Page 50 of Curveball
“I want you to stay, if you will. And look, the kids aren’t done with their game yet. We can go back outside.” He gives me sad puppy dog eyes and waits for me to give in. I roll my eyes and nod. He’s not the only marshmallow.
With a shit eating grin, he pivots us toward the back atrium door. I scramble for a lone, elusive vestige of bravado and turn down the volume to my conscience—she’s really no fun anyway.
“Is that where it’s private?”
He tilts his head as if deciphering my words, and stammers out, “I suppose. I mean, nobody else is out there right—” He stops walking and his gaze darts to my raised-brow expression. “Ooh.” He drags out the syllable and the rise and fall of that single word tells me he knows exactly what I want.
I want a do-over.
His hand tightens around mine, and I give him a squeeze. He immediately spins us in the other direction, toward the staircase off the foyer. The one leadingupstairs.
“How remiss of me. We never did finish our tour of the house, did we?”
“No, I don’t believe we did,” I say, playing along as he hurries me up the steps to the second floor.
“Absolutely not.” From the upper landing, he waves his hand toward a long paneled hallway to the left. “Over there are some guest rooms, a couple of bathrooms, nothing interesting.” He yanks me down a hallway in another direction.
“So, what’s down that way?” I pull back and point to yet another wing that’s almost out of sight as we pass door after door. He turns back with his brow pinched, as if he has to think about it.
“Oh. That’s Natalie,” he says like it’s no big deal.
Well, fuck.
“I want to be Natalie.”
Max chuckles, deep and warm, and I get a little shiver down my spine. “What if I promise something even better behind door number three?”
I scoff. “Better than my own wing in a mansion?”
Max breaks character with a low, rumbling chuckle, then propels me into the next room we come to, shoves the door closed, and presses my back against it. “Wait till you finish, and then let me know.”
My hands go to his shoulders and tangle in the length of his hair. The All-Star break is still weeks away, so it will only get longer. I lift my chin and his slightly parted lips move in, landing on the exact spot where my throat meets my collar—that place where my pulse is leaping—and prompting a dart of hot desire in my center.
“Wait, what? What am I doing?”
My brain is scrambling, what with his neck nibbling and his thumbs rubbing circles at the juncture of my thighs. The thin fabric of my cover up only helps to increase the friction—and my need.
“Babe, you’re going to hold on tight until your knees give out.”
Max’s lips leave my throat and travel down my chest to the valley between my breasts, where they pause to suck and nibble, and it’s a really good thing I’mholding on tight.
My hands, which clutch at his shoulders, lower to his waist because I want to feel him, too, and my hands dive under his faded Terrors tee, eager to explore the acres of rigid muscle in his back and torso. I let out a moan of anticipation. This tour—thisday—is now so much better.
I’m still fully clothed—well, wearing my swimsuit and a barely-there dress over it—but it’s been so long since any man has been this close, taken this much interest, made me feel this good. I throw my head back against the solid surface of the door with athunkand focus on the tremendous pleasure this man is raining upon my body. My heart races—thunders—as his attention moves from my chest up to my mouth, and I join him there, frantically fusing our lips together. Sucking, and rubbing, and gnashing, and stealing each other’s breath.
Max is grinding his demanding cock against my core andmy God, that’s an impressive piece of anatomy. My need is coiled, ready, desperate to rip off his clothes and then mine with no more sense than a horny teenager, and?—
Panting and desperate for breath, I shove Max from me.
“What are we doing?” I practically shout the words, then slap my hand over my mouth.
Max releases me and takes a step back, his eyes glazed, and I immediately notice two things. One, the door he shoved me through—that I fell through willingly—leads to what is obviously his bedroom, and two, his cock is rock hard behind the thin fabric of his board shorts. I turn my back to him, the hammering of my heart a tempest of stress and anxiety, combined with a whirlwind of hormonal impulses.
What have I done?
The synthetic fabric of his shorts makes a swishing sound as he approaches, then comes close enough to wrap me from behind in his long-armed embrace.
“I’m sorry. I got carried away. You just . . .”
