by Kennedy Ryan
Oh hell.
“You know I called on the house for rent next door. Just for shits and giggles, to see how much of a bargain I got.” Her laugh goes sour and cynical. “It was three times what I pay. That’s you, too? You did that?”
“Iris, let me explain.”
“And the daycare. You can explain that, too, right? How Elevation just happened to start on-site daycare for their employees when Jared hired me?”
I’m silent. I thought I was being awesome. I thought it would make her happy not to have to leave Sarai miles away. I wanted to make this easy for her, but somehow I’ve screwed it all up.
I have to make this right, to explain and drive out the disappointment clouding her eyes.
I breach the invisible wall of tension separating us by cupping her chin, tilting her face up so she can see the truth when I tell her. I’d do anything to restore that glow, that pride in herself that made her even more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her. “Iris, no.” My thumb strokes over one high cheekbone. “I can explain about the house and the daycare. I can explain everything.”
“I should be flattered you made up a job for me, huh?” Her eyes shimmer with unshed tears. “Men always seem to find good use for me, don’t they? What are my responsibilities exactly? Blow jobs under desks, quickies in the copy room? When do I start?” She drops to her knees in front of me and touches my belt. “Now?” Bitterness sets the lushness of her mouth into a hard line. “Or maybe you’d like to see the goods first?”
I’m stunned as she fumbles at the buttons holding her dress together, her fingers shaking as she undoes the top one and then another. The curve of her breasts swell over a black satin cup. I hate that my breath quickens and my dick stiffens at seeing even that much of her.
“I thought you’d like that,” she whispers, a tear splashing onto her hand.
“Stop, Iris,” I grit out. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”
“Like what?” Her fingers keep slipping buttons out of holes, revealing the taut line of her waist, the exaggerated curve from waist to hip. She’s so finely crafted, but I’d hate for her to think that’s all I want from her.
I go to my knees, still much taller than her, but at least now we’re on the same level. I quickly re-button her dress, ignoring the silky skin my knuckles brush over along the way. I cup her jaw and press our foreheads together. I gentle my grip on her, my displeasure and frustration softening when I feel her under my hands.
“You did this. I promise,” I say. “Jared had already given you the job before he even told me you called him.”
She opens her mouth to speak, but I rest my index finger over her lips. I have to get this out.
“When he told me about the job he’d already offered you . . .” I pause, making sure she hears it was a done deal before I was involved. “I admit, I was excited.”
Slight understatement.
“I wanted things to go well for you,” I continue, reluctantly dropping my finger from her mouth. “San Diego is one of the most expensive cities in the country. With an entry-level position, you wouldn’t have been able to afford the neighborhood you’re in. I wanted you and Sarai safe and in a good spot. I don’t expect or want anything in return. I haven’t set you up like a mistress or something.”
“It feels like it,” she says, but some of the tightness eases from her neck and shoulders.
“I don’t even own that house. One of the guys from the team dabbles in real estate on the side. It’s one of his properties. When he heard an Elevation employee, a single mom, needed a place, he knocked the rent down.”
The air begins loosening between us, and I risk taking her hand.
“And the daycare.” I shrug. “I don’t have a good excuse for that except . . . I wanted you to have Sarai close, but in Jared’s last employee survey, several moms indicated on-site daycare would be helpful. It’s not just for you. There were other kids there when you dropped Sarai off, right?”
Iris nods, searching my eyes for several seconds. “So there is a job?” she finally asks. “A real job? That phone interview Jared put me through wasn’t just him going through the motions for his brother’s girlfriend?”
Girlfriend?
Calm down.
She doesn’t mean it like that.
She isn’t saying . . . shit. Who am I kidding?
“Girlfriend?” I can’t resist asking. “Are you gonna be my girl, Iris?”
I’m still cupping her face, and her thick hair is falling across my fingers. She smells like paradise, and I’m not sure I can do this—can make it out of this room without kissing her. Without lifting her onto the conference room table, shoving that dress over her legs, and eating the hell out of her pussy. Because that’s pretty much all I can think about now that we’re this close. It’s like I haven’t had a meal since the last time I had her, and my mouth is watering imagining that clit, those lips, her juices. Her coming for me—coming in my mouth, dripping down my chin.
“I need to take it slow, August,” she whispers.
Slow.
That would be in direct contrast to my right-now fantasy. I struggle to command my body. I haven’t had sex in a really long time. Jared was right. I need to fuck, but the only girl I want is telling me she needs to go slow. And though my body is raging and burning and yearning to bury every inch I got inside of her, slow we will go.
“We can do that,” I tell her. “However long it takes.”
My voice sounds even. You’d never know there’s a rocket in my pants ready for lift-off. Rehabbing my leg, getting back on the court in less than a year, coming back stronger—that took Herculean effort. If I can be that disciplined for a game, I can control myself for Iris. I’ve waited for her, and I’ll wait some more until she says we’ve waited long enough.
“I wasn’t prepared for this,” she says, her voice almost an apology. “For any of this. I thought . . . I know I’ve been out of the loop, but last I heard you were being traded to Houston. I didn’t even know you’d be living in the same city.”
That’s when an awful thought occurs to me. Have I had things that wrong?
“So did you accept the job because you thought I’d be gone?” Disappointment and embarrassment drive me to my feet. I miss her warmth immediately, but maybe I need to get used to the idea that she moved here because she thought I was leaving.
“Wow. Now I feel like a fool.” My laugh is a three-dollar bill. Fake. Counterfeit. “I didn’t even think . . . yeah, I guess I didn’t think this all the way through. I assumed you felt . . .”
I swallow down the emotion burning my throat. Jared’s voice comes back to haunt me—his warning that I would regret staying with the Waves if things with Iris didn’t pan out. The flower I brought her lies on the floor by her knees, and that’s how I feel. Clipped at the stem. Discarded.
“I did.” She stands, her head only coming to the middle of my chest. “I do . . . feel it, I mean.”
She reaches for my hand, winding her fingers through mine and looking at me the way I imagined she would, a mixture of possibility and want and hope in her eyes. “I feel it, too, August. I always have,” she says softly, tucking her full bottom lip into her mouth for a second before going on. “I’ve just . . . been through a lot, I guess, and I’m still sorting some things out.”
Been through a lot? What the fuck does that mean? What’s she been through? Who hurt her? Caleb? That dude is dead if I find out he hurt her.
“What does that mean?” I ask, hoping my voice sounds more civilized than I feel. “What have you been through, Iris?”
I feel it immediately, the wall erected between us. Her eyes go distant, looking inside herself. “I can’t . . . I mean . . .” Her eyes beg, and I’m willing to do whatever she wants. To give her whatever she needs. “Can we just not talk about that right now?”
Frustration strangles me for a second, but I force myself to calm down. She’ll tell me eventually who I need to maim.
What happ
ened to her?
I nod, twisting our fingers tighter, letting her know I’m not going anywhere.
“Oh.” She shakes her head, confusion back on her face. “Wait. So what happened with the Houston deal? Last I heard, it was all but done.”
Do I tell her the truth? If I tell her what I did, all that I gave up on the off chance she’d be with me, that’s a lot of pressure. On her. On me. On this relationship, once it becomes an actual relationship with dates and daily conversations like normal couples have, and sex . . .
Shit. I’m probably gonna break my dick jerking off so hard before I leave this building.
“August?” she asks again. “What happened with the Houston deal?”
Sneaking around trying to help her, not being completely upfront got us off to a rocky start. I won’t risk that again being anything less than honest.
“When Jared told me you were moving here, I passed on the deal.” My words fall into this chasm of stunned silence. She rears back as if I’ve struck her. Her fingers start loosening from mine, but I don’t let her go.
“No.” I squeeze her hand gently, lifting my other hand to cup her face. “Listen to me.”
“August, that contract was forty . . .” She draws a deep breath before charging on. “Like, forty million dollars.”
“Forty-five, but what’s a few million here and there?” I joke.
“But what about the team?” She asks, ignoring my attempt at humor. “Houston made the finals this year.”
“Yeah.” I stamp down the fear that I’ll never win a championship, never have a ring, the holy grail I’ve pursued most of my life.
“That team is primed for a championship,” she reminds me unnecessarily. “Maybe even next season.”
“Iris, I’m well aware.”
“But it makes no sense. I don’t understand.”
Here’s my chance to get it right. My chance to make sure she knows that, though I’ve been chasing a ball up a court all my life, with this I’m not playing games.
Take the shot.
“Your dreams and ambitions got swallowed up when you had to follow Caleb,” I say, holding her eyes with mine. “I want you to know there’s someone who will follow you.”
She blinks several times, and I can only hope my words are sinking in.
“But you can’t . . . I’m not . . .” She falters and tries again. “August, Houston is your best shot at winning a ring.”
“You’re right.” I loosen my fingers from hers so I can hold her face between both hands. “Going to Houston is my best shot at winning a ring.”
“Then why would you—”
“But staying here,” I cut in, caressing the fullness of her bottom lip with my thumb. “Staying is my best shot at winning you.”
40
Iris
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
It’s not the first time Lo has asked me this question, and it certainly won’t be the last.
“Don’t start, Lo,” I mumble, stretched out on my stomach on the living room floor, coloring with Sarai.
“Now tell me again what he said?” she asks, knowing good and damn well what August said. I’ve told her the last four times she’s asked.
“He said Houston is his best shot at winning a championship,” I repeat, stripping all the emotion from my voice but swooning all over again inside, “but staying here is his best shot at winning me.”
“Damn, he’s good.” Lo gathers a fistful of popcorn. “The last thing I would be telling that man is that I want to go slow.”
I don’t answer but keep my head down and focus on coloring in the lines.
“More like, let’s go right now.” She squints at the television mounted on the wall. “Now, which number is he?”
I glance up from the Frozen coloring book to the television broadcasting the Waves game. The players’ backs are turned into the huddle for a time-out.
“He’s number thirty-three. It was his dad’s number, too.”
“Now his dad was a brother or what?”
“Yeah, his dad was black. His mother’s white. His father actually played in the NBA, too. He died in a car accident his second season.”
“Oh, man. That’s rough.”
We both glance at the television when the crowd cheers. August just made a three-pointer. He high-fives his teammates.
I could be there. In the month we’ve been in San Diego, August has offered Sarai and me tickets, but we’ve never gone. They’re still in pre-season, though, and this is an exhibition game. The regular season doesn’t start until the end of this month, and I promise myself I’ll go to some of those games despite the public scrutiny that will inevitably follow if I’m associated with Caleb’s biggest rival.
“I’m glad he’s having a good game.” I smile, because I know he’ll text me after and ask if I watched, and what I thought, and how’d he do.
“Hmmmmmmmm. Look at all that curly hair.” Lo slides a sly glance from the television to me, watching for a response.
I glance up again, and my heart triple times. August stands at the free-throw line. Of course, he makes the shot. He’s a ninety percent free-throw shooter.
“He does have great hair,” I admit neutrally. It’s shorter than when I saw him in Baltimore, when it clung to my fingers like hungry silk, but he was rehabbing then.
“That man is fine,” Lo says. “He could get it.”
My head snaps up and my eyes shoot venom.
“There we go!” Lo points to my face and laughs. “About damn time. I’m just trying to gauge if you’re feeling him or not.”
Oh, I’m feeling him. I’m feeling . . . everything, and it scares me to death.
“So he’s okay with you taking things slow?” Lo probes further.
“Yeah.” An involuntary smile tugs at my lips, and I drop my crayon. “You know he has a Louisiana iris at my desk every morning when I get to work?”
“Well, he’s rich. He can afford to have it delivered.”
“Nope.” I shake my head and suspect I may look dreamy. “On the way to his early morning workouts, he delivers it himself. He even leaves handwritten notes.”
“What do the notes say?”
I shrug, biting my bottom lip and caressing the blue–gray crayon that matches his eyes almost exactly.
“Simple things like I hope you have a good day.” I giggle and feel my cheeks heat up. “Or you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”
Are we still going slow?
I’d play you at the five.
I can’t wait for our next kiss. Remember our first?
Our first kiss ended with his head between my legs and my best orgasm to date. In a closet, no less. What could August accomplish with a bed?
“We talk about everything,” I continue with a smile. “Work, life, ball. It’s so easy, so natural for us.”
Lotus sits up on the couch, leaning forward and pressing her elbows to her knees.
“He sounds like a great guy. He’s fine as hell.”
“He loves Sarai,” I add with a smile. “Every time he’s in the Elevation building he goes by to see her, even if it’s just for a few minutes. She can’t say his full name, so she calls him Gus. He hates it, but he won’t make her stop.”
“You’ve already fallen for him,” Lo says softly.
Groaning, I flip onto my back, the coloring book abandoned. Of course, I’ve fallen for him. I’m not an idiot. I started falling for him the day we met, and I haven’t stopped falling since.
“That doesn’t change how I need to handle this,” I tell Lo, my eyes fixed to the beamed ceiling in our small house. It’s in a great neighborhood, but our place is small—just the right size for Sarai and me. A tiny square of grass serves as our backyard, and we have a lemon tree that scents the air when we sit outside. There’s a second-hand . . . okay, third- or fourth-hand car in the driveway, purchased with a little bit of the money MiMi left for Lo and me to split. It’s not much, but it’s all mine.<
br />
“When I told you to change your course,” Lo says, bringing me back, her eyes and voice matched for seriousness, “I didn’t just mean find a job. There’s a life out there, girl. You are not just somebody’s mama.”
“And I’m not just somebody’s woman either,” I say curtly. “Believe me. I’ve been that.”
“Don’t let Caleb win, Bo.”
Since Lo helped me escape and already knows what happened, she’s really my only outlet to speak freely about it. That NDA keeps me locked down, but it’s also the agreement that gave me my freedom.
“I’m not letting him win.” I sit, finding her eyes and looking at her straight. “I just have reservations.”
“About August?”
I shrug, not sure where my reservations stem from, but sure that I have them.
“It’s hard to trust again,” I admit. “I missed all the signs with Caleb. The jealousy and possessiveness. Pressing for deeper commitment than I was ready for. Isolating me from the people I care about. When you’re that wrong about someone, it makes you cautious.”
“And that’s it?” Lotus presses.
“I also worry about what Caleb will think—what he’ll do.”
“Excuse me?” Lo’s face wears full-coverage indignation. “What’s that sombitch got to do with anything?”
“He hates August. Hell, August hates Caleb, too.” I plow a nervous hand through my hair. “You know it was Caleb’s dirty play that broke August’s leg two seasons ago, right? He did that on purpose, Lo. And he told me he’d do worse if I got involved with August.”
“He can’t do a thing to either of you now.”
“That’s easy to say when it’s not you,” I say bitterly. “You have no idea.”
“So now we gonna compare rape stories?” Lo asks softly. “Is that it?”
“Oh, God. No.” I rush to the couch to sit and grab her hand. “I didn’t mean it that way. I know you know how it feels to be violated. I just meant . . .” How do I make her understand the depths to which Caleb sank to control me?
“Caleb is crazy. Like truly crazy.” I close my eyes against a torrent of nightmarish memories. “The things I’m holding over him only work if he cares about his career and his endorsements and everything else more than he cares about . . .” I don’t want to make my fears more real by voicing them.
