Chapter 17
Evan Brock was putting on a show at first base, and it was making my job physically painful.
I crouched in the dugout, feigning interest in a rack of bats I’d already organized twice as he stretched for a wide throw. The fabric of his white baseball pants pulled tight across his ass. The seam disappeared into the cleft between them, and a fresh ache grew behind my zipper.
I knew that ass. I knew the weight of it in my hands, the heat of it against my face. I knew the fine blond hair at the base of his spine and the exact spot where his skin went from smooth to textured. I knew what sound he made when I spread him open and speared him with my tongue.
I reached for a water bottle and drank without tasting it.
At the top of the fourth, Evan settled into his batting stance—feet wide, knees bent, bat cocked behind his right ear.
His thighs were enormous in this position, his quadriceps bulging against the fabric.
Those thighs had clamped around my head.
They’d trembled against my cheeks while I sucked his balls into my mouth.
They’d shaken so hard the bed frame rattled while I ate him out.
He fouled off the first pitch, his hips rotating with controlled violence.
The second pitch came in low and inside, and he dropped his hands and drove it into the gap in right-center.
The crack of the bat echoed through the stadium, and Evan was already gone, those massive thighs pumping as he rounded first and slid into second in a cloud of dirt.
He popped up, brushed off his pants, and adjusted his cup. Which was protecting the balls I’d held in my mouth, rolled on my tongue, squeezed until he’d squeaked. The same ones that drew up tight when he was close, that hung heavy between his thighs when he opened up for me.
I pressed the heel of my hand against my crotch under the cover of the dugout bench and forced myself to breathe.
The rest of the game was torture. Every time Evan moved—fielding a grounder, stretching between pitches, jogging back to the dugout—my brain supplied the private version.
The version where those muscles were bare and slick with sweat, where those thighs were spread wide and shaking, where that ass was tilted up and open for my mouth.
My stomach had been off since warm-ups, a nervous churn entirely due to Evan’s impending answer. Every inning that passed was one inning closer to knowing. I gripped the pine tar rag and squeezed until my knuckles ached.
Evan went 3-for-4 with two doubles and a single. He drove in three runs. He made a diving stop in the eighth that saved two runs and brought the dugout to its feet. The final score was 11-3, Wildbrook. A sweep.
The team celebrated in the locker room while I collected equipment. I moved on autopilot—bats into bags, helmets into crates, batting gloves paired and stacked. My hands were steady, but my pulse was not.
On the bus back to the hotel, Evan sat in his usual spot against the window, headphones in, his head tilted back against the seat. I stole a glance at his neck—the short, dirty blond hair tapered to a point, the thick cords of muscle disappearing into his collar—and willed the bus to go faster.
The elevator ride was silent. Three other players rode up with us, and Evan stood at the back, his duffel over one shoulder, his eyes on his phone. I stood at the front, watching the floor numbers climb.
The doors opened on the seventh floor. The other players turned right, while Evan and I turned left.
The key card beeped green, and the door swung open to reveal the single king bed, rumpled from two nights of use. I dropped my bag by the dresser and turned around. Evan kicked the door shut with his heel.
He stood in the middle of the room, his duffel still over his shoulder, and stared at me. His blue eyes were calm, his jaw set, firm but relaxed. His expression was open. All the usual guards were completely down.
“So,” he said.
My heart slammed against my sternum. “So.”
He dropped the duffel and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I thought about it.”
“Right.”
“Every at-bat, every play, it was in the back of my head.” He pulled one hand from his pocket and rubbed the back of his neck, his bicep flexing. “You want to draw me. The version nobody else sees.”
“Yes.”
“And you’d turn it in to your professor, and other people would see it.”
“Yes.”
He nodded slowly, his tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek. He held my gaze, and I held his, and the silence stretched between us. “Okay.”
A rush of heat flooded my limbs, and I had to lock my knees to keep from swaying. “Yes?”
“Yes. You can draw me. But…”
My stomach dropped. Of course there was a but.
Evan took a step closer, closing the distance between us until I could smell the sweat and dirt still clinging to him. His eyes were intense, searching my face. “I want you to be part of it.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, his hand dropping from his neck. “A drawing of me…that’s only half the story, right? It’s your hand on the paper, sure. But what happens in here”—he gestured to the room, to the bed—“we’re both in it. So if you’re going to draw what this is, it has to be both of us.”
My brain was working hard to keep up. “You want me to draw us together? How?”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone. He held it up between us, the black screen catching the light. “You said your professor wants the moment the mask cracks. You said she wants vulnerability and exposure. Something honest.”
“I did say that.”
“What’s more honest than this?” He gestured between us with the phone still in his hand. “We film it. You and me. Then you can go through it, pick a frame—whatever you want—and draw that. The real thing.”
I forced a breath in, then out. The idea was so far from anything I’d imagined that my brain was still buffering, loading the concept frame by frame.
“That’s…”
“Insane? Yeah, probably.”
“I was going to say brilliant.” The word came out before I could filter it. Because it was. The reference material would be real and alive, a moment captured in motion that could surpass any static pose or fading memory.
Evan’s shoulders dropped a fraction. He’d been braced for rejection. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. But, Evan”—I sat on the edge of the bed, my legs suddenly unreliable—“what would we be filming, exactly?”
He sat next to me and turned the phone over in his hands, his calloused thumb running along the edge of the case.
“I want you to fuck me.” A flush crept up the side of his neck.
“You once said—” My voice came out strangled.
“I know what I said.”
“That was weeks ago. You were very definitive.”
“I was scared,” he said. “I’d never had anything near my ass before you. And then you”—he exhaled hard, his hand scrubbing over his jaw—“you put your tongue in me, and I came so hard I shot myself in the face. Tastes my own cum. Remember?”
“Vividly.”
“So after that, I started thinking. If your tongue did that to me, then…” The flush had reached his cheekbones now. “I want to know what the rest is like. With you. And I want it on camera because”—he turned to face me fully, his knee pressing into my thigh—“I want you to see yourself too.”
The Magnums were in my bag. The ones I’d bought at that Walgreens in Garden Oaks with Hunter, half-joking, half-hoping.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d ever break the seal.