Pitched:

Pitching for the pitcher:

By Christine Wood:

Copyright © by C Wood 2020:

Any resemblance, to people, events, and places,

Written within the pages of this book is purely coincidental,

as this is a work of total fiction. All characters depicted in this work of fiction are 18 years of age or older, when anything sexual takes place.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book.

May not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would

like to share this book with another person, please purchase an

additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this, book and did not purchase it, or it wasn’t purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Feedback is much appreciated either good or bad, so I can fix errors:

Chapter 1:

Suzie Q and I, we are singing karaoke in the back garden, much to the annoyance of the neighbours. In fact, we’ve just finished entertaining them, with if I do say so myself, a blinding rendition of my theme tune, Penny Lane, a renowned tune by the fab four. Though why Suzie insisted it was my tune or in fact called me that, why I don’t know? I never asked, but she knows I’m not from Liverpool nor called Lane, she is stupid and loud? I’m though Penny Daniels, twenty-four, very drunk and keeping the neighbours up… Anyway, it’s not my fault they ask for more and so we sang it again, and we do it better than the four lads from Liverpool did, and no I’m not thinking of those lads, but ours Russell, Mark, Jeff and Royston, four old university friends of ours, who’ve just left with the threat of the police being called by the fuddy-duddy’s next door.

What it’s only... I look at my wristwatch and it’s, oops our bag, it’s three in the morning. No really, it’s that late, or is it early? I guess it’s an either or? Heck no wonder they are angry. I’d lost function of the watch to eye coordination at some point early in the night, not helped with the constant refuelling my mouth, with those brain damaging Bacardi heavy Mojito cocktails of Suzie’s. Suddenly Suzie had a brainstorm, or was it a brain fart? Who knows when it happened, but it was definitely after drinking far too many of those self-same said Mojitos?

We’d, as you can guess, have been drunk all night at my ‘Penny’s-Purged-The-Perv-Party?’ A very well-attended soiree I might add. I didn’t know, nor did I care, what she was blabbering on about, because I was a little tipsy, but with the guests and the lads at last all gone, and we were supposed to be clearing away, but I’m singing again and singing this song made her dare me to do something stupid and feckless.

Just for a laugh Penny Lane, go on do it for me please, please, pretty please, remember the New Year’s resolution? She begged, and I found the abandoned mic and looked at it like I had found Suzie’s new sex toy. Yes of course I remembered it, it was written on my torso in permanent marker for two days, so drunk was I. I feel I am being led astray by Suzie. I remembered it alright, but because for those two whole days, that the bloody thing wouldn’t come off. It was just about the worst resolution I’d ever made, actually the only one I had ever made, why make them, when I only ever did good things? The next song came on and I loved it, so with mic in hand and not a sex toy, I blast out my best Frank Sinatra impression ever, I sound like the Sex Pistols on downers though…

New York, New York, so good they named it twice, New York New York, all the scandal and the vice, I love it. New York, New York, now isn’t it a pity, what they say about New York City? I had a sudden thought, I stopped singing and asked. What do they say about New York City? Told to shush again by Mrs Fuddy-Duddy, I remembered the time and turned it off. Thank you and goodnight, Mr and Mrs Fuddy-Duddy. My parting shot to the woman who had ruined my party and was hiding behind her hideous curtains.

I don’t know Penny. Go and find out, then you tell me, I double dare you. Take up that weird job offer? What was she like fourteen again?

I fell out of the tree last time she double dared me to do something, and I was the one who broke her bloody arm. I laugh as she takes the mic off me, and we go in search of the weird e-mailed job offer, complete with its tickets and hotel reservations. The job offer we thought was bogus, because it was just too good to be true and we all know if it looks too good, chances are it is too good. Much like the shrimp and prawn platter the supermarket who sold us it really cheap because it was closing. Yeah right how were we, drunk me and Suzie supposed to see those iddie-biddy date things? Apparently, it was way past its sell date, or so Lydia the guest who spent the night vomiting in the bathroom told me. I will be sued tomorrow when the other prawn and shrimp eating guests report us for food poisoning. Good job I hate shrimps and prawns, or I too would be so ill.

Finally finding it she decides for me, that yes this is a good idea, and despite my protests to the contrary, she says it’s an even better idea than climbing that tree, to see the hunky topless gardeners in the neighbour’s garden. Yeah right with you Q.

Right, time to start then, we need to get you to the airport and see what New York has to offer you, in the way of hunks, studs and yes girl, sex. Take a chance Pen, besides what have you to lose, I dare you? She said it, so I’m doing it.

Shit, I’m going to New York. Tell me again why did I say I do it? Ask me again after an eight-hour flight, with the worst headache ever. What I really need right now is to get some sleep or another drink. Hells teeth no, never ever again am I drinking any of Suzie’s ‘special’ cocktails. She had helped me pack lord knows what, and I am off in a black cab. I’m headed for the airport and all before I could change my mind, or sobered up more like?

Oh yea of little faith Q, but yes, she did know me better than I knew myself. Q is the Yin to my Yang, and the best non-sister ever. I am her P and together, we are P and Q, and we know how to mind or P’s and Q’s. We pay attention to detail, or so the joke goes anyhow, well sometimes we do? Obviously, this isn’t one of those times. The only person I had of any consequence left in my life is my Q, because my parents died doing their missionary work, their car took them to see God, via falling off a muddy mountain path, and down a mountain side. It happened when I was at college, thankfully I had not attended my parents church missions because it was examination time, so I didn’t die with them. I shudder when I think about them. I only do that when I am totally rat arsed. God I’m too drunk to fly, because I am remembering them again.

Well I’m here now, and I am hung over. My head is aching, and I am waiting at the airport for a plane to take me either to my dreams or to a disaster, or better still to a week or two of shopping and selling my soul for the perfect shoe. Why am I here again I ask myself as I stumble to check in and smile like a lune at the pretty lady behind the desk?

Hello, Miss Daniels, did you pack your own bag today? I grin, and I think about it.

Yes, I watched as Suzie Q packed, she looked at me and I grinned. That’s an old photo and I was having a bad day then too. She smiled, and my bag was on its merry way, too late to change my mind, so I head in through security.

I’m not sure how I got through, but I did, and I go to get a strong black coffee from the exclusive lounge thingy. Why did I do this again? That’s right, all because Suzie Q, best friend and drinking buddy had dared me to do it, that is why. What’s betting this bite’s me in the arse, it normally does, as with anything done whilst drunk and with Suzie? I had done some pretty wild things, but not sexual things when inebriated, too many times and with some very bad endings. Usually it’s me getting the bad end of a girlfriend’s fist, thanks to Q making a play for their guys. Suzie, she had a thick skull and a very bouncy bottom, she gets up and walks away, me I am an apologetic friend, and so they pick on me not her. She normal sits and waits for me to smack them, then comes back ‘to save me.’

I then look around to see if I am being watched and she is coming to save me this time? Damn alcohol kills my sensible side completely, Suzie must be permanently pie eyed, because she is never sensible. Oops I look down at my feet and I realise I still have my slippers on. Oh hell, please tell me I’m wearing underwear, I do a subtle quick check, and yes it seems I am. The shy girl in me must have put them back on when Suzie wasn’t looking. Result, now to route through my hand luggage and put some shoes on.

Why had Q packed my waffle iron? I told her I wanted my curling iron? Flip, I then start to wonder what’s in the big bag? Shoes are found, and the dead rabbits are back in the bag. Why do I listen to her, why do I always do something stupid with her? I mean this tops my stupid list though, and why did I do it, yep that’s right because of yet another epic cocktail fuelled Q party, the one on New Year’s Eve and that stupid resolution to be a daredevil man rider, hahaha right? I must stop home more, oh wait that was another one held at home. I need a better plan, or a new friend.

My New Year’s resolution was to become a flirty vamp, and to have had sex at least once before the end of the year. Have a ball and live life properly, party and enjoy every opportunity thrown at me. Oh, and to stop being a workaholic with no social life, Q added that on for sheer stupidity. Simple then, just change my life completely. Could I even do a full three hundred and sixty degree, turn around? It couldn’t be as bad as the life I was, at the time leading. I really need next year’s resolution to be my learning to ignore Suzie and never drink with her again, or perhaps get a new friend?

I guess my flirty vamp thing had begun with me taking up the very kind offer of a flight and first class accommodation, all to pitch for the job that I cannot remember applying for, and one I really do not have the qualifications for. I will rephrase that, I do, sort of. I just think it’s weird that they need me, a British female sports agent to represent an All-American baseball player, when I don’t know a gnat’s fart about the game? Then again, I am a quick study and I needed something to change in my life, because I was sad at home. Was I actually talking my drunk self into actually doing the weird arsed job? The job offer, weird arsed or not, couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I had just broken up with my fiancé of just over a year, Garth Davis. What a perv he turned out to be in the end, and he was the reason for last night’s impromptu drinking session. He was just another lying, crazy, male chauvinistic bastard.

My lack of worldliness, strict upbringing, and my weird parents are to blame for me levitating towards the prick called Garth, thanks to them my life wasn’t that of a typical young woman. I was old before my time. I felt nothing, because as stupid as it sounds, I didn’t know how to feel anything, my parents drummed that out of me at an early age. They didn’t do emotions, and having had no love and kindness, nor anything akin to passion in my life, unless it was God related and then that was their passion not mine, it was simply endured by me for a peaceful life.

Life should be normal, but it wasn’t easy, I learned to dismiss what was perceived by others as normal, as just another irksome hindrance. I had to explain all I did to my parents at school, and college, so they could make me see the light, and be a good godly girl. A girl who was dedicated to give my purity to my husband and be faithful to my parent’s teachings and my church’s wishes. No, I was not raised in a cult, however it seemed like it to outsiders, and Suzie.

I had no longing for anything more than what I had in my life, and I wanted to be a good wife to Garth, and good daughter to my parent’s memory. A sane person would and could possibly see, there was a distinct lack of love in my life. Suzie tried to help, but being brainwashed is just that, it is a worse when it is a deep-seated brainwashing from birth, like mine was, and it takes some ridding of and I tried, but the doors slammed shut every time I tried to move to the dark side of my thoughts.

When I first met Garth, he told me he didn’t do love, he liked me, but he didn’t love me and stupidly I accepted this as my lot. I had put up with this from my parents all my life and he was the same, he was being God fearing and strict! That last year with him, it was at best strained and at worst boring, and not what I thought I’d signed up for when I agreed to marry him. Perhaps I had started to change when the ring went on and I was unaware the changes were happening. Who knows when it actually happened, the change in me, but I do know it got worse, before it started to get better with him, Garth, I think?

I’d guess I had been blinded by his charisma, charm and what I thought I would be getting, when we married, that body of his! What he was offering was I thought normal. It never crossed my mind that I was being brainwashed by him too, and I then realised the time spent with my parent was just their training me to serve my husband and be a good wife and mother. Nearing the end of our time together I suddenly, and without warning, started to wake up from a bad dream, but it wasn’t a dream, it was my life and he had turned it into a nightmare and I had helped in my own grooming, by believing this was all I was worth, my parents taught me well and he honed their training, and I allowed it.

In the three years that we had been together, he had eaten away very slowly at everything good in my life. He began slowly moulding me into something to fit his requirements. That killer was last year for me it was the worst, because I hadn’t had Suzie Quill in my ear telling me not to be stupid. She wasn’t here, so his game plan was put into play all the drastic changes before she got back, it would be he thought, too late to change me when she came back. I’d always done the things that the key people in my life had told me to do, included in this is the stupid things the Q orders me to do, because I knew no better than to follow orders, after all I’d only replaced Mum and Dad’s beliefs, with those of Garth. I’d simply switched up the puppet master, that was all. It hadn’t always been bad though, things with Garth? No, it actually started out so very well too.

He like me was a believer in no sex before marriage, purity of both body and soul. Something which both my parents had taught me from an early age, that I was to be a good Christian, and it was expected of me to be moral and upright, and to abide by the strict Christian codes they lived by. I was to stay pure and be a virgin until marriage, without that I was a ruined woman and couldn’t enter the gates of heaven. They instilled their values into my learning from an early age, because they were devout in their own beliefs. I went along with their ways and I did everything that they asked of me, as you do when you’re a child. Pious Penny was the taunting name the kids at school gave me, and one I had for a long, long time, because I looked and dressed like a miniature nun. I think my colleagues do call me similar names, but behind my back these days. How did I get tangled up with Garth? I will tell you…

I’d found out from dating a few ‘normal men’, that most of them were all wired the same way, idiotic, with wandering hands, most were sex crazed morons and all of them had a one tracked mind. All of them thinking that having no sex before marriage was a joke, several saying well you don’t buy a couch without sitting on it, or that you have to try before you buy. Buy what exactly? I wasn’t selling anything, certainly not my purity and virtue? This was something that I found difficult to do, my having to explain to every man after we passed the first date stage, that I had decided to practice abstinence and that I was abstaining from sex before marriage. It was the way I was brought up, and no it was not a challenge, nor a joke and no I wouldn’t change my mind no matter how big his dick was. Usually I ended up on my own, and normally after a tirade of their abusive and nasty comments! I found out to my utter shock, that if I didn’t put out, I was a freak, a lesbian, a prick tease, or just simply a fucking frigid bitch. They wrongly assumed it was a given that if I went out with them and they had paid for a meal or drinks, this act of chivalry entitled them to a night in my bed.

I always insisted on going Dutch after the first few dates I had, it was less hassle and there was no mistaking my intentions, well not always of course, because there were a few who though just being at their table entitled them for dinner and benefits, a leg kick and if they persisted a smack with my foot in their nethers stopped them in their seats. They learned quickly that I may be pure innocent and church going, but I can kick the crap out of a horned devil with a hard on, a devil who doesn’t take no for a no, my favourite nun at school, Sister Hortense, the Gardener of God was good at boxing, kick boxing actually, she learned this before answering her calling to God. So, ergo after those disastrous dates, I hated and mistrusted men for a long time.

So, when I finally met Garth through work, he was my boss’s best friend, he seemed to be the perfect man for me. He was perfectly nice to look at, and lord had a body to die for, hey shoot me I was celibate, not blind! He was perfect in every way for me, because like me, he believed in everything that went with my lifestyle choices too. We went on quite a few dates, and he never once made a pass at me that way. Explaining that kissing and hugging were all he would do until he was married. I wouldn’t have minded the petting that others did, that wasn’t sex, plus it would have alleviated some of the pent-up tension I had looking at his body. That was kowtowed too and with a resounding no, so I had to get my own relief, even that he considered a sin! I kept quiet of my self-gratification, for fear of losing this gem I’d found. I perhaps wasn’t as chased as I thought, I had urges to touch, look and have, but I held back with him, but gave in to my own relief and often.

I was, I thought, right in thinking that he was the perfect man for me, considering his consideration to my immediate needs were great. His warmth and affection were pleasing and just what I thought I needed. He’d take me to wonderful new places, and we did some fantastic things together all the time. He endeavoured to make special moments for us to remember: Be it a trip to Paris and sailing down the River Seine, walking arm in arm through St Peters Square, or a weekend of skiing at his Swiss chalet, I was spoilt and indeed cherished. What would our married life be like with him? He made me dream of romance and wild sex in these places, places when we were married, we would make mad and passionate love, once we were able, and with reckless and wild abandonment too.

I may have been led astray a little by Suzie at collage and uni, but I never gave or did anything sexual to any man, because deep down I was afraid of being sent to hell. I actually thought I was heading there anyway, after taking too good a note of Garth’s well-kept body. I hoped and prayed that he was as energetic in his love making, as he was at everything else he did, that thought alone made the not touching him all the harder, but it also made the waiting all that more exciting. He looked like he would be a good lover, looking as he did, the same as all the romantic, good looking male lead actors, in any one of my hundreds of romantic films that I had amassed over the years. They were in fact my love substitute, which came in the forms of shiny silver discs, films about love, romance and there was nothing in them that either he or my parents approved of and even watching those would send me on the quick path to hell. Okay, I will admit that I wasn’t that bothered about hell when I was locked in my room watching films, the risk was worth it.

I hoped he would be as good as the lead actors and I would get to do the things the girls in them got, the girls who were made love to! I hoped I’d learn about this thing called real love from my films, and they would be a teaching aid to my having fantastic unbridled, raw and emotional sex. I hoped I would feel the touch of a man and through those wonderful films, I hoped I would learn how to please him. I hoped after we were married, and after that first proper all-consuming kiss was had, that he would make me want to scream his name aloud, then I would claw at his back, shout, scream, tantalise and seduce him into giving me his all. Until that day I made do with the films, whilst I waited like a good girl, to ride the roller-coaster adventure I’d waited forever to take. I really thought he was the one to do all this for me. Stupid me!

All my other needs were taken care of, sorry I will rephrase that, they were in the most part. I did still have all that massive pent up sexual need, which he didn’t take care of and seeing him daily made my imagination run riot, but he wouldn’t entertain me. Even in a non-full-sex-sort-of-way, even that he wouldn’t do. Therefore, I had to invest in my own friend for that and with the help of my non-judgmental neighbour Suzie, we purchased my purple rabbit called Bob, and after a few how to videos on a banned site on the internet were watched at Suzie’s, Bob excited me that way and all the time, but this I had to hide away from him, it was still a temptation, one that I should not give into, but I needed that release. It was his fault. Him and that body.

I remember the time we almost did it one time, yes, we so very nearly came so close. We were in Paris, he was on a business trip, he was pleased with his deal and we’d both been drinking, and the passion almost got the better of us. But, and without a stitch of clothing removed, he stopped and went to his own hotel room. The next day he was angry at me for tempting him, I blamed Mr Pinot and Mr Grigio for that night. He was very mad at me and himself for days, having nearly crossed a boundary he couldn’t cross until the band of gold and the words of promise and commitment had been uttered by his village vicar and in nearly doing so, he was ashamed of himself. Me, the temptress, who knew I had it in me? He never came close to doing that again, but I did see a different Garth that night and a damn sexy one too. I never had to fend off drunken passes again because he, sorry we, never did it again because he was an honourable man. Had my parents still been alive, they would have loved him, because he went to church every Sunday, and was so like them and their need to please the Lord God their master.

I had however stopped going to church when my parents died, and because I could at last think for myself. Garth never pushed me to go to his church, perhaps because I’d lost my belief in God, if I ever had a belief in him to begin with that is, they had I hadn’t, so I never went with him. We were to be married at the church in the village where he had his country house, and after we were married, I would have to attend. Taking my place and sit alongside him, in the family pew. Did they still have family pews? I laughed inwardly, phew. I accepted his proposal just two weeks after he had made that slip. He asked me to move into his London and his home in the country with him, a year before our marriage, to see if we would be compatible.

I thought this would actually lead us to having sex, alas no, I still had my own room. He was devout in his beliefs that we would be virgins on our wedding night, great no sex was to be had, but I didn’t push it. Then when I moved in, he slowly started to change me. Suzie was on her Asian and Australasian six month scouting trip, she was looking at expanding her business, to include the football players over there, so I didn’t actually notice the big changes I’d unwittingly already allowed, she would have spotted them and made me stop and think.

Once we were living under the same roof, his roof, the first thing he changed was my wardrobe. The work clothes I wore were now tailored handmade suits with conservative blouses and shoes. Not really a bad thing actually, they were very smart. However, giving up my shoes was a killer blow because they were the next to be changed, as was my underwear, because it’s far too sexy. This he found out I owned, no, not from looking at my body wearing it, no nothing as erotic or suggestive as that. No, he found out when his housekeeper, mad as hell at me already for asking her to wash my things, she took one look and she refused to wash them, so I was going to wash them myself, but no she couldn’t leave it and she grabbed them to show him what I wanted her to wash.

These Sir are the clothes of a hussy. She told him. I am not soiling my washing machine, with the devil's temptations. Christ I was moving in with a freakier Christian than my parents and his maid for God sake, why I stopped with him when that happened, I did not know!

Blood and sand, they do the job, they cover the tits and bits. That didn’t go down too well, because using that sort of language wasn’t in keeping for the new Lady of the Manor, she, (me) must never again be so uncouth. He told me off, and then when he looked at the offending items, he then realized what my underwear actually looked like, he was shocked, and I think horrified? It was to be changed, and my old things were to be given to charity. It was packed and waiting in the hall when I got home the next night. My sexy three pieces weren’t going anywhere near Oxfam, they were far too sexy and too damn expensive. This should have set the alarm bells ringing and it did.

I rebelled and stored it in my bedroom at home, along with my fabulous to die for shoe collection, I loved my shoes too much to send them to the charity shop, which got my clothes and so they too were now with Suzie Q. Stopped too my boozy nights in or out with Suzie, she was back and yes, as predicted she freaked because I had turned into a fucking trophy Stepford wife. The controlling had grown quite bad, and for the past month it really was unacceptable, he even wanted me to get rid of my little car, as she was too sporty and not at all suitable for his wife. My film collection had joined my shoes, underwear and old life around at Suzie’s, my fucking car would not fit in the sodding bedroom, because there was no space left in the damned thing.

My old life was now boxed away and hidden in my now much smaller bedroom. My film collection and the eminent loss of my car woke me up to the reality of life he was leading me into. I would never get to complete my bucket list, because I would be too busy with the life, he had mapped out for me. My list wasn’t to see the Seven Wonders of the World before I died. No, it was to see the places in these now boxed away films that I had stored in boxes, in the storage locker that was my room. My life was also in cold storage. What was I going to do, go around to Suzie’s and have a night wearing the underwear, shoes and watch a film or two and then go home to the master, where I was to spend my evenings reading and concentrate on self-improvement? Goddamn it, the man was a moron. I spoke various languages, had two damn good degrees under my belt and held down a fantastic job, improve on what?

With a month to go before our grand wedding, Garth had me escort him on a business trip to Paris. I pointed out to him sights that were, yes beautiful, but they had been used as locations in this film or that love film. He actually said romance was and is for fools, it was overrated and that I was to grow up and live in the real world, what the hell? There is love in the real world. In that moment I realised there would be no love in our marriage, and no matter how buff his body was, his brain and heart were both hard, empty vessels for business, there was no romance to be had because he didn’t believe in it.

Bloody hell I am all grown up too, I am bloody twenty-four, not fourteen, and he was speaking to me like a child. I half expected him to chew my food or cut it up for me. He ordered all that I ate the whole weekend and until this trip, it hadn’t bothered me. Now that my mind had been made up for me, that it was over and finding a less challenging way of finishing it, was making me very cranky. He spoke in horrendous French to the waiter, telling him I was useless. The stupid fool even after three years together, did he not know I was fluent in the French language, spoken and written? On reflection though why would he, I was never allowed to speak to people, unless they spoke to me. Then their conversations to me were quickly brought under his control. I’m angry, yes damn right I am, I am not a brain-dead moron, so why am I acting like one?

The strange things on the trip, they got even stranger. Our bedrooms had a connecting door, we usually had separate suites away from each other, to give temptation a wide path was his excuse. There had been a booking faux pa, so it meant there was just a connecting door between us.