Adrian stepped up behind him, his touch sure and careful, not clinging, just there. He settled one hand on Gage’s hip and used the other to guide his elbow.
“Feet shoulder-width apart. Little bend in your knees. You’re not muscle-arming anything. Let your reflexes drive.”
Gage adjusted his stance.
“Right there,” Adrian murmured close to his ear. “Feel your balance. Let the ground hold you.”
He sucked in a quiet breath despite himself. The heat of Adrian’s body at his back was startling after weeks of cold rooms.
The feeling caught him off guard. He wasn’t used to intimate contact.
As a young man, he’d been told those kinds of feelings were distractions that could deter his plans and were to be ignored until his father deemed him ready to consider courting.
He was supposed to finish seminary school, become an associate minister in their church, then find a wholesome Christian girl, whom his mom adored, marry her, make love to her, and give her babies.
Everything in that order as his father planned.
Then the block happened.
Men with iron wills and hard bodies built by labor, violence, and survival. Voices roughened by curses, not prayers, darkeyes under permanent scowls, all drew his attention when it shouldn’t have.
So he’d buried any and all ideas of sex…until now.
As he stood there with uneven breaths, and pulse racing, he realized those kinds of thoughts didn’t disappear. They just waited for the right time to rise again.
Adrian stepped away, and Gage was jolted back to reality.
“First, we don’t swing.”
Gage frowned. “Huh?”
“We don’t swing,” Adrian repeated. “We listen.”
The machine whirred.
Gage held still.
Whoosh.
The ball fired out of the thrower with a loud, swift rush of air and smacked the net behind him.
Again.
Whoosh.
Again.
Again.
At first, it was chaos. A sound coming too fast, and too hard.
Then his mind began to find the cadence of the motor spinning. The micro-pause before release. The whisper of the spin just before it reached him.
Adrian’s voice stayed low. “That’s it. Your brain is already mapping it. Let it.”
The machine cycled again, and Adrian finally said, “Okay. Now we swing.”
Gage’s pulse revved.
