The Pitcher's Assistant

Epilogue

One Year Later

Pippa

Out in the stadium, the fans are chanting Cort’s name.

It’s time for him to take the field and close the game, but he’s too busy taking me.

My skirt has been rucked up around my hips, several buttons of my blouse open. He has me pinned to the concrete wall, his shaft filling me in aggressive drives. My climax is right there, so close I can feel the quickening of my muscles and I wrap my legs tighter around my husband’s hips, reveling in his harsh grunts, the wet slap of our flesh.

“Mulloy!” shouts the Astros pitching coach over the speaker that feeds into the privacy room just off the bullpen. “Take the mound!”

“Not until my little girl comes,” he growls in my ear, changing angles with his hips, his teeth razing the sensitive skin of my neck. “She’s so close. Starting to claw at me. And fuck, that little pussy is flexing. Squeezing.”

The pitching coach can’t hear him, of course. My husband is fiercely private in all things, especially when it comes to me. But he has certain demands that Astros management has been forced to deal with. Such as him requiring my presence in the bullpen on the days he pitches. One year ago today, Cort dragged me into this very room and made wild, messy love to me before pitching the best game of his life. While the ritual might annoy his coaches, they don’t argue with his methods. Even if they get impatient, time to time.

“I’m sorry. I’m close,” I whimper.

“No. You don’t rush, baby. The world can wait.” He thrusts deep and grinds the trunk of his flesh against my clit. “There’s only us. There’s only this.”

Over the last year, he’s told me this over and over, until it became my deepest belief. I might have a burgeoning career in sports reporting and Cort might be God’s gift to baseball, but we return to our own private world, again and again. This is where we prefer to be. In each other’s arms, where everything feels right.

“I love you,” I gasp, looking into his intense blue eyes, moaning over the way his hands mold to my backside, keeping me stationary for his pounding hips. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too, Pippa.” He flattens me more securely to the wall, the pace of pumps picking up, moving so fast that a scream builds in my throat. “God help me, I’ll never get enough of this pussy. Need more and more of it every goddamn day.”

“It’s all yours, Daddy,” I whisper in his ear—and the guttural sound he lets out pours kerosene in the inferno inside of me, blazing me past the point of no return…

Five Years Later

Cort

This is supposed to be the greatest day of a baseball player’s life.

Only one year after retirement, I’m being inducted into the hall of fame.

But it’s far from the best day I’ve ever had. There is no way to top my wedding day. The afternoon I married Pippa on the shore of the ocean, the wind blowing her hair, her eyes full of tears, my undying love for her reflecting back at me. There’s no way to top the day she gave birth to our daughter. Or the midnight delivery of our son.

Or every single time I’ve been between her thighs.

There’s definitely no beating that. Not with accolades or trophies.

All of my best days are with Pippa—and they’re because of her, too.

I’m a confident man. Some might even call me cocky about my pitching abilities. But hell, if I’m not humbled in this moment to be standing here, my beautiful, talented wife tucked up against my side, looking up at me adoringly. With pride. Our son is sleeping in the crook of my arm, my daughter doing figure eights through my legs, earning a giggle from Pippa.

I’m the happiest man on the entire planet.

Five years ago, I was lost. They called it a slump, but I was lost until she came into the locker room and pulled me out of the darkness, gave me hope. She made me love baseball again. Made me want to succeed so she would be proud of me, along with our children. All I can hope for is that my encouragement of her career and telling her I love her, constantly, has been enough to pay her back for bringing me back to life.