Long Relief (Hardball 1)

She was moving before she realized her intent, which was to tackle him from his chair. His arms crushed around her and they both tumbled to the floor, hands and mouths already finding each other.

“I do,” she mumbled between kisses. “And I don’t want you to go to Charlotte.”

His hands groped for the bottom of her shirt, and she went one step further, whipping it over her head and tossing it away. She tugged his head down and pushed their mouths together, a sound between a sob and a moan slipping between them. Food, work, fucking baseball, none of that mattered as much as the rush of emotions and the feeling of utter rightness that gripped her.

Scrambling together in a tangle on the floor, they hurried to undress, to get to skin-on-skin faster than their frenzied, hindering help they gave each other would allow. By the time they were naked, they were both breathless, and she could barely squeak out, “Please tell me you brought condoms.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I had a feeling there was a fifty-fifty chance of needing them tonight.” He kissed her, long and slow, then growled in frustration before standing and sprinting into the kitchen. He pulled a box from his jacket pocket and, after a curse-filled second of trying to open one end, he just tore the entire thing in half. Condoms flew through the air and rained over the linoleum, and Maggie laughed so hard she couldn’t breathe.

Then, when he was sheathed and slowly sliding into her, she was breathless for an entirely different reason. It might not have been the most graceful sex or the longest-lasting, but sex on the kitchen floor, surrounded by an exploded box of condoms, would be one of her most treasured fantasies from now on.

Afterward, when they were snuggled together satiated and happy in her bed—as exciting as the impulsiveness of it had been, the floor was no place for a thirty-seven-year-old back and forty-two-year-old knees—she leaned up on her elbow and said, “Wait… I thought you didn’t like to have sex the night before a game.”

He stretched lazily. “Yeah, well, you’re breaking a rule for me, I might as well do the same for you, right?”

She laughed, and he reached up to cup her cheek in his palm. “It’s going to be rough, Maggie. I’ll be away a lot, you’ll be busy… we’ll probably be eating terrible takeout every night because we can’t be in public together. But we’re going to make this work.”

“And that,” she said, leaning down to kiss him, “Is all I’m asking for right now.”