That set her back. The man was honest to a fault, and it kept throwing her off. He was supposed to lie to her and act like an ass and pull immature ghosting routines where he pretended his phone was off when she tried to reach him.
Maybe he’d already lied to her. Like when he said he wanted intimacy instead of sex. Or was he actually lying to himself about what he wanted?
“If I wear the shoes,” she murmured throatily, “do I get a reward?”
Suspicion clouded his expression. “Like what? A gold star?”
She shrugged. “Maybe you take me to the bathroom in the club and see how far your hand goes down these jeans. Or didn’t you notice how tiny these panties are on me?”
“I noticed,” he said shortly and ran a hand through his hair, a habit she’d started to clue in meant he felt uncomfortable. “Trust me, I’m not that much of a good guy.”
News to her. “Tell me. Would it be so bad to let your bad boy out to play occasionally?”
His eyes narrowed. “Yes, it would.”
When he didn’t elaborate, her curiosity went through the roof. So he wasn’t denying that he had a wild streak. Interesting. Because if he had denied it, she’d have called him on that, too. No man who put his hands down a woman’s dress in a crowded ballroom with scarcely a glance around could claim he’d never done anything like that before.
Seemed like Logan might be hiding behind his public persona, too. What would he be like if she stripped him of his conservative armor?
Suddenly, she was ready to get him out in public, where she could flirt and seduce and provoke him into putting his hands on her again without fear. Because behind closed doors, it wasn’t real. She had to get out of here before she forgot they weren’t a couple with an interest in getting to know each other beneath the surface.
* * *
By ten o’clock, Logan had a pounding headache that beat against his temples in perfect time to the garbage being pumped out of the speakers at the Deep Ellum club Trinity had dragged him to.
The Mustangs had lost today—again—and what he should really be doing was combing through his roster—again—to see where he could make improvements.
As a whole, the team’s manager had point on the fine details, but he had to work with the talent Logan gave him. It was the general manager’s job to get the right guys onto the field for the best price. Bang for the buck was key when it came to the financials of a ball team. Managing money should come easily considering his DNA, but it didn’t. He had to work at it.
So instead of crunching numbers and looking at possible trade angles, Logan leaned against the bar nursing a light beer that wasn’t fit for unclogging a drain. The view was nice, though. Trinity perched on a bar stool, clutching a highball, one jeans-clad leg entwined with his. She’d done that a while back in a seriously sexy back off, ladies move that had raised his eyebrows, but he kind of loved it.
They couldn’t exactly talk due to the music, yet the contact created a sense of intimacy he’d never have expected. As a result, he’d been sporting a semi in his pants since the moment her leg had snaked possessively around his.
All right, the fact that she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that he’d personally put on her body might have a little more to do with the hard-on. When he’d said he wanted to see the real her, he hadn’t expected to like it so much, or to discover a burning desire to uncover more. He’d barely scratched the surface of what lay beneath Trinity’s outrageous exterior. And that thirst for knowledge was at least 50 percent of the reason he was still here.
The bump in ticket sales was the other fifty. Myra couldn’t control her glee earlier when she’d phoned him in the dugout to say that today’s game had hit an all-time high for attendance. Which unfortunately wasn’t saying much, but it was saying something.
There was definitely room to get some more press, though.
And he needed to do it before his skull split in two.
A photographer had been circulating near the front of the club, and he bided his time until he saw her headed toward the bar. From the corner of his eye, he tracked her progress until she was close enough to guarantee she wouldn’t miss it if he tossed her a great shot.
Logan plucked the highball from Trinity’s grasp. Before she could squawk, he swiveled her stool and cupped her face in both hands, bringing it up to his. Their lips connected.
It should have been a token kiss, just show. But this was Trinity, and she didn’t hesitate to open her mouth. That steel piercing slid hard across his tongue, sensitizing him all the way to the bottoms of his feet. Her arms raced down his back. She flattened her palms against it and shoved, grinding his erection straight into her center, hard enough to put stars across his vision.