ChapterOne
OLIVER
“What doyou mean I’ve been traded?”
“I’m sorry, Oliver. I did my best to try and negotiate an extension on your contract, but you got hurt twice last season. Spent a lot of time on the bench.”
“It’s a professional sport, shit happens.” I ran my fingers through my hair frustrated. The team had every right to trade me. Hell, if I were them, I would have traded me too, but it sucked. I wanted to stay in New York where my family was, and where I’ve been my whole career.
“You’re needed in San Diego in two weeks to officially sign the paperwork and to meet your new teammates, and do a press conference. Training with your new team will start in late February.”
“Fuck.” I sighed, resigned to the fact that I was about to move across country, not something I wanted right now.
“Oliver, you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Sorry man, I tried to keep you here.”
“I know. Thanks.”
I hung up the phone and looked out the window of my apartment overlooking Central Park West. I’d lived here for six years, helping run the family business when I wasn’t training or during the regular baseball season. I could retire, but I wasn’t ready yet. If I didn’t play baseball anymore, I don’t know what I would do. I hated being in the office all day everyday, and training helped me keep control of the restless beast within me.
Last Christmas I thought about retiring, especially after I met Claire. She was sweet, but she was also in love with someone else. The idiot finally woke up and decided he couldn’t live without her. She sent me a picture of them together and I noticed a small rock on a certain finger. I was happy for her, and our ruse over the holiday to make the idiot jealous apparently worked. We kept in touch after our cruise ended and she invited me to the wedding. I sent them both a gift, but was unable to make it because of my busy spring schedule.
She was happy, and that’s what mattered most. Even if he hadn’t been in the picture though, it never would have lasted with us. She was submissive by nature, but I don’t think she could have truly handled me and my tastes. I wanted someone that needed discipline and direction as a part of their daily routine as much as I did, only they needed my help. Claire didn’t need that, she just needed to be owned and possessed by the man she already loved.
I looked around my apartment. It was empty except for the furnishings some designer thought would look great in the modern space. I didn’t care what it looked like. Hell, I was hardly ever here. If I wasn’t training, I was in a suit working at our downtown offices. Blake International was trying to build their next big project, a hotel and casino in Morocco. We were working with the governments to make the arrangements before we broke ground.
I was mainly just there for show as a member of the board that received a piece of the pie, but I could be at the meetings via conference call. They didn’t need me, and I needed the physical exertion that baseball brought me. Maybe moving to my family’s California home would be good for me. The weather would be a hell of a lot better than New York. I could skip the bitter cold of the winter that was fast approaching. It also meant I didn’t have mom breathing down my neck about getting married anytime a major formal event happened in the city.
Ever since my cousin’s wedding on that damn cruise, she was hell bent on setting me up with girls that she thought were suitable. They were all beautiful, successful, and strong, but not one of them was submissive. Not one of them could give me what I wanted. What I needed. What I craved.
I took a deep breath and decided to get it over with. I needed to be in California in two weeks, I’d be there in a couple hours. Maybe two weeks of sunshine and swimming in the indoor pool could do me some good. I hadn’t been to our home in California in over a year. I wasn’t even sure why we held onto the property when we didn’t do anything with it, but I’m glad that we’d kept it because not having to look for a new place to live or having any of that stress with being traded was nice. I was lucky I was traded to a team where I already had property waiting for me.
A few calls later I had a flight booked, my mom was going to ship the rest of my personal items to me later. There wasn’t much that I wanted from the apartment. Most of it was just stuff picked out by the decorator. I packed my bags and headed to JFK. I had less than two hours to get through town and airport security to catch my flight, I’d be in California before nightfall west coast time.
ChapterTwo
LUNA
Peace and quiet.
I took a deep breath as I disengaged the alarm to my favorite place. This California mansion belonged to the Blake family. I’d never met them, and they were never here. In the year that I had been cleaning this place, which mainly consisted of opening the doors and windows to let the fresh air in, making sure nobody had messed with anything on the property, and sweeping a light layer of dust away, I’d never seen anyone in residence.
The Blake family home was the first job I’d taken for our family owned business. I started working in the evenings after school so I could have some spending money, plus it gave me something to do since all my sisters had left me behind. I’m glad they were back now, but damn, I missed the quiet of it being just me and mom some days.
Since my sisters came back home a few weeks ago from New York, this home had become my sanctuary. I needed the quiet that you can’t get when you have seven sisters and a sick mom all crammed into a three bedroom house. My family was large and loud. I loved them, but I was always the baby and felt different, like I didn’t quite belong.
When my sisters started moving to New York after their eighteenth birthdays, the house gradually started getting quieter and quieter as each of them left. This last year, it had just been me and mom as I finished up high school, and though I knew something was wrong with her, she told me not to burden my sisters with it, that she was fine.
My eighteenth birthday came and went and my senior year ended, but instead of following my sisters across the country, I stayed with mom and started cleaning more houses with the company she and my dad started up before I was born. It was hard work, but I could be alone when I did it and didn’t have to answer to anyone. I didn’t have to worry about being the awkward baby sister of the beautiful Reyes sisters. I was just me. I could daydream as I worked and live in my own head.
Having my sisters back was great. I’d missed them, but it also meant that I was back to a large, loud household with no privacy and feeling just a step out of balance. They all seemed so perfect and normal, talking about boys, hair, and makeup. I lived with my hair in a ponytail most of the time because it just got in the way and tended to frizz, boys my age didn’t interest me because they were idiots and gross. Who had time to put on makeup when I would just end up sweating the stuff off anyway? I just felt so out of step with my gorgeous horde of older sisters. Something was missing, but I was clueless as to what it was. Even with them all gone I still felt off and it was frustrating to no know why i was so fucking out of step and not know what exactly I needed.
Here, alone, I could dream about the man I wished for, he was strong capable, in control, greedy, and hard. He would hold me close and kiss my hair, but bend me over his knee when I got out o line. I smiled to myself thinking about him and what he would do if he caught me going into the pool alone when I didn’t know how to swim. He’d be protective and treat me like I was precious, but lose control when he was inside me.
I let out a sigh and took a deep breath, opening the French doors to the back enclosed patio where the heated pool was left unused. The lagoon style pool was gorgeous. The blue water shimmered in the fading light of the California sunset. The smell of the clean pool made me smile. I’d let the pool guy in on his scheduled day last month and I did the regular every week maintenance myself. It was easy putting the vacuum in the pool and letting it run as I cleaned the house. I was always here when they had someone scheduled to come in and check on the home. It was one of the requirements that Mrs. Blake had when she hired my mom’s company to take care of the California home for her family.