Block Shot (Hoops #2)(81)

“Yeah, it is,” I agree immodestly.

“This calls for a celebration.” She clasps her hands together under her chin. “Should we go out?”

She’s browned some from the sun, and my seven freckles sprinkle across her nose like flakes of cinnamon. With her bare face and feet, and sporting her bikini, no one would think she’s one of the NBA’s most powerful agents. She’s unadorned and in her own skin. Looking like this, she could bring me to my knees.

“What if we stay in?” I tug at the loose knot on her head, and the hair spills over her shoulder in a single file line of silk. I toy with the ends, deliberately allowing my knuckle to brush the curve of her breast. “Could that work?”

A deep breath lifts her chest under the cover-up, and she swallows, lashes fluttering from the subtle contact with my hand. We haven’t made love since her office, and I hope she wants it as badly as I do. She did ask for her own room, though. So maybe not.

“I forgot to ask how your room is,” I say, dropping her hair and taking up with her hand, lacing our fingers together.

“It’s, um, great.” She looks from our joined hands to my face. “Beautiful actually. Thank you for this. For all of it. I needed it.”

“So did I.” I loop an arm at the small of her back and scoop her sun-warmed curves into me.

She stiffens at first, and then I can almost see her make the decision. To relax. To enjoy. To let herself want me. I can’t know for sure what the decision is, but she leans into me instead of away. The sun melts her expression into a smile, into pleasure. She props her elbows on my chest and works her fingers into the hair by my ears. It feels so good, I close my eyes and wait for more of her touch. She doesn’t disappoint, walking her fingers to my temples and adding gentle pressure, coaxing a groan from me.

“That feels incredible.” I slide my hands lower on the swell of her hips, lower still to cup her butt. “You have such a great ass, Banner. Have I ever told you that?”

She fixes her eyes on the tiles at our feet and licks those perfectly symmetrical lips, sinking her teeth into the bottom.

“No, you haven’t.” The words come thin, like the breath has been sifted from them. “You don’t think it’s, um, too square?”

“Square?” I laugh at the unexpected question and squeeze the firm roundness overflowing my hands. “I have no idea what that means, but I want to bite your ass every time I see it, if that answers your question.”

Banner’s eyes widen, and then a deep-throated laugh unspools from her that reminds me how much I love to make that happen.

“Wow. Thanks.” She gives a tiny shake of her head. “Leave it to you, Jared.”

“Why’d you ask me that?” I squeeze her ass again just ’cause.

“It’ll sound silly to you.” She lowers her lashes and chews on the corner of her bottom lip. “There’s this blogger who said . . . things about me when I started dating Zo. That’s all.”

The smile I’ve been wearing since I took her in my arms slowly falls apart.

“What kind of things?”

Rose gold tints her cheeks as she toys with my tie, studying the pattern instead of looking at me.

“She said I was like the, um, the biggest Kardashian,” she says softly, her smile less natural than before. “She called me Sponge Banner Square Pants because she said my ass was, well, square.”

And August wonders why I hate people.

“I can usually brush stuff like that off,” she says, looking up at me with that same stiff smile I can’t stand. “I know. I’m a powerful woman and all that, right?”

Uncomfortable chuckle.

“I should be impervious to that shit.” She twists her lips into a grimace. “But some of it sticks from time to time, and kind of . . .”

She doesn’t say the word “hurts,” but it does. I can see that some stranger, some person who doesn’t even know Banner—doesn’t know that she speaks God knows how many languages by now, doesn’t know she’s the first to go to college in her family, doesn’t know she charges into dangerous situations she has no business being in to rescue grown men who should know better, doesn’t know that she sees potential in broken people like Quinn and refuses to give up on them even when they give up on themselves—some person has hurt this spectacular woman by saying her ass is square?

Fuck that.

I take her chin between my thumb and index finger and lift until her eyes meet mine.

“Listen to me, Banner,” I say firmly. “Your ass is not square, but if it was, so the hell what?”

“I know that,” she says hastily.

“Yeah, you’re a strong woman. You’re a lioness. Hear you roar. Got it, but no one likes things like that said about them in a conversation, much less tweeted to thousands of—”

“Millions,” Banner interjects softly. “Tweeted to millions of people with a photo for reference.”

“Tweeted to millions of people with a damn photo for reference,” I say, futile rage testing my calm. “Humans, we suck. I know we have these bright shining moments, but a lot of us just suck most of the time, and we say mean things to gain more followers. The worst of us exploit each other’s pain to get something for ourselves, and then there’s people like you.”