by Box Set
His cock, hard and swollen between them, pushed his patience to its limits.
He wanted all of her.
He wanted nothing separating them.
Fighting the urge to thrust, he wanted to give her time to get used to him. Charity, as usual, had other ideas. A bountiful smile, so full of life and lust, she grinned at him then dug her nails along his back as though urging him deeper as she rocked with him. When she tumbled him over, rising to straddle him all the while holding him captive to her body, he gazed up the length of her—the full, heavy breasts and lush hips. The slight roundness to her belly, the hint of stretch marks. A body so beautiful and soft—so curvy and divine.
The woman who owned his heart. The mother of his child.
Perfection.
When she rose up, riding him, he skimmed his hands over her waist and to her breasts. Perfectly unabashed, she captured his hands and held them to her. He squeezed her breasts as she squeezed him. The pace she set had him clenching his teeth as she took him deep with every downward push. He drove up to meet her, letting her dictate every stroke. When she shifted above him, her head going back as a low, soft, almost imperceptible cry tore from her. Hunger ripped through him and he flipped her back onto her back, raised her thigh and plowed into her sweet, pliant body. She quivered and shook around him as her orgasm tore her apart. He increased his tempo to follow, the need to be one with her, to be so deep within she could never expel him, a driving force.
Her eyes opened, their swirling pools so kissed with dark pleasure, he rasped out the words they both needed. “I love you.”
Then his balls tightened, heat sweeping up his spine as jets of pleasure burst from him. The orgasm shredded his ability to think, and he gave up everything to the sensation of claiming her. Dropping his head, he fused their lips together, swallowing her cries as they slid into home plate.
Exactly where he belonged.
They lay together for a few minutes or a few hours, Zeke didn’t know which. Her inner muscles spasmed around him and as his cock roused once more to the task, he began to kiss her again. It took more than an hour to build to an erection, and he used the time to devour her. With kisses, nips, and sucks, he coaxed more orgasms from her. The second time he sank into her, he had her on her belly, hips raised. Pushing into her, he had the sensation of flying, far more sweet than even a pennant. Every time she allowed him into her body, he wanted to roar his pleasure.
They both fought to stay silent. After their second round, he thought they might have slept. Then he woke to feel her mouth on his cock and his world narrowed to the hot, pulling sensation. When she mounted him, he let her guide the pace, a goddess he craved with every fiber of his being.
Dawn was still far from edging the horizon, when they slid into the shower hot and sticky from hours of sex. They didn’t say anything, but afterward, they dressed and made their way back to the kitchen. Through it all, their daughter slept. A faint bruise marked her neck—a hickey he’d left there—and his back had some definite welts from her nails.
She made them fresh coffee and, mugs in hand, they stepped out onto the little patio at the back of the apartment. The early hour held sway and the world seemed to slumber around them.
“Why did you come home this time?” Her soft question beckoned to him, and he slanted her a look. “All these years, you never came back. So, why this time?”
It wasn’t an unfair inquiry. After all, it was the truth. He’d avoided Sherwood Point at all costs in the years since he left. If he hadn’t? Well, maybe he would have noted the resemblance between himself and Andie. Maybe he would have seen his Charity was alone… Pushing aside the thought, he hooked his foot around her chair and met her questioning gaze. “Did I ever tell you about Stone?”
Tiny lines deepened between her eyes as she shook her head. “I don’t think so. Was he one of the guys on the team?”
The team. The Charmings He’d maintained a lot of friendships over the years. His original pee wee league teammates were one set of friends. His current team, they were a different kind of friends, but still his. The others? No, they were guys who forged a connection one long, brutal summer away from everything and everyone they had ever known under the tutelage of a man who took no crap. “No, Stone was the guy who ran the ranch where I had to spend that summer.”
Her frown erased as a hint of wonder filled her expression. Despite the half-light from the interior shining out, he could make out her flushed features. “You never liked talking about that summer.”
“No,” he agreed. “I didn’t. The reason I had to go was because I was a hot-headed fool, and I was letting my temper get the best of me.” The temper he’d inherited from his father, a man who was both a drunk and an ass. He’d beaten his mother, more than once, turning that anger on the woman who loved him. Once or twice, he’d done the same to Zeke. Then he wrapped his car around a tree and the torment ended. Well, the physical torment… “I don’t talk about this much, but I’ll tell you.”
“You don’t have to.” Charity always looked out for him, didn’t force him to take responsibility. She forgave him before he even asked whether he deserved it or not.
“Don’t do that,” he said, and it came out more of a snap than he intended. Gripping the irritation inflaming him, he reached over to capture her hand. Apologizing with a stroke of his thumb against her skin, he sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it that way. You let me off the hook way too easily, pretty girl, and I need you to hold me accountable.”
She tugged her fingers from his grasp then pressed her fingers to his lips. “I made choices for us both. I was wrong to cut you out…I don’t hold you responsible for not coming back to see me after what I said and did. I just wanted to know what had changed.”
Fighting the need to drag her back to bed in order to broach the topic between them since she’d opened the door, he nodded slowly. “Stone ran the camp—the ranch. It was his place. He didn’t let me get away with anything, and he did something my father had never managed. He taught me how to be a man. I never really saw it back then, not like I do now.”
She dropped her hand to his leg, the light weight of it on his denim-clad thigh grounding him.
“There were a dozen of us that summer, all there for different reasons. Different screw ups, sometimes just abandoned. One thing I never wanted you to see was my father’s temper. I had it in me, the same ugliness. The same desire to pound on things when it didn’t go my way. I used to think I was better, but the older I got, the worse it grew.”
A frown creased Charity’s brow, and he saw the unspoken question in her eyes.
“No, you couldn’t see it. I didn’t want you to. Never…never did I want you to see what I was capable of. In my father, it was filth, and I didn’t want it to be the same way. If I’d ever done to you what he did to Mom…” Zeke shook his head. “I couldn’t. So I channeled it elsewhere. Sports helped, but sometimes I felt like I would explode, so I’d do some crazy stuff—jump the train tracks when a train was coming, swinging down into one of the old creek beds from a bridge, take dumbass risks to cope with it.”
“Until you and some of the guys wrecked the gas station.” Yeah, it hadn’t been their brightest move. Of course she remembered it.
He nodded, owning the action. “The Sheriff told my mother that I had to get help or the next time I committed a felony, I’d be licking my wounds in prison. She never told me how she found Stone or what she had to do to send me. I just know she took me to the bus station that day after school got out and put me on it. She told me straight up, I had to go and I had to stay there. If I couldn’t do that for her, then I didn’t need to come back home.”
Too compassionate by half, his admission sent a wave of sympathy through her expression and tears filled her eyes. “How could your mother do that to you?”
“Don’t be mad at her,” he said, his tone gentle and coaxing as he covered her hand with his. “I don’t think it was easy for her to tell me th
at, and it sure as hell wasn’t easy for me to hear. But I went, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me, Charity. I missed you—I missed the other Charmings—but I didn’t miss the ugly punk I was turning into. Stone taught me rules, he taught me control, and he taught me that a real man… he puts his best foot forward and if he can’t do that, he doesn’t get involved.”
Blowing out a breath, he gave himself a moment. The last message he’d had about Stone didn’t bode well. Taking a long swallow of his coffee, he girded himself for the rest. “Stone’s in a coma, and they don’t think he’ll make it. It’s hard for me to think of that tough old bastard lying helpless in some hospital room. I got the news the same day I got the request—again—to come out and work with the Charmings. I’ve had one every year since we won the series, and I’ve always felt guilty about turning it down.”
Her eyes were quiet as she studied him. “But you didn’t think you could put your best foot forward before?”
Relief swamped him. “No. I thought I’d be a petty bastard if you were with some other guy. I wanted you to be happy, but I didn’t want to see you with him. I thought I would hate this mythical jackass who’d taken the only woman I loved and had a child with her—the things I wanted. As long as I couldn’t be a good man and honorable about it, I had no business being anywhere near you.”
Guilt filled her expression. “I did that to you…”
“No, darling, my father did it and my choices…if you’d called me, if you’d said you needed me, I’d have been here.”
“But I didn’t call you.”
The failure was still his. “If I had given you a better reason…”
“Better reason?” The tears shimmering in her eyes threatened to fall. “You offered to marry me after I told you the baby wasn’t yours—after I lied to you. You wanted to do what was right by me, even when you thought I’d betrayed you.”
Because in his gut…in his gut, he’d never believed her capable of it. “I always thought if you had, it was because of something I did.”
A splash of dampness struck his hand, and he didn’t pause to think. He pulled Charity from her chair and into his lap. When she buried her face against his neck and sobbed, he cried with her. The silence of the tears, so full of loss and heartbreak—he didn’t know how to comfort them.
The sunrise streaked pink across the sky by the time their tears quieted. He considered his next words carefully, stroking a hand against her back. “We let each other down.” As much as it pissed him off to think of everything she went through on her own, he couldn’t level his fury at her. She’d done her best. “Let’s not do it again.”
“I’d like that,” she whispered, her voice stuffy with unshed tears. “Zeke?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I love you.”
His heart fisted again, a fierce pump of pride. “I love you.”
They’d figure it out. All of it.
Together.
***
The last three days of spring training with the Charmings flew past so quickly, it robbed Charity of breath when the day for Zeke to leave arrived. They’d finally confessed the truth to Andie, that Zeke was her father. Her daughter’s reaction stunned them both. She’d looked at them with eyes so like his, wise beyond their years, and said, “Good. I always wondered where I got my throwing arm from.” The ease with which she accepted him left them all in laughter.
Zeke wanted them to join him after his spring training. He had an apartment, he’d told her, but they could get a house. She couldn’t leave her job without warning and Andie still had school. Their daughter decided for them—she’d just made the Charmings, and she wasn’t leaving her team.
Only after they agreed to visit him when Andie had some time off school did he manage to head for his car. Watching him drive away was the hardest thing Charity had done in years. Andie kept her spirits up, though, she chattered non stop about her father, about the game, about what she’d learned. Charity simply missed him. Missed the strength of his arms around her, the way he thought everything through, and his sheer determination to make everything right between them.
As one day slipped into the next, only his regular phone calls and texts kept her going. She grieved his loss more than she had the first time. Why? She had to wonder, and it was that question she broached with her mother when after two weeks, she had taken to crying herself to sleep at night.
“Why now? Why is it so damn hard now?”
Her mother eyed her across the counter in her kitchen. Andie was safely at school, counting down the days until they flew to where Zeke’s team worked on their spring training. She’d never left Sherwood Point, and couldn’t wait to see the wider world beyond their small town.
“Sweetheart, because you’re letting yourself miss him this time.” Her mother shook her head while pouring two glasses of iced tea. “The first time, you sent him away, you told yourself it was for the best. You were protecting him. This time, neither one of you wanted him to go, but you had to let him go back to his life while you stay here because you have a life here.”
True. She took a drink of the unsweetened tea, the hint of lemon helping her throat. All the crying had left her with swollen eyes and a sore throat, a fact her daughter had betrayed to Zeke. “Do you know what he said this morning?” He called three times a day, sometimes four. He texted all the time. Instead of continuing, she pulled out her phone and showed her mother the selfie of Zeke crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue.
Her mother laughed. It was a most ridiculous image. “He told you to smile and not cry, right?”
“Yes.” Charity sniffled, then shook her head. “I love him so much…but how do I pack up my whole life and go to where he is? How do I do that to Andie?”
Not commenting immediately, her mother drew out a couple of spiced cookies, then set them on the plate in front of her. After a long moment, she said, “You don’t do it alone. You talk to Zeke. You two make a plan, then you both talk to Andie.”
“But there is so—”
“Charity,” her mother covered her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Together. You’re tearing yourself up because you want to make him happy. You want to make this decision for him. Don’t. Make it with him.”
With him.
Her mother was right. They changed the subject, talked about a lot of other things, but Charity couldn’t get her mind off Zeke and sent him a text when her mother excused herself to use the restroom.
Miss you.
His response came almost immediately. Miss you more. You will both be there at the first game, right?
The first game. They had spring training games planned and he’d told her he would have tickets for her and Andie, right behind their dugout.
Do you want me there? She couldn’t help it, but she had to be sure. She’d turned his life upside down.
She didn’t know what she expected him to say, but less than a minute passed before he sent, I love you.
It was so the right thing.
Less than a week later, she could barely contain her own jittery excitement as she and Andie arrived at the stadium where Zeke would be pitching his first game of the season. Her daughter hadn’t stopped talking about stats since they’d set off on their journey. Apparently, every number she quoted meant something, but Charity’s thoughts weren’t on Zeke’s game but on seeing him again. Shown to their seats by a man named Mitch who turned out to be Zeke’s agent, she laughed as Andie immediately went to the railing to look down. The teams were on the field already warming up, and they found Zeke without trying.
His gaze collided with hers and, even from so many yards away, she heated under the affection shining in his eyes. Andie waved enthusiastically and his open grin sent her heart flip-flopping. The need to be with him overwhelmed her. It was everything she could do to stay seated.
By the time the game started, she was practically vibrating. He threw his first pitch and struck out the first man at bat. Andie went crazy yel
ling and cheering. When he struck out the second batter, Charity was right there with her. All to soon, they’d ended the first half with no one on base. Zeke’s stride back to the dugout was as cocksure as he deserved to be.
Though she’d never been as invested in the game as either Zeke or Andie, Charity found herself biting her nails with each inning. His team was up by one point, and it was a hard-earned one to zero. At the end of the fourth inning, music played and the screens around them lit up. They’d done it a few times with introducing the players and the stadium was damn full for the pre-season.
“Mom! Look!” Andie’s voice dragged her attention to the screen as Zeke’s face appeared. An announcer made much of the pitcher, listing his successes and some of his history, then the video turned on him.
“I have to say I asked for a favor before the game began,” Zeke told the crowd. “I asked them to use a kiss cam.” The crowd rumbled its approval. “Usually we don’t at these games, and you’ve all seen some of those sharing their anniversaries and birthdays with the team today, and we’re mighty glad to have you all here. But right now, I have to thank two very special visitors in the crowd—visitors I never thought I’d get to say were here.”
Emotion clogged Charity’s throat.
Zeke stared right into the camera and it felt like he gazed into her eyes. “A long time ago, a man I respect taught me that a real man always puts his best foot forward. So, to my girls, this is me putting my best foot forward. Every game I’ve ever played has been for you, even when I didn’t know it. Every game I will play will be for you. I know we have a lot of questions to answer, and a lot of plans to make, but I want you both to know…the only team I belong on is yours. If you’ll both have me, I want to marry you, Charity Lane. I want to give Andie the father she deserves and you the husband you need—the husband I need to be for you. So what do you say, my pretty lady? Will you have me?”
The camera suddenly zoomed in on her, and Zeke appeared in her periphery. Andie let out a whoop and threw her arms around her dad. He lifted her, balancing her on his hip as he stared at Charity.