Strike Out: Mustangs Baseball #6 (4 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

He’d never again complain about a woman not waxing her lady parts. Shit, those pads had hurt coming off, just like Smarty Pants Scientist had said they would. He spread lotion on his now, smooth-as-a-baby’s-butt skin, taking extra care with the patches where the hair had been ripped out by the roots. Shaving was the way to go, and though he’d been through a couple of razor blades getting rid of his body hair, he deemed the cost well worth it. Ripping those pads off had brought tears to his eyes. After removing the first two himself, he’d given up and had Dr. Reed yank the rest off, one after the other, as fast as she could. There had been no use prolonging the agony, he’d just wanted it over with.

To give her credit, she hadn’t said, “I told you so.” She’d even pretended not to see the tears he’d swiped away before they could spill down his cheeks.

Arriving at the stadium early, he grabbed his practice uniform from his locker and headed to her office. He’d change clothes in the trainer’s restroom to avoid the razzing awaiting him when his teammates noticed his extreme manscaping. Being a lab rat was bad enough without being the brunt of a million jokes. He couldn’t hide it from them for long, but he’d take whatever reprieve he could get.

***

At the sound of the door opening, Tricia glanced up from the printout of yesterday’s data she was studying. Royce Stryker stood there dressed in a Royal blue Mustangs T-shirt and loose fitting shorts hanging almost to his knees. Below the hem of his shorts, his legs were hairless. She tried not to smile, but failed. He’d come back! And, he’d taken her advice and shaved. She’d felt sorry for him yesterday, even if his discomfort had been because of his stubbornness.

“Hi.”

“Hi, yourself,” she said. Arranging her reports into a neat stack, she slipped them into the folder that would be their home until she got around to putting them into a binder. “Ready for a test run of the wireless system?”

“I suppose so.” He crossed the room and set his duffle bag on a chair. He turned to face her, arms stretched out to his sides. “My body is yours.”

Even though she knew his words weren’t meant in a sexual way, they still caused every nerve ending in her body to tingle. She’d lain awake the previous night, imagining what it would be like to touch Royce in very non-clinical ways. When she’d finally closed her eyes and slept, she’d dreamt of him. Or rather, she’d dreamt of the two of them, doing things. Call her perverse, but ever since he’d threatened to spank her yesterday, before he knew who she was, she hadn’t been able to get the thought out of her mind.

She wasn’t a virgin, but she wouldn’t call herself well tutored in sexual matters either. She knew just enough to understand some women liked to be spanked, that it was an aphrodisiac for them. Apparently, she was one of them.

This morning, she’d woken, aroused and wiggling her ass in the air—something she’d been doing moments before in her dream while her imaginary lover brought his hand down on her bottom, over and over again. She’d been so damn horny, she’d reached for the vibrator in her nightstand to finish what her dream lover had started.

“Give me a sec.” Thankful she’d left her bag on the floor beside the desk, Tricia bent to retrieve it, taking her time before lifting it to the desk. All she needed was a few seconds for her face to return to normal. She had no idea how to explain the color heating her cheeks to Royce.
Oh? You noticed the blush? It’s nothing. I was just wishing you would spank me.

Yeah, that would be professional. He’d report her to the Mustangs’ management, and she’d be gone in a heartbeat. There wouldn’t be another professional sports team who would touch her with a ten-foot cattle prod afterward.

Imagining the career-ending scenario turned her blood to ice, effectively putting a quick end to her erotic thoughts.

She dropped the bag on the desk then stood in order to get a better look at the contents. It didn’t take long to find the small box of adhesive pads and the plastic container filled with what she would forever think of as electronic sperm.

“Take your shirt off, please.” While he undressed, she found the page in her notebook where she had assigned numbers to each electrode frequency. Earlier, she’d used a marker to label the pad with corresponding numbers, all so she could keep track of what body part the data stream was coming from and match it against the baseline data. It wouldn’t do to get her wires crossed, so to speak.

When she turned around. The sight of his bare chest stole the breath from her lungs. “Wow.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the wide expanse of light-gold skin. The absence of hair didn’t make him look any less masculine, if anything, it made his shoulders appear wider and brought the definition in his abs front and center. She licked her lips, wanting to run her tongue along the deep valleys to scoop up the deliciousness of Royce Stryker.

“Like it?” He ran his hands over his hairless torso. “I haven’t been this smooth since I hit puberty. It feels good.”

His voice jolted her back to reality, and she realized she’d been staring openmouthed at him like an awestruck teenager.

“I don’t know how much trouble it’s going to be to keep it this way, but we’ll see. If I don’t like it after a month, I’ll just let it grow back. I tell you, I have a new appreciation for what women go through. I almost killed myself in the shower trying to shave my legs.”

An image of Royce, naked with soapy water following the contours of his body, formed in her mind and wouldn’t go away. Lord, what a sight that would be. “I hope you didn’t cut yourself. What with your aversion to blood….”

A shudder racked his body. “I cut myself a couple of times.” He raised his left leg, so he could point out a thin red line below his knee. “This one’s going to leave a scar, I think.”

She laughed at his theatrics. “If every little cut left a scar, there wouldn’t be an unblemished woman on the planet.”

“I might need stitches,” he said, in all seriousness. Another shudder rippled over his magnificent pectorals.

Before he could become any more melodramatic, Tricia peeled the backing off the first pad, adhering it just above his left nipple with a smack. “I don’t have a medical degree, but I predict you’ll live. Would you like me to have the team doctor take a look, just to make sure?”

“No.” He rubbed his chest where she’d all but slapped him. “What did you do that for?”

Four distinctive red marks indicated where her fingers had touched his skin. Once again, her mind shifted to her erotic dream the previous night. The marks on his chest were fading rapidly, but she didn’t think his handprints on her ass would disappear as quickly. No, she was certain, even after they eventually did fade into oblivion, they would remain in her memory for the rest of her life.

“Let’s focus on getting you ready to play today, okay?” She slapped another pad on his right pectoral with less enthusiasm than before. Nevertheless, she didn’t let her fingertips linger. Even through brief contact, his newly-revealed skin was smooth and incredibly warm to the touch. And tempting. “I don’t want team management complaining about you being late.”

The woman had no appreciation for what he’d been through. Hell, he could have died in the shower last night. The sight of blood streaming down his leg after he’d sliced himself had almost done him in. If he hadn’t grabbed hold of the handle on the back of the glass door and used it to steady himself while he collapsed against the wall, he might have broken his neck. Or bled to death. Luckily, clamping a washcloth over the wound had stopped the bleeding, or he would have been in big trouble.

But, he’d survived, and been more careful shaving his chest and arms over the sink. He’d rather clean up a mess than die in the shower.

Dr. Reed knelt at his feet in order to adhere pads to his legs. He glanced down, intrigued by the swell of her breasts visible down the front of her V-necked Mustangs shirt. Beneath the thin cotton, she wore a plain looking bra that lifted her assets up high, giving her cleavage he didn’t remember seeing the day before. He would have remembered. A guy didn’t forget creamy swells like hers, especially when the woman wasn’t deliberately doing anything to show them off. If she’d been blatant about it, he wouldn’t have given them a second look, but because she obviously didn’t know how tantalizing they looked from his angle, he couldn’t take his eyes off them. He flexed his hands, imagining how the feminine globes would feel.

Soft fingers slid beneath the hem of his shorts, lifting the fabric to expose his thigh. Already on the flight deck, his libido shot off the end of the runway into full-flight. Luckily, the woman causing all the commotion in his shorts was busy searching one-handed through the box of adhesive pads on the floor beside her. Royce stepped back.

Toppling forward, Tricia screeched, recovering her balance a split second before she would have face-planted on the floor.

Shit.
His erection withered instantly. “I’m sorry.” He crouched to her level. “Are you okay?”

She sat back on her heels and glared at him. “I’m fine.” One hand rested on her thigh while she used the other to brush a lock of hair out of her face that had escaped her low ponytail. “Why did you move?”

He didn’t dare tell her the truth, but if they were going to do this every day for a month, hiding his natural reaction to her wasn’t going to be possible. It wasn’t like he could control
that
part of his body, not when she touched him like the way she was. Perhaps, if she had a clue…. “You…. I mean…your hand was….” He closed his eyes, searching for a way to tell her that didn’t make him sound like a pervert. Coming up empty, he opened his eyes.

She was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind, and maybe he had. This whole thing was insane anyway, so why sugarcoat it. He took a deep breath then let the words fly. “When you touched me, I got an erection.”

The stunned look on her face would have been comical if his job hadn’t been on the line. If she reported him for sexual harassment, he wouldn’t have to worry about getting his mojo back. Mustangs’ management would kick his ass to the parking lot in a heartbeat.

“But, I touched you yesterday.”

He could practically see the cogs turning inside her analytical brain as she worked out what he was saying. “Yesterday was different. Don’t ask me how, ’cause I can’t tell you. All I know is, when you slid your hand under my shorts…. It was a natural reaction.”

“I see.” She grabbed the two boxes on the floor containing her stuff and stood. “Well. I’ve got to put the electrodes on you.”

Royce stood his ground while she stared at him with narrowed eyes. He held her gaze, refusing to let her see him sweat. Did she even know she held his fate in her hands?

“Take your shorts off.”

“What?!” Of all the things he imagined her saying, take it off wasn’t even on the list.

“It’s the shorts. Putting my hand inside your clothing is too intimate, so the solution is to take them off.”

“But….”

“You didn’t have the same reaction yesterday, did you?”

“Um.” He looked down at his feet.

“You did?” Her voice had raised a couple of octaves, enough to nearly pierce his eardrums.

He returned his gaze to hers. “It didn’t last long.” He’d had too much on his mind yesterday, what with the blood test and everything else she’d sprung on him. Sexual attraction had taken a backseat.

“I don’t believe this.” She fisted her hands on the curve of her hips. She looked furious and flummoxed, all at the same time, and damn if her reaction wasn’t sexy.

His cock stirred again. This time, he refused to shield his reaction. It wasn’t like she was the kid he’d first thought she was. She was a grown woman, a scientist no less. She knew the way of the world, and she had to know how men reacted to her. “What can I say? I’m a man, and you’re an attractive female.”

He thinks I’m attractive?

The thought warmed her from the inside out. She wrapped the feeling up with a mental ribbon to be examined later. She’d promised to have Royce ready in time for batting practice, and she wasn’t going to fail on her first day.
Why can’t he act like nothing was wrong?
Why did he have to bring his problem out into the open? As long as they both pretended not to notice then they wouldn’t have to address the issue. But, nooooo. Mr. Too Sexy to Ignore had to go and blow the lid off the proverbial pot.

Now, his lack of control was out there, so to speak, and they’d have to deal with it before they could move on.

The college kids she’d worked with had all the decency to pretend nothing was going on when they reacted to her touch. She’d expected reactions from the younger men, had braced herself to pretend she didn’t notice, but she’d expected someone of Royce’s age and experience to have better control over his desire. That he didn’t, thrilled her. Not that she wanted him to know how he affected her. She needed his complete cooperation, and if he got a whiff of her attraction to him, she’d lose whatever respect she might have garnered thus far.

“Look. All I’m saying is, yesterday, you seemed to deal with me touching you just fine. Maybe if you weren’t wearing so many clothes….”