Pitcher Perfect, page 6
“That’s the spirit.” She realized her lips were turned upward at the corners, but the fledgling smile froze in place when she remembered the plan she’d formulated. Was this her opening to bring it up? Was he going to hear this idea and immediately ask her to turn around, drive him back to East Cambridge? Because Skylar had worked on her proposal in the shower and the whole thing sounded a lot crazier out loud than it looked on paper. Everything looked better on paper. “So, I have a tiny little proposition for you, Redbeard . . .”
“Thank God you said something. Yes, I’m hungry. I’ll stop anywhere.”
“In a while. It’s something else.”
“Fire away.”
“Okay.” She flexed her fingers on the wheel. “Okay, I just want to preempt this by saying, you can decline. Obviously. No hard feelings. If you say no, we’ll just move on and pretend like this never happened.”
He turned in the seat to face her. “Holy shit, I’m so intrigued right now.”
“It’s definitely intriguing. I’ll give it that.” Deep breaths. In, out. “The objective of this week is not only to win the Page Stakes, but to make Madden notice me, right? Well, here’s the thing. What if he actually does? Notice me.” Needing something to do with her hands, she fiddled with the radio, flipping through various Sirius XM stations and landing on some alternative. “I don’t know how to seal the deal. I’m not great at flirting. My, um . . . physical encounters with guys have been kind of awkward. So even if we do manage to get Madden’s attention, I have no idea how to keep it.”
Robbie was quiet for a full ten seconds. “Okay, like, this is serious. You’re being serious. You don’t think you’re enough to keep someone’s attention.”
He sounded so incredulous. Why? “I mean, I haven’t kept anyone’s attention before, so . . . the proof is in the pudding, isn’t it?”
“Maybe you just haven’t liked any of the guys enough to bother. Have you thought about that?”
Did he sound a little pissed off? No. He was likely just irritated that she’d lured him on this trip under one pretense, then sprung a totally new game plan. “Whatever the reason is that I’ve been single my whole life, I just want to make sure I’m ready. Really ready. In case this ruse works. You know?”
“Where do I come in?”
“Well . . .” The temperature of Skylar’s skin started to elevate, her scalp prickling. “We’ve established that you like women and women like you. Hooking up is pretty much your specialty.” In her periphery, she noticed Robbie’s shoulders slump ever so slightly, but couldn’t imagine why. He’d bragged about this exact truth a matter of days ago. “Maybe you could teach me to do the things . . . that women do to attract you?”
She glanced over to gauge his reaction, but found his expression blank. The only telling movement was the heavy rise and fall of his chest. “I thought . . . I mean, I want to be better than how I’ve been, Rocket—”
“Oh, I hope you didn’t misunderstand me before,” she rushed to say. “There’s no shame in having as many partners as you want, as long as they’re treated with respect, you know? And, um . . . well. There’s also no reason all that experience and knowledge in your head couldn’t be harnessed for the greater good, right?”
“Greater good,” Robbie repeated slowly. “Meaning . . . ?”
“Meaning, if you say yes to . . . teaching me some moves, the best part is that you won’t— you don’t get attached. It’s guilt free.” Skylar gave a rueful laugh. “And come on, it’s for a worthy cause.”
Brow puckered, Robbie stared out at the highway, his white-knuckled fist gripping the strap of his seat belt. Uh-oh. Any second now he’d ask to be taken home. “I strongly disagree with the way you’re making yourself sound like a charity case, Skylar,” he said instead. “And I don’t . . . I don’t want you to have moves that other girls have.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know!” When she only raised an eyebrow at him, he visibly searched for a qualifying statement. “You have your own moves. You just haven’t located them yet.”
“Let’s say I believe that. How am I going to locate them?”
Robbie swallowed loudly. “WWBD,” he said to himself. “WWBD.”
Skylar did a double take. “What does that mean?”
“What would Burgess do? I’m trying to imagine him in this situation.”
“And?”
“Turns out it only works for hockey. I got nothing.”
All right, clearly he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of teaching her how to operate around men. Drop it. Now. Pushing too hard on something like this would make her behavior as bad as Robbie’s that day at the baseball field. “Should I stop at Dunkin’ or Denny’s?”
Now it was Robbie’s turn to do a double take. “That’s it? We’re done talking about this?”
“Yes. Easy as that.”
“Oh, sure, easy. Right.”
“Dunkin’ or—”
“What kind of moves are we talking about? Flirting and . . . what?”
Skylar took a very heavy gulp. Braced. “If you open my glove compartment, there’s a white leather planner. There’s a slip of paper folded in the middle. It’s an . . . itinerary. Of potential lessons, so to speak.”
He almost broke the glove compartment getting it open. Seeing her beloved planner in Robbie’s hands gave her a warm, unexpected flip in her stomach. No one had ever touched that planner, save her, and his long, blunt—and somewhat crooked—fingers looked so masculine tracing along the softness of the spine, the breath caught in her throat.
What is wrong with you?
Skylar gripped the wheel and ordered her pulse back into its usual rhythm, but the sound of him unfolding the paper shot it sky-high again.
Chapter Eight
Robbie stared down at the neatly lettered timeline in front of him.
It was a five-day calendar of the current week. Each day, there was a new lesson, and each lesson had been penned in a different color.
Such innocent teals and pinks for writing phrases like:
Sunday: Flirting
Monday: Date Night Practice
Tuesday: Making Out
Wednesday: Blow Job Workshop
Thursday: Main Event (Maybe)
Fucking. That meant fucking. Maybe.
Son. Of a bitch.
This was the hottest thing he’d ever laid eyes on. Besides Skylar. And his dick was acting accordingly, turning to stone in his sweatpants, perspiration starting to bead at the hairline hidden beneath his ballcap. Let me get this straight. If he went along with this plan to be her professor of love, every day for the next week, he would not only be allowed to perform these activities with Skylar, he would be encouraged to do them.
Teach her how to do them.
He didn’t deserve to be this incredible woman’s sex tutor.
At all. Like at all.
Which is why there was a catch. A huge one.
He’d be teaching her all this for the benefit of another dude.
So . . . at the end of the day, was this heaven or hell?
Jesus, though. Even knowing hell might lie on the other side of this five-day crash course, he couldn’t stop himself. Not a chance in hell. Even the idea of flirting with her was making his balls throb, let alone a blow job workshop.
Had a more magical phrase ever been uttered?
And dammit, even knowing these skills would eventually be put to use on someone else, he hated the possibility of her going through life thinking she was . . . less than. In any way. An ache that had started to form at the beginning of the conversation intensified now.
I have to show her she’s the holy grail. She needs to know.
The fact that Skylar, a Division 1 all-American who could cut him off at the knees with a well-timed insult, had any doubt in herself at all made Robbie wonder.
Where the hell had that self-doubt come from?
“You’re very quiet over there.”
“Sorry, I’ve never seen blow jobs on an itinerary before.”
Ever so slightly, she winced. “I grew up around my brother’s friends. I know how much those skills are valued. But we can skip that one if—”
His booming laughter almost caused her to crash the car. “No, no. It stays.”
Skylar blinked over at him. “Wait, so you’re in? You’ll help me?”
Robbie could practically hear Sig, Burgess, and Mailer shouting at him to say no immediately, turn back now before it was too late and Robbie ended up falling for this girl. Because he was halfway there already and this sexy list almost guaranteed he’d be wrapped around her little finger by the end of the week.
Don’t do it, imaginary Mailer hissed at him. Come back. Let’s go clubbing.
Show me a single man alive who would say no to this.
That’s fair. Mailer again. Just remain objective. Don’t be in it for anything but the sex.
“Okay, got it,” Robbie said.
“Got what?”
“I meant, yes. I’m in.”
When Skylar put the car in park and the engine abruptly cut out, Robbie almost had a heart attack. He’d thought they were still on the fucking highway.
Nope. They were in the parking lot of a Dunkin’.
This dirty calendar had blown a fuse in his brain.
“Should we start now?” Skylar asked, blowing another one. Pew. Pew.
“Here?”
“What’s the matter?” She pursed her lips at him. “You’ve never flirted in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot before?”
Funny how she didn’t seem to realize the way she naturally challenged him was flirting. The best kind, apparently, because his whole body started to thrum. “Go on.” Robbie jerked his chin toward the rear of the car. “I’ll meet you at the trunk.”
“As long as you don’t stuff me inside of it.”
“Not until I get my blow job.”
Skylar giggled on her way out of the car and Robbie’s breath hitched in response, his gaze zeroing in on that tiny little gap that formed between her jeans and the small of her back when she exited. A miniature handle he wanted to slide his fingers into to tug her back into the vehicle and kiss her senseless. That wasn’t happening until Tuesday, though, according to the schedule, and he wasn’t going to push his luck.
She knocked on the rear window. “What are you doing in there?”
Answer: waiting for his erection to go away. It was one thing to flirt in a Dunkin’ parking lot. It was quite another to do it at full mast in broad daylight. Problem was, his brain had made it to the end of the itinerary to “Main Event (Maybe)” and now every part of his body was sweating. Would they have to fabricate some excuse to leave her family and hump it out in a parking lot somewhere, his jeans around his knees, her panties torn down the middle, the car rocking steadily faster?
Goddamn.
Wherever this ended up (maybe) taking place, he’d bring his A-game.
She’d be a changed woman afterward.
And somehow, some way, he’d make sure he wasn’t too much of a changed man.
“I give up,” Robbie muttered when his dick adopted a heartbeat. Giving himself a junk adjustment, he climbed out of the passenger side. Quick glance down to make sure the thing wasn’t pointing east like a weathervane, then he put as much swagger into his step as humanly possible, rolling to a stop in front of a curious-looking Skylar where she leaned back against the trunk, watching his approach. “It’s the first of the month, Rocket. Time to pay up.” He eased into her personal space, using his knuckle to tilt her head back. “You’ve been living in my head rent-free.”
She blinked, lips parting.
Nailed it.
A laugh burst out of her, the force of it causing her legs to lose their balance, her butt landing on the rear bumper. The girl was literally shaking.
“No, you didn’t,” she gasped, holding her ribs.
“What?”
“I hope you’re happy. You’ve disgraced this hallowed Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot.” Skylar sailed through another round of laughter. “I can’t believe you used a pickup line on me.”
“Pickup lines exist for a reason,” Robbie defended. “A man has to start somewhere. You’re lucky I didn’t ask to buy you a coffee, because I like you a latte. I thought about it.”
She was laughing so hard at this point, her eyes were starting to turn glassy.
This wasn’t going well. At all.
Robbie loved the sound of her laugh, but he didn’t take her shocked amusement as a good sign when they were supposed to be flirting. Time to turn it up a notch. Which he hadn’t been required to do in . . . ever. And something inside of him, possibly his competitive nature or maybe just an intense need to appeal to this woman, had Robbie leaning down and hovering his mouth a hair away from Skylar’s. Close enough to taste orange juice on her breath. “You’re fucking beautiful all the time, but especially when you laugh.”
Ironically, her mirth died down, brown eyes running a curious lap around his face. “I’m already confused about flirting. So far, according to you, it’s either cheesy or intense. Isn’t it supposed to fall somewhere in between?”
“It’s a mixture of both. Making you laugh, but also making sure you know . . .”
“Know what?”
An exhale hissed out of him. “That I’d like to wake up tomorrow with your knees imprinted on my mattress.”
Her chest dipped. “Any girl’s knees, you mean.”
No. He didn’t. But this was her way of reminding him of the barrier between them, wasn’t it? This wasn’t real, no matter how much he wanted it to be. She was there to learn from him, not to make an actual connection. Still . . . “If we’re going to be convincing this week, maybe you just have to pretend I’m talking about you, Skylar. All the time.”
She thought about that, no idea it was the truth. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Taking her wrist, Robbie tugged her off the bumper. “Come on, let’s go get breakfast.” He twined their fingers together, ignoring the lump that welled in his throat over how right it felt, and guided her toward the Dunkin’ entrance. “Pretend we’re a couple. We’ll keep working on flirting.”
Skylar’s wide-eyed gaze brushed over their joined hands. “Okay.”
“It’s your turn for a pickup line, so start thinking.”
“The pressure is on,” she muttered, following him into the air-conditioned shop, the coffee- and sugar-scented air enveloping them on all sides, “Smooth Operator” drifting out of the unseen speakers. There was nobody in line, so they walked up to the register hand in hand. Skylar ordered an orange juice and a chocolate glaze, while Robbie ordered three breakfast sandwiches and a large coffee, cream and sugar, please and thank you.
The young man working behind the counter handed Skylar her donut right away and she took a bite while they stepped aside and waited for Robbie’s food to be ready.
“Okay, I think I’ve got a pickup line. Be forewarned, it might be terrible.”
Robbie tried not to stare at her mouth as she chewed, knowing full well it would taste like chocolate oranges. Still sweating in all the places. “Let’s hear it, Rocket.”
She swallowed her bite, squared her shoulders like she was preparing to throw a pitch. “If you were this donut I’m eating, you’d already be inside me.”
Immediately, he choked on his spit, dissolving into a coughing fit right there in the middle of Dunkin’. “Holy shit, girl,” he managed.
“That bad?”
More sweating. His waistband tuck job wasn’t going to last. But his own suffering became an afterthought in the face of Skylar’s growing embarrassment. “Bad? What? That was hot.” Just please don’t say that ever again to anyone but me. Please. “Don’t quote me on this, but I think you might be a natural.”
She rolled her eyes. “Shut up.”
“I won’t shut up. That was advanced.”
“Well . . .” She shrugged, a little cockier now. “I was raised around a lot of boys.”
“Believe me, you do them proud. I almost choked on my tongue.” Completely forgetting himself, Robbie reached up and brushed a speck of glaze from the corner of Skylar’s mouth. “Now, say it again, but give me body language at the same time.”
“What kind?”
Never having explained flirting out loud before, Robbie took a moment to think. About what he’d die to have Skylar do to him. What would make him hot. Or hotter, as it were. “Look at my mouth when you say it. Touch me in some way.”
She nodded for a few seconds, then stopped. “Touch you how? Give me an example.”
Gladly.
Looking her in the eye, he moved closer, smoothing back some wayward hair that curled near her right temple. Then he let his fingers skim down, down to her neck, right behind her ear, just the barest hint of his fingertips connecting with her smooth skin, gratified when he left goose bumps in his wake. “No one should ever touch you like this, unless you asked, okay?”
“I know,” she half whispered, studying him with a small wrinkle in her brow.
“If someone ever does that, you come find me. I’ll go find them.”
“Not if I kill them first.”
Lips twitching reluctantly, he let his hand drop away, all five digits continuing to tingle. “Good.”
After a beat, Skylar raised her hand and repeated the action identically, which Robbie found so endearing it was almost painful, because he didn’t have those little flyaway hairs at his temple, but who cared? Who gave two shits when her touch was trailing down the cords of his neck and her gaze was locked on his mouth. God, it was a struggle not to breathe like he’d just played a full period of hockey without substitutions.
“If you were this donut I’m eating, you’d already be inside me,” she murmured, surprising him by dipping her fingertips past the collar of his hoodie, tugging lightly on one of the strings playfully, before letting her hand fall to her side once again. “How was that?”
“Really good,” he rasped, abdomen flexed tighter than a drum.
A voice was shouting in the back of his head, probably some kind of warning that he was already getting in too deep with Skylar, feelings-wise. And the voice only got louder—
