Bedtime Story

The crack of the bat brought me and the drunken population of Bootleg Springs to our feet. Boots and sneakers stomped on the metal bleachers as Nash listed and stumbled his way to first base. It was top of the sixth at the Bootleg Cock Spurs Tuesday night fast pitch softball game. Summer was just easing into being and cooking up a spectacular sunset over the lake. And everyone, including the players, was shitfaced.

The field’s moonshine stand did a better business than the concession stand. And the dusty yellow school buses were already waiting in the parking lot to drive everyone’s drunk asses home. I’d learned my lesson my first game in this tiny West Virginia town nestled between mountains. I’d been hungover for two days straight. I’d also kissed Scarlett Bodine that night. That had been worth everything else.

Speak of the devil, my girl was up to bat. She wiggled her hips and took a practice swing that I swore I could feel the breeze from. The crowd loved her, even with double vision. “Bases loaded, Bodine,” Rocky Tobias shouted, sloshing his moonshine down the back of EmmaLeigh. But EmmaLeigh was seven sheets to the wind and didn’t give a damn about her favorite Go Cocks hoodie.

Gibson, Scarlett’s oldest brother stepped out of the dugout and signaled her. I bit back a laugh. He was telling her to get on base, not swing for the fence. Scarlett signaled back with her middle finger and the crowd roared.

I loved her. It was pure and simple as that. One look at that upturned nose, those freckles, those damn eyes and I’d been hooked. And then she’d opened her mouth and twanged and y’alled her way into my heart where she’d dug her claws in and never let go.

She looked in my direction and puckered up. Sexy and cocky and barely controlled chaos. I sent her a kiss and a wink back.

Scarlett let the first pitch go, deigning it unfit for her swing.

“Ball!” June Tucker shouted through her umpire mask.

The catcher tried to argue, but had trouble getting to his feet. Six or seven shots of moonshine would do that to a person, even a forty-year-old man carrying a few extra pounds around the middle.

The second pitch rocketed into the strike zone and Scarlett swung with power and precision. There was the electric clink of ball meeting bat and as the crowd surged to its feet and wobbled, Scarlett flashed that cocky grin and broke into a dead run. Straight as an arrow down the baseline, she rounded first at a sprint and headed toward second. The outfielder bobbled the ball and spent precious seconds scrambling.

My girl’s foot hit second and she flew toward third pushing the other runner home. The outfielder regained control and made a lopsided throw in the general direction of third base. The shortstop plucked it out of the air and sent it sailing to the third baseman. The crowd was screaming unintelligible encouragement and it fed Scarlett like diesel fuel.

She landed at third a split second before the ball hit the glove and when it bounced out and rolled between the base coach’s legs, she was off again. Scarlett Bodine might have been petite and halfway hammered, but she sure could move.

The crowd was hysterical. “Run, Scarlett!”

“Move yer ass, Bodine!”

Bootleg Springs took its softball seriously.

The third baseman got her shit together and rocketed the ball off toward home. The catcher ditched his hat and stood on shaky legs as Scarlett barreled toward him.

I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Scarlett hit him at full speed just as his glove closed around the ball. They fell backward on the base, knocking into June and taking her down with them. It was a pile of limbs that the ball rolled out of.

“Safe!” June’s muffled call had the crowd screaming as if they’d just won the Super Bowl instead of a Tuesday night adult league softball game. I loved it.

“Cocks! Cocks! Cocks!” the crowd cheered.

I climbed down the bleachers, picking my way through mason jars and inebriated adults, and rounded the dugout. Scarlett was enjoying a victory lap in front of the crowd on her brothers’ shoulders. They dumped her unceremoniously into my arms, exactly where she belonged. Her face was already showing the shadow of a bruise on her jaw and her elbows and knees were scraped raw. She never looked happier.

To think I could have missed out on this. I could have stayed the course and lived a dull, calculated, colorless life.

Scarlett pulled me in for a hard kiss. She tasted like apple pie moonshine. It didn’t matter how many times her lips touched mine, it was always a shot to the gut. Just like a hit of whiskey. I was a lucky man. Not that her pain-in-the-ass brothers—or Scarlett for that matter—would let me forget that.

“We won,” she breathed.

The other team was stumbling off the field, heading for the school buses and their designated drivers.

“Nice run,” I told her, in no hurry to put her down. “Looks like you’ve got a few battle scars, champ.”

“Nothing that won’t keep me from celebrating appropriately,” Scarlett said, shifting against me.

The woman was a witch or a walking ED drug. All she had to do was look at me and I was hard. I’d yet to get used to brandishing hard-ons in public.

“Behave yourself until I get you home,” I warned her.

“Nope. Home’s too far when there’s a perfectly good dugout right here.”

I looked over her shoulder at the aforementioned dugout. “It smells like sweaty jock straps and mud in there,” I complained.

“Live a little, Dev,” she said, gray eyes sparkling. She knew every button of mine to push. Scarlett would have made a hell of a lawyer.

“I’m not getting naked in there with you,” I told her. “I’m a county judge now. I’m not supposed to break the law.”

“What’s so illegal about gettin’ naked?” Scarlett wanted to know.

But before I could spout off the penal code, she brought her fingers to my lips. “I want you to follow me into that dark, abandoned dugout,” she insisted.

I let her slide down my body until her feet touched the ground.

“And if you follow me,” she said walking backwards. “I’ll make you really happy.”

“Really happy?” I parroted, my blood careening toward my already hard cock.

She crooked her finger at me. “So very, very happy,” Scarlett promised.

Fuck.

Well, if I was going to get arrested, what a way to go.

I glanced around. The stands were already empty and the concession stand was closing up. Everyone was always too drunk to hang out after the games. They wanted to go home and eat and pass out in front of the TV. It was Bootleg tradition.

Scarlett stepped down into the dugout and I followed like a trained beagle. Eager and anxious. The sun had set making it impossibly dark inside. It smelled earthy and damp. There were sunflower seeds under my feet. I reached for her and felt the rest of my body light up the second my fingers found her.

“I like seein’ you in the stands,” she said, her voice breathy.

“I like seeing you plow over middle aged men,” I confessed.

She laughed and slid her hands up my chest and back down. An innocent touch that had my dick throbbing for the same attention. She did this to me. Made me hard, made me forget who and what I was. Sometimes the only thing that mattered was the feel of her wrapped around me. That’s when the world made sense.

She cupped me through my slacks. “I see you’re ready to play,” Scarlett teased.

“The question is, are you ready?” I’d peeled her out of her uniform countless times before. And when my fingers found her pants already unsnapped and unzipped, I lost my damn mind. I shoved my hand down her pants into her pretty white underwear that I’d watched her put on before the game. I could feel the heat, the wet. Her pants were too tight to give me much freedom, so I pushed them down to her knees and forced her leg onto the bench, opening her to me.

Her breathing was ragged already. Hell, mine wasn’t any better. And when my fingers slid through those silky folds I imagined her eyes rolling back in her head. I teased her with my thumb as my fingers danced around her entrance. She bucked her hips against my hand and I leaned down to capture her mouth with my own.

“You drive me wild,” she whispered, the West Virginia strong and sweet on her words.

“Right back at you, sweetheart.” I pinned her against the wall with my body and slid my fingers home.

She was chanting a jumble of dirty words and prayers that I hoped never found God’s ears. I let her ride my hand, directing me like she was breaking a stallion. My cock, thick and heavy, ached for her touch.

As if she read my mind, Scarlett paused in her thanking of the “sweet baby Jesus” and made quick work of my pants. She had my zipper open and my dick in her hand before I could even free one of her breasts from her sports bra. She had a compact body that reacted to my own like it was an aphrodisiac.

Her fingers tightened around my shaft and my vision grayed on the edges. I thrust into her, curling my fingers and swallowed my name on her lips. She stroked my cock between our bodies, the tip of it brushing the flat of her stomach transferring the thick drops of precum to her ivory silk skin.

I squeezed her bare breast in my hand, my cock jerking in hers when I felt her nipple pebble against my palm. “Scarlett.” I fucking loved her. I worshipped her. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to make her happy and that included making her come in a damn dugout where just about anybody in town could catch us.

“Dev,” she moaned. “Jesus. You’re gonna make me…” The sound of her head thwacking against the block wall gave me pause.

“Don’t you dare fucking stop,” she ordered me.

“I never have enough of you, Scarlett Bodine.”

She tried to slide down the wall, bending her knees as if to kneel.

“No, baby. Not with your knees all scraped up,” I told her, though it cost me. Having Scarlett suck me off in the shadows? Yeah. My cock and I were both on board for that.

She swore quietly. “Fine. Put me on the bench then,” she ordered.

Without withdrawing my fingers, I wrapped my free arm around her waist and set her on her feet on the low bench that ran the length of the dugout. It put her breast at mouth level and I took full advantage.

She was doing strange and wonderful things with her fingers on my shaft. And I knew from the tingling at the base of my spine that I didn’t have much time. I felt her the walls of her pussy pulsing weakly and knew she was close.

“Where do you—” I tried to ask the question, but Scarlett clamped one hand on my head pulling me back to her breast. She used her other to guide my cock between her legs, still stroking it.

“You’re gonna come right here, honey.”

Nestled between her thighs, the crown of my cock parted her folds to nudge at her clit. And still she stroked. I sucked and fucked her with my fingers, adding a third just to hear her whisper my name.

I was in charge of her orgasm and I could feel it building like a thunderstorm. “That’s right, sweetheart. You’re gonna come on my hand, squeezing those fingers inside you.”

“Oh fuck,” she hissed.

Her grip on my cock was painful and exactly what I needed. I gave her nipple a long stroke with my tongue and reveled as she fell apart on me. Strong, hungry squeezes clenched my fingers and I was coming, too. The orgasm built from my balls and erupted so fiercely it fucking hurt. The hot jets of my release coated her sweet little clit, my fingers as they pumped into her, and her ivory thighs.

I was marking her, the same way she’d branded my heart. We belonged to each other and neither of us was likely to forget that.