Mom: I knew it. I am so unbelievably proud of you. Go show them who you are.
Smiling like an idiot, I shove the phone into my pocket and turn back toward the hotel lobby. Adrenaline pounds through my veins, making me feel completely invincible as I walk toward the bank of elevators. The lobby is completelydead, my teammates already holed up in their rooms, waiting for pizza deliveries or bypassing dinner altogether in favor of sleep.
I hit the up button and stand there alone, bouncing slightly in my turf shoes, my mind racing with game-day strategies and pitch sequences. Tomorrow, I won’t look like a junior member of the coaching staff. I won’t head right to the bullpen. I’ll stand on the third base line for the Star-Spangled Banner, and I’ll warm up with Martinez on the field.
The elevator bell chimes. The heavy steel doors slide open.
I step forward to get in but stop dead in my tracks.
Campbell is standing alone inside the empty elevator car. She looks up from her tablet, her hair slightly messy from a long night of work, looking tired but altogether too beautiful for my own good.
Her eyes flicker, then widen in surprise as she registers that it’s me. “Jake? I thought you were?—”
I don’t let her finish. I don’t hesitate, and I sure as hell don’t think about the rules, the front office, or the silent warnings she signals every time we’re alone and standing too close. The absolute high of the starting news and the overpowering gravity of the past forty-eight hours collide in my chest.
I step straight into the elevator, my large frame completely crowding her against the back wall. Before the doors can even slide shut behind me, I drop my duffel bag to the floor, reach out, and cup her jaw with my hands, pulling her face straight up to mine.
And I kiss her.
It’s not a gentle, tentative brush of the lips. It’s an eruption. Her tablet clangs on the floor as her hands rush to mychest, gripping fistfuls of my long-sleeved Mavericks compression shirt. A soft, breathless gasp escapes her throat, and I use the split second to deepen the kiss, drinking her in like a man dying of thirst.
We’re sealed in our own private room, the slow beeps offering us a warning as the elevator car climbs to wherever it was called. Neither of us pushed a button.
I press forward, my chest crowding her back until her shoulders flatten against the mirrored rear wall of the elevator. I don’t let up for a second. My hand slides from her jaw, my fingers tangling deep into her hair as I tilt her head to get a better angle. She tastes like sweet mint and something else intoxicating, something that makes my brain go pitch-black. An expensive wine.
For a heartbeat, her hands flatten against my chest as if she’s going to push me away, as if her sensible, logical business brain is screaming about boundaries and rules. But then I growl against her lips, my other hand gripping her hip, pulling her flush against me until there isn’t a single millimeter of daylight left between our bodies.
Her resistance evaporates.
With a low moan, her hands once again clench into the fabric of my T-shirt, bunching the cloth in her fists as she pulls herself upward, meeting my tongue with a desperate hunger of her own that catches me completely off guard. If Campbell Hines is hellbent on breaking me, this is exactly how she does it. She’s destroying every ounce of my control, and I am gladly letting her.
The elevator gives a smooth, mechanical shudder as it continues its long ascent to the upper floors. Every level we pass feels like a cliff. Any moment, we’ll be forced to part. I slide my hand up from her hip, tracing the curve of her ribs beneath her blazer, my palm burning hot against herclothes. She arches into my touch, her head dropping back against the mirrored wall as my lips leave hers to tear a path down the column of her throat, biting softly at the sensitive spot right beneath her jaw. A sharp, trembling gasp shudders through her entire frame, her fingers digging desperately into my shoulders.
“Jake,” she breathes out, her voice a wrecked, beautiful whisper that threatens to drive me completely over the edge. “Jake, we can’t?—”
I pull away, but leave her by only an inch before she pulls me close again.
“We are,” I mutter against her skin, my hands moving inward, my thumbs grazing the curve of her breasts. I bring my mouth back up to hers, smothering the rest of her protest in another deep kiss that tells her exactly how little I care about right and wrong right now. I consume her, my thighs pinning hers against the glass, making her feel the thick, undeniable hardness of exactly what she does to me.
The elevator bell rings out, loud and jarring in the quiet, enclosed space. The electronic display above the door flashes with a seven as the lift slows, settling into a smooth stop. We part, both of us facing forward and wiping the evidence from our mouths like teenagers caught kissing out by the lake by the police.
The sudden threat of reality hits us like a bucket of ice water. Campbell’s eyes blink wildly, her focus on the slow-opening doors. Her lips are swollen, cherry-red, and wet from my mouth despite her attempt to rid her face of clues. Her hair completely wild around her flushed face, she’s the exact opposite of the pristine executive who walked into this hotel earlier.
I stare at her, my hands still twitching to reach out andpull her back, my pulse roaring in my ears as the hallway outside sits empty. Nobody is there.
Just before the doors close again, she slips out. And I take the ride back down to four alone. Alone, and so fucking wound up that I’m going to need to relive that kiss with my cock in my hand in the shower the minute I get into my room.
TEN
CAMPBELL
Working the Little Rock press box was supposed to be the easiest part of my weekend. Usually, small-market sports reporters make for easy conversation, and I like getting into debates with them over who had the best ERA over the last several seasons in the majors or what I think about proposed rule changes.
But since the story posted on Connor’s platforms, media interest in the Mavericks has exploded. The usual two- or three-reporter turnout for a Triple-A game has doubled. And there’s at least one television station parked in a van outside the clubhouse waiting to get sound bites after the game to match the in-game b-roll they’re grabbing from the affiliate station. I should be thrilled—that’s my job, to get more eyeballs on this team. And here we are in a whole other state, and all anyone wants to talk about is the Mavericks and their special father-son duo.
“Hey, Campbell, you got the updated stat sheets for Martinez’s home-away splits?” Lee, a reporter fromTheGazetteasks, his voice cutting through the haze in my brain.
“Yeah. Yeah, of course,” I mutter, forcing my fingers to navigate my tablet. My hands are steady, a testament to years of corporate conditioning and plenty of clerking jobs during law school, but my skin hasn’t stopped buzzing since I stepped out of the elevator last night. Every time I blink, my mind goes right there, to the moment when Jake’s lips met mine. There was no sleeping last night. I barely etched out thirty minutes, my dreams pre-scripted to the feel of his hard body against mine, pressing me against the wall. His hips grinding into me, his mouth trailing kisses down my throat while his fingers flirted with my breasts. I don’t know what I would have done if his thumbs ever made it to my hard nipples. I soaked my panties as it was. Fuck, I’m soaking them now just thinking about it.
