Page 29 of Honey Undone (The Hornets Nest #5)

“I’m going to need the tanned, strictly sunshine baseball player to stop making assumptions. I love the rain,” I said to him. “I do not like being out of the loop.”

“Is that all it is?” He asked, taking my hand and leading me toward the house. The implications of his question were clear. Why were you sad?

“That’s all.” I gave his hand a squeeze, trying to convince him and myself that it wasn’t the time or the place to have the ‘I might not be here in six months’ conversation with him.

“I can fix that problem,” he said.

The worst part was, he could probably fix it but I was too much of a chicken to talk to him about it.

I surrendered to his gentle tugs and curled myself against his side as we wandered through the house.

We walked by all the empty rooms to the wide open back door and ventured into the rain after a brief thirty-second pause from the downpour.

“What the hell is that?” I asked him.

“A slip and slide,” he said, his lips crooked and showing off a portion of his brilliant, sharp smile. “Come,” he hopped down off the step and held his hands up to me, grabbing my waist and pulling me down before I had time to register what the hell was happening.

Several members of the Hornets baseball team were spread out across the lawn in dirty clothes, and half naked, covered in grass and mud. I watched in amazed horror as Van Mitchell the outfielder tossed his massive, muscled and very naked, very muddy torso down the hill with reckless abandon.

“What?” I laughed and inched forward to watch, from the angle we were at I couldn't see over the hill but I knew it was steep.

We climbed it just the other night. As I got closer it was obvious that they had been doing this for years.

Down the backside of the hill, carved into what was a beautiful patch of grass was a dirty path that had turned into a mud pit from the rain.

It was a thick, slippery slope that they were sliding down.

“Oh my god,” I said as Kaia tore off her pump cover, her muscles were still tense from our workout, her back flexing as she spoke to the first baseman with a smile on her face.

He was telling her how to do it without getting hurt, but I still flinched as she took the thin plastic sled from him and launched herself down the hill.

Her screams of laughter filled the air as everyone cheered for her.

Jensen tugged off his shirt with one hand, and between the rain and the gym pump I nearly moaned.

Every muscle on his body was tight and overworked, the tattoos stretching over his tanned skin.

Combined, it made me clench my thighs together.

He was turning me into an animal. He looked over at me and lifted my chin with the crook of his finger, “eyes up here, Belle.”

“I’m having withdrawals,” I grumbled and grabbed his wrist before he could pull away.

That made him laugh, his chest rumbling as he brought me closer, “ later ,” rolled off his lips as he leaned down and his lips met mine gently, the rain making the kiss slick .

“Tease,” I said as he pulled away, his fingers finding my wrist and backed toward the edge of the hill.

“I’ll just watch for now,” I said to him, between the rain, the mud and the sharp slope… Everything about the slip and slide they all loved so much looked like a surefire way to get hurt before my season even started.

“No.” Jensen shook his head.

“No?” I said as he tugged me toward his chest, his hand snaking up under my t-shirt to fan over my stomach. Cheater.

“You talk such a big game about how much tougher you are than me, you’re going down that hill,” he said as his hand roamed, his fingers brushing the edge of my gym shorts.

“That death trap doesn’t prove how tough I am,” I said to him with a grin on my face, hiding the fact that my stomach was churning over, needy like an idiot for his hand to trail lower.

“Fine,” he said, and pulled his hand away. “You don’t wanna have fun, I can take you home,” he said, and he was dead serious.

“Good, we can have more fun in private anyways,” I said, pulling on his arm.

“Oh no, Adeline.” He looked me over, mischievous and two steps ahead of me. “I’ll drop you off at home. I won’t be staying… no fun means no fun.”

“That’s not fair,” I said, trying to control the whine in my voice. It would give him way too much power in the situation. “You can’t leverage sex to get me to do something dangerous,” I grunted, narrowing my eyes on him as the rain dripped down my face.

“I can’t?” Jensen’s lips curled to the side and he closed one eye, his face scrunching up to keep the water out of his eyes. “Isn’t that exactly what I’m doing?”

“I’m not going down that hill, Jensen!” I yelled out to him as he got further away from me.

He shrugged his broad, toned shoulders at me, the ink rippling across his chest, “have it your way but I’m cutting you off, having only one thing on your mind is making you cranky. ”

Kaia appeared from the bottom of the hill, out of breath and soaked in mud from head to toe. “You gonna let him talk to you like that?” She hollered over the sound of thunder.

“Don’t be a chicken, Minty,” Rhea called out to me.

It cracked through the air and I knew that I didn’t have a choice.

“What are you going to do, Adeline?” Jensen said as I walked toward him on mission, I didn’t bother removing my shirt before I lowered my center of gravity, wrapping my arms around his core and shoving him backwards.

“Hey!” He called out, unprepared for the tackle as we both hit the ground at the edge of the hill.

“I’m not a coward and I’m not cranky,” I huffed, breathless from the excretion.

I was strong but Jensen was pure muscle from head to toe, he barely grunted hitting the ground.

He laughed wildly, as everyone stood around cheering us on as he rolled me through mud.

The wrestling match was short-lived between the rain and slippery terrain, we lost our grip on the edge and went tumbling down the hill.

His arms wrapped around me as we picked up speed, my laughter a combination of screams and tiny yelps that turned quiet as we slid to a lazy stop in the mud.

“Are you okay?” Jensen huffed, running a hand through his mud-drenched hair.

His soft eyes traced over me quickly, “I didn’t hurt you?

” He sounded panicked for a moment as I adjusted in the mud, my hand slipping out from under me and splashing around us as I started to laugh.

“Adeline!” Jensen's voice was tense when I didn’t answer.

“Can we do it again?” I asked.

Jensen’s concern dissipated as his lips curled outward and showed me the brightest smile I’d ever seen from him.

“You’re crazy,” he grumbled, pulling me up from the puddle and wrapping his dirty hands around my jaw.

His lips tasted like dirt and grass but I leaned into the kiss he provided and let the world go fuzzy.