” Jace answered. Noelle could hear him moving away. “Just getting dressed.”
After a few thumps, presumably Jace hunting down something more than a pair of boxer shorts, she heard him answer the door. She tuned out the rest of his conversation with Dylan and concentrated on making herself presentable, starting with ditching the sheet for her tank top and yoga pants. She’d adjusted her brace and was slipping her pants on over it when Jace spoke through the crack in the bathroom door again.
“Okay, Duchess. You can come out now. The coast is clear.”
She pulled her tank top down over her head. “That was fast.”
“I work fast.”
He could say that again. They’d only known each other a couple of weeks. Never even gone out on a date, unless you counted walking around the clinic and sharing macaroons, which she didn’t. And yet she’d let him touch her in ways no man ever had. Not just let him. Begged him.
Heat crept up her cheeks at the memory. She caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror and frowned. Not only was her face beet-red, her hair looked like a family of rats had moved in and thrown a party, and she hadn’t brushed her teeth in almost twelve hours.
“Almost done in here.” She found Jace’s toothpaste on the counter top, squirted a dollop on her finger and ran it across her teeth. Her hair might be beyond hope, but her breath could still be saved. When she was done, she rinsed her mouth and splashed her face with cold water.
“All yours,” she said as she opened the door and brushed past him.
“Thanks.” He got halfway through before turning back to her. His chest still bare, he’d put on jeans but neglected to button them, and she could see a tantalizing slice of his happy trail over the waistband of his boxers. “We okay?”
“Sure.” She shrugged, hoping the lie didn’t show on her face. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
“You know why.”
“It’s all good. We scratched an itch. Now we can move on.” She spotted her ballet flats in the corner by the window and bent to pick them up, saying a silent prayer that Dylan hadn’t made it far enough into the room to see them, too.
Jace chuckled behind her, no doubt getting an eyeful of her backside. “Honey, this is way more than an itch. I’m talking full-on poison ivy. Or maybe chicken pox. Whichever is worse. It’s gonna take more than one little scratch.”
She sat on the bed and slid her feet into her shoes. “I seem to recall four ‘little scratches’ over the course of the night. That wasn’t enough?”
“Not for me. Can you honestly say it was for you?”
No, she honestly couldn’t. But there were a whole host of other reasons why continuing to scratch their so-called itch was a bad idea. For example...
“We can’t keep doing this. What if someone found out?”
“What if they did?” He leaned against the doorframe and folded his massive arms across his naked chest, almost making her objections fly out the window. Almost. “Would that be so awful? We’re two consenting adults. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“You may not, but I do. I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”
“And I don’t?”
“Are you kidding? You’re the bad boy of baseball. Your reputation is safe and sound. Whereas mine...” She hesitated, debating how much to admit to him and deciding to keep it to a minimum. “My last breakup wasn’t pretty. The press had a field day. I can’t go through that again.”
The headlines flashed across her brain like the news ticker in Times Square.
Behind The Scenes Drama Takes Center Stage At NYC Ballet.
Ballerinas, Choreographer Caught In NYCB Love Triangle.
Duped And Dumped! What Will Prima Ballerina Noelle Nelson’s Very Public Split With Choreographer Yannick Grenier Mean For Her Career?
“And you won’t.” With a shrug of one shoulder, Jace brushed off her concern. “We’ll keep things on the down-low.”
Noelle stood and straightened her shirt. “Do you really think that’s possible?”
“W
hy not? This place prides itself on its privacy. No one knows we’re here but our friends and family.”
“What about the staff? And the other patients?”
He stalked over to her, all sex appeal and smolder, and took her chin in his hand. “We’ll be discreet. And if someone does happen to see something, they’ll keep their mouth shut or risk getting thrown out on their ass.”
“The clinic would do that?”
“In a New York minute.” He brushed a thumb over her cheekbone, starting a ripple of lust that went all the way down to her toes. “So what do you say? You in?”
“I’ll... I’ll get back to you on that.” She shook her head and stepped away, breaking his pseudo-hypnotic contact. “Now go. Get ready. Dylan won’t wait forever.”
“Neither will I, sweetness.” He winked and headed for the bathroom, calling over his shoulder as he went. “Neither will I.”
* * *
IT WAS MORE like thirty minutes than ten by the time Jace made it to the dining room. Just a fancy name for a cafeteria, really. Moving slower than a three-hundred-pound defensive lineman thanks to the marathon sex session—Sara was going to ream his ass out in PT—he grabbed a tray, loaded it up with scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and coffee and scanned the room for Dylan.
He found him at a table in the corner. Not hard, since the kid was waving like a madman to get his attention. He was patient, Jace would give him that. And eager.
“Hey, Dylan. Sorry I kept you waiting.” Jace plunked down his tray and pulled a manila envelope out from under his arm. “But I brought you something to make up for it.”
He tossed the envelope down on the table in front of the teenager.
Dylan held it steady with what remained of his left arm and undid the clasp with his right. “Thanks.”
“Don’t get too excited,” Jace warned, taking a seat across the table. “It’s not a signed baseball or anything.”
Not that he hadn’t thought of that. He’d already tasked Coop with bringing a shitload of Storm memorabilia when he came out in a couple of weeks at the All-Star break.
Dylan smiled and blew his bangs off his forehead. “I kind of figured from the package.”
He struggled to open the flap, finally succeeding and pulling out a stack of papers.
“I printed some stuff off the internet,” Jace explained. “It was the best I could do on short notice.”
Dylan thumbed through the pile. “Jim Abbott. Pete Gray. Those are the guys you mentioned yesterday, aren’t they?”
Jace nodded and chugged his coffee. “I ordered some books from Amazon, but they won’t get here for a few days. I figured this would give you a head start.”
“Head start? On what?”
“Getting back on the mound.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of missing an arm here.” Dylan lifted his stump.
“So were Abbott and Gray. And they played in the majors.”
“Seriously?”
“Abbott was a pitcher, like you. Even threw a no-hitter.”
“No way.”
“Yes way.” Jace tapped the stack of papers. “Read all about it. Then we can talk.”
“You bet.” The kid stuck the papers back in the envelope, shoveled the last of his eggs into his mouth and washed them down with orange juice.
Jace tucked into his breakfast and listened to Dylan talk baseball, rattling off statistics like Vin Scully. If Dylan didn’t beat the odds and make it back on the field—which, okay, was a major long shot, despite what Abbott and Gray had accomplished—he’d make one hell of a sportscaster.
Dylan was midway through his recap of game seven of the 2001 World Series—he would have been what? One? Two?—when Jace felt the hairs at the back of his neck prickle. Even before he saw her out of the corner of his eye, he knew.
Noelle.
She hobbled her way down the food line, somehow managing to look graceful as she tried to balance her tray, still favoring her injured leg. She’d tamed her hair—barely—and put on a fresh set of clothes and a touch of makeup, but even across the room she had the unmistakable, well-pleased glow of a woman who’d been thoroughly ravished the night before.
By him.
Jace cleared his throat and dragged his eyes back to his plate. He’d promised to be discreet, and the last time he checked public leering wasn’t part of the dictionary definition.
“She’s pretty, huh? She your girlfriend?”
Shit. So much for discretion.
“Friend.”
“I think she’s into you,” Dylan observed as she threaded through the tables to a seat on the other side of the room. “She was totally down with you in the hall yesterday.”
“Down with me?”
“Yeah, she digs you. Trust me.” Dylan swiveled back around to Jace. “You should ask her out.”
If he only knew. “You think so?”
“Sure. What have you got to lose?”
Great. Just great. Now he was getting dating advice from a kid who’d barely started dating himself.
“Besides,” Dylan continued, “there’s not much else to do in this joint.”
True that. Jace ran his fork through what was left of his eggs and played along. “And where, pray tell, should I take the lovely lady? We’re in the middle of nowhere here.”
It was twenty miles to the nearest town, if you called an intersection with a gas station, mini-mart and municipal building that served as the police station/post office/county courthouse a town, and Phoenix was a two-hour drive. Great for keeping the paparazzi and lookie loos away but hell on the social life.
Dylan half lifted a shoulder and peered out through too-long bangs. How the kid found the strike zone with that shit in his eyes was beyond Jace. “It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. What’s she into? Other than you, I mean. Girls dig it when you pay attention to stuff they like.”
Damn. Kid had game. Maybe Jace could learn something from him after all.
He stared at Noelle across the cafeteria, as far from him as she could get and still be in the same room. Her parting words to him that morning were a challenge, one he was all too willing to accept. He wasn’t the type to sit on his hands and wait for a woman—or anyone—to “get back to” him.
It was two outs, two strikes, bottom of the ninth. Time for him to hit one out of the park.
He turned to Dylan. “I’ve got an idea. But I’m going to need help.”
“Sure thing.” The teenager lit up like he’d struck out the side in front of a capacity crowd at Fenway. “Whatever you need, I’m your man.”
“Great.” Jace downed the rest of his coffee, picked up his tray and stood. “Let’s get started. First things first. We need to make an appointment with the hairdresser. She’s usually here on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“Oh, I get it. You want to look dope before you make your move.” Dylan put the manila envelope on his tray, one-handed the whole thing and followed Jace across the room. The kid was adapting quickly, even without a prosthetic. Good sign.
“Not me, hotshot. You.”
Dylan put his tray on the conveyor belt leading back to the kitchen and ran a hand through his shaggy blond locks, remembering at the last minute to snag the envelope back before the tray moved too far down the line. “I always look dope.”
Ah, the blind confidence of youth.
Jace set his tray down behind Dylan’s and watched them both disappear. “That may be true, but you can’t play ball with your hair in your eyes.”
Christ. He was barely thirty years old. When had he become his father?
Dylan gave him a blank stare. “I thought this was about you and the ballerina chick.”
“It is. But that doesn’t mean I can’t give you a little friendly advice.” Jace clapped the boy’s shoulder and led him into the hallway. “So what do you say?”
“Okay,” Dylan said after a moment’s thought, drawing the word out like it was four syllables instead of two. “Just d
on’t let her make me look like a total gomer.”
“Sure, kid.” Whatever that was. Damn, he was turning into his father. “Sure.”
9
“MISS NELSON! MISS NELSON!”
Noelle turned to find Dylan sprinting down the hall toward her.
“Slow down, buddy,” she teased. “Where’s the fire?”
He pulled up short next to her. “Sorry, I just wanted to make sure I caught up with you so I could give you these.”
He held out a delicate bouquet of flowers in varying shades of pink, purple, orange and yellow.
Noelle took an uncomfortable step back, shoving her hands in her pockets. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to let down a starstruck fan with a crush, but it never got any easier. Especially when said fan was an impressionable teen. “Dylan, you shouldn’t have...”
“I didn’t.” He thrust the flowers at her. “Read the card.”
She took the bouquet, fished out an envelope from among the blooms and slit it open with her finger, reading silently.
Follow the kid. Don’t ask questions.
“Who sent this?” Like she didn’t know. Only one smug, self-important, sinfully sexy shortstop was bold enough to order her around like a drill sergeant.
“He told me not to say.” Dylan looked down at his Air Jordans. “And that you should come with me, no questions asked. That’s what the note says, right?”
“I’m not one to blindly follow orders.” Even if they were from the man who’d given her her only non-self-induced orgasm in the past six months.
“He also told me you might be less than agreeable. And if you were, I should give you this.”
Dylan pulled out another envelope and handed it to her. Noelle ripped it open impatiently and mouthed the single word on the card.
Please.
Damn him. All her righteous indignation seeped out of her, curiosity rushing in to take its place. What did Jace have up his sleeve now?
“All right, lead on.” She gestured for Dylan to go ahead, cringing a little inside when he took her past the pool. “Any idea what Ja—uh, the man who sent you has planned? I was hoping to squeeze in a late-night swim.”