“Effortlessly.” She angles a look up at me that is both withering and full of pity. “While you were entertaining Cousin It at strip clubs, I was talking to Lamont’s mother.”
I lean back against the closed door to listen. I really don’t care how she did it. I just want her to stay a few minutes longer so I can take my time appreciating every magnificent inch of her.
“Ahhh.” I nod and turn down the corners of my mouth. “His mother back in Atlanta.”
“I flew there straight from Denver, actually. Even attended a Sunday service and helped pay for the church’s new roof.”
“Wow.” I don’t care about the church’s roof. “You pulled out all the stops.”
“They really did need that new roof.”
She smirks and turns to leave, but I cuff her wrist with my hand to stop her. Her surprised glance collides with mine over her shoulder. I subtly tighten around the delicate bones of her wrist, push away from the door, and step into her comfort zone, close enough for our scents to mingle and our breaths to mix in the tiny bit of space I’m allowing. I’m crowding her, but I don’t care. Every minute that passes, I care less about Lamont Christopher, and his cousin and his mama, and their church and their roof.
And Alonzo Vidale. I care least about him and his committed relationship with my equinox.
“You really showed me,” I say, pitching my voice low and dipping my head until our foreheads almost touch, intimacy cocooning us in the open, in the hallway. Her pulse sputters through the warm skin under my fingers. Her breath catches and her eyelashes flutter in rapid blinks. She swallows, the muscles of her throat working under the velvety skin. I’d love to sink my teeth into that tendon; to mark the slim column of her neck. I want her to wear me and carry my scent everywhere she goes. She’s the only one who has ever stirred anything primal in me.
Her eyes shift from my hand encompassing her wrist to my face, a mask I’ve smoothed free of all the urges and feelings and things roiling under the surface. She tugs at her wrist, but I don’t relent.
“Let me go.” Her voice is husky, but calm.
“Of course,” I say politely, releasing her.
With one last searching glance, the one trying to figure out what’s changed, what’s going on, she turns and leaves.
I’ll let you go, Banner.
For now.
13
Banner
“If you try to shut us down, we’ll show you just how we get down.”
The opening lines of “Girl Gang” blast through the Echo by my bed, tearing me from a nightmare. A sensual nightmare starring none other than Jared Foster. The dream started with him gripping my wrist the way he did in the hall. An innocent enough beginning, but then he sucked my neck, untied the red belt at my waist, pushed his head under my turtleneck and bit my breast. Thank God Alexa put a stop to that horror show before it went any further.
The song still blasts from the Echo, and I’m buried under my pillow. I moan, rubbing my legs together like a horny cricket.
“Alexa, shut the hell up,” I say impatiently.
The music stops abruptly, but the voice from Quinn’s app triggered by the five am workout on my schedule takes up where Alexa left off.
“Girl, you better get that ass up and out the door.”
“What the hell?” Zo asks from behind me, his voice sleepy and confused. “All these alarms and bells and shit. How do you ever sleep in?”
“I don’t.” I toss the covers back and throw my legs over the side, talking myself into standing up, when a muscled arm reaches around my waist and drags me backward. “Zo, I have to get up.”
“No, you don’t.” He presses me back into the pillows and settles between my legs. “Sleep in with me.”
He dots kisses along my neck and squeezes my breast. My nipple lifts involuntarily under the persistence of his thumb. He slips a hand into my pajama bottoms, and I know what he’ll find. Dread twists inside my belly.
“Dios,” Zo says, sliding his mouth down my chest, taking my nipple through the silk pajama top. “Tan mojado.”
So wet.
Guilt clogs my throat. I can’t do this. Not with him after dreaming about damn Jared Foster. I hate this. I’m so disciplined in every waking moment of my life, but I have no control over my unfaithful subconscious and its contrary longings.
“I really need to get up, Zo,” I whisper, biting my lip and training my eyes on the ceiling instead of looking at him.
His large palm cups my bottom, pulling me into his erection, into his eager thrust. My body doesn’t care that I was dreaming about Jared. Doesn’t care how disrespectful it would be to sleep with Zo right now, that it would feel like a betrayal. It just wants to be filled. It just wants to fuck.
And so I do.
I flip through the pages of the preliminary contract, a frown puckering my brows. Sutton Lowell, Vancouver Titans’ President of Basketball Operations, sits across the conference room table, waiting. When I reach the last page, I look around the room, ostensibly searching, and then under the table. I half-stand from my seat and peer out into the reception area just beyond the glass wall separating us from his staff in their cubicles.
“What are you looking for?” he asks.
“Another zero.” I shove the contract across the table to him. “I think you’re missing one.”
“Banner, come on.” He leans forward, looking me directly in the eyes. If he’s searching for softness, I can tell him right now he won’t find it. Not on this.
“You need to max Zo out, and you know it.”
“You really think you have the leverage for a maximum contract? You know his numbers were down.”
“At the end of the season, yes,” I concede. “Not all season and not his entire career.”
“We need that cap space to do some rebuilding with younger players.”
“I’m well aware.” I slide my iPad into its leather sleeve. “But I fail to see how that affects my client. If he doesn’t get a max contract now, then when?”