It works, and he grabs my wrists, spins me, puts his entire body weight against me—until we’re touching more places than we’re apart. “Yeah.” I huff it right into his ear. “That’s what I thought you wanted.”
“Fuck you.” But it’s not a denial, and he doesn’t draw back. We’re both in filmy basketball shorts with exercise tightsunderneath. Layers of fabric between us. Still, he’s getting hard, his cock nudging at my hip.
“Are you mad I fucked Savannah?” I whisper. “Or are you mad that she did something you wanted to?”
“I—” Forsyth cuts himself off. He shakes his head, not like he’s denying it but like he wants that thought out of his brain. Like this isn’t the first time he’s tried to shake out this kind of thought. Finally, he gets control of himself. Reaches up and grabs the back of my shirt, like he’s going to try to fling me across the room. “Don’t change the subject.”
For a moment, we’re suspended like that, Forsyth’s mouth a mere few inches from mine. I could kiss him. I’d only have to lower my head slightly. He wouldn’t be the first man I’ve kissed—nowhere near the first—but I bet I’d be the first man he’s kissed. That alone makes me hesitate.
“Adler…” It comes out somewhere between a growl and a whine, like he’s that close to giving in and is just looking for an excuse.
“Asher,” I correct. Getting called by my last name is inevitable in a clubhouse, but that doesn’t mean I actually have to like it that much.
“Go to hell.” But his lips are slightly parted. His hips brush mine again and he makes a noise like his voice is caught in the back of his throat.
Fucking a teammate’s wife is a very bad idea. Fucking a teammate is somehow even worse. Jonathan Halperin, who’d just gotten drafted this summer—who’d almost tanked his own shot at a major-league career because he put up an Instagram post declaring he had several partners—was careful to mention that one was hisformerteammate.
If anyone came in now, maybe they’d see two guys fighting over the same woman. Maybe they’d see something else, something a team that’s astraditionalandfamily valuesorientedas the Peaches can’t overlook. Never mind there are all kinds of families who come to our games.
Still, one of us should draw back, for both our sakes. Fine, if Forsyth needs me to do it, then that’s what I’ll do. I move away, injecting air between us.
He blinks a few times as if he’s just now realizing where we are, then smooths his hands down the front of his T-shirt and adjusts himself briefly in his shorts as if he’s merely uncomfortable and not achingly hard. He’s still glaring at me, less like he might rip my head off and more like he’s pissed off that I let him go. “Fine,” he says, walking away from me, “but this isn’t over.”
That much is true. We’re not done. And after the past twenty-four hours together, I’m not sure any of us wants to be done. “Come back when you know what you want,” I call.
He turns back. Shoots me a grin that’s all teeth. “I want you to stay away from my wife.”
I toss him a smirk to watch him go incandescent with anger. “I don’t think that’s up to you,” I say. “There’s only one person who gets to make that decision—and she’s back at the hotel.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Brayden
Somehow,we’re supposed to play a baseball game today. After I walk away from Adler—cock hard, head spinning—I drag myself toward the cold tubs where guys do their post-game soaks.
I strip off my shirt and get into the tub in my shorts and leggings. The water is so frigid it stings. Good. I need that pain. I need something to pierce through this haze of whatever I’m feeling: Adler’s body hard against mine. The dark look in his eyes as he peered down at me. How he could have shaken me off any time and didn’t. How he was unsurprised to feel my cock against him. How I felt his cock against me and all I could think wasmore.
I don’t?—
I’m not?—
It’s just a physical reaction. That’s what I tell myself. That’s what I’ve been telling myself for years. I don’t want him. Ican’twant him.
Fuck, I need more: more than this cold tub. More distance between us than the few hundred feet we’re apart on the field.Maybe I should do what Blake did and run away to another city. Maybe I should move to the goddamn moon.
I shut my eyes, trying to push away the feelings of his hands on me. Am I mad at him for fucking Sav? Jealousy is worrying someone will take what’s yours. Envy is for wanting what someone else has. An old church sermon, delivered by a pastor who the girls all made a point never to be trapped alone with. He had to leave when they’d caught him groping money from the congregation’s coffers.
Am I jealous that Asher, like a snake, snuck into my house and made Savannah come before I even got the chance? Or am I envious he didn’t do the same to me?
Sav said he was good with his hands. Good with his mouth.For a moment, earlier, I wanted to shove him to his knees. Shut my eyes and pretend that he was someone else or I was someone else.But he’d know.You’d know.
If anyone finds out I’m even thinking something like this, I’ll be off the team. Disowned or worse. I want to dig deep in my chest and gouge this feeling out of myself,to go back to being who I was pretending to be when I woke up this morning. Someone who could make his wife writhe in pleasure without thinking about the man in the next room.
I’m not like that.I clench my eyes shut, plunge my hands into the water, ignore my own chattering teeth. Pain isn’t anything. Anyone who says otherwise is just soft.
Soft. What Brad called Blake—that he was soft-handed, soft-hearted. A word thrown around so much that I felt its ricochet. I couldn’t be soft. That much was clear. So I rebuilt my body from callus and muscle and drowned out everything else.
I’ve been doing this all my life. What’s a few more hours or weeks or years? Adler will leave at some point. When he does, thisfeelingwill go with him. I just have to hold on between now and then.
