The Baseball Player Next Door

Inning 24 ★ Have Your Cake and Eat it Too

"Then, don't."

The words remained between us until our tears dried. Our eyes found each other.

He swallowed hard. "I don't want to make you choose."

I gave him a smile. "I'm not choosing. It's not fair." He frowned a little, not quite getting it. "Fuck the world and its rules. I'm getting my cake and eating it to."

And I did. I grabbed my cake by his cheeks and brought his lips to mine. I was hungry for it, and I ate my cake like someone was trying to steal it, with big bites that had my tongue stroking his with abandon. With small bites to savor his lips. With handfuls of his hair between my fingers, gasping for air as I I felt the cake start to bite back. He stroked my bottom lip between his in a way that traveled all the way down between my legs and made my head roll back. He took advantage of that to place open mouthed kisses on my neck, sweet little bites here and there that drove me wild with the need to do the same to him. But everywhere.

"Shit," he cursed suddenly. I opened my eyes and tried to clear the haze that had possessed me. He was looking at my neck with pity. "That's a hickey forming right there."

I groaned and touched the tender area he was looking at, right below my left ear where there was no hiding it. I might have to let my hair down for the rest of the trip and the next few days. It gave me a thrill to think about it.

His deep set, green eyes pinned me with a mischievous look I hadn't seen often. It almost made me afraid.

"I can fix this," he said, grabbing my right arm and bringing it up to his lips. He kissed my open palm and then just the middle of my underarm. Without breaking eye contact, he licked the skin and closed his lips around it, sucking hard. What I felt right then couldn't be described with pretty words. It was primal, attacking all my senses and wrapping me only in the desire for him. I had fallen so hard and fast that the free falling made me feel like I was floating instead. When he was done he said, "There, now you can tell everybody that you were bitten by nasty mosquitoes."

He had to help me stand up after that because my knees were so weak. I hated his shit-eating grin, but I could feel a copy of it blooming on my face. We walked with our hands held to the cabins, where we let go.

I snorted. "So I guess we're going with my original plan of keeping this a secret, then?"

He sighed, as if this were a chore. "I hate it when you have the better idea."

I played left field for the last two innings. I didn't get to do much, except catch a pop fly for an out, but that was okay. My head was dancing with all sorts of crazy ideas that I struggled to shake off. I was coming up with baby names for our kids and we hadn't even practiced making them yet.

Heh-Sooz. I officially would never judge boy crazy girls again. This was some heady type of drug.

The next day I felt like shit because between my dad's snoring and the butterflies in my stomach I hadn't managed to sleep much. As predicted my entire face graduated from shrimp pink to red lobster. I put on some heavy duty Nivea cream all over, hoping it would soothe the irritation. Ellen was going to kill me when she saw me, either by me ruining my face further or when I told her the news.

Dad hissed once he took a glance at me after waking up.

I motioned at my face. "Thanks for passing along the ginger curse, dad."

"Just make sure today you really cake on the sunblock."

I saluted at him. We went out to meet the guys. This time everybody was contributing to making ham sandwiches and chopping fruit for breakfast. I hated that the first person who saw me was McCann and he just smirked at me. Maybe he kept it just at that because I flipped him the bird before he could open his yap. Chris, sweetheart that he was, just ignored it and addressed me as a normal person would. I sat with him because I was hoping Santiago would join us. Anthony did instead, he took one look at me and just gaped.