Hook Shot (Hoops #3)(62)
I’m a fan of the Big O myself.
Lotus’s joke from our day in Harlem replays in my mind, making me grin and shake my head. I find that happening a lot. We haven’t gotten to spend much actual time together. She had to accompany JP to Milan unexpectedly, which sucks. She got home last night, and we’re trying to arrange for her to meet Kenya tonight.
“Your girl into hip-hop?” Kenya asks, texting and not lifting her eyes from her phone.
“Yeah. Why?”
“There’s this concert. Maybe we could go after dinner.” She looks up at me, but something over my shoulder captures her attention. “Man, that would look good on my wall. Shit, that would look good on anybody’s wall.”
I glance over my shoulder to see what’s so great and stop, the blood freezing then boiling in my veins. I cross the gallery with quick strides to join a small group clustered at the base of a photo that must be blown up to six-feet tall, mounted on the wall.
It’s a woman.
The slim figure is tucked into the corner of a window seat. Her lean legs, smooth and sun-kissed copper, are slightly parted. Her head, haloed by a caramel and butterscotch mane of wild curls and coils, is flung back, exposing the sleek muscles of her throat and a wisp of bone, her clavicle, inked with scripted words. She’s wearing a man’s white shirt, unbuttoned, opened, the tails hanging on either side of her toned thighs. One breast is partially covered by the shirt, but the other is exposed, the shirt dripping off her shoulder and running down her arm. A tiny gold bar pierces a plump berry-colored nipple dangling like heavy fruit from a vine. The beginnings of a tattoo ringing the tops of her thighs peek out from beneath the shirt tail.
Her pussy is in shadow, but it’s obvious she’s not wearing panties, and the lightly muscled plane of her stomach rises above her lap, decorated with a flower blooming around her belly button. Her hand, limp at her side, is adorned with one silver ring, and tattoos of the moon on three fingers. My eyes follow the line from her knee, past her calf, to the well-crafted bones of her ankle. The black polish on her toenails is slightly chipped, an intimate, candid detail, like all the other intimate, candid details no one in this fucking gallery should be gawking at.
I squeeze my eyes shut, at once blocking the image and also trapping it behind my eyelids for later. Forever. I want to rip it from the wall and burn it. I want to take it home and wake up seeing it every day. My jaw aches with the pain of clenched teeth. My hand opens and closes, making and releasing a fist.
“Nice tits, huh?” A guy with a receding hairline nudges me with his elbow and shares a roguish grin.
I grab his arm and squeeze. He yelps, and Kenya pries my fingers from his elbow.
“Kenan, what the hell?” Kenya asks, turning apologetic eyes to the man who is rubbing his elbow, fury and fear on his face. “My brother has, uh . . . PTSD. Sorry about that.”
“Sorry,” I mumble. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No problem,” he says hastily, walking away and flinging parting words over his shoulder. “Thank you for your service.”
“My service?” I ask, bewildered. “What’s he—”
“You’re welcome,” Kenya snaps. “Better a troubled vet than the NBA player he could sue the pants off for mauling him. Dude, what’s wrong with you?”
I look back to the photo.
“This?” She points her thumb at the wall. “The Lo thing?”
“It’s not a thing,” I grit out. “It’s her.”
“Huh?” Her face wrinkles into a frown and then stretches wide with realization. She looks back to the wall. “Lo? That’s Lotus?”
A guy beside us snaps a picture of the photo with his phone. Before I can snatch and crush it, a woman in glasses walks up to address him.
“No photos.” She points to a sign a few feet away. “Please show me your phone. I need to see you delete the photo you took.”
I watch in anger and frustration, holding my tongue until she’s done.
“How much?” I ask as soon as the guy walks off.
“Excuse me?” She turns to me with a polite smile, but her eyes gleam avariciously behind her rimless glasses. “For Lo, you mean?”
“For the photo, yeah.”
“It’s only been in the gallery two days,” she says. “And we’ve had so many inquiries about it already. It fetches quite a price. It’s—”
“Not for sale,” a man’s voice, semi-familiar, says from behind me.
When I turn and Chase is standing there, I almost lunge for his neck. He and I stare at each other, dislike shimmering in the air like heatwaves rising off asphalt.
“How much is that one?” I point to the photo to the left of Lo.
“Six thousand,” he replies with a smirk.
“And that one?” I point to the photo on the right.
“Oh, that one’s a steal at fifty-five hundred,” he says.
“And that one?” I point to the wall behind me, not even looking at what’s back there.
“Whichever one you mean,” he says, his eyes gleaming with malice, “they all have price tags, except this one.”
“Seven thousand,” I offer, leveling my tone, controlling my anger.
“No,” he says, his jaw set at an obstinate angle.