Page 37 of Heavy Hitter

“Clearly, which is why the whole world knew when you gave chlamydia to Kit Benedetto.”

“To be clear,” Jimmy defends himself, “Kit Benedetto gave chlamydia to me.”

“Apologies.” Lacey rolls her eyes. “There was already a blind item on the Sinclair,” she reports.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“A blind item is when—”

“No, I know what a blind item is.” For fuck’s sake. “The other thing you said.”

“It’s a gossip site,” she says, and it clicks for him then, the hot pink web page the guys were looking at back in the locker room that day. “And sure, it was vague—the blind item, I mean—but not so vague that my fans aren’t going to be able to sniff it out in half a second, so I just want to be sure we’re ready. For, like. Whatever happens.” She chugs the juice in one long gulp, setting her empty glass on the coffee table and letting out a tiny, ladylike burp. “Excuse me,” she says primly. Then: “It might be worth it for you to talk to Maddie. My publicist. About how we’d want to handle it if it did get out.”

Oh, Jimmy does not want to do that. “I’ve been a starting player in the MLB for thirteen years, Lacey. I know how to handle the press.”

“My press is different from your press.”

“Okay,” he says, knowing he sounds sullen and not being able to do a hell of a lot to stop it. Fuck, his hands are killing him. They feel like they’re on fire. He shakes them out one more time, fighting the urge to get up and go into the kitchen, open the door to the freezer, and jam them inside. “If you say so.”

“I say so.” She looks at him for a moment, appraising. “Come here,” she says quietly. “Give me your hands.”

Jimmy shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

“I know,” she agrees calmly. “You’re a big strong sports hero. I said come here.”

Jimmy sighs, but he does it, shifting closer on the sofa until he’s close enough to smell the sunscreen and chlorine smell of her. He feels annoyed in every direction: at his body for being old and creaky, at Lacey for thinking he’s too stupid to handle reporters. At himself for caring either way.

Lacey picks up his right hand and examines it for a moment, turning his wrist this way and that before pressing gently, then with more pressure, digging her thumbs into the meat of his palm. “That okay?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah.” Jimmy huffs a sheepish laugh. “That’s okay.”

Lacey nods and reaches for his left hand this time, pressing at the webbing between his thumb and index finger. Jimmy drops his head back against the sofa, his eyes closing almost involuntarily as she tugs gently on each of his fingers. He’s been half-hard since basically the first second she touched him, but it’s not until she slides his index finger into her mouth, scraping her sharp white teeth gently over the pad of his fingertip, that he realizes exactly what she’s after. “La-cey,” he says, cracking one eye open.

“What?” she asks. She’s grinning, looking deeply pleased with herself. “What the fuck did you think I was going to do, miraculously heal all your various injuries? I’m not a fucking sports medicine doctor.”

“Uh-huh.” Jimmy reaches for her, pulling her into his lap and tugging at the ties on her still-damp bathing suit. “Come here.”

But Lacey wriggles away. “I’m busy,” she informs him, and drops to her knees in front of the couch.

Jimmy lets out a quiet, disbelieving swear. He doesn’t want her to feel like—just because they sort of argued—Jesus fucking Christ, he cannot put a thought together at all. “Okay,” he manages finally. “Okay, you definitely don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t have to, thanks,” Lacey says, looking up at him with open amusement. She ghosts her nails down his thighs in a way that makes him shiver, then hooks her fingers in the waistband of his swim trunks and snaps it back against his skin. “Do you want me to or not?”

Jimmy hesitates. Of course he fucking wants her to. He wants all kinds of shit he has no business wanting: to get inside her and stay there for the foreseeable future, to hold her down and get her off and be the best she’s ever had. “Lacey,” he tries again, but she’s already working his shorts down over his hips and wrapping her hand around him, swiping her thumb over the liquid at the tip. “Sweetheart—”

“You gotta tell me,” Lacey decides, resting her sharp chin on his knee and grinning at him, this hugely tickled, hugely dirty expression on her face. “You want me to do it, you gotta say.”

Jimmy growls, he can’t help it—how hard he is and how badly he wants her, how shy he suddenly feels. “Please.”

“Please what?”

For fuck’s sake. “You know what.”

Lacey rolls her eyes. “Prude,” she teases, then tucks her dark hair daintily behind her ears and ducks her head.

Jimmy groans. He closes his eyes like a reflex, then opens them again, equal parts desperate to watch her and afraid the sight of it is going to end him way too fast. Her mouth is obscenely, heartbreakingly warm. He never brought this up as a possibility, all those nights they talked on the phone together. Never even let himself think about it. Jimmy threads his fingers through her hair as she does her thing, rubbing gently at the back of her neck. He feels scraped raw and helpless, like she could well and truly wreck him without ever meaning to. Like she leaves a trail of destruction in her wake. Lacey watches him from her spot on the floor, no tension or distrust in her face at all as she takes him deeper, sucking fast and sloppy like all she wants is—

“Okay,” Jimmy announces finally, reaching down and hauling her to her feet, pulling her into his lap so she’s straddling his thighs. “Come up here.”

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