Seduce Me

by Jill Shalvis

  She swallowed hard. “Next,” she squeaked.

  A young woman stood there, clearly as in awe of Jack as Sam was. She licked her lips and made sure she was as close to the line as she could get. “I’m standing here until I dunk him,” she told Sam. “I don’t care how much money it takes.”

  It took five bucks.

  And this time when Jack climbed back up, he looked at Sam and mouthed, “Two.”

  She blinked.

  “That’s two people you’ve gotten to dunk me,” he clarified. “Don’t think I’m not keeping track.”

  “It’s my job,” she said weakly, but when she handed balls to the next person in line—another young woman—Sam didn’t offer one word of encouragement.

  When she missed, Sam breathed a sigh of relief.

  But then came the most adorable little girl ever. She couldn’t be more than four, with long dark hair and the darkest eyes Sam had ever seen. She was clutching the hand of a woman wearing the official tag of Heather’s charity.

  “This is one of our kids,” the woman said. “Thelma is in a group home near the rec center, and some of the money we earn here today will go toward new play equipment in her yard.”

  Sam looked down into Thelma’s dark eyes and felt her heart crack. “Well, then, sweetie, this game is on me.”

  “I get a ball?”

  “You get as many balls as it takes to dunk Jack Knight,” Sam rashly promised, and pulled a twenty out of her pocket to add to the day’s earnings. Then she picked Thelma up and tucked her on her hip. With her other hand she grabbed a basket of balls and stepped over the line. “Dunk him.”

  Thelma giggled, and threw her first ball, which went about three feet.

  Sam stepped even closer to the tank, and the target. She met Jack’s eyes.

  He lifted a brow. “Three, Sam?”

  She thrust her chin in the air. “Again, Thelma.”

  Thelma missed.

  Sam moved even closer.

  The crowd was cheering loudly now. Jack looked both intrigued by Sam’s interference, and also quite resigned.

  The third throw was beautiful. Thelma hit the target and Jack took another bath.

  When he surfaced this time, he didn’t climb back onto his seat. He got out of the tank. He didn’t grab a towel; he came directly toward Sam, who was just about to put Thelma down, but suddenly felt holding the thin, warm body close was a good idea. “Thelma, what do you say we go—”

  “Hi, there.” Jack bent a little and smiled into Thelma’s eyes. “Do you know who I am?”

  “You fly through the air and you make baskets.”

  Jack laughed, and so did the people around them. “I did,” he agreed. “And now I’m going to make this pretty lady holding you fly. Right into the water, like I just did. Do you want to see that?”

  Thelma clapped her hands.

  Sam’s heart started beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. Faster. “Well, I don’t really think Thelma wants to get down right now—”

  Thelma opened her arms to Jack.

  Wet and all, he took the little girl from Sam and smiled sweetly down into her face. “That’s a girl. Want to help me?”

  Thelma nodded.

  And everyone looked expectantly at Sam.

  “I don’t think I ever agreed to actually get into the tank,” she said, glancing over at the water, which suddenly looked very, very cold. “I’m pretty sure I just said I’d help.”

  “Yes, and this is going to be a great help,” Jack told her. “Seeing you in a bathing suit, and wet, will help me tremendously.” He waggled a brow challengingly. “Unless you want to chicken out, of course.” He smiled down at Thelma, happy in his arms. “I’m sure the kids will understand if you don’t want to—”

  “Oh, fine.” Stepping back, she untied the strap of her halter sundress from around her neck, unzipped it and let it fall. She kicked it up to Jack, who caught it and grinned at her, taking in her white bikini.

  Reaching up, she gathered her hair, tying it with the band she’d had around her wrist. Ready, she paused to take one last look at Jack and then went still.

  His eyes, hot and hungry, were right on hers.

  And her heart, racing only a second before, skipped a beat. And then another.

  “Don’t worry,” he said lightly. “The water’s only a little cold.”

  “Thanks.” Moving to the tank, she climbed the ladder while everyone cheered her on.

  And then she was sitting on the little seat—wet from Jack’s body—waiting to be dunked.

  She watched Jack run his free hand over Thelma’s hair before he grabbed a ball. He said something to the crowd over his shoulder, and everyone in line cracked up.

  She rolled her eyes. She’d gotten him dunked, and now he was going to follow through on his threat and do the same to her. It was a male thing, an ego thing, a stupid male ego thing, so really, she had no idea why her stomach did a funny little quiver, why her thighs tightened, why her whole body was heating up.

  Unbelievable, but all this silly little playing back and forth was turning her on.

  She needed a therapist, she decided as Jack tossed the ball up and down in his hand, smiling at her.

  He wound up.

  And with perfect aim, dunked her on his first try.

  She went down with a startled squeal that had Jack grinning broadly. Beneath the water she became a blur, then her long legs gave a strong kick and she surfaced. Shaking the water from her face, she didn’t look at him as she climbed out of the tank.

  But he looked at her.

  And looked.

  Those long, toned limbs, all that dripping wet flesh…

  Oh yeah, today was looking up.

  Thelma laughed and clapped her hands. “More.”

  Jack laughed. “You’ve got it sweetheart.”

  AT THE END of the day, Sam’s body was humming with a pleasant sort of exhaustion. Hair still damp, she slid into the passenger seat of Jack’s SUV and put her head back.

  “Tired?” Jack poured himself into his seat, not uttering a word or complaint about his right knee, which she’d caught him favoring a few times. “Because I’m beat to hell. Who’d of thought dunking you would have done me in.”

  “I warned you,” she said. “The sport is dangerous for retirees.”

  He slanted her a daring look. “Are you asking me to somehow show you I am in no way ready for the old folks’ home? Because that’s what it sounds like, and believe me, this body is still in prime condition, and I’m willing to prove it.”

  She laughed. “Has a line like that ever actually worked for you?”

  He rubbed his jaw, looking only a little sheepish. “Yeah.”

  Sam gave a slow shake of her head. “That’s a sorry statement of my entire gender.” But inside, her whole body continued to hum with excitement.

  Jack started the car and they drove out of the lot. “I think Heather pulled in a ton of money today.”

  “Entertaining kids is a lot harder than I thought.”

  “You were a damn good sport about it.” He glanced at her. “Thanks for—”

  She laughed, shook her head. “Oh, no you don’t.”

  “Oh, no I don’t what?”

  “You are not going to thank me.”

  “Uh…okay. Why not?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Because you were a good sport, too, and I’m not going to thank you. Everyone should give back to their community like that, and I’m ashamed to say I don’t, not really. But I like the way I feel right now, so I’m going to try to change that.”

  He glanced at her but didn’t say a word, not until he pulled into Wild Cherries. Turning off the engine, unhooking first his seat belt and then hers, he faced her. He slid his hands to hers when she might have gotten out of the car. “You’re an amazing woman, Samantha O’Ryan. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  She knew her smile was far too dreamy for her own comfort. “Stop it. You don’t know me well enough to say th
at. You don’t know the truth.”

  “And what’s the truth?”

  “I’m bossy, outspoken and don’t follow rules very well.” She squirmed a little. “Among other things.”

  “Yeah. So?” Lifting a hand, he tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, then trailed his finger down her throat until her breath caught.

  “That doesn’t scare you?” she whispered.

  “That you’re bossy, outspoken and don’t follow rules?” He looked into her eyes and laughed. “Maybe if you were my financial adviser, but no…” He traced her throat again, down to the very base of her neck where she knew her pulse had just leaped. “You don’t scare me.” He dipped his head and kissed the spot his finger had just touched.

  The feel of his lips on her had her head falling back a little, her eyes closing. She told herself that the reason she didn’t scare him because this…this thing between them wasn’t going anywhere. Nowhere except quite possibly—hopefully—to the bedroom, and they both understood that.

  She repeated it to herself to make sure she got it. This wasn’t going anywhere. Neither of them wanted any such connection. No matter how many times she said it, however, it didn’t seem to ring true, which led her to a bigger dilemma. Was this more than just girl meets boy, girl enjoys boy for summer, then girl moves on?

  No. This was temporary only. Fun. Uninhibited. And at the moment, with his mouth cruising its way over her collarbone, hair brushing the underside of her chin, his hands on her hips, that worked for her. That worked really well.

  Even though she suspected she’d need another pep talk soon enough. “Jack?”

  He’d made his way to her shoulder, bared by her sundress, and he gave her a playful nip that he promptly soothed with a kiss. “Hmm?”

  “Want to come in?”

  He went still, then lifted his head and met her gaze. “For…another hot chocolate?”

  “Not exactly.” She winced. “I don’t just work here. I, uh…live above the café.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I don’t usually like guys to know because…”

  “Because then maybe they’d show up when you didn’t want them to,” he guessed.

  “Yeah. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  “I understand, believe me, I do.”

  She imagined he did, for close to the same reasons. “I have some herbal lotion upstairs, made by a friend who really knows what she’s doing. I could put some on your sore knee, see if it helps.”

  He blinked once, slow as an owl.

  “I mean, unless you have something else—” Feeling silly, she turned away, reached for the door handle, but he stopped her and turned her back to face him.

  “I’d love to come up.”

  8

  THE EARLY EVENING ocean breeze had kicked in. It whistled over Sam and Jack, along with the sounds of the waves hitting the beach and the traffic on the highway.

  Jack followed Sam up the back steps of the café to her apartment, watching as she pulled her keys from her tiny purse and unlocked the door. She stepped aside, holding it open for him, and in the swirling jade depths of her eyes he saw good humor, intelligence and…hunger. For him.

  Thank God, he thought, and would have dug right in if it hadn’t been for what he also saw there.

  Affection.

  Not the love-your-body, or make-me-feel-good-tonight kind of affection, nothing as shallow or as easy as that, but something far more, far deeper. He took a shuddering breath, wondering how to react.

  A part of him wanted to run like hell.

  Another part wanted to stand still and do as he’d never done before—absorb it, go with it.

  Nurture it.

  Clearly he was losing his mind. No woman had ever really gotten to know him for his sake, and no woman was likely to start. Not even Sam, who lived on the busy highway above a cramped lunch café and didn’t seem to care about his celebrity or money—a woman who, until a week ago, wouldn’t have known him from any other Jack.

  But she knew who he was now, and if he’d learned anything over the years of being hounded by the public, by the press, by every single person around him, few people were unaffected by his celebrity.

  Nope. As he’d told her during their midnight swim, he didn’t want a relationship, no matter how tempting. Glorious as Sam was, and stimulating and beautiful and amazing, that hadn’t changed.

  “Stop thinking so hard, Jack,” she said softly. “This isn’t complicated. I just want to help soothe your pain.”

  Another confusion, as he hadn’t told her his knee ached today. In fact, they hadn’t really talked about that, or what he used to do for a living. She had just teased him about being retired.

  He was used to dates who expected him to be the “star” the press had made him out to be. The simple truth was, women liked his celebrity, they wanted the perks that went along with it, and they expected him to provide them.

  He’d known from the very beginning that Sam would be different. She still had no idea how damn attractive that had been to him. But now she’d casually mentioned his knee, which meant she had more than just a passing knowledge of him.

  “You’re not going to fit in here very well, it’s really tiny.” She took his hand and pulled him into the kitchen, which though as small as a closet, was warm and inviting. The floors were scarred hardwood but clean. Her table was made of wood, too, with two mismatched chairs that somehow worked in the place. Her cabinets had no fronts. Inside them, everything was neat as a pin.

  “How long have you lived here?” he asked.

  She lifted a shoulder. “Since I started working for Red full-time.”

  “Your uncle?”

  “Yeah. And when he retired a few years back, buying this building was a natural fit for me. Of course, I’m mortgaged to my ears and I’ll be paying out of said ears even after I am dead and buried…” She laughed. “And sometimes the home budget means eating whatever’s left over from downstairs, but it’s a small price to pay to belong somewhere.”

  He’d paid cash for his multimillion dollar home in the hills and hadn’t thought twice about it. Having a ridiculous amount of money, he rarely looked at the prices of things, and he never, ever, had to eat leftovers to keep to his budget. Hell, he had no budget.

  Sam looked at the chairs, then at his large frame and, with a small smile, shook her head. She led him out of the kitchen and into the living room, which was also small, warm and homey. Two bare windows looked out to the ocean. There were more beat-up wood floors here, and a surprisingly large, forest-green sofa that was plumped up with pillows and looked so inviting he nearly sighed.

  The entire apartment couldn’t have been more than six hundred square feet, not much more than his own huge large entrance hall, and yet he’d never felt more at home than he did right now.

  “Sit,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  His body twitched at that promise, but when she came back, she hadn’t slipped out of her clothes, she wasn’t holding a condom between her teeth and she wasn’t looking at him with heat in her eyes—all three fantasies which had been whipping through his head since she’d disappeared.

  In her hands was a pale green bottle. “The healing ointment,” she said, and sat on the coffee table right in front of him, between his sprawled legs.

  An unwittingly erotic position that made his fantasies even harder to let go of.

  She looked into his eyes. “What’s the matter?”

  Other than being hard as a rock and you being oblivious to what you’re doing to me, nothing. Nothing at all. “How did you know my knee is killing me? Or which one, for that matter.”

  “You’re favoring your right one here and there.” She opened the buttons down the sides of his sweats from mid-thigh to the hem. She un-capped the bottle and poured some of the stuff into her hands, rubbing them together, her gaze dropping to his right knee, and the six-inch-long scar running down the side of the kneecap.

  “It
smells awful,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

  “But it will feel heavenly.” She put her hands on him, and he hissed in an involuntary breath.

  “Cold? Sorry.”

  “No, it’s…” Heavenly. Only he had no idea if that was because the stuff was soothing or because her hands were on him, rubbing slowly, so achingly slowly, that the rest of him wished it could cry out and feign hurt, too.

  “How long since the surgery?” she asked quietly.

  “The last one? Nearly eight months now. It’s fine. It’s healed.”

  “And yet you left basketball.”

  His gaze lifted from her fingers on his flesh up to her eyes. “Fine and healed to walk are one thing. Fine and healed to play on a NBA court is another entirely.”

  “That must have destroyed you.”

  In all this time, no one had ever just put it out on the table like she just had, not even his family. Avoidance had been done in love and affection, but it had hurt regardless. “Yes,” he said a little thickly, shocked to find his emotions so close to the surface. “It did for a while.”

  “So what do you do now? With your free time, I mean.”

  “Let the general public dunk me at carnivals.”

  “Surely you needn’t have been forced out of basketball entirely. You could…I don’t know. Coach. Announce. Ref—”

  “I do. I run leagues and ref for the rec center. Not exactly demanding, I know, but the change of pace was good. Now I watch late night TV without worrying about curfew. I eat what I want, drink what I want. I exercise for fun instead of necessity, and I no longer have to answer to a committee on every little decision I make, including, but not limited to, what kind of shoes I wear and how many hours of sleep I get a night.”

  “That must be…freeing.”

  “Yeah. So is not having to be a role model when I never asked to be one. So is walking onto a court and knowing there’s no pressure, only fun.”

  “And you really don’t miss it?”

  Her heart was in her eyes. For him.

  He stared down at her hands on his knee, and then put his hands on her, resting his palms on her thighs. Easy enough to do, since she sat between his sprawled legs. “I’ve something better to talk about. Massaging you, for instance.”