Page 14 of Caught Looking
The realization hit me like a ton of bricks, like a truth that erased everything else that existed before it, and I saw it all clearly. If I’d give up everything for him, if I’d be willing to give up baseball, fame, fortune or whatever it cost me to have him, why couldn’t I let him do the same for me? As I saw him dance the song I’d named ours with someone else, I finally decided whatever the cost that would get him in my arms forever, I was willing to pay it.
I turned to look at Chantal, who was still quietly observing the scene unfold. “I’m going to do it.”
“Don’t ask me for permission—I’m fully in support of this.”
It only took like twenty steps to close the distance. Just as the song was about to end, I reached him, put a hand on his shoulder, and growled out something that sounded like, “Come with me.”
The other man was about to protest, but Hatuey was already fully focused on me. “What’s wrong?”
I took his hand and pulled him out of the dance floor and past the ring of people around it as fast as I could. For a fevered moment I thought it would be easier if I just picked him up and threw him over my shoulder, but suspected that would not go over well.
As we reached Chantal, I waved a hand at her and shook my head. “We have to go home,” I said as I practically ran out of the house with him in tow.
“Go home for what?” he asked, still feigning an annoyance that was contradicted by the way his hand tightened in mine.
I didn’t answer as I shouldered my way through the house and out the door. The air felt different outside, like oxygen could finally hit my lungs. My chest heaved up and down as we made our way down the path that would take us to our villa. But before we could make our full escape, Hatuey tugged on my hand and stopped.
“What’s going on, Yariel?” He didn’t seem angry, but he sounded like he was determined to get answers one way or the other.
“I’ll tell you at home,” I protested, wanting to move. Needing to get him where I could do and say all the things I wanted to. But Hatuey wasn’t having it.
“No, I want you to tell me here,” he insisted, pointing at the gravel path we were on, but I didn’t miss that tiny glimmer of hope in his brown eyes.
“I can’t talk right now, Hatuey,” I explained, my throat prickling with everything that wanted to come out.
“Why?” His jaw had that stubborn set it got when he was about to get hella difficult, and he took his hand out of mine to cross his arms over his chest. “Tell me why you made me leave the party I was having a perfectly good time at.”
Now it was my turn to get stubborn, so I planted my feet and met his eyes, which were daring me to fuck this up. To not give him what he’d been waiting for me to give him for days.
“Because I almost lost it seeing those guys flirting with you.”
He raised his eyebrows at that, and the corners of his mouth lifted up a fraction of a centimeter.
“Because I was ready to wreck shop just from watching you dance our song with someone else too.”
Now he looked genuinely confused, and opened his mouth to probably ask what the fuck I was talking about, but I kept going, needing to get it all out. “Because, I’ve been a fucking powder keg for the last four days and if I don’t get you home so I can fuck you, I might die.”
I sounded like I’d been running for miles by this point, and I felt it too. My eyes were blurry, and my heart hammered against my chest as Hatuey processed all the shit I’d dumped on him in the last thirty seconds. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Shifted from one foot to the other as he considered what to tackle first.
“Fuck, Hatuey, say something,” I growled, like the demanding asshole I was.
He held up a finger, finally snapping out of whatever trance he was in, and stepped in closer. He looked furious and I wanted to wreck him. “First of all, hold your fucking horses. You’ve been tiptoeing around me for days now,” he said in a huff. “Don’t expect me to jump because you got all jealous and want to shove your dick in me to mark your territory or whatever.”
Just the mention of my dick getting anywhere near him was enough to set off every nerve in my body simultaneously. But I was not longer driving this car.
“Second…” His voice was definitely on the sexier side of things now, and my cock was once again joining the proceedings. “It really pisses me off how hot I find this brooding asshole shit. I need to think about what’s going on with me I really do.”
With that he stalked off, in a break-neck power walk that had us at the door of our villa in a couple of minutes. We didn’t talk as we made our way inside. I tapped in the code to the door noticing my hands shook as I punched in the numbers.
I reached for him once we were safely inside, but he moved back just beyond me. “Did you give us a fucking song and never bothered to tell me?” Now he was the one growling.
And I had to look away because my hands twitched and my heart was racing in that frantic way that only happened before I walked out in the field with only my bat in hand. That detached sensation of a moment being too big to take in all at once. I felt like I was floating as Hatuey scrutinized me. And I wanted to run, hide from what he was obviously seeing for the first time.
I’d been hiding from him. I’d been hiding all of it for so long. And now I was caught, without anywhere to run off to.
Chapter 9
Hatuey
