Redemption

by R. R. Banks

  That would most certainly not be one of my fantasies, if I had any.

  “As you might have guessed,” he said, “I’m a baseball player.”

  “I gathered that,” I said.

  He took another sip from his cup and then turned to put it on the counter behind him before reaching for mine. I gave it to him and he put it in place with his.

  “I thought that tonight we could have a little fun on the field,” he said.

  I now knew for certain that the decidedly un-datelike clothing that had been sent to me had been selected to ensure that I was able to move easily. It was intimidating to think about. I prided myself in being many things, but sporty was not one of them. It wasn’t that I was the kind of person who would fall over my own feet when walking down the street, but I also wasn’t going to be the first one chosen for a team if a spontaneous game of dodgeball broke out somewhere. I was thankful then that this date was not with a man who I had been lusting after or even knew. It would be too embarrassing to even contemplate attempting to be athletic if I was also trying to impress a man who I was attracted to. That thought struck me, and I smiled, understanding more now what Fawn intended when she created the retreat.

  Lee started toward the field and I followed him. We stepped through the arch that led to one of the towering flights of steps that rippled through the seats positioned on tiers around the diamond. It looked cavernous, far larger than anything that I remembered. We walked down the steps and out of a gate that led down onto the field.

  “What position do you play?” I asked.

  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. We both lay still for a few seconds, our hard, uneven breath getting lost in the openness of the stadium around us, before I dipped my mouth down to his and caught it in a deep, passionate kiss.

  Lee kissed me back with intensity, using one hand to hold the back of my head so he crushed our mouths together as if seeking even more of the pressure and connection. Our tongues tangled, massaging against each other and tasted each other’s mouths deeply. The exploration drew unchained sounds from deep within us as we put all of the attraction and tension that we had felt since meeting into the kiss. It was liberating and unusual, frightening and yet thrilling, to not think about anything but the immediate physical reactions and needs that I was experiencing. I didn’t have to think about what he was thinking or what it would mean if I went through with each compulsion that I experienced. This wasn’t about thoughts, emotions, or questions about what would come next. I didn’t care how he was going to perceive me or if he was going to call me the next morning, because I knew that he wasn’t. This was about my body, my pleasure, and I felt hungrier with each step that we progressed.

  I felt his hands come to the backs of my thighs and pull me forward, causing me to straddle his hips. The tight, stretchy pants that he had selected for me to wear allowed me to settle onto him and feel his body fully beneath me almost as though there was no fabric between us at all. Rather than the slight embarrassment I had felt at Lee’s discovery that I had elected not to wear anything beneath the pants, I felt grateful for it now as my core cradled against his surging erection and my lack of panties allowed me to build the delectable pressure throughout my body as I rocked my hips against him. I wondered if Lee could feel my wet heat through the fabric of our clothing and I pressed down harder, hoping to show him my reaction to him, and to coax him to touch me.

  Lee unbuttoned my jersey and pushed it back over my shoulders. I could feel my nipples straining against the thin satin bra I had chosen to wear beneath the tight white tank top, and I arched slightly to push my breasts toward him, wanting him to touch me. His hands came to the hem of the tank top and he whisked the shirt away. The soft coolness of the air tightened my nipples even further and I reached behind my back to release the clasp of my bra, dropping it out of the way to expose my breasts fully to him. Lee moaned and reached up to cup my breasts, filling his hands with them and kneading his fingers into the supple flesh. His palms stimulated my nipples and I felt the sensation course through my body, shooting between my thighs to further arouse me. In one movement he sat up, wrapped one arm around my hips, and flipped me onto my back so that I landed on the ground as he had been moments before.

  Not taking his eyes away from my face, Lee grasped the waistband of my pants and started to pull them down off of my hips. As he pulled them down, I kicked off my shoes and peeled away my socks so that when he got the pants totally off of me and tossed them aside so I was bare in front of him. Before the date, I had expected that it would be strange and even uncomfortable to be naked in front of someone I didn’t know. Now that I was laying there with Lee gazing down at me, though, I felt sexy and desirable, open and willing the way that I had when I was in the cottage in front of the mirror. It was a connection to myself and my own sexual experience that I had never had with my ex, and I was becoming intoxicated by it, wanting more with every moment.

  The sun had completely set around the diamond now, but I could see Lee in the silvery light from the moon that flowed through the stadium and pooled on the infield around us as he sat back on his heels and peeled off his jersey and then his shirt. I watched hungrily as he kicked out of his cleats and then released his pants. Once they were loosened, he raised up and shook them off, kicking them aside so that there was no longer anything between us. I reached for him and Lee came forward over me, propping himself up with his hands on either side of my shoulders so that he could spend another few moments kissing me before pushing back onto his knees again. There was no going backwards now, no reversing the progress that we were making. Nothing was going to keep us from rushing headlong into exactly what both of us wanted.

  He moved with directed, unflinching determination and I complied with the rapid guidance of his hands as he pulled my legs apart, positioning them on either side of his. He grabbed my thighs and yanked me forward so that my hips lifted slightly off of the ground. Lee slowed and brought one hand forward to glide his fingers down through my hot, wet folds. He was gazing down at my body, his eyes filled with appreciation of what he was seeing, and I pushed my thighs further apart to give him more visual access. I had hoped for some lingering attention, but after only a few seconds of massaging, he took his hand away and leaned slightly to grab onto his pants. He pulled them toward him and I saw him rummage in t
he pocket of his pants to withdraw a slim black case. He withdrew a condom from the case and tossed the case and his pants aside again. I squirmed with desire and anticipation as I watched him tear open the packet and then roll the condom down the delectably thick, straight length of his cock. When he finished, Lee grabbed my thighs again and pulled me a little closer so that my hips lifted and rested into his lap. Suddenly he was inside me and I cried out with the fullness of him burying himself deep within my body.

  He didn't pause at my reaction, but withdrew slightly and slammed back into me with even greater intensity, bringing another sharp cry from my lips. The sounds only seemed to spur him forward and Lee held onto my hips tightly as he thrust into me so hard and fast I felt like I could barely catch my breath. The feeling of him stretching my walls, plunging further than I thought possible, was dizzying and I felt my eyes close briefly so that I could lose myself in the feeling. Finally having his almost impossibly hard cock inside me gave me a tremendous sense of fulfillment as all of the anticipation that he had built as we ran the bases was met. His low, rhythmic grunts caused me to open my eyes again and I allowed myself to watch in erotic fascination as he closed his own eyes and increased his pace a little more. My fingertips dug into his arms as he arched back, roaring with release as he pulsed against my aching walls. He straightened and stared down at me again, bringing his hand between us so he could touch me. The combination of his thumb swirling into my swollen, hypersensitive clit and the pulsing of his cock within me sent me crashing over the edge and I gasped, breathless at the consuming power of the climax that milked him.

  When our bodies finally relaxed, I straightened my legs and opened my arms so that Lee could rest down on top of me. He buried his head in the crook of my neck and trailed lazy kisses along my skin. This was the moment in my relationship when my ex would have let out a self-satisfied sigh and climbed out of bed, heading for the shower and then to the living room to watch TV, leaving me alone in the bed to convince myself that I had enjoyed it and contemplate what to do next. There was none of that now. Lee was completely relaxed beside me, as if there was nowhere else that he wanted to be and nothing else that he needed to be doing. It was reassuring in a way that I couldn’t quite put into words. It wasn’t that I was feeling anything for Lee. In fact, I was totally and completely confident in the reality that I felt nothing but deep satisfaction and a sense of friendly gratitude. Instead, there was a sense of camaraderie, as if we were sharing in this moment but also simply enjoying it for ourselves. Right then I knew that I was going to be able to invest myself in this process and was willing to let it take me anywhere it wanted to.