We were coworkers. We could never do the things I was fantasizing. So it was safe and wonderful to just wallow in the imagined thrust of his powerful stroke inside me. Coil tight, circle the bat, breathless pause, then…
Crack.
My breath caught. My nipples tightened unbearably. And those eyes, touching me after the pop. It was like afterglow that lasted just a moment before we began again.
Coil, circle, pause.
Yes! Do it again, please. Oh please!
And he did, until sweat was running down his face and his eyes seemed to blaze at me. Then he threw away the bat with a growl that I felt all the way down my spine. He held my gaze as he stomped toward the bleachers, grabbed a towel and wiped off without ever breaking eye contact. I thought he’d duck into the dugout then the locker room. I was waiting for the moment when he would be forced to stop staring at me, but it never happened.
Instead of going inside, he jumped up and grabbed hold of the railing. I watched his fingers wrap around the iron bars and heard his grunt as he climbed the wall. A second later, he leaped over the metal and landed with a thud right in front of me.
Right. In front. Of me.
“Um…” I swallowed. “Connor—”
“Not a word,” he said as he grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet.
“What—” I argued, but he didn’t give me a chance to talk.
“No!” he growled. “Not until we’re inside.”
I wanted to look around for help, but I couldn’t move my gaze away from his eyes. His pupils had expanded until the dark gray was nearly black. And that stroke I’d felt inside and out now seemed like a tether wrapped around my spine. Where he pulled me, I willingly followed.
We were at the ballpark, so he took me inside to the empty main hall, my sandals echoing on the concrete floor as we walked. But there wasn’t any real privacy in the huge space. He paused long enough for me to catch up but then headed straight for the nearest door. It was to the women’s bathroom, and he slammed through it as if he were busting through the gates of hell.
“Connor, what’s going on?” I demanded. He’d broken eye contact the minute we’d made it inside, and that had allowed me to snap out of my thrall. The cooler air had also helped me marshal my scattered thoughts, thank God, though they were still soaked in lust.
He didn’t answer but stomped farther into the empty bathroom. Then he whipped around to glare at me.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“Fuck” was not the right word to use, because my brain was already there. Fortunately, my mouth wasn’t. It was reacting to the accusation in his tone.
“My job! Getting pictures of you for the articles.” As proof, I lifted up the digital camera that had been strapped around my neck.
“That’s not your job. It’s the journalist’s.”
“I know.” I took a deep breath. Confession time. “The guy I had lined up fell through, so I decided to put together the articles myself. I’ll be the journalist.”
“You sure as hell aren’t!”
“I am,” I argued. “Get used to it.”
Okay, so that was not the most professional way to handle things. I tried to calm myself. I stared at the nearest sink, rather than at his flushed face or rippling chest, and I made sure my voice was modulated to some level near normal.
“I realized you were right. The journalist I had in mind couldn’t do it, and I don’t trust anyone else to handle it right. No one, that is, except me. I can put it out under my name personally and offer it to the outlets. Plenty of websites are desperate for content. And I know it’ll get picked up by a lot of places, because I’m damned good at my job.”
“You can’t do that.” His words came out like hard bullets of sound.
I twisted, facing him enough that my gaze could connect with his. “I sure as hell can. So long as I let everyone know my connection to the Bobcats, it’s all above board. In fact, it happens all the time.”
“You said the journalist would have to watch me at practice. I’d have to talk to him every day. Honestly.”
“Yeah. And now, that’ll be even easier because you already know me.” Okay, so he obviously didn’t trust me, but hell, I couldn’t have everything. And he really needed to stop whining about it.
“You can’t do it,” he repeated, his expression tight and hard.
