by Kennedy Ryan
“I’m so embarrassed,” I groan into my hands. I don’t know how much of the interplay she could see with Caleb either, but after our conversation in the stands, I think I care less about that.
“She probably suspected that we make out when I told her we were staying in a hotel tonight.”
“We’re what?” I’d assumed we’d stay at his mother’s.
“Lotus is gonna keep Sarai,” he says. “And you and I are gonna spend the whole night together.”
The mom in me immediately wants to protest. No one else should have to look after my daughter. I should be able to do it, but August’s had to leave before the sun came up every time we were together.
I’m going to give this to myself. Give this to us.
I lean my head on his shoulder as we approach the car and his mother’s knowing grin. “That sounds marvelous, baby.”
48
Iris
What was I thinking?
My reflection in the mirror mocks me. August and I get a night on our own in a billion-star hotel. One night when he doesn’t have to leave. Instead of lingerie to tempt him, I’m wearing a basketball jersey. I mean, it’s his jersey, but still. It’s not as sexy on me as it is on him.
I fluff my hair around my shoulders and over my arms, crossing one foot over the other like Sarai does when she has to pee.
“Well, all your crap is in the other room,” I tell the girl in the mirror. “So you gotta go out there at some point.”
I need this. Today’s game was stressful. Seeing Caleb was a nightmare. Dinner with August’s family was great, but the anticipation of tonight hung over me the whole time. The prelude of covert touches under the table, stolen kisses in the hallway, long looks charged with promise—it’s drawn my nerves tight and has me poised on a fine edge. The Stingers’ game was the end of a road trip, so August hasn’t been home, and we haven’t been together in days.
Lo is the only person I trust with Sarai overnight, and with them safely up the hall, I can relax completely.
When I enter the bedroom, I don’t even take in the white and gold furnishings, the thick pile carpet, the stunning view of the city. The only thing I notice about the huge bed is the man sitting at the foot of it.
August showered shortly before I did, and he’s hasn’t bothered dressing. He’s always a luxury for the senses. August naked, the muscles in his stomach stacked, his skin beaded with moisture, his hair a chaos of messy curls? That’s a matter of irresistibility.
I make it my business to know sports stats, so I know August’s wingspan, but that’s not the same as seeing his shoulders stretched wide, a horizon of muscle and bone and bronzed flesh. I know his vertical, how high he can jump from standing, but that’s a flat number. It tells you nothing about the legs of a man six inches over six feet, long and lean with chiseled flanks and thighs, or the calves carved from clay, hardened and burnished in the sun. He’s a shooter. He’s one of the best the league has ever seen and deadly from behind the arch. But I know those arms, carved and sculpted, as a haven, and those “handles”, his hands, the safe place where I leave my heart.
His eyes widen on me, a heated scan of my body. “Damn, Iris.”
I cross over to him, and he tugs me to stand between his legs. His cock, hard and stiff and hot, brushes against my skin. My toes curl into the carpet and my fingers curl into the dark silk of his hair. He palms my shoulders and strokes down my arms. There’s reverence in the hands tracing the shape of my hips through his jersey.
“I should have worn something sexy,” I say in a rush. “Like a negligee or—”
“Just stop.” His laugh comes out, a wisp of smoke. “Seeing you wear my number is like a wet dream wrapped in a hand job.”
He outlines his number, thirty-three, emblazoned over my chest with one finger. When he pinches and rolls my nipples, the cartilage in my knees goes to goo. I grab his shoulders, smooth and velvet, to keep me on my feet. His hands wander over my legs, creeping under the hem of the jersey to cup my bare butt, squeezing until his fingers meet at the crack of my ass. With his eyes locked with mine, he spreads my cheeks and runs one thick finger along that secret, sensitive ridge. Like he’s pulled a lever, moisture leaks from my body, dampening my thighs.
Stealthily, one hand slips between my legs, and for a few moments he just caresses my lips. My breath grows jagged. I’m a moaning, shameless girl spreading her legs, silently begging him to touch me there. To open me up, invade, and own this pussy.
August teases me until his fingers are soaked with my body’s wet, begging offering, with the supplication leaking down my thighs. My nails sink into his flesh, demanding more.
He doesn’t look away and neither do I, when his mouth, steamy and insistent, possesses one breast through the jersey. He finally spreads me and taps my clit.
“Oh.” I wilt against him, weak and gasping, resting my forehead on his. “August.”
His thumb strokes me, repeating the caress and stealing more breath with every pass. He pulls one leg on either side to frame his muscled thighs until I’m splayed over him, cool air whispering over the wet, hot pleat of me.
“I wanna fuck you in my jersey, wearing my number.” He tongues the length of my neck. “Ride me, Iris.”
Just those words said just that way—I’m frozen in the moment. Preserved in a block of ice. For a second, my body shuts down. Cools. Stalls. Those words haunt me.
Another man commanded me to ride him. He told me to make him believe I wanted him, but I couldn’t. I didn’t. His cruelty stole my passion and turned me cold.
“Iris?” August’s frown, the concern on his face, in his voice, remind me where I am. “Baby, you okay?”
I blink down at him dumbly, swallowing my tears, eating my memories whole and digesting a nightmare from long ago. I nod, my lips a cold, wobbly curve.
“Kiss me,” he whispers, his eyes so tender, so intent.
I remember a magical night under the stars, under a streetlight on the eve of greatness. A night filled with laughter and confidences, pregnant with promise. And I see him so clearly, my prince, asking for a kiss.
And I do.
I kiss him like the world might end tonight because I’ll never take this for granted. Not his kindness, when I’ve known cruelty all too well. Not his tenderness, when I’ve been handled roughly in the past. Not his love, when I’ve been possessed and owned and mistreated.
He thaws me with his kiss, my prince, and I melt into him. We’re chest to chest, with August’s number crushed between us. I take his cock in my hand, aligning our bodies, and two become one in a carnal slide of flesh. I anchor myself by my elbows hooked around his neck, and we kiss until I’m dizzy and our breaths tangle in a cloud of bliss. Under the jersey, his palm spans my back, digging into the naked flesh as our hips lock and roll and grind. My body clenches around him, and we pray, we curse, we moan, we mate like our bodies were made for this moment.
Ours is a love that reimagines—that peels back the sky at high noon searching for the stars, collecting them like shells in a bucket. We bathe in stardust, drink from the Milky Way, and dance on the moon. We pierce the firmament, peer into infinity, and tread on time and space. There is no before. There is no after. Now gives birth to forever. This moment may die, but this love never will. Time is not a line. It’s a circle, and we, August and Iris, we stand at the center.
“Have you seen Sliding Doors?” I ask, pressing my back into the rigid wall of August’s torso.
It’s dark and I’m only a few minutes past an orgasm that left my brain like an old floppy disk wiped clean.
“The movie?” His hands move in my hair.
“Yeah, Sliding Doors.”
“Kate Winslet?”
“No, Gwyneth Paltrow.”
“Is that the movie where her mother-in-law tries to kill her?”
“No, that’s Hush.”
“Why do you know so much about Gwyneth Paltrow?” he teases, pinching my sides and making me squeal. �
��It’s weird.”
“It’s not w . . . okay. So in Sliding Doors, this lady—”
“Gwyneth Paltrow.”
“Oh, my god. Yes,” I agree, laughing into the pillow both our heads rest on. “Gwyneth Paltrow.”
“I’m just clarifying.”
“So she drops this earring in the lift.”
“A what? A lift?”
“It’s London. Lift. Elevator. Same thing.”
“So she drops an earring in the lift.”
I hear his grin in the dark and wait a beat to let my silence warn him.
“Okay, okay.” He laughs into my hair. “I’ll stop.”
I elbow him in the stomach. He “omphs”, and I go on.
“Well she drops the earring and the story branches off into these two different scenarios.” My good humor dissolves like sugar in vinegar. “With these two different men.”
August doesn’t laugh either, but finds my hand and links our fingers under the overstuffed weight of the duvet. He waits for my next words.
“I used to think of the night we met all the time.” I bite my lip and blink back unexpected tears. “You wanted to kiss me outside the bar.”
“And you told me you had a boyfriend.” His voice has grown sober, too.
“When I was . . .”
Beaten. Bruised. Threatened. Violated.
“. . . unhappy, I would imagine that I kissed you that night.” I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing I could erase the wasted years between then and now. “I would imagine that I chose you, and that one choice changed everything.”
He’s quiet. I won’t tell him everything. I won’t tell him much at all, but it will be the truth.
“It was like there was this parallel universe where I made the right choice, and we were happy.” I struggle to release the words that acknowledge my error. “But I would always wake up, and you weren’t there. Caleb was.”
“In this alternative universe,” he says softly, caressing the webbing between my fingers, “was Sarai mine?”
I hesitate, not sure what he wants me to say, so again I choose the truth. I nod. He drops his head to my nape and leaves a long breath there.
“Then we were there together, because that’s what kept me going when you were with him.” He rolls me onto my back, pressing his forearm by my head into the pillow. “Not that it had already happened, but that it still could.” He brushes the hair back from my face, peering down at me in the darkness like it’s the light of day and he can see me clearly. “It has happened, Iris.” He brings our clasped hands to his lips. “That’s not an alternative universe. That’s our life, baby.”
I almost don’t want to smile—like my happiness might shatter this illusion, and I’ll wake up curled at the edge of the bed, staring down the barrel of Caleb’s pistol. But I won’t. Tomorrow I’ll wake up in August’s arms, and my past, my memories, Caleb – can’t rob me of that.
“Can I tell you something?” August’s voice anchors me in this dream, extends it a little longer.
“Of course.”
“I want to wake up this way every morning,” he says, hope lifting his words. “And I want our kids to bust through the door and jump in bed with us.”
Tears gather at the corners of my eyes and silently stripe my cheeks. There was once a girl brave enough to want those things, but she was crushed and ground to dust. I don’t know if I could find her again if I tried.
“And I’ll make pancakes,” he continues, his enthusiasm growing. “And I can teach them to shoot, or not. They don’t have to play basketball. I don’t care. I just want them to be ours. Yours and mine.”
He strokes his thumb over that finger on my left hand, which once held a ring of protection and once held a ring of bondage. The tears won’t stop because I’m not ready to put a ring on that finger. As much as I love August, that’s a step, a risk I’m not ready to take. Not even for him. Not yet.
I’m braced for the question, trying to figure out how to tell the man I love no.
“If I were to ask you tonight, Iris, would you say yes?”
He already knows. I hear the resignation, the disappointment in his voice, and I wish I could surprise him. I can’t yet.
But I will.
I lived in hell, and my way back is a journey. I survived a nightmare, escaped a monster, and I faced him down today. I may not be able to tell August yes tonight, but one day I will.
“I’m sorry, August.” I shake my head helplessly and brush at the tears. “I-I can’t say yes yet.”
“I know, baby.” He tightens his arm around my waist and tucks his chin into the curve of my neck. “That’s why I’m not asking.”
49
August
“Good game, Rook,” Kenan says as we get off the bus.
“You, too.” I grin at him, lowering my duffle bag to the ground while we talk. “We’ve put together a little winning streak here lately.”
“Little bit.” Kenan’s stern face yields a smile. “Next year we’ll be a plus five hundred team.”
“You think?” He and I start toward the hotel entrance.
“If Deck and the front office play their cards right in the draft this summer and get us some more key pieces, hell yeah. We’re doing well for an expansion team.”
“Yeah, we’re starting to gel. Tonight was great.” I grimace. “Minus the snow. The last place I want to be is stranded in Denver an extra night because of weather.”
“You called Iris to let her know?”
“About to. Once we get settled in the room, I will.”
“How’s her cousin?”
I stop in the hotel lobby and stare him down. “Do you want Iris to put in a good word for you with Lo or something?”
“What?” He looks at me like I have two heads and an extra nose. “Why would you think that?”
“Obviously because you keep asking about her.”
“Has . . . she ever asked about me?”
I’ve never seen Kenan “Gladiator” Ross tentative, but the expression on his face is probably about as close as he’ll ever come.
“Never,” I answer unhesitatingly, my lips stretching into a smile.
Kenan rolls his eyes and gives me a middle-finger salute.
“August, hey.” Decker walks over to us from the front desk, a file in his hand. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
“Sure.” I fist-pound Kenan before he walks toward the elevator. “What’s up, Deck?”
“Come sit.” He gestures to a nook just off the bank of elevators.
It’s late and I have no idea what this is about, but I hope he makes it quick. I want to call Iris as soon as we’re done since she’s expecting me tonight.
“Um, I just got off the phone with Avery,” he says, watching me closely.
“Cool.” Now I really don’t know where this is going. “How’s she doing?”
“Good.” Decker hesitates and then goes on. “How much do you know about Iris’s relationship with Caleb?”
Predictably, my hackles rise. The hackles on my hackles rise.
“I know it’s over.” Even I hear the tension in my voice.
“Calm your ass down, West.” Deck’s lips tighten around the words. “I’m just trying to figure out if you know . . .” A sigh heaves his heavily muscled shoulders.
“Know what, Deck?” I ask impatiently. “Dude, spit it out.”
“There was a file delivered anonymously to Avery today at the station,” Deck says, the words dragging over his lips.
“Okay. What kind of file?”
“This one.” He slides it across the table to me but places his hand on top so I can’t open it. “It’s a file of pictures. Um, pictures of Iris.”
My hand knots into a fist on my leg. “My Iris?”
“Yeah.” Sympathy fills his eyes. “Your Iris.”
“Like . . . naked pictures?” I try to keep my brain contained in my skull. “Give me the file, Deck.”
“Not naked.” He keeps his hand ov
er the file and blows out an extended breath. “Pictures of her beaten pretty badly. And some medical records that detail . . . a pattern of abuse.”
“Abuse?” The word, ugly and harsh, shouldn’t even be in the same sentence as her name. “Like when she was young? Like someone touched her or . . .”
“No, not when she was young. More, um, recent.” His look offers sympathy. “You didn’t know?”
Decker and I stare at each other. I know what’s in that file. Maybe I’ve known all along and didn’t want to accept that it could have happened to her. Too many things that didn’t add up suddenly stand in perfectly straight columns and equal a horrific sum.
“Caleb?” The name is strangled in my throat. “Are you saying Caleb hurt her? He put his hands on her?” I stab the file on the table with my index finger, rage pistoning through my body. “Is that what’s in here?” I grit out. “That motherfucker hurt my girl?”
“Yes.” He lifts his hand from the file. “Before you look at this, consider something. Iris probably had her reasons for not telling you.”
“She said she signed an NDA. That was the only way she could guarantee sole custody of Sarai.”
“Yeah, well that makes sense.” He draws a deep breath and expels it. “Considering what’s in it, she probably never wanted it to come to light anyway. I need to tell you something else.”
“What else?” I stand and pace in tight circles, driving my hands into my hair. “What is it, Deck?”
“August, he . . . he raped her pretty brutally.”
God, no.
I stop, stock still, turning only my head in careful inches to make sure I heard him right.
“He . . .he raped her?” My voice can’t make it past a whisper. “Caleb?”
I honestly can’t remember the last time I cried, really cried, but tears burn my eyes and blur my vision. My chest feels concave, like it collapsed on itself and is crushing my heart. My hands tremble when I link them behind my neck. I’m holding on—to my sanity, to my composure—but everything’s slipping through my fingers.
