by R. R. Banks
I knew that it was a relevant question, even though no response would have had any significance to me. I was only ever a casual baseball watcher and had never really caught on to all of the nuances of the game.
“Catcher,” he said, “and Designated Hitter.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
We were walking through the dirt of the infield out toward the grassy expanse of the outfield and when we got there, he sat down.
“That means that if a player who doesn’t have very good batting skills comes up to the plate or the team is down and really needs a score, I take the batter’s place and hit for them. We’ll do a little practice in a bit and see if you could be a DH, but first we have to stretch. I nodded and followed his lead as Lee guided me through a series of stretches. It felt awkward at first, but soon I found myself settling into the process, pressing deeper into the positions, and feeling my body start to come awake. I stretched my legs out in front of me and reached forward to grasp my toes. A moment later I felt Lee walk around behind me and his hands come to the center of my back. He applied pressure, easing me deeper into the stretch. It burned in my hips, but I held it.
When Lee released the pressure, he placed his hands on my ribs and guided me around to lie on my back.
“Bend your knees,” he said.
I complied and he grasped one of my ankles, picking my foot up off of the ground. He straightened my leg and pressed it straight up, then starting guiding it toward my face. His body rose up slightly to create leverage as he continued to press my leg. Though we were both dressed, the suggestiveness of the movement didn’t escape me. I felt like my body was waking up even more and I focused in on the feeling, wanting more. Lee had me switch legs and I tried to stretch further this time. Just when I felt that I couldn’t go any further, he released my leg.
“Your turn to help me now,” he said.
Lee put the soles of his feet together and leaned forward.
“Press down on my back,” he said.
I got behind him and pressed down. He barely moved.
“I don’t think I’m strong enough,” I said.
“Then lay on me.”
I turned around and rested my back on his.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Go ahead.”
I pressed into the ground with my feet, stretching out over Lee so that I could press him further down into his stretch. The warmth of his body seeped through his uniform even in the cool air of the late afternoon and I felt attraction building. We continued stretching for a few more minutes before he told me it was time for batting practice. I surprised myself at actually feeling excited about the new experience and followed him to a cage on the far side of the field. A bat was lying on the ground and Lee leaned down to pick it up.
“Have you ever done this before?” he asked.
“No.”
“OK. Well, you hold it like this.”
He demonstrated the grip on the bat and the stance of a batter. My eyes drifted over to the way that his tight pants cupped around his round, muscled ass and I smiled in appreciation. I didn’t care what he wanted to teach me, I was happy to learn if I got to keep looking at him in his uniform. He straightened and held the bat out toward me. I accepted it and tried to take the same position that he had assumed. A slight smile came to his lips and he stepped up behind me. His body molded to my back and he wrapped his arms around me, his hands coming over mine to adjust my grip and the position of my body. He helped me take a few practice swings and then stepped away from me. He pressed a button and the small yellow machine at the far end of the cage whirred to life before spitting a ball at me.
I shrieked and jumped out of the way, watching as the ball zoomed past me and smacked into a net behind me. Lee laughed and took me by my shoulders, guiding me back into the batting position. I braced myself, waiting for the ball, but when it came, I jumped out of the way again. Pressing my hand to my erratically beating heart, I turned to Lee.
“You know what? Let’s pretend that I hit it really, really well,” I said.
“OK,” he said through his continued laughter. He came toward me and took the bat out of my hands, dropping it back to the ground. “If you hit the ball really, really well, that means that it’s time to run the bases.”
“That’s something I think that I can handle.”
Lee guided me out of the cage and back to the infield. We stood on home plate and he pointed toward first.
“That’s first base,” he said, “you go there – “
“Tag! You’re It,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder and starting at the fastest pace that I could toward the base.
“That’s not the way it works!” Lee protested, but when I looked back over my shoulder at him, he was chasing me.
I jumped onto the base and turned, starting toward second. He was gaining on me and I felt his hand touch my back.
“Got you,” he said.
I turned around laughing and shrugged.
“I guess I’m not going to be a very big help to the team.”
“I don’t know about that,” Lee said. “Let’s try again. We’ll run them together this time.”
Lee brought me back to home plate and reached down to take my hand. I realized that I enjoyed the feeling of our palms touching and our fingers intertwining. There was a slight flutter in my belly, a moment of excitement that I hadn’t felt in so long. We took off running toward first base. When he got there, Lee took me by my hips to stop me and pull me closer to him. He looked down into my face.
“It looks like we got to first base,” he said.
There was something slightly smoky in his voice, as if the words were holding more meaning than they initially seemed to. I nodded and he tucked one finger under my chin, using it to tilt my face up to him. He leaned down toward me and his mouth pressed against mine. The kiss surprised me, but in a sweetly exciting way and I returned the kiss. It lasted for several seconds longer and then he pulled back to look into my eyes. He hesitated only briefly and then ducked his head down for a deeper, more intense kiss. Our mouths opened and his tongue entered mine, stroking first across the inside of my bottom lip and then delving further. His hands moved to my lower back and he pulled me up against him. I was breathless when the kiss finally ended.
“And again,” he said.
I smiled at his joke, but then felt him tugging lightly on my wrist, guiding me to start running toward second base. When we got there, he stopped me again and turned me toward him.
“Second base,” he said.
The lightness was disappearing from his voice, replaced with something richer, an attraction that was almost tangible. Though the joke had felt silly and teasing at first, it felt distinctly less childlike now as Lee kissed me again and then brought his mouth down to run along the side of my neck, kissing his way to the neckline of the jersey I wore. He unbuttoned it and pushed the sides out of the way. I could feel my chest rising and falling with sudden nervousness and my skin tingled when his fingertips touched the neckline of the tight tank top. He pulled it down, slipping it down over my breasts. Cupping both of his hands under them, Lee leaned down and swept his tongue down the swell of one breast into the valley between them, and then up over the other. He brought his tongue to the edge of the cups of my bra and let it dip beneath the fabric so that I felt the tip just brush over each of my nipples.
I was softening under his touch, already wanting more, when he stood, straightened my bra and tank top, and then buttoned my jersey again. Without hesitation, he took my hand again and we started running toward the next base. When we stopped, Lee immediately captured my mouth, kissing me with more intensity this time. I felt his hands coming to the waistband of my stretch pants and my mind starting spinning. This didn’t feel like a high school game anymore. The euphemisms didn’t seem as playful, but boldly serious.
“Third base,” he murmured against my lips as he pushed my pants down over my hips.
He
removed them only to my knees, but it was far enough that he could discover that I had worn nothing beneath them. Lee’s hand came between my thighs and he pushed them apart a few inches. I felt the cool air sweep over my core and it became immediately obvious how much he had already aroused me. He lowered down to his knees and his face settled onto my thighs before his tongue dipped into my folds. It was only the second time I had ever felt that sensation, the first being Noah’s unexpected touch in the cottage, and I was still shocked by it. Lee lavished the blissful attention on me for several seconds, bringing me tantalizingly close to the explosive climax that I had experienced in the cottage, but then pulled his mouth away, stood, and straightened my clothing just as he had on second base.
I expected him to start running again, but instead, he wrapped his arms around me and looked down into my face.
“So, what’s next?” he asked.
“Hmm?” I asked, unsure of what I was supposed to say.
“You’re the one who hit the ball,” he said, teasing back to my fear in the batting cage. “How well did you hit it? Right now, you’re sitting on a triple. That’s a pretty good hit. But is it good enough? Did you hit it better than that?”
I nodded and a mischievous glint came to Lee’s eyes. We started running toward home plate, but when we were nearly there, he turned and grabbed me up against him again.
Chapter Ten
Snow
Lee wrapped one arm tightly around my waist, throwing me slightly off-balance, and we took several unsteady steps backwards, stumbled, and landed on the dry red dirt of the field. I immediately rolled him onto his back and climbed over onto him so that I was sprawled across his chest looking down into his face.
Get Snow and the 7 Hunks HERE.
Boy Toy (Exclusive Sneak Peek)
A Billionaire Older Woman & Young Man Romance
Note from R.R. Banks:
First of all, thank you! Thousands read Snow and the 7 Hunks and many personally emailed me to say how much they loved Hunter and I should give him his own book and story. I also read several reviews on my own books and others’ and have seen women wondering why it’s always the man who is in-charge and a billionaire. What about the women??
Well, both your wishes have come true with Boy Toy! You’re welcome. *Smug Face*
Boy Toy is a full-length standalone novel set to release early October 2017. You don’t have to read Snow and the 7 Hunks first but if you do, you’ll find some cool Easter eggs in Boy Toy.
Now, time for that Sneak Peek!
Chapter One
Eleanor
“Why now? Why fucking now?”
The gold and red carpet felt rough beneath my feet, making them sting as I ran down the narrow hallway. There was nothing like the corridors of the lower levels of a cruise ship to make me regret that extra serving of cheesecake. I had removed the heels that I had so carefully chosen for the night son after I started running and they were dangling from my fingers now. Now way in hell I was going to let them go. The terrifying-looking goomba behind me might be getting closer, but I wasn’t about to drop those shoes. That didn’t mean that I was going to twist my ankle on them and go out like one of those simpering blondes in a 50s horror movie, though, so I would just keep holding them from their straps and contemplate all of the ways that I could use them as a weapon if the need came along. As I ran, my heart pumped fear through my veins, causing the blood to rush in my ears and blur all sound around me. I tried to listen for the sound of the man chasing me, but I couldn’t hear it. Was it possible that I had actually gotten away from him?
I knew those three months I spent cruising would have some actual real-world benefit at some point. Using my extensive knowledge of the layout of most ships in this cruise line wasn’t exactly the benefit I was hoping for, but at that moment, I would take it.
There was no one else in the seemingly endless hallway, but I couldn’t decide if that was helping me or if it was making my frantic run more terrifying. If there was someone else there, they might help me, or could act as a deterrent for the man chasing me, even if they didn’t realize that they were doing anything. I could just pause sort of near them and hope that their presence would spook the man and make him go away. Kind of like those tiny home security system signs that people stick in their front yards even if they don’t actually have an active system. Of course, considering the luck that I was having that night, I would run right into the protective arms of the man’s partner.
I finally came to a curve in the hallway and took a moment to orient myself as I followed it. I wasn’t sure how long I had been running and was starting to lose track of how far I had gone and where in the enormous cruise ship my haphazard course had brought me. Had I run past the hairdresser three floors up, or four? Were there more levels of interior rooms below me or had I gotten all the way down to the bottom of the guest portion of the ship? The thought of being this far down always unnerved me. Even though I knew in the logical part of my mind that it wasn’t the case, whenever I roamed this far into the lowest passenger levels I felt like I was going underwater. There was a reason that I had always avoided the submarine rides onshore. And at amusement parks. Or sticking my head under the surface to rinse my hair in the bath.
I had been in the nightclub on one of the high decks when I started running. A bartender that had been trying really hard to flirt with me but was a bit too “cucu-kachoo, Mrs. Robinson” for my taste had just handed my drink toward me across the glowing surface of a serpentine black bar that was reminding me of my younger days in a way that I wasn’t sure I appreciated when I glanced over my shoulder and saw the men step into the room. Even through the flashing strobe lights in the dark club I recognized them and my heart sank. The cruelness in their expressions sent chills through me and I knew instantly that Virgil had sent them. I dropped the drink from my hand and started to run, not looking back over my shoulder even as the people around me shouted their protest at the sound of the glass shattering and me forcing my way through the undulating bodies crowding the dancefloor. I had hoped that whoever these men were, they wouldn’t be able to keep up with me in the chaotic lights and dancing masses.
I heard shouting behind me as I burst out of the club and started toward the stairs. The men had obviously seen my escape and weren’t thwarted by any of the people trying to ride out the last gasps of the night locked in a messy tangle of anonymity and hormones. I ducked into the first stairwell and leaned against the wall for a second to pry the shoes from my feet. They were not sprint-friendly and the experiences that I had had in the past with men much like these told me that I wasn’t going to be slowing down again soon. From there I took the stairwells, corridors, and decks in a seemingly nonsensical pattern that had me weaving and backtracking my way through the massive cruise liner without consideration for who might see me or what anyone might think of me. At that point it didn’t matter to me what I needed to do or who I needed to use to get away. I wasn’t above flinging myself on a stranger for a diversionary make-out session, or taking a tremendously-overdressed dip in the zero-entry pool if I needed to.
Why did it have to be a ship? Why did I have to be stranded out in the middle of the fucking ocean where I couldn’t just disappear into a store or hop out a window and get away?
I saw the door to another stairwell ahead of me and quickened my steps to try to get to it faster. I paused just outside it and leaned close to the door, trying to listen for any indication that they might have chosen that stairwell in their pursuit of me. It was quiet. It seemed that I might have actually confused them enough to get away. At least for now. Satisfied that I was safe for the moment, I pressed the brushed silver bar to open the door and slipped inside. The dizzying flights of steps spiraled up through the decks and then rippled down deeper into the ship, confirming that I hadn’t actually found myself in the bowels of the levels. I let my eyes follow both paths, trying to determine which would be a better choice. The last time I had gone through one of the
stairwells I had gone down, so I decided this time I would go up, hoping that I wasn’t just backtracking myself right into their path. The move would make me end up right back to where I had been, but maybe I was going to run out of bad luck for the week.
I started up the steps as fast as I could. Even though I was clinging to the handrail like any good responsible stairwell-user, my feet tangled beneath me and I stumbled onto the stairs ahead of me.
Perfect. I was a dumb blonde from a 50s horror movie.
Muttering a few creative obscenities, I pushed myself up and continued down the stairs. I ran past three decks before choosing the door that led out of the stairwell. I had taken only a few steps when a massive figure stepped out from a small alcove and reached out for me. I screamed and tried to escape the man’s grip, but he turned me around and covered my mouth with one strong hand. Despite my thrashing, he seemed to have no trouble controlling me, and I eventually gave up, not having any energy left in me to fight against his strength. He picked me up off the floor and pulled me backwards into the alcove with him. I felt his mouth come to my ear and the heat of his breath burning on my skin.
“Be quiet,” the man hissed.
The voice sounded distantly familiar, but I couldn’t place it. In my life, a familiar voice wasn’t something so completely out of the ordinary and many of the voices that were so familiar didn’t belong to people I would particularly enjoy meeting in a desolate hallway, so it didn’t give me any sense of confidence. I screamed harder against the man’s hand, but his grip tightened.
“Shut up,” he demanded into my ear. “Unless you want those guys to find you, I suggest that you quiet down. You’re going to be lucky if every person on this deck hasn’t heard you by now.”
I stilled at his words. His grip loosened and he lowered me to my feet again.