Hook Shot (Hoops 3)

“This table cannot hold us both, Kenan,” she says, her words lispy and lazy. She buries her head in my shoulder and curls into a ball like a little cat in my lap.

“What you’re really saying is it can’t hold me.” Her punishment is a squeeze and a kiss in her hair.

“Hey, you said it.” She chuckles and slides her hand under my shirt, running her palm over my abs. My muscles jerk at the contact. “This doesn’t even feel real.”

“What doesn’t feel real?”

She lays her head back on my shoulder and catches my eyes. “Can I look?”

“Look at what?”

In answer, she runs her hand over my stomach again and lifts both brows. A surprised laugh rolls out of me. “Baby, of course. It’s just abs. You’ve seen them before.”

She slides off my lap, a wicked grin painted on her pretty lips. When she lifts my shirt, her mouth drops open.

“Just like I remembered them.” She pushes the shirt up a few more inches, and her eyes widen. “You have the most beautiful chest. God, these nipples.”

While I’m searching my memory for any time someone’s complimented my nipples, and coming up empty, she dips and takes one into her mouth.

She’s completely absorbed, eyes squeezed shut and her cheeks hollowing out. She takes one nipple between her teeth, flicks her eyes up at me, and bites. Hard.

“Shit.” My hand slams the table. “Lotus, fuck.”

Her tongue darts out to soothe the sting, and just as I’m sure I’m going to come in my pants, she bites the other one and grins up at me.

I laugh, turned on in spite of the pain, or possibly because of it. “You little witch.”

“Won’t be the first time someone’s called me that,” she says dryly and runs a palm over the muscles in my stomach, laughing when they clench involuntarily. “Someone’s sensitive.”

“Or horny.” I laugh. Her smile falls away and she palms my dick.

“I’m so selfish,” she says, distress written on her face. “I didn’t even—”

“No. That was for you. I wanted it to be just you.”

She opens her mouth, I’m sure about to argue, but my phone rings. I can’t resist kissing her still-open mouth, smiling against her lips, and answering my phone.

“Hey, Ken,” I say, not looking away from Lotus, and she doesn’t look away from me.

“We still on for tonight?” Kenya asks.

“Lemme check.” I hold the phone away and ask Lotus. “You still down to meet my sister for dinner?”

“Sure.” She winks. “I can ask for all the embarrassing stories of your childhood and awkward puberty.”

“I was never awkward,” I tell her. “Yeah, Ken, we’re good. Gimme the details.”

I pantomime writing, and Lotus dashes over to a table in the corner and grabs a pen and some kind of sewing pattern that has a dress on it. I scribble the details for dinner and the concert afterward. My handwriting is even less legible than usual, but I can make out most of the letters when I read it after we hang up.

“So dinner at six.” I look up from my chicken scratch. “And then the concert.”

“Who’s the artist?” She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t want to sit through somebody I don’t like for two hours.”

“Yeah. That would be whack. This is actually a surprise concert in Central Park,” I say, faking a frown. “I’m not sure you’ve even heard of this guy.”

“Who is it?” she asks, suspicion and skepticism mingling in one glance.

“Grip?” I ask innocently.