Pitcher Perfect, page 19
“I used to love them,” Skylar murmured, finally. “Maybe I still do, because we do them together, but I feel useless when I lose. I feel useless when I don’t do everything at the highest level. And maintain it.”
“You could never be useless,” Vivica breathed, visibly horrified.
“We’ve always believed in pushing our children,” Doug tacked on, though his voice held a note of uncertainty. “It’s what bonded us in the first place. Instilling a drive to succeed, not merely compete.”
“She has already succeeded,” Robbie said firmly, drawing her tighter to his chest. “Everyone needs to have their hard work acknowledged once in a while. That’s why we have the ESPY Awards.” He pressed his mouth to her hair. “Speaking of which, will you be my date this year? Mailer looks like shit in a dress.”
Caught off guard, Skylar laughed, and warmth flooded Robbie’s body. Enough to drown in. “I’ll think about it.”
“Fair enough.”
“Skylar . . .” Doug cleared his throat so hard, a flock of birds went screeching from a nearby tree. “We’re very proud of you, if we haven’t made that clear.” His attention lingered on the Boston University T-shirt hanging from Robbie’s back pocket. “In hindsight, I see we’ve missed an opportunity to congratulate you on your achievements and instead focused on—”
“What I failed to do,” Skylar rushed to say. “I know. I . . . if I could get a second chance, I’d—”
“Skylar, no.” Vivica covered her eyes. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t be lamenting the fact that you got into an amazing school. I didn’t realize we’d made you feel like a failure by not . . . by not—”
“By talking about Brown like it’s the only institution worth a damn.” Elton scrubbed at his five-o’clock shadow. “Damn. I’m sorry, Sky.”
“We’re sorry,” Doug said, sounding dazed.
Vivica nodded, seeming unable to speak.
“Do you want to forgive them, Rocket? Or think about it?”
“Forgive them,” she said, her eyes welling.
Everyone converged on Robbie at once, even Madden, both him and Skylar absorbed in a group hug that couldn’t have been more unnatural or awkward if it tried, but at least it was genuine. Skylar was getting the comfort and love she needed. That’s what mattered most. That’s what would always matter most. But speaking of her needs, his girl was shivering and that wasn’t going to work for Robbie.
“I need to get Skylar somewhere warm. A shower. Now.” He scooped her up into his arms, towels and all, pointedly ignoring her when she insisted she could walk. “No.”
She started to argue, then visibly decided against it, her head flopping exhaustedly onto his shoulder. “Okay.”
Skylar’s uncharacteristic surrender got his feet moving, as well as his adrenaline. Again. “Was that lake cold enough to give someone hypothermia?”
“I don’t have hypothermia.”
“You say this while your teeth are chattering.”
“That’s partially due to the lingering terror.”
Robbie stumbled a little on his march through the trees, almost like he’d blown a fuse, his human electricity flickering off and on. All because he was thinking of Skylar terrified. A cold sweat clung to his skin now and he had tunnel vision. Get her to the house, warm her up, tuck her into bed with some soup. That was the game plan. Oh God. Every time the adrenaline started to subside a little, the fact that his legs had gone weak became more obvious. “Partially?”
She blinked up at him and he could hardly decipher her expression. Was that . . . awe? “Maybe I’m shaking a little because I’ve never had someone see me as clearly as you do. Thank you, Robbie. For that.”
A hat trick would no longer give Robbie the ultimate high ever again. Nope. This was it now. Skylar looking up at him like he was Superman. Someday maybe their kids would look up at him the same way. Like he could do anything. And suddenly, he could. This was another facet of being in love. It put a man in permanent beast mode.
“I can’t wait to tell Mailer,” he said to himself.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
They were almost to the house when she reached up to brush her fingers against his jawline. “Thank God you came back.”
His stomach bottomed out and he had to stop walking for a full ten seconds.
What if he hadn’t come back?
“Sorry, I . . . maybe I shouldn’t have said that.” His arms were shaking around Skylar and she had the audacity to seem surprised about that. “I think maybe we both need that hot shower.”
“Mm” was all he could manage.
This time, when she wiggled in his arms, he had no choice but to let her stand.
They walked up the front steps in a huddle.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Skylar had been shaken up like a martini at the Gilded Garden and dumped into a transparent glass, her feelings on full display. No hiding. No stiff upper lip. Was it residual fear or the immensity of her relief—or possibly a combination of the two—causing the giddy desperation that coursed through her body while Robbie worked the faucets of the shower, holding out his hand to test the water temperature?
She didn’t know, but the need to touch him was so fierce, she put her hands behind her back. When had he become this . . . this rock? Her rock?
Over the course of the week, she’d started to depend on him. Of course she had. This was her teammate in the Page Stakes, not to mention her partner in a romantic deception in which they no longer seemed to be participating. Right? And Skylar had always been her own rock and in a lot of ways that would never, ever change, but God . . . Robbie’s every action since he’d shown up this morning had been heroic. Decisive. Mature.
Scary.
This Robbie was scary.
In the sense that she was now experiencing a deep need to be touched by him. To feel his presence as closely as possible. His heat, his strength, his Robbie-ness that seemed to correspond to her emotional highs and lows intuitively. Was it possible she was romanticizing him because he’d quite possibly saved her from a watery death?
Did she love Robbie and not Madden?
Or was she just shaken up? Confused?
Was she letting her attraction to this man increasingly cloud her judgment?
Finally, Robbie nodded with satisfaction over the water temperature and made a no-nonsense gesture. “In you go, Rocket. Please.”
She nodded and dropped the towel, immediately wrapping her arms around herself to combat the lack of warmth. Robbie made a gruff sound and ushered her into the steamy shower stall, releasing an exhale of clear relief when she stepped beneath the spray and moaned. After taking a few seconds to revel in the heat permeating her bones, she looked toward the still-open glass door to find Robbie watching her with his forearms propped high on the top of the shower frame, his chest dipping and rising slowly.
“You warm yet, Skylar? You feeling better?”
“Yes. I promise.”
His eyes closed briefly and he let out a slow breath, relief softening his gaze when he looked at her again. “That bathing suit is so you.”
“It’s scientifically proven to add speed,” she murmured into the shower spray.
His lips jumped. “Thanks for making my point for me.”
Skylar turned a little in a shameless attempt to draw his attention to her butt—and it worked, his eyes going smoky, a muscle leaping in his jaw. “I have a cuter one I wear when I’m not trying to crush my competition and accidentally drowning instead.”
He winced, paled slightly. “Could you stop bringing that up?”
“Sorry.”
Robbie clenched his eyes closed and shook his head hard, as if trying to banish the last half hour from his mind. “What does this other bathing suit look like . . . and did you pack it?”
“I did pack it, actually. It’s turquoise with white hibiscus flowers on it.”
Robbie hummed in his throat. “I can’t picture it. Going to need to see it in person, I’m afraid.”
His gravelly tone caused a tautness in Skylar’s lower body. A pull. “Maybe.”
He simply made eye contact. The kind that made her sound breathless when she said, “I thought we decided you needed to warm up, too.”
“I can’t get in there with you.”
“Why not?”
“It’d be a tight squeeze, for one.” The muscles of his abdomen flexed and held, his gaze tracking up and down her thighs. “Two, I don’t know what’s going to happen if I touch you, but I doubt I’d be able to stop. And as bad as I want to get my hands on you, I’ve got an inconvenient need to know where we stand. Let’s label this relationship, girl—”
“Get in, Redbeard.”
“Fine. Coming.”
He was right. It was very close quarters. The moment Robbie ducked into the shower, the available space in the stall shrank to almost nothing, but that was what Skylar’s body wanted. At that moment, that was the only entity she wanted to hear from. News from her body, not her brain or her heart, both of which were getting their signals crossed. Robbie’s bare chest crowded her into the corner of the shower, his hands planting themselves on the slippery wall above her head, biceps popping, a rocky exhale.
When he leaned down, when he would have kissed her—every pinprick of her nerves celebrating in response, flashing hot and wild, rushing—he stopped before their lips could meet, searching her eyes with an intensity that blocked her next inhale.
“Tell me everything you want,” he demanded, dragging their mouths together roughly. Oh my. “Tell me every fucking thing you want and need.”
“Well, it’s . . . Wednesday. It’s blow job day. I thought we could—”
Robbie covered Skylar’s mouth with his hand. “I’m not talking about sex. And . . . wow. Wow. I can’t believe I just said that out loud. My hand on your mouth is actually preventing you from talking about sucking my dick. So yeah, I don’t know, Skylar, but I think I’m pretty messed up over you. I want to know what you want in life. I want to make sure you get it?” He rolled their foreheads together. “I don’t know. I don’t know. My chest hurts, baby. Help me out.”
She’d never experienced raw honesty from another person this up close and personal and it made her feel drunk. Stoned. That’s what Skylar wanted, too. Didn’t want to be in possession of a single faculty whatsoever. Just wanted to feel and not overthink what touching Robbie meant. Where his confessions might lead. “What I w-want in life?”
“That’s what I said.”
There was a list in the back of her planner, but in the steam with this big man pressing her into the wall, she could only recall a few items amid the hormonal rush. “I want to swim at the Great Barrier Reef. Pitch a no-hitter . . .”
“You haven’t pitched one yet?”
“I have, but I want one at the collegiate level.”
“Got it.” His right hand dropped from the wall, fingering the strap of her bathing suit, waiting for her nod before he started slowly, slowly tugging it down her right arm. “Okay.”
“And . . .” She snapped her mouth closed before she could say the rest.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
A red brow arched. “Nothing?”
He yanked down the other bathing suit strap and it happened, it was happening, her breasts were uncovered. Out in the open. She couldn’t help but look down to see what Robbie could see and wow, the view actually turned her on. Her arms were trapped at her sides thanks to the wet straps and that position put an arch in her back, lifting her breasts, her stiff nipples quickly growing wet with steam, her pulse accelerating at the way his eyes darkened, his huge hands coming up to cup and knead them, thumbing her nipples. Circling them with a featherlight touch and inspiring a slow tug between her legs.
A breathless glide of moisture. There.
She trapped a moan, but couldn’t quell her shudder.
“That nice?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“What was the third thing you were going to say?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t remember . . .”
Robbie lowered his mouth to her tight breast and gave a long, thorough lap of her nipple. “You’re going to tell me what it is.” The rosy bud disappeared into his mouth, the pad of his tongue rubbing, rubbing. Relentless. “Say it.”
“A giant erasable calendar with everyone’s sports schedules on it,” Skylar blurted.
When she expected him to laugh or cringe, he only transferred his attention to her other breast, licking the entire thing up, down, and sideways, making her head fall back against the shower wall, her teeth making marks on her bottom lip. “Who’s everyone?”
“Uh.”
“Kids?”
“Yes.”
“Is that a someday wish or a someday soon wish?”
“Someday.”
He hummed again. It was a new sound for him, one he’d been making a lot today, like he was absorbing information about her or . . .
What.
Oh God.
She couldn’t think with him giving her breasts so much . . . enthusiastic . . . attention. At some point, he’d lifted her off the ground with his forearm beneath her butt so he wouldn’t have to duck down so far to lick and suck and kiss her there, breathing heavily all the while, like they were his last meal.
Where was this leading? What was going to happen?
Those unknowns led to her reaching for some control in the form of kissing. Threading her fingers into his wet hair and dragging him into a kiss that was even more intense than before, his hips grinding her butt into the shower wall in time with the stroke, stroke, stroke of his tongue, turning her brain into an impenetrable fogbank and more importantly, making her inhibitions go poof. Gone.
“I want to get on my knees for you,” she gasped.
“No.”
“You . . . no? But . . .”
“You were drowning less than an hour ago, Skylar.”
“I didn’t, though.” She scrubbed a hand down between their bodies and massaged his erection through the soaked front of his trunks, forcing him to muffle a ragged noise in her neck. “You were there.”
“I’ll be there every time if you let me,” he said, choppily. “The fact that I rescued you . . . is that why you want to kneel for me?”
She tugged open the string of his shorts and slipped her hand inside, gripping. Jacking him once, twice, three times, savoring the way his shoulder muscles tightened, the veins growing more prominent in his neck. “Maybe the fact that I want to suck this was subconscious until now, but Robbie?” She sipped at his bottom lip. Nipped it. “If I didn’t want to get on my knees for you, I would never have put it on the schedule.”
Relief, tenderness, and heat, combined with a heavy swallow, made him so endearing in that moment. Vulnerable. It was an admission that he’d needed to hear—that she’d been attracted to him all along. She kissed his cheek and lingered there, her grip staying busy on his erection until an uneven groan broke free from his mouth, his length stiffening further and further in her hold. The kiss Robbie gave her was wet, provocative, sexual. “Does that mean you’ve wanted to fuck me, too?”
Yup. “Don’t push it,” Skylar teased on her way down, her mouth open as it skated down his bare torso, her knees finding the shower basin with a gentle thud. And there he was in front of her, thick and protruding, straining toward her mouth in a subtle arch that she pumped in her hands, observing him from below until she judged that he breathed the fastest when her grip remained semiloose and moved fast. What else did he like?
“Teach me.”
“Jesus Christ,” he hissed, bracing a hand on the wall, cupping her face with the other. “You really know how to turn a spank bank obsolete, don’t you? This is all I’m going to see from now on when I need to get off. Skylar on her knees with her nipples red from getting sucked, wanting me to show her how to fuck her mouth.” His fingers twisted in her hair and fisted, not enough to hurt, but enough to make her back straighten, her attention captured. “Just so we’re clear, I’m going to teach you how I like my cock sucked. Just mine. You don’t need to know what anyone else likes.” He guided his hard sex to her lips, rubbing the head along the seam of her mouth. “Nod or I’m not going to put it in.”
It blew her mind that she liked being spoken to like this. In this moment, she wasn’t a daughter or a pitcher or a sister or a student. All the things in her life that gave her performance anxiety or invited stress. She was just a half-naked woman who’d driven a man to a heightened state of arousal and he was letting her know it. Maybe later or tomorrow or next week, things would be different, but right now, she belonged to him. They belonged to each other.
So Skylar nodded, hot thrills running through her, overlapping, tripping over one another until she was a human beehive. Buzzing. “Teach me how you like it sucked.”
Briefly, Robbie’s head fell back, his Adam’s apple prominent, throat flexing. Then he looked back down at her with glazed eyes. “Keep stroking me in your right hand. Use your left to hold my balls.” She did as she was told, gratified to see his abdomen knit up tight like a drum, his hand fisting on the shower wall. “That’s good. Fuck, that’s good. Don’t squeeze them, just move your palm front to back, give me a little friction, and . . .” He pounded that fist into the shower wall. “Like that. Like that. Yeah.”
“When do I get to taste it?”
“You getting impatient?” he asked through his teeth.
“Maybe.” She kissed his tip, teased it with the tip of her tongue. “Yes.”
“Maybe I’m stalling because I know as soon as I see my cock in your mouth, I’m going to lose my fucking mind.”
“Good. Do it,” she whispered, burying her tongue in that salty slit, moving up, down.
“Oh goddamn, baby. Fine. Fuck it,” he heaved, pushing his length into her mouth with a guttural grunt, her lips stretching to take him, that smooth invasion becoming a distraction from everything else, such as the actions she was supposed to be performing with her hands. All she could do was savor the new sensation of salty weight in her mouth, the act of being used for sexual pleasure and how excited it made her to exist—right now—just for this. “Look up at me, Skylar,” he said raggedly. “Eyes up.”
