Page 73 of Pitcher Perfect
He remained still as a statue for long moments, before the breath came whooshing out of him, his big body falling forward, hands planting on his knees. “Holy shit. I was only giving myself ten to one odds.” It took him some time to straighten andslow his breathing down and all Skylar could do was watch in fascination. This reaction... it was all for her? “What about him?” Robbie’s voice had dropped way down in pitch, his eyelids hooded as he observed Skylar closely, seeming to hold his breath again. “You still got feelings for him?”
“I don’t know,” she said, truthfully. And hey, “I don’t know” was a huge downgrade from a couple of weeks ago when she would have willingly thrown herself in front of a train for Madden. She’d just never expected the train to have unruly red hair and an appetite that rivaled the passengers of a medium-sized cruise ship.
The fact that her feelings had been massively—and troublingly—downgraded didn’t seem to satisfy Robbie in the slightest, however. In fact, his jealous expression as he backed her up against the kitchen counter made her shiver, her neck losing any semblance of strength, head falling back when he spoke against her ear. “Give me ten minutes in the dark with your panties off and you’ll know. I’ll get you over him underneath me.”
Several brain cells fried themselves like eggs on a skillet.
“It’s, um...” She twisted her hands in the sides of his shirt, struggling to form coherent thoughts when he was raking his open mouth up and back in the slope of her neck.Feels so good.“It’s Wednesday. Main Event parenthesis Maybe isn’t until tomorrow.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“Today is BJ Workshop day.”
He hooked an arm under her knee and drew it up to his hip, higher, higher, only allowing her center to graze his erection, light encounters until she gasped, trying to get closer. To rub on him. “Oh, believe me, I know that, too.” He made an almost humorously desperate sound into her neck. “God in heaven, please just get mealonewith this girl.”
The lines were quickly blurring here.
What had started off as lessons to help her be more confident with men was turning into... something else. A guideline for giving pleasure to each other. But where would all this leave her when Robbie inevitably came to his senses?
“Can we just keep them... lessons for now? Can they stay what they always were?”
His mouth paused on her neck and this time, she visibly injured something inside of him, which was not her intention. She simply didn’t know how else to protect herself. Keep this gorgeous sought-after hockey god interested indefinitely when she’d never been able to retain interest from men in the past? In what world?
Protect yourself. That’s all you’re doing.
“Yeah. Lessons,” Robbie said, voice like gravel, reluctantly disengaging from her as the air horn went off outside. “Whatever you need to tell yourself until you’re ready to think of me as more than a player.”
Skylar wanted badly to correct him. Tell him that’s not how she thought of him.
Truthfully, though... she did. She had for their entire acquaintance. It was something she’d just accepted, classifying her jealousy as silly and useless.
Was it even possible to change her perception of him now?
But if he could make her heart race just by walking through the door, didn’t she owe it to herself to... try?
Chapter Twenty-One
The only thing making Robbie feel better as he, Elton, and Doug stood at the edge of the lake, preparing to swim to the opposite shore, was heeasilylooked the best shirtless. His standout physique was little consolation, however, because Madden and Skylar were standing shoulder to shoulder on the other side of the lake and Skylar was in a bathing suit. A black one-piece Speedo, obviously. That was so her.
No nonsense.
Buy the most aerodynamic swimsuit on the market.
No bells and whistles.
Somehow, she managed to make it hotter than a string bikini.
The one silver lining here was that he had an incentive to swim as fast as humanly possible to get to the other side of the lake and break up Skylar and Madden’s little huddle, preferably before she remembered all the reasons she was in love with Madden. Maybe Robbie should be grateful that Skylar had answeredI don’t knowwhen asked if she still had feelings for the catcher, but guess what? He wasn’t.
Robbie needed the answer to be a hard no, like, yesterday. Last year, even.
As soon as he’d made the conscious decision to fight for her, all the possessiveness and hunger and admiration and fear he’d been keeping contained broke free. Now he was a teeming tangle of issues, all of which revolved around her, yet she was also thefucking antidote? Love was a bitch, man. It didn’t even make sense.
If there is anyone else in the world who’d work harder to make her happy.As long asthe answer to that is no, you’re the right man.
The answer to that question was even more solid this morning after witnessing Skylar’s reaction to the Boston University shirts. She’d needed those symbols of support. He’d noticed that and acted on it. Maybe he’d only done one small thing so far, but it counted, right? She’d tucked her face into his neck afterward. He could still feel it there.
“You boys ready to lose?” Doug said, dropping into a runner’s stance, preparing to sprint toward the water. “I was the captain of the swim team my senior year.” His tone sounded... forced? “I swim this lake every morning in the summertime.”
