Block Shot (Hoops 2)

“Shut up, Ban,” I cut in softly. “I’m not giving you that out. Tonight you face the truth.”

“Which is what?” she asks.

“Do you have any idea how many women I’ve been with?” I ask instead of answering her question directly.

“No, I—”

“Neither do I. I literally don’t remember some of them. Just a blur of hair and faces. I got some of their names wrong the night they were in my bed.”

I grasp her stubborn chin, lift it.

“But you? I remember exactly how tight you were. How wet. I still hear the sounds you made in the dark, and I know how we smell together. I have perfect recall of every second I was inside of you. That’s the truth.”

Her pupils dilate and she draws a stuttering breath.

“Banner, you’re my match.”

Finally saying the words out loud, declaring it, feels right.

“I’m not your match,” she says, one imperious brow ascending. “I’m too good for you.”

“True,” I grin, tightening my hand at her waist. “But I’m going to have you anyway.”

“It was a one-night stand, Jared,” she says lamely.

“Now who’s lying? It wasn’t a one-night stand. It was one night, and I never intended that to be the end. You let that prick motherfucker take away all the nights we should have had.”

I dip to nuzzle her neck, nudge aside the collar of her blouse to kiss the soft skin beneath.

“I want them back, Ban. I want you back.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” she says breathlessly, still fighting it. “You can’t just have me back like the last ten years never happened. I’m in a committed relationship, and you can’t ignore that.”

I stare at her, waiting for her to remember my moral compass spins. There is no true north. There’

s only what I want and what stands in my way. I cup her neck and sift the fingers of one hand into her hair and grab her ass with the other.

“What I can’t do,” I say. “What I won’t do any longer is wait. I tried to give you space, but you’ll only use that space to make more excuses. So that ends tonight.”

And without warning, I kiss her the way I’ve wanted to since I walked in.

21

Banner

It’s like that first time he kissed me, and it’s like no kiss I’ve ever had before.

When Jared first kissed me in Sudz senior year, the zeal, the fervor of it snatched my breath. Yes, it was deep and hard and demanding, but what startled me was that all that intensity was turned on me. Watching Jared, crushing on him for years, and then kissing him was like seeing a cyclone from land—marveling at its power and dark, twisting beauty only to find yourself suddenly, improbably, at its center. Standing still in my office, I’m at the spinning center of a kiss that will demolish my life. I know it, but I can’t stop.

I want it too much.

I crave the deliberate seduction, the methodical, plunging, sweeping stroke of his tongue over mine. He angles me, fits his lips over mine, controlling the pace and depth of the kiss, standing and flipping our positions. He hoists me by my waist onto the cluttered desk surface and inch by inch, urges my skirt higher and higher until the hem collects at my waist. With a glance down at the triangle of black silk between my thighs, he groans, falls to his knees, raining kisses on my stomach through my blouse. The hot, wet suction of his mouth at my breast penetrates the flimsy layers of silk.

I can’t form the words that would stop him. Maybe I could have before he slid down my belly and buried his nose in my panties. I like to think I could have before he dragged the black silk down my thighs and past my stilettos. But I’ll never be sure. Because he did those things, and then he pressed me open wider and separated the lips of my pussy and sucked my clit.

“Ahhh.” A rumbling starts at my center, the warning tremors of Pompeii. A premonition of ruin. “Jared . . . Oh, God.”

His mouth never leaves me, but he presses one big hand between my breasts until my back hits the desk and my legs dangle over its side. Then he opens me like a flower, peeling back the petals and flattening his tongue against me, his mouth hungry, thirsty, needy, and my body surrendering every response he demands. His is unrelenting worship, and I’m his altar. I stretch my arms down, knotting my fingers in his hair and caressing the rugged beauty of his face. His jaw flexes under my fingers with the ardor, the wondrous labor of his mouth between my legs.