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 shoulders 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 Twenty-two
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?
No. Those were something altogether different, and those feelings had to stop. Now. Because those feelings belonged to a person who had no control. Or at least they belonged to a deluded dreamer who thought love was something good and grand and lasting.
Not Jocelyn Bloom. She wasn’t deluded and she sure as hell didn’t harbor those dreams.
“Wish we could get into the clubhouse.” Will jiggled the rusted knob of the small baseball clubhouse on the other side of the dugout. “But they changed those locks.” A few feet to the left, he stabbed the key into the metal door of a stand-alone structure she’d seen a hundred times but never imagined she’d walk into.
As he opened the door and guided her in, he ran his hand along the jamb. “Good. Rubber stripping. At least we won’t fry if we get hit by lightning. Just…” He smiled as he pulled the door closed and trapped them in darkness. “Fry another way.”
“How long do you think we have to wait it out in here?” How long would she be locked in a dark closet with Will, her new, raw, frightening feelings so close to the surface they could bubble up at the first clap of thunder—or with the first heated kiss?
“As long as you want to.”
“They’re going to get worried about me,” Jocelyn said, blinking to get her night vision, but it was still nearly pitch black.
And then it wasn’t, as Will hit the switch and the little room was washed in yellow light, revealing a five-foot-square mess of bats, buckets of balls, lost gloves, batting helmets, and giant catcher’s vests hanging like dead men from hooks along the wall.
He stared at her, intense and direct. She tightened her grip on the shirt bundled against her chest and met his gaze. Could he read the vulnerability that coursed through her?
“Nothing is going to happen in here if you don’t want it to, Joss. Lights can stay on.”
But all the light did was highlight the set of his jaw, the burn in his eyes, and the rise and fall of his stunning chest. Against her will, her gaze dropped over that sight, down to his jeans, and—
She looked back up. “Too bright. Turn them off.”
Immediately they were back in black, surrounded by the echo of thunder and the rain on the roof. The dizzying smell of leather and clay, familiar scents that transported her back a decade and a half to a time when the mere scrape of metal cleats on concrete made her knees go weak.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, reading her, of course.
“Nothing, I…”
“Something’s the matter.”
“I…” Think, Joss. “I don’t want the first time to be in a closet,” she whispered, only a little surprised by the actual truth of that admission.
“Well, that’s some good news.”
It was? “What is?”
“That there’s going to be a first time for us.” His seductive tone, like the evaporating rain, left a fine chill on her skin. And yet she let her hands fall to her sides, the shirt still hooked to her fingertips, her bare breasts completely exposed to him.
He stood about six inches away, making no move.
“Jocelyn?”
“Mmmm?”
“Are you over that moment of panic?”
Not even close. “I am.” God, she wanted to touch him. Just make this about fulfilling her need and taking that crazy ride of complete abandon again. Why did he have to mention love out there on the field?
She was just getting used to the idea of sex and he’d brought up the only thing scarier, the only thing that stole any shred of control.
He took one step forward and they touched. His bare chest to her bare chest. His legs against her legs. His—
Oh God. He was so hard.
He pressed a huge, daunting, mighty erection against her stomach and all she could do was drop her shirt with a soft whoompf.
“So, what happened out there?” he asked. “Are you scared of lightning?”
“I’m scared of…” Love. “This.”
“Of being with me?”
Define being. “Maybe.”
He tipped her chin with his thumb, then cupped her jaw, forcing her to look up at him. The air vent above the door let in a whisper of ambient light, enough to see how serious he was. “Are you scared of sex?”
“It always reminds me of… that night,” she admitted. “And what happened.”
“Oh,” he angled his head, sympathy all over his expression, agony in the single syllable. “Then all the more reason for us to try to make new memories.”
&nbs
p; She closed her eyes. “You always know the right thing to say.”
“And do.” He pressed against her, making her nipples pucker against his warm, wet chest. Between her legs, the twisting coil of need tightened again. Her fingers grew heavy and numb. Her head buzzed.
This was like being drunk. Like being helpless. God, she hated helplessness. More than anything.
“It’s also scary to lose control.” Maybe it was both. Loss of control, loss of sanity, equaled pain and misery. Was that the equation that added up in her head every time she felt like this?
Not that anyone other than Will had ever made her feel quite like this.
“I can give you control,” he said softly, kissing her first on the forehead. “You want to call the shots?”
She nodded, slack-jawed at how much need coursed through her.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to… not lose control.”
“Then you take charge,” he said, gently sliding his hands over her bare arms. “You call the game, Coach.”
She wet her lips, but it didn’t help her parched mouth. She put her hands on his shoulders. God, she loved those shoulders. Big, strong, reliable, sexy shoulders.
She splayed her hands over the muscles, dragging her fingers down, closer to what she wanted. Over his abs, closing her eyes so that every sense was focused on the masculine ripples of each perfectly formed muscle.
She could do this. She could do this and not hear the accusations and feel the punches, not relive the night when letting loose had caused her so much pain.
Forcing the memory away, she continued down to her knees, unbuttoning his jeans on the way, scraping the zipper.
He was naked under there, erect and pulsing and as big as she’d always imagined.
And, oh, Lord almighty, she had imagined.
“Joss.” His fingers tangled in her hair. His skin smelled like salt and something sexy she couldn’t identify. Not sweat. Just man.
A stone stabbed her knee and sweat stung her skin. Through the slotted vent above the door, lightning flashed, one second of near-illumination that let her see his swollen, wet, smooth tip as she freed him.
He pushed the jeans down and guided her mouth to him, murmuring, “Please.”
Meet Me in Barefoot Bay Page 54