Page 15 of My Stalker, My Protector

But somehow still burning alive with need for her. Starving.

She’s given me an edge so sharp, there’s no sanding it down. It remains.

I start to repeat how much I adore her, love her, but there’s a tentative knock on the office door. “Three minutes to game time, Jenner.”

“Yeah,” I call back raggedly, swiping sweat from my upper lip, turning Scout over in my arms. “Hey.” Why isn’t she looking at me? “Hey. Angel. Give me your eyes. What’s going on?” Panic assails me, spinning the office around me in a circle. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” Finally, her green eyes shine up at me, earnest and beautiful. “I’m great. I’m incredible. I didn’t know it would be like that.”

“It will only be like that with each other,” I say, kissing her hard.

Making sure she hears me.

“Good luck tonight,” she whispers.

I nod, every cell in my body screaming at me not to leave her. To bring her home, damn the game to hell. But I want to give her everything. I want her to have comfort and luxury and stability. Getting recruited will enable me to do that. “Stay where I can see you.”

“I will,” she whispers.

“For the rest of your life,” I say against her mouth.

And then, though it kills me, I leave the center of my universe to go play a baseball game, knowing my mind will be on her the whole time.

Today, tomorrow, until I take my last breath.

6

Scout

After the game, I meet Cash behind the stadium. The same security guard who babysat me during the game waits with me and as soon as Cash storms through the rear entrance, hair still wet from his post-game shower, I’m swept up into his arms without so much as a hello, his arms banding around me possessively on the way to the parking lot. He settles me into the passenger side of his truck, the scent of soap clinging to him.

I inhale it like a beggar, my nipples puckering in my tank top as he slides the seatbelt in between them, my lungs ceasing to function properly. My virginity is gone. He took it. On a desk. While the entire baseball team and coaching staff were within earshot. I’m still reeling from the experience…and wondering why I wouldn’t change a single detail.

I loved it. I loved how he spoke to me with such harsh language.

I loved how roughly he handled me.

I loved the sensation of his come spurting inside of me, hot and thick, the way he groaned as it happened, like he’d been waiting his whole life to give me what his body produces.

“You played great,” I say, sounding totally breathless. Like a simpering freshman mooning over the star baseball player, because that’s exactly what I am. Aren’t I? “Two home runs. Three RBIs. The pitcher looked like he wished he’d stayed in bed.”

He pauses in the act of fastening my buckle, his gaze dragging down over my body. My breasts, my thighs, then back up to my lips, which seem to plump beneath his rapt attention. “I was just trying to end the game so I could get back to you.”

“Oh,” I whisper, studying him for signs that his feelings are authentic. Not make-believe. “Because you were worried about the stalker?”

A drawn-out silence ensues. “Something like that.” He clicks the buckle home, his big warm palm sliding up my thigh, massaging me just beneath the hem of my skirt. “I’ve been thinking, maybe we should go somewhere in public. Like we’re on a date. See if we can draw him out into the open.”

I’m in a weird blissful purgatory.

On one hand, the idea of going on a date with Cash makes my heart race wildly.

On the other, he keeps implying it’s all in the name of catching my stalker.

Maybe it is.

Maybe I’m being naïve in thinking he wants to be with me beyond this single weekend.

And perhaps I should enjoy him while I have him. “Okay,” I say, swallowing the knot in my throat. “What do you want to do?”