Wild Pitch (Dominating the Diamond Book 1)

CHAPTER 20

She tips my face up to meet hers, not with two dainty fingers tucked under my chin, but by wrapping her entire hand around my throat, tight beneath my jaw. Ramirez grips me with enough force that I think I may need to fake a gym accident to explain the bruises, and I have never wanted to follow an order so badly in my life.

The rookie who shouldn’t be in my hot tub hesitates with her lips so close to mine, I can practically feel their softness.

“Kiss me.”

I don’t make her tell me again.

I’m sure it’s in my head, the way she tastes like strawberries. Her lips couldn’t be softer, but she kisses without temerity. Every ounce of self-doubt is gone. The woman sitting strong and solid in my lap is the same one I saw dominating the diamond at that feeder team game. Her tongue fills my mouth without reservation, and I lose myself in her kiss.

She slides forward until her thighs grip my hips. With nothing but satin and spandex between us, she presses against my dick. But that’s all she does. The tease of her body so close, and she doesn’t so much as grind against me. It’s beautiful torture, sitting with her tongue in my mouth, her hand on my throat, her stomach and tits rubbing against me. My hands explore her back. I scratch down her spine and wrap her hair in my fist.

I delight in the way she gasps into my mouth, even as my dick begins to ache from her stillness.

We kiss until we’re out of breath. The jets have turned off. The water is still except for where it splashes against our skin. Fog has rolled in to obscure the moon and diffuse it’s light like a halo behind Ramirez.

“It’s late,” I whisper against her swollen lips. I don’t know what’s gotten into us, and I don’t know what comes next.

I only know two things: this is a recipe for trouble, and I’m not ready to let her go. When she starts to pull away, I rest my forehead against hers and fill my lungs with her strawberry scent one last time.

“You should have brought the towel.” She laughs, but the sound is shaky. Not nervous, but more than just breathless. As if she’s holding back, but what, I can’t imagine. Her face, which conveys so much, too much, on the mound, is unreadable.

For the first time tonight, I let myself grab her by the hips. The touch is too short, when all I want is to linger, and the little gasp of surprise is still on her lips when I set her aside. I climb out of the tub, not saying a word until my feet are on the deck, and I hear the water splashing around the woman trying to follow me.

“Wait here.”

“Reyes, I was kidding–”

She starts to protest, but I’m already crossing the deck as quickly as I can without slipping. To my satisfaction, she’s still in the water when I return with the towel that I’d meant to leave with her nearly an hour before.

I don’t mean to pause, but the way she stares stops me in my tracks. Ramirez takes the stairs in slow motion, or maybe that’s only my imagination. Water sluices down her body, painting her brown skin in streaks of moon-spun silver, and her hair tumbles over one shoulder, freed from its elastic prison by my own rough affection. She is a goddess of water and starlight, and I hate how badly I want to fall to my knees in worship.

Except I don’t hate it, I realize, still frozen as she adds her wet footprints in the path following my own. I fear it.

Holding the towel out in front of me feels like the most ridiculous move in the world. It also feels impossibly natural. She flashes me that grin of approval and turns, but when I drape the towel around her shoulders, she doesn’t grab it. Ramirez stands there, inches in front of me, with her hair pulled to the side, and waits.

I don’t know why I do it. I don’t even know if it’s what she was waiting for, but instead of stepping away, I begin to pat her dry.

The back of her neck, her shoulders, the skin bared by her sports bra. I soak every drop from her arms down to her fingertips and bring the towel back into the curve of her waist and the arch of her lower back. She steps forward, but I’m not tentative when I grab her hips this time. Instead of letting her turn to face me, I press myself to her back. The towel between us is soft but not nearly as soft as her skin, and I wrap my arms around to dry her belly.

My hands drift up and linger at the band of her sports bra. Water soaks through the towel, wetting my palms as the lower curve of her tits brushes my thumbs. When I can’t fight the temptation to touch more, to feel all of her, I force my hands down. Her whimper of need is so soft the wind nearly carries it away, but it’s enough to make the denial worth it.

“Your turn,” she whispers.

But when she turns and reaches for the towel, I drop to my knees instead. It’s a terrible decision, adding to the string of questionable choices we’ve been making all night long.

She drags her fingers through my hair, and I wonder if she’s figured out that this is my weakness. The gentle scrape of her nails on my scalp. It’s hard to be embarrassed about kneeling for her when she pulls just hard enough to make me look up to meet her gaze and plants her foot on my thigh.

“What are we doing?” she asks me again.

I still don’t have an answer, and my brain is too hazy with her nearness to come up with anything clever. The towel in my hand speaks for itself. The way I cup the cloth around her calves, her knees, never too high up her thighs, is the only response left for me to give. Too soon, her legs are dry, her skin is pricked with goosepimples, and my excuses for touching her have evaporated into the fog.

“Mateo–”

It’s louder than a whisper. Sweeter than a whine. The first time she calls me by my name, it’s a plea. A command in three quiet syllables.

I lower my mouth to the beauty mark on her thigh and kiss.