3. Trick

Texas / November

I've got my dick in one hand, hard and throbbing, and my phone in the other. The screen is extra bright in the dim light of pre-dawn, and it should feel recriminating.

On one hand, the guilt is there. But that hasn't stopped me all season, so why should it stop me today?

And in a perverse way, knowing how wrong it is to hunt through Sinclaire's Instagram posts for tiny glimpses of long, strawberry-blonde waves and her bright sunshine-filled smile only sharpens my arousal.

I haven't seen her in months, so these online glimpses are all I get.

Wicked desire slithers through my veins as I slow-scroll her posts.

It's five in the morning, and I should be asleep, resting.

Today is the last time I play professional baseball. Tonight, my team plays in the final game of the final championship series of my career. We've pushed our rivals to the very limit, and one way or another, it's going to end.

So I should be asleep right now. That's my routine, and after twenty years of playing pro ball, I know how important rest is to my performance.

Instead I'm looking at the short text message chain we've exchanged. Eight months, less than twenty text messages.

In May, she told me that her thesis was accepted.

In June, that she accepted an internship with a women's basketball team in New York.

In July, I asked her if she was coming to the games we were playing there. She couldn't, she had a conflict. Sorry, she wrote back. Love this batting streak you're on, though.

I flip back to her Instagram, not wanting to read the last few messages where I ask her if she's coming to the play off series.

Questions she just didn't reply to.

I'm in love with a girl who doesn't even want to get text messages from me.

Not just in love with, cowboy. You're stroking your meat to a reflection of her hands in a mirror.

It's a photo from a few months ago. She was on a podcast, talking about being a female statistician in sports, and she shared a photo of herself, her hair tumbling forward, covering up her face, her hands wrapped around a microphone. All of it is framed in an oddly dark, hyper filtered selfie taken in a mirror.

I've spent a lot of time wondering how she took it. Why she took it, why her Instagram is so private and moody when Sinclaire is sunshine personified in person.

As always when I'm getting close, I push the scene I'm looking at into a fantasy that matches the one real moment I have—her throwing herself into my arms.

I stare at the dark room where she recorded the podcast. Imagine sitting in the shadows, waiting for my girl to be done with her interview.

Watching her disconnect, then push away from wherever she's sitting—a desk? A counter?—and twisting around, beaming at me.

All done.

That's my girl. Come here and Daddy will give you a reward.

She flies across the dimly lit room, bringing her light and sweetness with her. I get all warm inside as I feel her soft weight land against me, arms going around my neck, breasts against my chest.

I take her mouth fiercely, giving her my tongue, showing her how to give me hers right back.

God, the things I want to do to her. My fantasies are chaotic fever dreams of primal impulses.

I want to kiss her like I want to fuck her, with everything I have. A bull finally let loose in a sunny pasture.

I want to climb on top of the most off-limits girl in the world and seed her over and over again..

Fuck, I shouldn't even have that thought about the daughter of my current manager, my former teammate, my once and always mentor.

On the other hand—probably the same fist choking the base of my cock with the same strength that will send me to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot—I've made it to the final game of the World Fucking Series, having one of the best seasons of my entire career, jacking it the thought of putting a baby in the coach's very grown up girl.

So while I can't ever tell Jeff what changed this year, I'm not going to stop.

Yeah, that's why your balls are heavy and aching. Because of sport.

I groan and close my eyes, my phone falling to my chest. I drag that hand down to my sac and squeeze.

No, it's not because of some superstitious winning hope. I make myself come for Sinclaire because all it took was a single, haunting glance and I knew she was the only girl I'd ever want.

The universe is fucking cruel, delivering me my soul mate in the form of the little girl who I once taught to ride a horse—dropping her back into my life a twenty-four-year-old bombshell.

Twenty-five, now. Sixteen years younger than me.

Today is her birthday.

Seed slicks the crown of my erection and I swipe my thumb through it, circling it to the stretched lip of my foreskin and the sensitive ridge of flesh just beneath that.

Happy birthday, Sinclaire. I'm gonna win you the World Series tonight. Then I'm going to track you down and find out how to make you less sad.