Fungoes. That was the word. “Haven’t heard that term for fifteen years.”
He smiled and slammed another, far and long, the ball bouncing along the ground until it came to a stop deep in center field.
That was no infield fungo. “Hitting ’em a little hard tonight, aren’t you?”
“There’s a glove in the dugout if you want to field,” he said.
A smile pulled. “You think I can catch those fungoes?”
“I’ll hit puff balls for you, Bloomerang.” He grinned and used the bat to gesture to the dugout.
Bloomerang. The girl who always comes back.
She stepped down into the dugout, set the beer on the bench, and grabbed the brown baseball glove. “They just leave this stuff out here?” she asked.
“My key still works the equipment room.”
That made her laugh. “Seriously? They haven’t changed the locks in fifteen years?”
“They haven’t changed a lot in fifteen years.”
As she stepped out onto the field, she slipped the mitt on her left hand. “But you have, Will.”
“We all have, Jossie.”
She trotted out to center field, her thin, flat sandals all wrong for baseball. “Hang on,” she said, kicking them off. “Okay, batter.”
She got into position behind second base, hands on knees, butt stuck out. “Bring it.”
He popped her a slow and easy grounder, rolling the ball so gently she had to walk forward to get it before it stopped. “You can do better than that, Palmer.”
“Let’s see your arm.”
Grabbing the ball, she straightened, held it up, and threw it straight into the dirt.
“Ah, the perfection of the female throw.”
“Screw you.”
From forty feet away, she could see him grin.
“Is this what you’ll do as a coach?” she asked.
“At fielding practice.” He hit another one, a little harder down the middle, and she managed to stop it.
“Ugly,” he said. “But you got the job done.”
She threw it back. “What about all those balls all over the outfield?”
“I’ll clean up when I’m done.”
“When are you going to be done?”
He slammed a fly ball. “Go back, go back,” he called, and she did, wanting to be that woman who just turned the mitt and caught it and not the one who cowered behind the glove hoping it didn’t bop her in the head.
She stuck out the glove and missed the catch.
“Oh, man,” he said, disgusted. “Run the bases, scrub.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Run the bases. Complain and you do it twice.”
She put her hands on her hips and opened her mouth to—
“Three times around.”
“Hit the ball, Palmer.”
“Catch the next three and I’ll let you go.”
She laughed, spreading her feet for balance, the grass soft and cool on her toes, so utterly grateful for this moment of pure pleasure. The air was thick with the rain that would surely come and the unspoken truce that they were just here to play.
“Fun job you have,” she said just as he was ready to toss a ball and hit it.
“Throwing balls in the air?”
“Playing. Just relaxing.”
“Well, I don’t actually have it at the moment.” He tapped another softie right to her. “That’s one,” he said.
She threw it in the general vicinity of home base and he jumped to the side and snagged the ball before it hit the dirt.
“Still a great catcher,” she said.
“Passable and my knees are screaming at me. Ready?” He hit this one a little harder, but she dove for it and went sailing on the grass and caught it, holding up the ball with far more drama than the situation called for.
“Uh, you have to throw a grounder to a base or you didn’t make an out.”
She waved the mitt. “Details.”
He had the next ball, but instead of tossing and hitting it, he stood very still, looking at the field. It was so dark she couldn’t quite read his expression, but she knew Will’s body language.
“You’re not mad anymore,” she observed.
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
“What are you thinking?” she asked, a funny, unholy tendril of anticipation curling up through her chest at the intimacy in his tone.
“I was thinking that…” He hooked the bat on his shoulder and held out the ball. “You’re even prettier than you were when you were a teenager.”
Her heart hitched.
“And you were really pretty then.”
She smiled, knowing he couldn’t see her in the dark but giving him thanks for the compliment anyway. “You’re prettier now, too,” she said.
Laughing, he threw the ball in the air, flipped the bat down, and whacked that ball long and high and all the way to the fence.
She didn’t even try to get it. Instead, she just turned and watched it bounce off the centerfield fence.
“First one there gets the beer!” he said, throwing the bat and starting to run.
The instant she realized it was a race, she took off, but he caught up to her in seconds, slowing down so they reached the ball at the same time, both of them diving for it, both of them hitting the grass.
And because it took no thought to do the most natural thing in the world, Jocelyn reached for Will and he pulled her close and kissed her with the same power he’d used to hit that ball.
Chapter 21
Oh, man. The only thing better than the tangy, fresh smell of outfield grass was the bone-deep pleasure of rolling in it with Jocelyn Bloom.
The instant their mouths connected, Will tried to ease her down and get above her, over her, on her. The need was swift and desperate and so pent-up he let out a groan.
She pushed him on his back and leaned over him instead. “My white pants are going to get grass stains,” she murmured into the kiss.
“You’re right,” he said with mock concern. “Better take them off.”
She laughed, still kissing him but maintaining all the control, on top, hands on his face, her every muscle taut. “One of us half undressed is enough.”
No it wasn’t. He flipped her firmly on the grass, looming over her, liking it so much better up here. “Every once in a while, you’ve got to let go of control.”
“Who said?”
“I said. What are you doing here, anyway?”
Her lips curved up as she placed one finger in the dead center of his bare chest. “Came to see you half undressed.”
“You can do that anytime,” he said. “Just ask.”
She walked her fingers up his chest, up his throat, settling on his Adam’s apple, one of her favorite spots in the world.
Déjà vu sparkled behind his eyes for a second, then was gone as quickly as it had come. Trailing her finger higher, she traced the line of his jaw, then his mouth, finally looking into his eyes.
“We never finished,” she said softly.
“This morning?”
“That night. This morning. This whole life. Everything with you is like… unfinished business.” She managed a shaky smile. “You know that kind of thing drives me almost as crazy as the permanent grass stains I’m getting on my favorite cargo pants right now.”
“It’s good for you,” he said. “You need to be driven crazy, Joss. Let go and let me…”
She didn’t move, the only sound their evenly matched, and slightly intensified, breathing. “Let you what?”
“Drive you crazy.”
She barely nodded and he lowered his face to hers, starting soft and sweet, which lasted about four seconds, then everything intensified to—more. Her breath caught in her throat, and her leg curled around his, her bare foot grazing his thigh and sending a heat flare straight to his balls.
Instantly, he was hard for her.
The second she felt his erection she put both hands on his sh
oulders and started to push him away, but he kept kissing, kept torturing her tongue and nibbling on her lips and grazing her front teeth until her fingers relaxed. For a long, long kiss, he felt her suspended between surrender and second thoughts.
“Will,” she whispered. “I’m not sure I can do this.”
“We’re just here for practice, Jossie,” he assured her. “Nobody’s going to hit a home run, I promise.”
“Promise?”
He nodded. “We’re just hitting fungoes.” He kissed a path from her lips to the opening of her collar, easing the material back to expose more skin. “Emphasis on fun.”
She laughed softly, arching her back just enough for all her pressure points to hit his, sending a surge of blood from his brain right down to the most pressure-filled point of all.
As hard as the bat he’d just tossed to the clay, he rocked slightly, his erection right over her pelvic bone, making her suck in a quick, sweet breath.
“See?” he said. “Just make a little contact.”
“Is this entire makeout session going to be baseball puns?”
He chuckled into the next kiss. “Yeah, it might be. First base is this, right?” He opened his mouth and gave her his tongue, which she sucked and licked and shared with a sweet moan of pleasure.
“You like first base?”
She sighed, angling her head to offer her throat. “It’s safe. I can handle first base.”
They kissed some more, but he couldn’t control his hand. Couldn’t resist sliding around her ribs and stealing a touch. Her only response was a sharp intake of breath, so he flipped the first button and then the next.
“We appear to have a runner headed to second,” she teased, making him laugh.
“The catcher’s busy. This guy’s got the base.”
She moaned her yes and he finished the next two buttons, delighted to find a front-clasp bra that he could unsnap before her next breath. At the same time, she kissed him some more, wrapping one hand around his neck and doing a little caressing of her own on his pecs.
“Not fair,” he whispered. “I don’t have a shirt on.”
“I noticed.” She kissed him again. “And noticed.” Another kiss. “And noticed some more.”
He chuckled at the compliments, then began a slow rock of his hips against hers.
God, they fit. Her fingers tightened their grip on his hair, angling his head, deepening the kiss, giving him all kinds of silent permission. He pushed the shirt over her shoulders, taking the bra with it, and finally pressing their bare chests against each other.
“Will, we’re outside.”
He laughed. “We’re on my home field, honey. I know what I’m doing.”
She gasped when his hand touched her breast, the nipple budding against his palm. Blood slammed harder into his erection and he let out another groan.
She tensed enough that he could feel all her muscles clench. Was she that scared of him?
No, her dark eyes told him to go on. Shuttered, lost, falling into a place he’d never seen her go. He took a moment to drink in the shape of her breasts, the feminine slope, the deep pink nipples. Only a minute. He had to taste.
Still holding his head, she guided him there, both of their hips moving in perfect rhythm. Engorged now, his hard-on found the sweet spot between her legs, threadbare denim and thin white cotton all that separated their bodies.
Murmuring his name, her head fell from side to side as he suckled one breast and thumbed the other.
“Oh my God, Will.”
Noisily, he let go of her and headed back up to kiss her. Only then did he realize her face was wet.
The sight hit him like someone had slammed a fastball into his gut. “Are you crying? No.” He wiped her face. “Don’t—”
“It’s rain, Will. Don’t you feel it?”
The second she said it, a drop splattered on his back. “Oh, thank God. I thought I made you cry. Jocelyn, I never want to make you cry. Ever.”
She bit her lip. “I’m not going to cry, but…”
“What? What is it?”
Closing her eyes, she let out a soft groan of helplessness, moving her hips against him, riding his erection. “This feels so good…. I never…” Each breath was work as she rocked harder. “I never… felt anything… like this. Oh, God, Will, I can’t stop.”
She rammed against him, her eyes shuttered in ecstasy as an orgasm washed over her. “I can’t stop,” she murmured over and over again, holding him with everything she had, battering his poor, engorged cock, damn near making him come, too.
But he held on as the rain picked up, splattering over them, so cool he was surprised it didn’t sizzle when it touched their heated bodies.
“I don’t believe that just happened,” she managed to say, still shaking. “I just… you know… on the Mimosa High baseball field.”
He grinned. “Which just became my best memory on this grass in a lifetime of many.”
She finally opened her eyes, unfocused and lost. “I can’t believe I lost—”
“Believe it.” He quieted her with a kiss. “In the pouring rain, too.”
She wrapped her arms around him, biting back a smile. “I liked it.”
“No shit.”
Still smiling, her eyes sparking with arousal, her cheeks flushed with a climax and wet from the rain, she wrapped her legs all the way around him. “What is your best memory of this field?” she asked.
“Prior to the last five minutes? Um, let me think.”
“The championship game against Collier?” she asked. “No, I bet it was that grand slam junior year.”
He didn’t respond, but a slow chill of disbelief walked over his bare skin.
“Or maybe it was the night you got MVP as a freshman. That was big.”
Holy, holy hell. “You remember all that?”
“Of course. You were…” She swallowed and gave him the rueful smile of a shared joke. “You were everything to me.” Her words echoed his of that morning, as sweet as a fastball snapping into his catcher’s mitt.
Except for the past tense. He wanted to be everything to her now.
Cupping her breast, her heart pulsing into his palm as if her blood were pumping right into him, he looked into her eyes. Around them, the world lay silent except for the gentle tap of raindrops on the grass and his back.
“Jocelyn, what’s it going to take?”
“To get me in bed?”
He smiled. “I think we’re on our way to that. To get you to say those words you never got a chance to tell me that night?”
For at least five, six, maybe seven beats of the heart he could feel under his palm, she just looked at him.
“You want me to say…”
“I lo—”
“No.” She put her hand over his mouth. “Not yet. Not here. Not half naked in the grass.”
“I can’t think of a better time or place.”
She shook her head. “No.”
Disappointment thudded in his stomach, but he just nodded.
“Hey,” she whispered, lifting her hips. “We gonna leave a runner on second?”
“Not if I’m calling the plays.” He kissed her again, dragging his hand over her bare body, loving every curve, every moan, every sensory overload. The rain intensified, no drizzle now, but a pounding, pouring wash over everything. He slipped his hand between her legs, massaging gently, then flipping the snap and pulling the zipper of what were surely some grass-stained white pants.
“Jossie?”
“Mmmm.”
“I think I’m getting to third.”
He eased his hand over her lower abdomen, into her satiny panties, onto her sweet mound. She arched up to meet his touch, giving him entrance to her slippery womanhood.
There. There. There was the everything he wanted. White lights exploded behind his eyes, blinding and—
“Shit!” They both jumped at the same time, the near simultaneous thunder warning just how close that lightning had struck.
“Off the field!” He scooped up her fallen clothes, grabbed her hands to yank her up, and tore across the field just as another jagged white line split the blackened sky and a rumble rolled over the stadium.
Her hand slipped out of his, and he whipped around to see her standing in the rain, naked from the waist up, barefoot, bedraggled, and so fucking beautiful it ripped his heart right out of his chest.
“Joss, come on,” he urged. “This storm is close.”
She didn’t move, her expression stricken with shock and fear.
He grabbed for her hand, knowing the next strike was seconds away. He’d seen lightning hit the right field pole; he knew how dangerous this was. “Come on.”
She relented, letting him pull her, sliding when they hit the muddy clay so he had to put his arm around her to help her keep her footing. Just as the next bolt flashed, he threw them both into the dugout, which still wasn’t safe enough.
“Holy shit, that storm came fast.” He stood in front of her, protecting her, giving her the wet shirt, which she bunched in front of her bare breasts.
On the bench, she looked up at him, sopping strands of hair falling in her face, the whisper of makeup smudged under her eyes.
Breathless, she nodded.
“Why did you freeze?” he asked. “Panic?”
She nodded again, sliding her lower lip under her front teeth.
“Don’t worry,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “We can squeeze into the equipment closet.” He pulled out a set of keys and grinned. “And finish.”
But she looked every bit as panicked by that as she had been by the lightning.
Chapter 22
Panic? Let him think that. It beat the truth.
Jocelyn followed Will around the dugout to the clubhouse, staying close to the concrete of the structure, one wary eye on the sky, the other on the man who led the way.
It was one thing to treasure her childhood feelings and teenage crush. It was one thing to let go of her initial anger that he was caring for Guy and see Will for the remarkable, attractive man he’d grown to be.
But the feelings that had just rocked her down to her bare toes?
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