Page 34 of Double Play

The rest was a blur. He lost himself in her cues, her responses, tuning everything he did to her reaction. He thrust harder when she began moving her hips to a fast drumbeat. He sucked at her nipples until her back arched. He listened to her pleas, her signals, her whispers, her moans. Drove deep when it made her scream his name, pulled back when she needed to catch herbreath.

Until finally the relentless urge of orgasm thundered down his spine. He plunged deep, feeling her body clench around him. She cried out and arched back. Tight little tremors fluttered around him. He came hard, so hard everything went white for a moment. So hard he lost track of time. He could have been buried inside her for a minute or a week, and it wouldn’tmatter.

Because afterwards, all he wanted to do was get back inside. Back to where all differences and boundaries were erased and two soulsbecameone.

13

After that night,Dwight and Maggie got together every chance they could. After every game, she’d skip down from her second-floor office and meet him for dinner. Sometimes they didn’t make it out of the stadium, and would end up in some forgotten corner of the building, naked. Usually they went to Dwight’s barebones condo, because there they could be private and make all the noise they wanted. But occasionally Maggie insisted they go to her place. She didn’t like abandoning Nina, who was losing heart about her relationship with JimLieberman.

“He never Skypes me anymore,” she wailed over takeout barbecue they’d picked up at the Smoke Pit. “I told him it doesn’t matter how late, but he keeps falling asleep andforgetting.”

Dwight tried to calm her down. “He’s in the Bigs now, he has a lot of demands on him. Media, fans, the pressure, it’s about a thousand times more than here. Every time you step on that field, it’s like Thunderdome. You just gotta have a littlepatience.”

Nina waved a chicken wing at him. “Patience?Patience? All I’ve been ispatient!”

“She’s spent the best years of her life waiting for Bieberman,” Maggie teased. “The years between twenty-one andtwenty-two.”

Instead of laughing, Nina glared. “Don’t call him that. Now all the fangirl skanks in San Diego are using that name. I hate it. I heard he started signing Bieberman on their chests. Did I show you the alertIgot?”

She pushed her phone across the table to them. Dwight leaned over Maggie’s shoulder to look. A headline on a sports blog read, “A Short Stop to a Kiss.” It showed a photo of Jim, in his Friars uniform, kissing a female fan on thecheek.

“He kissedsomeone!”

“On the cheek,” Maggie said. “That doesn’t meananything.”

Dwight shook his head and returned to his plateoffood.

“Trevor warned me about this sort of thing. He said all the girls who hang around the ballplayers are really persistent and it’s so easy to think no one’s ever going to know. A lot of ballplayers cheat, don’t they,Dwight?”

Dwight choked on a forkful of potato salad. “There’s always going to be guys who cheat. That doesn’t mean we all do. You know your brother. He’s so crazy about Paige, another woman could walk naked across his face and he wouldn’tnotice.”

“Yeah, but what about Jim? We aren’t even an official couple. We had one date. One really great date. Two kisses. One amazingmake-out—”

“Okay, we get it.” Dwight stopped her with a pained look as he wiped barbecue sauce off his mouth. “Don’t need the blow-by-blow.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “Someone else who ought to read a romance novel nowandthen.”

He shrugged. “Guess what, baby girl.Ihave.”

“No.Way.” Nina scrambled onto her knees on the couch, bouncing up and down with excitement. “Which ones?Why?When?”

“I don’t remember titles, but it was in college and I was looking for some pro tips for winning over the ladies.” He grinned at their shocked faces. “Worked,too.”

“You arebad.” Nina whacked him on the arm. “But in a good way,” she added thoughtfully. “Can you have a talk with Jim, do you think? I know what’s happening. He’s nice guy and if a girl bats her eyelashes at him, he won’t be able to say no. Just like he can’t stand up to my brother. Trevor’s probably giving him the death glare so he’s afraid to call me. You know what Jim needs? He needs some romance-herolessons.”

Maggie washed down her chicken with a swallow of Coke. “Nina, I hate to say this, but maybe you’re asking him to be someonehe’snot.”

“No. No.” She shook her head vehemently. “I like him how he is. I just want him to…to…claimme. To want me so bad, he’s willing to piss off my annoying brother to get me. Instead, he’s there in San Diego forgetting I even exist. I don’t want to get in his way while he’s working so hard, but it’s like he barely remembers whoIam.”

Maggie exchanged a look with Dwight. Neither believed for a second that Lieberman had forgotten about Nina. But as for Trevor intimidating Jim—that was very likely. In fact, Dwight had talked to Trevor about that very thing, after Maggie caught Nina cryingoneday.

Trevor’s response: “If a few glares can scare him off, he’s not the right man for mysister.”

He had a point, but Maggie’s heart went out to Nina. You couldn’t really help who you fell inlovewith.

Did it make sense for Maggie herself to fall for a charismatic, popular baseball player? They were classic opposites. He was an extrovert, she an introvert. He was utterly confident in his physicality, while she still held herself gingerly, always on alert for warning signs from her body. The only time she lost that caution was in bed with Dwight, as a matter of fact. The delirious pleasure chased awayallfear.

Dwight came from a large, loud family. When they called him, he spent a lot of time bursting into that generous, infectious laugh of his. His family treated him like an adult, not a child, the way her parents did. When her parents called, the conversation often felt like a class report, during which she presented a carefully edited version ofherlife.

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