Catching Hell: A Hot Contemporary Romance (11 page)

She reached for the condom on the nightstand and ripped open the foil before he could identify the sound. She slipped out the circle of rubber and rolled it between her fingers as she turned back to him. He groaned as she smoothed it down his full length.

The instant he was covered, she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, hard and deep. His mouth was stiff for a moment, but she was insistent, refusing to accept his answer. She felt the moment he gave way, the instant they were perfectly balanced between desires.
 

And then he was drinking from her, grasping her like a man dying of thirst. His hands closed over her hips, guiding her, supporting her. She straddled him, never breaking the lock of their lips. She paused above him, feeling his warmth, feeling his need, and then his hips rose to meet hers.

She gasped as he filled her, as her body folded around the entire length of him. He shuddered too, deeply, completely. Her first motion was tentative; she didn’t want to lose their connection, didn’t want to ever let him get away. But he matched her movement, surpassed it with his own, and then they had their rhythm, knew their bodies.

She wanted to slow down, wanted to draw out the bond, bring him to the edge and gradually take him down, only to build again and again. But he had no patience left—if he’d ever had any at all. When she eased away, teasing, his fingers tightened on her hips. When she spread her palms across his chest, he pulled her even closer.

And so she gave him what he wanted. She rode him with a passion, with a concentration that spiraled in, tightening and focusing until there was only the connection between them, only the single bond that clutched tighter and tighter, and one last time tighter before it exploded with the force of a new star flaring.

“Anna,” he cried as he came, and then he whispered her name over and over and over again until it vibrated through her body as she lay across his chest.

When it was over, when they had shivered and shuddered and laughed in the soft glowing aftermath, he was the one who pulled the sheet over her shoulder. The sheet and the blanket, and the coverlet, too, which he somehow snagged from the floor. As she curled beside him, spooning up to his slowing, steadying heartbeat, he settled an arm across her waist. The last thing she felt before she fell asleep was the spread of his fingers across her belly, warm and smooth and even and calm.

* * *

Bacon. And coffee.
 

And the rustle of a newspaper, the pages being turned with not quite enough stealth.

Anna took the sheets with her as she rolled over in bed, forcing her eyes open against the glare of morning sunlight. Zach had cleared space at the kitchen table for a pair of Styrofoam containers and a tall clear cup that glinted with ice cubes and Coke. He took a sip from his own drink as he wrestled the Sports section into submission.

“Tell me there are eggs over there, along with the bacon,” she groaned.

“And toast, too. Sourdough and rye. I didn’t know which you’d want.”
 

He looked awfully chipper for a man who’d been awake half the night. More than half the night, she thought, as she stretched her legs, feeling the pull of long-unused muscles in her thighs.

He also looked like a man who was settled in for a casual Sunday morning at home. His T-shirt and jeans were well-worn; his hair was a shade darker than usual, still damp from an obvious shower.
 

“I can’t believe I slept
that
soundly,” she said, reaching for her robe, which he must have folded neatly at the foot of the bed. The silk was cool against her skin, and she shivered as she pulled it close around her. When she looked up at Zach, she could see that he was also thinking about her sash, about the bond that had brought them together the night before.

“I went down to my own place,” he said, offering her the soda as she padded over to the table. “You’ve really got to talk to your grandfather about giving you a raise. Judging from your kitchen cabinets, you’re living on ramen.”

“Saltines, too,” she said with a smile. “And I think there’s a can of tuna somewhere.”

He rolled his eyes. “I have more food downstairs, and I spend about one night a month there.”

“At least there’s always Club Joe,” she said, opening up the foam container. “Thank you.” She made short work of dividing the toast, parceling out the packets of jelly as well. She waited until Zach was spreading raspberry preserves over his sourdough before she snatched the Sports section from him.

Skimming past the headlines, she turned to the box scores. The entire previous day was spread out before her, every game captured in meticulous code. In a flash, she could see who had won, who had lost. Which individual players had scored big. Tyler Brock’s numbers stood out like they were printed in fluorescent ink—a grand slam, bringing Texas a win.

She looked up to find Zach watching her. There was no reason to pretend she hadn’t been focused on the phenom. Zach wouldn’t believe her if she lied. “He had a good night,” she said.

“I could say the same thing about myself.”

She was surprised by the energy that teasing comment jolted through her, as powerful as an electric shock. Zach wasn’t playing games. This wasn’t like any morning she’d ever woken up next to a guy—some college kid moaning about an upset displaced roommate or a paper he had to write.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“For me? I eat my breakfast, read the rest of the paper, stay as long as you’ll have me, then head out to the farm. My suspension lasts another three days, so I won’t catch up with the team till they’re in Pittsburgh.”

He made it sound so easy. So
normal
. And he hadn’t begun to answer the question she had really asked. “Zach,” she said, her voice low.

He met her eyes squarely. “I told you this was a bad idea. And Sunday morning is the reason why. Sunday, and Monday, and every other day you walk into your office, sit down at a table with Small, and figure out what you have to do to run your baseball team.”

“I don’t want it to be like that.”

“You don’t always get to call the shots.”
 

There was a lifetime of learning behind the words. Once again, she was struck by how different this morning after was from any she’d experienced before. Zach wasn’t a boy, drunk on sex and fun and a temporary, meaningless bond. He was a man. A grown man who’d already made thousands of adult decisions. And he’d make thousands more in his lifetime—starting with holding on to his no-trade clause.

He sighed and put his coffee cup on the table. “Come here,” he said.

She moved around the table. She let him settle his hands on her hips, shift her to sit on his lap. He smoothed her hair off her face, gathering the long strands and twisting them into a loose knot at the back of her neck.

“We’re two separate people,” he said. “With two sets of needs. I’m not asking you to change who you are, to do anything different than whatever you were going to do yesterday morning. But I’m not going to give in to you either. I can’t.”

“I wouldn’t want you to.” And that was the truth. A Zach Ormond who would concede to her just because they’d slept together wasn’t the Zach Ormond she’d dreamed about for the past fifteen years. He wasn’t the leader the Rockets had come to depend on. He wasn’t the man she knew.

Besides, if he gave in, he’d be giving her permission to send him away, to banish him to Texas. She’d lose him in a heartbeat, watch him instantly become just another man on another team her Rockets had to beat.
 

She’d be better off drawing things out. Negotiating contract clauses with him here in Raleigh.

It was a mess. A knot that she had no idea how to untangle.

But as she shifted on his lap, she became aware of one thing. Zach’s body was responding to her, even if his mind was grappling with the truth. There. She felt him twitch again, and she couldn’t miss the sharp intake of his breath.

He started to shake his head, but she stopped him, catching her fingers in his curls. His lips were warm when she leaned down to kiss him, and she tasted coffee and cream and raspberry jam.
 

She wasn’t sure which of them stood first. And she wasn’t certain who led the way over to the bed. She wasn’t clear on who opened the nightstand, fumbling for a condom. Not one of those details mattered as Zach set about proving that the night before had not been some bizarre, unexpected, utterly mistaken fluke.

Anna glanced at her phone as Gregory Small slid into his seat at the conference table. “You’re late,” she said flatly.

He looked surprised. “I was on the phone with Texas,” he said.

Of course he was on the phone with Texas. It was his
job
to be on the phone with Texas. “And?” Anna prompted.

Small looked around the table, including the other meeting attendees in his answer. “It’s getting more complicated. St. Louis wants the kid, too.”

She wasn’t surprised. Any idiot could look at team standings and rosters and see that St. Louis would want Tyler Brock’s bat. Give it another week, and LA would be in the hunt, too.
 

She settled back in her leather chair, listening to the men start their dissection of the situation. Her fingers flew across the pad of her laptop, automatically taking notes even as her mind wandered.
 

She’d nearly been late to the meeting herself. That was the cost of lingering over a blueberry cornbread muffin at Club Joe, watching Zach drink a second cup of coffee. In the end, they’d spent all of Sunday in her apartment. They’d microwaved the remnants of breakfast after letting themselves get distracted in her bed, and then they’d settled down to watch the Rockets’ afternoon game. Together.

She’d been surprised by how different it felt to watch the coverage with a player by her side. She was used to viewing games in the owner’s suite, to the constant stream of comments from Small, from Gramps, from the wide variety of guests.

But watching the game with Zach was a revelation. Sure, he commented on how a batter was going to take a pitch, how an outfielder was going to play close to the line on a particular at-bat. But Zach’s commentary went further than that. He watched the game like a chess master, predicting actions two, three, sometimes four times down the line.

Over and over again, he called plays—a tricky hit-and-run in the bottom of the fourth, a stolen base in the sixth. He watched with a quiet intensity, a focused joy that reminded her of nothing more than his passion in bed. He gave himself over to the game entirely, without concern for how he looked when he cheered a particularly good play, for how he sounded when he cursed a boneheaded attempt to stretch a double into a triple.

Quite simply, the man
lived
the game.

Zach groaned in disappointment when the Rockets gave up the winning run in the bottom of the ninth. His hands clenched between his knees, as if he longed to be in the dugout, commiserating with his teammates, heading back to the clubhouse and the airport and the journey to the next city on the out-of-town stretch.

They’d ordered in Chinese and reviewed the game, taking nearly as long to discuss what had happened as the actual play had taken. And, inevitably, they’d ended up back in bed.

“Don’t you agree, Anna?”

She shook her head, looking up from her computer screen as if something had captivated her among those pixels. Something businesslike and professional and utterly appropriate for public consumption. “I’m sorry, Gregory. Agree with what?”

Small pursed his lips, conveying an entire lecture on dissatisfaction. “It’s time to turn up the heat on Ormond.”

Anna was carefully neutral. “We have to do something.”

Small slapped a stack of papers onto the table. “I say we start with this. Bills from his nutritionist for the past quarter.”

Nutritionist. That person would probably disapprove of a dinner of pork fried rice. And crispy sesame chicken. And sodium-laden wonton soup. All washed down with a couple of beers, depleting the supply in her fridge. But surely Zach could redeem himself by cataloging all the physical exercise he’d gotten, before and after the meal…

Before Anna could fashion a reply that was suitable for the boardroom, one of the scouts shook his head. “We’ve always let the guys choose their own nutritionists. Just like their doctors.”

Small produced another pile of papers. “Exactly. But they’ve all signed contracts. We’ve got it here in black and white. They acknowledge we have no obligation to pay any medical specialist outside the experts specifically hired by the team. We’ve processed everyone’s payments so far, as a courtesy. As a perk. But we’re not required to continue doing so, and I strongly advise that we put our foot down now.”

Anna’s belly turned over slowly, and she wished she’d held off on that last can of soda. “For everyone, you mean. For all our players.”

Small shook his head. “For Ormond. If anyone else becomes a troublemaker, we’ll add him to the list. But there’s nothing that says we have to give special treatment to everyone.”

The scout growled, “Just everyone except the one guy you’ve targeted.”

Small’s voice was perfectly level. “I’m doing this for the team. We all agree that we need to replace Cody Tucker’s bat. We’ve asked Zach nicely. It’s time to raise the temperature a little.”

The scout shook his head. “All I’m saying is, this isn’t the Rockets’ way of doing things. Ask Mr. Benson, before you single out his most loyal player.”

Anna would love to pass the buck to her grandfather. She’d be thrilled to know that she wasn’t responsible, that this decision was out of her hands.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Gramps’ doctors had specifically told him he needed
less
stress in his life. He’d been grooming her for years to make decisions like this—that was why he’d invested in four years of tuition at the University of Michigan. That was why he’d given her the title of Special Assistant to the Principal Managing Owner.

She cleared her throat and was immediately the focus of every person sitting at the table. “There’s no need to bring my grandfather into this. I’m authorized to speak for him.”