“Okay. Who’s there?”
All signs of humor fall off her face.
“Lamont Christopher’s new agent.” A few quick steps bring her back immediately in front of me and she pokes her sharp little nail into my chest. “Block that, motherfucker.”
She blocked my shot.
I knew what it meant seeing her leave Lamont’s room, but it’s only when she voices it that I truly appreciate what a masterful move this is.
“Karma’s a bitch, huh?” she asks, satisfaction stretching her mouth into a wide smile.
“Apparently, she’s not the only one,” I reply admiringly.
Her smile holds, but her eyes narrow and frost over.
“Remember this bitch next time you and your pride of lions think about insulting me,” she spits, lightning in her eyes, thunder in her voice. “Or assuming I got where I am any way other than hard work. Remember this moment when I handed you your ass, Foster.”
Her anger, her indignation hit me with a blast of heat that burns through all my reasons and rationale and excuses to cover up what I have known deep down since senior year.
This woman is my match.
She is bright and good. And I can be dark, bad when I have to be. Sometimes when I don’t have to be, but just want to be. She is day and I am night. When day and night are absolutely equal, it’s equinox. Banner is my equinox. My equal. The revelation rattles around inside me, but my face, my surface remains smooth.
The game we’re playing just changed, and she doesn’t even know it. Banner is smarter than I am, but my gut is better. My instincts are sharper. I’m a weather vane. I feel shifts in the air, sense coming storms before she does. That sentience is my greatest advantage.
“So how’d you do it?” I ask easily, not missing a beat and giving nothing away.
“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?”
“You need to back down on this,” he says, voice quiet but stern like he’s lecturing a recalcitrant child. “The owners—”
“The owners can kiss my ass, Lowell.” I stand and stare him down. “If you don’t appreciate the rare talent that Zo is and has proven to be for a decade, I’ve already heard from several teams who will.”
“You can’t meet with other teams,” he says, eyes widening in outrage.
“Funny.” I touch my chin, fake contemplating. “I negotiated Zo’s contract myself and I don’t remember seeing that stipulation anywhere.”
“I thought it was understood. A gentleman’s agreement.”
“Ohhh. A gentleman’s agreement. So it’s a man thing. About time being a woman worked to my advantage.”
“Banner, you know what I mean. If you even think about talking to other teams—”
“I’m not thinking about it,” I say, brandishing the words like a knife. “I am talking to other teams because I knew you’d pull this shit when his numbers were down at the end of the season. Any excuse not to pay him what he’s worth.”
I press the heel of my hand into the conference room table and lean forward.
“I don’t want your balls, Lowell, but I will take them.”
Frustration settles between his brows and around his mouth, but he doesn’t offer anything else. I head for the door and toss a warning over my shoulder.
“I don’t care where you get it, but you better find my zero.”
What a day. Despite all my bravado in Lowell’s office, I feel less certain about Zo’s contract than I ever have in an off-season. His numbers are down. I don’t know why. It’s the first time in ten years he finished down. I’m thinking about taking care of one client when another calls. I answer with Bluetooth, negotiating the back roads to my house from downtown.
“Kenan, hey,” I answer, smiling. Kenan makes me smile. He’s so big and serious and daunting but has one of the best hearts around underneath all the bluster. He and Zo remind me of each other, and I’ve known Kenan almost as long.