Block Shot (Hoops #2)(58)

When I pull up to the ultra-modern Hollywood Hills home, cars spill from the drive and overflow the curbs. Loud music blares through the walls and permeates the air. Once I’m inside, topless girls walk around unselfconsciously. An open-door ménage à trois is going on up in one of the bedrooms. Last season’s defensive player of the year has his dick in some girl’s mouth. She has some guy’s dick in her ass. I can’t tell what’s going on with door number three, but their sexual game of twister is so commonplace at parties like this, no one even gapes and they don’t bother to close the door. If Link is in a situation like that, it would be rude to interrupt, and I wouldn’t want to join in. I’d show myself out and corner him some other time. It’s testament to how focused I am on Banner that I’m not even tempted by the abundance of naked flesh being flashed around the large house.

When I reach the landing for the next floor, a man, probably a baller based on his height, drunkenly yells at a woman I can’t see because his large frame blocks her, has her trapped against the wall.

“Clothes,” he slurs. “What’s a stripper doing with clothes on? I wanna see them tits. And that fat ass. Take ’em off.”

“I told you I’m not a damn stripper,” a strident female voice fires back. “Now get your hands off me or I’ll kick and sue your drunk ass.”

That voice . . . it couldn’t be. It better not be. Not here in this den of iniquity.

The woman steps away from the wall, buttoning her blouse and muttering under her breath in something other than English.

The hell.

“Banner?”





18





Banner





“Jared?”

I utter his name, shocked to come face to face with the handsome devil I’ve been avoiding all week.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, stalling and hoping to distract him from the fact that I’m here.

Needless to say, it doesn’t work.

“You’re asking why I’m here?” he demands, confusion and disapproval settling onto his face. “I belong here. I’m in places like this, parties like this all the time doing business.”

“Well so am I,” I say, willing my hands to stop shaking after the confrontation with the drunken giant. “I have business here, too.”

I step around him, hoping to get away, but no such luck. He grabs my arm and drags me into the nearest bedroom, slamming the door behind us. I can’t believe it’s empty. Seems like every corner of this house is occupied by rutting athletes and willing strippers, but he finds the first available in seconds.

“Who’s here with you?” he asks.

“No one. Why would someone be with me?”

“Why are you here, Banner?” He looks back at the door and then back to me, storm clouds darkening the vibrant blue of his eyes. “Was he bothering you? Did that guy touch you?”

Groped is more like it, but I’m not telling Jared with his face looking like that. I wouldn’t put it past him to go after him, and I know Jared used to ball and can handle himself, but let’s not risk it with a guy nearly seven feet tall.

“I’m fine.” I push past him. “I need to go.”

“Yeah, home.” He catches my elbow again.

I glance down to his hand on my arm.

“You really have to stop doing that.”

“What?” he asks, the clouds in his eyes shifting from stormy to cumulus. “Touching you?”

His grip gentles, and he cups both my elbows, drawing me into the hard heat emanating through his well-tailored suit.

“You liked it when I touched you at the movie, right?” His low-voiced words steam the small space around us.

How many times have I re-lived those scorching moments with Jared over the last week? Asleep, awake, working out, while reviewing a contract. The memory of those electric, erotic moments assails me without warning and have given me no rest. I woke up wet again this morning. I’d come in my sleep. Thank God Zo is traveling. I may have been making noises while I slept or said Jared’s name. I have no idea, but it would have been awkward and hurtful, and I refuse to hurt Zo any more than I have to.

What I’ve already done is more than enough. My heart aches every time I think about the conversation we need to have. I’ll have to tell him what happened with Jared, but I can’t even imagine how that would feel telling him another man touched me that way when I was supposed to be faithful to him. Telling him another man has overtaken my thoughts, my dreams. I’m not a cheat. I keep reassuring myself it was an indiscretion, but nothing we couldn’t get past.

But do I want to get past it? Get past Jared? Stay with Zo? I know I have to deal with it, but I can’t right now. It’s free agency season. Several of my clients, including Zo, are in the thick of it. That means constant contact with teams, meetings with GMs, negotiations with lawyers, phone calls with clients vacationing in time zones all over the world. I don’t have time to be preoccupied with a personal life, much less one as complicated as Jared Foster is making mine.

“Banner, you did like it, right?” Jared’s still touching me, his hands sure, his words confident, but uncertainty lies just behind his eyes. “Why have you been ignoring me?”