Page 12

BAZZI

B eing sober and this close to Cadence Andrews, for an extended period of time, was going to end up with one, or both of us, being embarrassed on account of me. Ever since last night, my brain had been chanting Cady’s name constantly. As if my heart was beating to the cadence of her literal name.

Something happened on that dance floor.

Something… changed between us.

Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe I’d just become more aware of something that had been bugging me at the back of my mind ever since I arrived here. Now that we were face to face, with no one to distract us, I felt that whatever this was, could slide into dangerous territory real quick.

I was legitimately terrified.

Never before had I felt something like this with someone. Not with any of my past girlfriends, not even with Vanessa. She was the one I thought I was ready to spend the rest of my life with. With Cady before me, it sent my heart into overdrive. A coworker was the last person on the planet I thought I’d ever feel this way about. Hell, she wasn’t just a coworker. She was a coach. My coach .

Part of me didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be home, in my condo, trying to focus on not fucking up the game tomorrow. I didn’t want to be at this one-on-one practice. All the guys just had to butt in with the suggestion after seeing Cady and I dance together.

Which only worried me even more.

I mean, I felt something, but I didn’t think it was obvious to anyone else. I didn’t know any of this chemistry stuff. Or what any of it meant. I was afraid to touch her. Because if I got that close again, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from completing that kiss we missed out on.

Instead, I put my walls up and was a total stiff dick to Cady. I couldn’t very well go and ask her out on a date when I was pretty sure that she barely tolerated me as a person. But fuck, I really wanted to. This was all going on inside my head while she was just trying, with one last ditch effort, to help me dance.

Now she was fuming. I had no idea how to act around her now. So instead, I hid. Hid behind a stern face and a forced reluctance to touch her.

I ran from her after our blowout on the field. I didn’t want her to be pissed. I wanted, with every fiber of my being, to dance with her like we had last night. But we already had one close call with a kiss while the woman was inebriated. Even if she claimed it was only a little, I didn’t want to take advantage of her in a moment of weakness and have her regret it the next day. I didn’t want to risk her career, or mine, with temptation.

My heart thudded in my throat as I ran down the steps from the dugout into the locker room. I needed to get out of here. The woman was out for blood, and I was the sole person on her murderous rampage radar.

Aggressive steps followed me and echoed endlessly off the metal lockers.

Shit.

I was cornered.

“You know what? I’m really fucking sick of your shit. So is everyone else. You think you’re all high and mighty because you play for the majors. Now that you’re back from the IL and barely batting over .200! Your reflexes are rusty! Every guy on this team is better than you.”

Cady’s sharp words hit me like a brick wall. Here I thought she was all dance moves and attitude, but I underestimated her knowledge of baseball. I did my best to ignore her truths as I whipped off my ball cap and threw it into the depths of my locker station.

Electricity was palpable in the air. My brain was a blur of emotion. I was pissed I had to be here. I was annoyed that Cady wouldn’t give me five seconds alone to collect my thoughts and figure out what happened last night and with practice today. I was crushed that she then had to go and admit to me all my faults this season in one breath.

Because she was right. She was right . I hated to admit that every single thing she said was true. It didn’t make me any less pissed.

“You really need to get your head out of that very fine ass of yours and back in the game. A routine surgery shouldn’t be holding you back like this. Especially since you had it before. Look, I get that you’re used to major league ball but, playing for the Sillys is where you’re at right now.” I tried my best not to flinch. But goddammit those words stung .

“So why can’t you just do your job? You’re here. Now. At the Sillys’ ballpark. All you have to do is listen to me and follow… simple directions. Why do you have to be such a fucking stick in the mud all the goddamn time?!”

The normally cold but docile Cady was suddenly unrelenting. I didn’t know there was this much passion and fire in someone so petite. The words she spat in my direction were nothing but ice and fire. It wasn’t just…

Wait.

Did she compliment my ass?

I’d been ready to charge right back at her but now I was thrown off course.

Godfuckingdammit.

Why the hell did my brain have to hyperfocus on that one line of her tirade? They were words that I never thought would leave her mouth but actually did . Cady might, just might, be attracted to me? It was the opening I’d been waiting for with bated breath, but I’d been too much of a coward to admit it.

I’d never been in this sort of situation before. What do I do? Do I fight back? Do I laugh it off? Do I ignore it completely? Why were women so goddamn confusing?

It wasn’t until that very moment that I suddenly realized why all this animosity had been going on between us. Of why I bristled every time she got near to my body. Why I could barely string a few words together around her. Why almost every waking moment of my life over the past few weeks was spent thinking about Cady.

I really wanted to kiss her .

The need to kiss her was putting my tumultuous feelings mildly .

I chanced a glance at her off to my right. Had this been a cartoon, there would have been smoke coming from her ears. With her hands on her hips, she looked seconds away from charging me like a damn bull. There was something in her eyes. Something aside from her anger glittered there in the stormy depths. Was it…concern?

“You’d better be fucking listening to me Jamie Rheem–”

Before I could realize what I was doing, my body moved of its own accord. It was on autopilot and Cady’s curves were the target. It only took two strides to confront her. The resolve in her squared shoulders melted as her hands fell from her hips in surprise. She wasn’t fond of having a taste of her own confrontational medicine.

For a moment it was an out-of-body experience as I found myself nose to nose with the woman. Well, I had to tilt my chin down to do so. I caught the whites of her eyes as my hands reached out to grip her hips and simultaneously closed the gap between us. It was almost as if the bowstring pulling us apart was suddenly loosed, sending, me the arrow, straight to the captivating target that was Cadence fucking Andrews.

My brain sat back in utter shock for a moment before it stood up and slow-clapped my body for finally doing what it wanted to do. I was a puppet and had some kinky motherfucker pulling the strings. I wasn’t in control of my body anymore. Or…was I?

I pushed her ass firmly against the equipment lockers behind her. They clattered as our bodies made contact. In one smooth motion, I hefted my hands around her thighs and slid her petite body up the wall so that we were eye-to-eye. Not breaking our stare down, I reinforced her position by cradling my hands along the dangerous underside of her thighs.

A soft squeak left her mouth, curling her lips into an enticing O. Her hands shot out to grip my shoulders. From the look on her face, it seemed as if she couldn’t decide whether to shove me off of her or embrace it. But the moment she made her choice; my entire body knew.

Her gaze met mine for only a single thudding heartbeat before there was a desperate mutual effort to bond our bodies together. This woman was a mouthful of petite sunshine and fire at any given time. Whatever she was lacking in height she made up for in attitude.

I couldn’t get enough of her.

Even when she annoyed me to no end and made my blood boil by bossing me around in this weird excuse for baseball. Now that I finally had her right where my body wanted her, I couldn’t help but think about all the ways she had made mine flush with awareness and need.

With our bodies pressed so intimately together, it only exacerbated the fact that I’d been in utter fucking denial about how badly I wanted this woman. Between her devotion to baseball and love for her team, she was literally someone who could have walked straight out of my dreams and into my arms.

Every part of my body was screaming to kiss her. Fuck I wanted to. Needed to. Despite her astonished look, there was something there in the deepest depths of her stormy blue eyes that was begging for it .

My eyes drifted down to her parted lips. There was a subtle quiver there, enticing me. I could see the flicker of her quick pulse along the column of her throat and my mouth started to water. Was she excited? Nervous? Terrified? I was a little of all of the above myself. It felt as if time wandered on for a century as we stared at each other, wide-eyed and panting.

With one mutual inhale, our mouths collided, hard and hot. I wanted to moan from the sheer relief and utter satisfaction of it all. It was as if I’d been a starving man, in my last moments of life, and given the Holy Grail to drink from. I wasn’t going to let a drop of Cadence Andrews go to waste.

As soon as our lips made contact, all of my hesitations and doubts dissipated in an instant. The humming chaos of the world was gone. All that was left was me and Cady. Something about that, about this, just felt so…so right .

My hips kept her body pinned to the wall, hands-free. I needed to touch her. To feel the heat of her body beneath my fingertips. To trace those treacherous curves that haunted my dreams and commit them to memory.

My breath caught as I felt her answer me in kind. Her fingers threaded through my hair, pulling me closer. Oh, fuck yes . The feelings, whatever feelings they were, were reciprocated. With that thought, our mouths slanted, mutually devouring one another as our bodies pressed together in a vain effort to be closer than was physically possible.

Her little breathy noises of want slipped into my hungry mouth. That alone had my dick ready to drill a hole straight through her and into the wall of lockers. Fuck. I’d been trying so hard to tell my cock to keep its cool, but now it was utterly impossible. My damn body betrayed me all thanks to the hobbit-like spitfire writhing with pleasure in my arms.

It especially betrayed me when she arched her body and rocked her mind-boggling hips into my aching cock. There was no doubt she felt it. With a moan, her hips thrust into my dick again. I could feel the heat of her cunt through her skinny jeans.

It's not like I could tuck that sucker away like a damn magic trick. It was trying to do its brainless best to poke a hole straight through my pants and find its way deep inside her.

If it wasn’t her body that had me in a chokehold, it was her damn mouth. She tasted exactly how she acted, like honey on a spring day with a kick of spice. It was just the thing to melt through my icy demeanor. The Kryptonite to my steely resolve. The one thing about me that I was so sure would never find an antidote to. And yet it showed up in a five-foot-tall bundle of chaos at what I thought, was the lowest point of my life.

The desperate way her hips were grinding into mine wasn’t going to end well for me. I couldn’t recall a time that my cock had ever inflated as fast as it did when our lips met. My blood rushed south so hard and fast that I was feeling delightfully lightheaded.

Fuck. I was close. Embarrassingly close to blowing my entire load in my pants. Between her excited kisses and her hips emulating sex every damn second, there was no hope for me if I didn’t put a stop to it .

My hands moved from their position of cradling her jaw down to her hips to stop them from her unknowingly getting me off. But I severely underestimated her core strength from years of dance. If anything, my hands on her hips spurred her on more to the point that she let out a needy little moan, picked up her pace, and it was all fucking over for me.

I choked on my own moan as my hips bucked from the force of my ejaculation. My brain shorted out to nothingness as my balls unloaded the masses directly into my boxer briefs. With a final violent shutter, I broke our kiss and pressed my forehead against hers, trying to catch my breath. With every fiber of my being, I hoped that she had no clue what had just happened south of the border.

It took a bit, but my tunnel vision finally subsided. It was then that I realized where the hell we were. As much as I wanted to continue this hot interlude and consume every square inch of her, the stank of the locker room reminded me that this was the last place we should ever kiss.

Nor should it have been the place for me to jizz my damn pants.

“Holy fuck that did not just happen.” Cady panted out as I caught her wide-eyed stare. My heart stopped that very second, utterly terrified that she knew that I messed my pants. With one sentence, she broke the spell that I was having a very difficult time waking up from. Or it could have been the fact that I was still trying to recover from a hell of an unexpected orgasm.

My eyes drifted back to her swollen lips as I licked her residual sweetness off mine. Which only drew her vibrant blue eyes back to my mouth and everything we’d been doing for the last few minutes.

“I’m…sorry…?” I still wasn’t exactly sure if her exclamation was a good one or a bad one. She still looked dazed out of her mind and her breathing was rough. Maybe she got something out of that too?

“No, no. Don’t be.” She managed to blink as her taut body relaxed in my arms. Her pointer finger absentmindedly twirled around a lock of hair at the base of my neck. “I’ve only been dreaming of what it would be like to kiss you since-” Those beautiful blue eyes of hers went as wide as home plate as her entire body froze. She quickly avoided my gaze. I kept my disappointment at bay as her hands shot away from my body and flat against the lockers behind her. “Oh, my dear god I did not just say that. I did not just say that to Jamie fucking Rheems.”

My brows went sky-high as my eyes darted across her face to decipher what underlying meaning her words had. This woman, who had been the bane of my existence since I met her, had fantasized about kissing me? I was so sure she hated my guts. I needed to get to the bottom of this while I still had her bottom in my hands.

“Since…?” I tried to channel as much of my nonexistent sexy swagger as I could muster. We were so close to greatness here and I didn’t want to fuck it up.

“Pretend I didn’t say anything.” Cady continued to avoid looking me in the eye as she attempted to wriggle from my grasp. But there was no way I was going to let her loose until she admitted whatever she had haphazardly alluded to .

My hands flexed along the back of her thigh and the roundness of her ass to remind her exactly where she was. The breathy little noise of surprise only added an arch of my hips to the mix, effectively repining her to the wall.

“I believe that’s a bit hard to do at the moment…” I gritted out. Because it was the inconvenient truth. How the hell was I still hard? Even after all that? The cum in my pants didn’t exactly make this conversation easy. It was difficult for me to ignore what was going on between us when my hips were the only reason she was still mid-air.

“Please stop making this worse.” Her brow furrowed with a grimace.

“Worse?! You’re the one who complimented my ass.”

“I–” Her eyes darted as her brain rewound the last few minutes of conversation. “I did not.” She shot back.

“You said, and I quote: ‘You really need to get your head out of your very fine ass and back in the game’ .” Sometimes my memory came in handy for things other than reciting movie lines.

Cady’s mouth opened in retort, but nothing slipped from those kissable lips of hers. It pulsed in a gape, much like a fish out of water. That was until her brow furrowed violently. She knew I was right.

“Oh, fuck you.”

“To be honest, I was hoping that’s where we were headed.” The words might have slipped from my mouth of their own accord, but they weren’t a lie. I swallowed dryly, afraid that I overstepped. But the swiftness in which the rosy color hit her cheeks was the telltale sign I was onto something. “Shit. Sorry. That was too presumptuous of me.”

Her body went rigid as her eyes finally met mine for only the briefest of moments. The pink in her cheeks went straight to red. Squinting her eyes shut, she shook her head.

“No. Nope. I’m dreaming.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at her dramatic response. Fuck, my heart was beating a thousand times a minute since she admitted there may be something mutual here. Even with our weeks of spicy animosity.

There was only one thing to do when a person insisted they were dreaming.

I pinched her ass.

Her back arched sharply as her eyes shot open, pressing her breasts into my chest. It was my turn to have my breath catch. But I did prove to her that she wasn’t dreaming.

“Cadence…” I was sure to use her full name instead of the pet name I gave her. It was difficult to keep the tone of my voice level. “As much as you aggravate me to the utter end,” Her eyes guardedly met mine as she looked at me through hooded lashes. “That kiss was… fucking everything . And I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought about what it would be like to experience some of those dance moves of yours. Horizontally .”

Her jaw dropped once again and all it brought me was a mental picture of those open lips around my cock. Dammit. There was no hope for my body. But I couldn’t take advantage of this woman. We were coworkers first and foremost. Although, I guess it was a little too late now .

“Jamie…” There was a tinge of warning in her breathless voice. At this rate, I was ready to carry her all the way to my penthouse. “You’re just saying that.”

I was taken aback. Sure, I was a major league ball player, but I wasn’t a player in the other sense of the word. My parents raised me right. Hell, I hadn’t even slept with or dated anyone since Vanessa.

That was because I hadn’t met anyone like Cady before.

“What, I’m not allowed to be honest?”

“Well…yes. But…” She let out a rough sigh. “Maybe the reason is because there’s only three, maybe four, layers of fabric between you and permanently attaching me to the wall.” My cock outright twitched as the exact words I was thinking escaped her mouth. “A guy would say anything to make it zero layers.”

I huffed at her.

While she wasn’t wrong in general, she was wrong about thinking that way about me. Women weren’t a conquest. They weren’t just a place to empty your balls. They were beautiful, fun, deserved to be romanced, with golden copper waves…

“Well, I’m offended.” I was sure to exaggerate my words and might have added a bit of a playful southern drawl to them. “Not all guys are assholes you know.”

“Yeah, well most of the ones I know are. The team excluded.” She grumbled with a huff as she continued to avoid my gaze. Her words brought me back to our conversation last night at the bar. There was no fucking way that I wasn’t going to let Cady believe that she was anything less than deserving of anything and everything.

In just the short time I’d been with the team, I could see that she was the damn glue that kept everyone in line and together. The team looked up to her. Respected her. She deserved that in every aspect of her life, both on and off the field.

“Okay…fair. But I’m not one of them.” Squinting my eyes shut, I shook my head to get back on the track of kissing Cady again. Having her in my arms like this just felt so…right. Dangerous. Exciting. “Because, unlike other guys…I have some rules . Decorum if you will.”

“Rules…?” Her eyes went wide before she cocked her head to the side.

“Contrary to your popular belief, I don’t take women home. I have a few stops…before that .” Shit, I was babbling but I had to get these boundaries out. This woman made me nervous as fuck. Especially with her steely gaze staring me down from such close proximity.

That pulled one of her patented snorts from her and broke the uneasy tension between us. I wanted to show her that all I had were good intentions. Okay, mostly good intentions. I didn’t want her to think that I was going to chew her up and spit her out like a mouthful of Big League Chew. Although she was making it really fucking difficult to stick to my rules at the moment with her hips glued to mine with her ass in my hands.

“What, do I need to stop by your lawyer’s office to sign an NDA?”

“What?” I recoiled a bit in surprise before my face twisted in confusion. Who the actual fuck had she dated? “What? No. I uh…have rules. For me. I don’t like rushing into…well, anything.”

“Ain’t that the fucking truth.” I rolled my eyes. “So what are these… rules you have?”

This single-handedly had to be the most awkward conversation I’ve ever had in my entire life. Especially with my briefs full of jizz and my cock still thinking we were at “go” time. No matter how flustered and fucking ready I was, this conversation was a firm boundary that I not only had for myself but in respect of whomever I wished to date.

“First rule: Connection.” That earned me another cocked brow. “Second: Oral Communication.” I watched as her brows turned to furrow together. This was not going well. “I think we have the first two well in hand.”

“Well, now.”

Damn, that sarcasm of hers.

This was my time-honored system. Even though the guys in my life razzed me about it, I always stuck to it. If I was going to sleep with a woman, it had to mean something .

“So that just means I can take you out. Courting is the next one.” Was that the flicker of a smile on her lips? Even though it sounded so antiquated, it was better than the word “dating”. I liked to think I was more distinguished than that. “Then…kissing.”

“I think you went out of order there a bit, Slugger.” A full-blown smirk blossomed on her lips.

I knew it was unusual, this list is what I did for me, for the women I brought into my life. It had never steered me wrong. Cady, on the other hand, didn’t look completely convinced.

“So…your so-called rules are a load of COCK.”

“I, no… what ? ” I sputtered. She really didn’t say what I thought she just said.

“Connection, Oral Communication, Courting, and Kissing. C-O-C-K, cock. Your rules spell COCK .” She gave me a curious once-over. “You really haven’t thought this through, have you?”

If she fucking said cock one more fucking time, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hold myself back from doing something I wasn’t completely sure she was on board with yet. But of course, it was Cady who would be the one to upend my carefully crafted set of standards.

“I certainly have. And since we’ve already made it through C and O…” I paused as her eyes made their way back to lock with mine. “And well, K,” My voice softened. “Courting is next. And…I’d like to take you out to dinner.”

“Dinner...?” She hesitated.

“I want to show you that my intentions can remain strictly…respectable.” Her face twisted and I sighed. I was fucking this up so bad. I had to turn a hot as fuck moment utterly cringy. “If I’m being honest, I’m a bit rusty in all of this. I had a long-term girlfriend back in San Diego, but we broke up because of the trade. It’s…been a few years since I’ve done this stupid song and dance.”

Cady’s eyes flashed in surprise. As she took the time to consider my request and overload of information, I gently lowered her back down to the floor. Maybe I messed up my only shot–

“Okay. Fine. Dinner. We’ll see if we can tolerate… whatever this is.”

Putting my hands up in surrender, I tucked them into my pockets to show her that this outing would be as innocent as she wanted it to be. But it was also to subtly adjust my dick to a position that I could more easily hide my, finally softening, hard-on as I slowly pulled away from her.

“Great.” I let out a breath of relief. “There’s something I need to do before we go. Just…give me a second.”

“For what?”

“Because I need to shower and change my fucking boxers.” I grumbled out and avoided her gaze. I didn’t wait another moment to see her reaction. Instead, I opened my locker behind her, grabbed a fistful of clean clothes, and headed off to the shower room.