“I’m fine.” I push past him. “I need to go.”
“Yeah, home.” He catches my elbow again.
I glance down to his hand on my arm.
“You really have to stop doing that.”
“What?” he asks, the clouds in his eyes shifting from stormy to cumulus. “Touching you?”
His grip gentles, and he cups both my elbows, drawing me into the hard heat emanating through his well-tailored suit.
“You liked it when I touched you at the movie, right?” His low-voiced words steam the small space around us.
How many times have I re-lived those scorching moments with Jared over the last week? Asleep, awake, working out, while reviewing a contract. The memory of those electric, erotic moments assails me without warning and have given me no rest. I woke up wet again this morning. I’d come in my sleep. Thank God Zo is traveling. I may have been making noises while I slept or said Jared’s name. I have no idea, but it would have been awkward and hurtful, and I refuse to hurt Zo any more than I have to.
What I’ve already done is more than enough. My heart aches every time I think about the conversation we need to have. I’ll have to tell him what happened with Jared, but I can’t even imagine how that would feel telling him another man touched me that way when I was supposed to be faithful to him. Telling him another man has overtaken my thoughts, my dreams. I’m not a cheat. I keep reassuring myself it was an indiscretion, but nothing we couldn’t get past.
But do I want to get past it? Get past Jared? Stay with Zo? I know I have to deal with it, but I can’t right now. It’s free agency season. Several of my clients, including Zo, are in the thick of it. That means constant contact with teams, meetings with GMs, negotiations with lawyers, phone calls with clients vacationing in time zones all over the world. I don’t have time to be preoccupied with a personal life, much less one as complicated as Jared Foster is making mine.
“Banner, you did like it, right?” Jared’s still touching me, his hands sure, his words confident, but uncertainty lies just behind his eyes. “Why have you been ignoring me?”
“Jared, you know why. It’s complicated.” I sigh heavily and pull away, walking over to open the door. “I’m working and I can’t do this with you right now.”
“Working how?” His question comes from behind me, and his hand slams the door closed again. He’s at my back. I’ve been outmaneuvered. I wanted to keep my distance, but there’s no distance between my back and his front. Between my body and the long hard length of him.
“Was he bothering you?” Jared asks, his lips at my ear, his breath in my hair. There’s genuine concern in his voice, and I hate that this man everyone assumes would sell his grandmother to make the right deal cares about me. Always has. It complicates things even more.
“I’m fine, Jared.” I rest my forehead against the door, refusing to relax against him, though every cell in my body urges me to do just that.
“You were buttoning your blouse,” he says, voice tight. “If he bothered you, then—”
“Then what?” I turn around to face him and lean against the door.
Big mistake. I’m confronted with eyes the dark blue of a midnight sky and the face carved from my fantasies with a lust-tipped chisel. He’s wearing a three-piece suit. The powerful width of his chest stretches beneath a navy blue jacket, vest, and a shirt the color of pink champagne, no tie. His hand still rests against the closed door, and his arm crowds me in.
“I hate it when you ignore me,” he says unexpectedly.
My eyes snap to his, and that was a mistake, too. Looking into his eyes. The intensity there is mesmerizing.
“Not just this week,” he says. “But when we first graduated, right after all that shit went down with The Pride. We were at a few of the same conferences. Every time I tried to talk to you, you froze me out. Once you even threatened to blow your—”
“Rape whistle,” I finish for him, chuckling. I was so desperate to keep him out of my life. I understood the danger then of giving myself to him, and even when I wasn’t sure what his role had been in what happened, when I didn’t believe I could trust him, I knew I couldn’t trust myself. I knew it then and I know it now.
“I need to go,” I say abruptly, turning back around and pulling on the handle. Under the weight of his hand, the door remains closed. “Jared, my client needs me.”
It’s true. It’s why I came here when Tanya texted me that one of my rookies might be in trouble, but it’s also my get-out-of this-room card. I’m relieved wh
en his hand falls from the door, but that’s short-lived because his hands grip my hips from behind, and he presses himself into me.
“Banner, I know you have things you’re working through.” A short laugh rustles the hair at my neck. “Hell, if your free agency season is anything like mine, you’re busy every second of the day.”
I nod, holding my body tense to create even an inch between our bodies.
“But I can’t stop thinking about Saturday,” he whispers across my neck, his words followed closely behind by his lips feathering light kisses across my skin. I shiver and he pushes into me, his thick length wedged into the cheeks of my ass. “About your pussy clenching around my fingers.”
“Oh, God.” I drop my forehead to the door again, my breath coming heavier. “Stop.
“Your nipples,” he continues, his breath thinning out, his palms spreading at my waist until he can brush the underside of my breasts. “I want them in my mouth again. Ban, please.”