Block Shot: A HOOPS Novel

by Kennedy Ryan

  “So destiny brought the future basketball player and the future sports agent together under one roof, and the rest is history, huh?”

  “Something like that.” I look around for the waiter to refill my drink. “Sorry that got so heavy.”

  “I don’t mind heavy,” she says softly. “Life is heavy sometimes.”

  And there it is. She’s one of those people who isn’t uncomfortable with the pain of others. It’s not awkward for her. She doesn’t say those weird things, the pat phrases that don’t actually mean anything, that don’t do anything, like empty calories.

  The server brings our food and we dig in, both making appreciative noises instead of talking when the dishes first hit the table. We quiz each other over steaming plates and several more drinks. Banner finds a fruity one with no pineapple and plenty of alcohol. I begged the waiter for a Jameson and am on my third by the time we’ve excavated the last ten years of each other’s lives and at least some of the things we never knew.

  The air around us thickens with every drink we take and every secret we share. Our drinks must be spiked with lust, some aphrodisiac that has us both heavy-lidded, licking our lips, linking ankles under the table, stealing touches every chance we get. I’m torn between continuing the most stimulating conversation I’ve had in years and taking Banner home for the best sex of my life.

  “So now that I know everything from your favorite color to your favorite movie,” I say. “I think it’s time to dig deeper.”

  “Deeper?” She relaxes into the seat, sipping the deceptively frothy concoction our server has plied her with all night. “Go on. Ask me anything.”

  “Strangest place you ever had sex.”

  The word “sex” planted in the air makes me hard. I read an answering flare of need in Banner’s eyes. She tips her head back, draws in the fresh air off the Caribbean, and looks so much like she did last night: head tossed back, riding me, driving, controlling the pace of our bodies colliding. And the mark on her neck she didn’t bother hiding, shaped like my mouth, ringed with my teeth, is yet another reminder of how we claimed each other.

  “Hmmm.” She looks up at the ceiling like she has to think about it. “Well, I did have sex on a desk in my office last week.”

  “That cannot be the strangest place you ever had sex.”

  Her grin would border on bashful if she wasn’t looking at me like she might crawl across the table and straddle me.

  “I think it might be,” she says, her laugh a little self-conscious. “I guess I just haven’t been adventurous.”

  “Or maybe you haven’t had the right lovers,” I offer with a roguish grin. “You’re welcome.”

  “Asshole.” She rolls her eyes, predictably, but still smiles. “And what about you, Mr. Sex Anywhere?”

  “The strangest? Let’s see. Once backstage at a U2 concert.”

  “Damn, you do have good taste in music.”

  “Told you.” I laugh and keep going. “Once in chambers. She was a judge. Aisle four of a grocery store. She was closing.”

  “Okayyyy.” Her expression grows more curious and incredulous with each revelation. Since she’s a Catholic, I think it best to omit my sexual encounter in a church confessional.

  “A PTA meeting.” I laugh at the horror on her face. “One of my clients was out of town and asked me to talk to the teacher.”

  “So I guess you enjoy the thrill of possibly getting caught?”

  “No, I just like sex and have it whenever the mood strikes me.” I shrug and shoot her a lopsided grin. “You should see your face right now. You’re like Green Eggs and Ham, the Sex Edition.”

  “What?” She wrinkles her nose, obviously confused. “What does that even mean?”

  “I would not do it here or there,” I affect a droll accent, quoting Dr. Seuss. “I would not do it anywhere.”

  “Oh my God,” she chuckles. “You’re ridiculous.”

  “A train! A train!” I keep at it. “Could you, would you on a train? Not on a train. Not in a tree. Not in a car.”

  “Shut it!” she manages through her laughter. “I’m not a prude or anything. I just haven’t been given the right opportunities.”

  “Ohhh, you haven’t been given the right opportunities,” I say, eager to provoke a response. “And here I thought you were the kind of woman who made her own.”

  Her eyes slit at my prodding, lit with a mixture of excitement and determination. She glances around the deserted terrace, and I’m not sure if I should be scared or aroused by her impish grin. I’m gonna go with aroused, since that seems to be my default with Banner.

  “You know what,” she says, tossing her napkin on the table. “You’re right. That is the kind of woman I am.”

  She slides down her seat and disappears under the table.

  “Banner, what—”

  The sibilant hiss of my zipper jerking down shuts me right up. Her hands at my belt make me go still. I like where this is going.

  “This is really happening?” I ask, afraid to hope.

  “Uh huh,” she says, her voice muffled through the wood.

  I slump in my seat and spread my legs. I want to make this as easy as possible for her.

  She pulls me out, her hands firm and cool, her mouth hot and wet.

  Holy fucking shit.

  All the alcohol I’ve consumed starts boiling in my blood and rushes to the head below my belt. I’m going to enjoy every damn minute of this, and if our server comes back, I’ll stab him with my steak knife.

  “I like this done a very particular way,” I say, striving not to sound breathless. “Do you need direction?”

  “You tell me,” Banner says, before taking my cock nearly to the back of her throat.

  I grit my teeth and fist the tablecloth, determined not to moan.

  “You’re doing just fine,” I choke out.

  “Mmmm,” she hums, the vibration traveling from my dick to my toes. She drags me over her lips until only the tip is still in and then licks me like that vodka popsicle. Thoroughly, greedily, like I’m worth a billion points and she can’t get them down fast enough. I slam my hand on the table, disrupting the glass and china. Banner’s laugh is steamy around me, and I almost lose it.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  You have got to be kidding me.

  “Uh, yeah.” I compose myself enough to answer the server with some semblance of coherence as Banner rolls my balls in her hand.

  “Dessert?” he asks.

  Shit, I’m gonna come. I’m pretty sure my eyes are rolling in the back of my head.

  “What?” I manage. “Huh?”

  “Would you like dessert?” he repeats, casting a curious glance toward Banner’s empty seat. “Or would the lady like something?”

  “I don’t know that I . . .” I spread my legs more and slide down, pushing another inch into her mouth “. . . saved room for anything else.”

  “The lady?” he asks again.

  “She-she . . .” God, she excels at this. “Um, went to the bathroom.”

  At that very moment, Banner’s enthusiastic bobbing below bangs her head on the table. The glasses and plates lift and clang. The server’s eyes widen and he clears his throat.

  “Dude, double tip if you get the hell outta here,” I rasp, on the verge of spilling my life down Banner’s throat.

  Without a word and with guaranteed discretion, he quickly leaves the terrace.

  With him gone, I slide the table back enough to see Banner’s pouty lips spread around my cock. An image to store away for future fantasies. I tangle my fingers in her hair, urging her to take more and faster. My other hand slips into the strapless dress to twist her nipple. Her breath stutters, disrupting the steady pace of her mouth on me, and I decide those are not the lips I want to see on my dick. I tug her hair until she has to release me. The look she sends up is leaded with passion, free of strictures and ready to give me whatever I want.

  “Get up here,” I command, only getting harder when she
immediately raises from her knees to stand. I venture under her dress, finding her panties and working them down her legs. Our eyes never let go as the silk descends, and as soon as they ring her ankles, she steps out and positions herself over me. Her thighs rest on mine, and the bright orange dress bunches at her waist. She leans in to kiss me, her mouth an open invitation, but pulls away just enough to make me chase her. My mouth strains to recapture hers. Husky laughter wafts over my lips with the Caribbean breeze while she reaches between us and guides me inside.

  This must be how it feels to enter a temple. With eager devotion. With reverence. With the first thrust up into her body, the tenuous hold on my control snaps. I grip her hips, and the silk of her dress flows over the backs of my hands with our every undulation. She hooks one arm around my neck, and the other arm hangs limply at her side while she rides me with abandon, head flung back, eyes squeezed tightly shut, and the only sounds on the terrace our ragged breaths and grunts permeating the balmy air.

  I can’t take my eyes off her. Something inside irrationally taunts me that if I look away, she’ll disappear. She’s a storm I can’t find the eye of. I need to hold her tightly, assure myself she won’t get away—that she doesn’t want to get away. Even with my arms locked at her waist, I can’t contain her. I try to grasp her in parts, but her breast overflows my palm. Her ass spills past my hands. Everything is ripe. Everything is full, except my way in. My passage into her body is narrow and tight, allowing me only so much, but I take that path over and over, like a battering ram at a castle door, hell-bent on reaching the queen inside.

  It’s still not enough. Even with our bodies locked and grinding like gears, working each other into a frenzy, there’s a gap, a space where doubt creeps in. Hunger for something deeper than physical possession gnaws at my gut. I thought this would satisfy me. It always has before, but I know instinctively that finishing now, I’d only want her again, still hunting for another entrance, for way in deeper.

  “Wait,” I pant, and as much as it pains my cock, I clench my hands at her hips and stop the roll of our bodies together.

  “What’s wrong?” Banner’s breath labors, her chest heaving, the bodice of her dress half-up, half-down, covering one breast and exposing the other.

  I lift the dress more, ruched at her waist, exposing us to the cool air christening the place where our bodies join. “Look at us.”

  Confusion sketches a tiny furrow between her brows until she looks down and sees what I see, me disappearing inside of her. Her body absorbing mine. I coax her hips into a gentle wave, and we watch the slick slide in and out, see her wetness, her juices coating my dick with each withdrawal. These are the pretty lips I wanted wrapped around my cock tonight. With one hand between her breasts, hoisting the skirt high, and one hand at her neck, I press my forehead to hers.

  “You see yourself on me?” I ask. “You see how you take me in? How that greedy little pussy eats my dick?”

  She nods against my forehead, her breath stuttering.

  “Answer me, Banner,” I say sharply.

  “I see,” she says, looking up to catch my eyes.

  “I want to be inside you all the time,” I say, urgency making my voice rough. “I want to be in your head.”

  I kiss her temple.

  “To know what you’re thinking.” I press her away from me enough to kiss between her breasts and over her heart. “To know what you’re feeling. To know what you need.”

  Our bodies take over, and I’m pounding up into her again, despite my best intentions. The muscles of her legs clench on mine with every rise and fall. She kisses me, her tongue taunting mine. A sparring match of parries and feints.

  “Okay,” she breathes into our kiss.

  I grip her face and solder our eyes together in a heated gaze.

  “This is more than sex for me,” I say. “Do you understand?”

  Her eyes widen, darken with realization.

  “I understand.” She never looks away, even as the pace of our bodies increases. “It is for me, too.”

  Her whispered assurance starts filling that hole, that empty space having only her body doesn’t touch. I kiss along her jaw, down her throat, inflict tiny bites on her collarbone.

  “Mean it, Ban,” I say fiercely into the scented cove behind her ear. “I need you to mean that.”

  “I do.” Her breath chops up against my neck. Her fingers twine in my hair. Her knees tighten at my hips the harder and deeper and faster we fuck. “I promise it’s more.”

  “I won’t share you.” I pull back and grasp her chin, forcing her to look at me. “I know it’s hypocritical. I know I took you. I don’t care. I won’t share.”

  “You won’t have to.” The breathless promise tumbles past her lips and into that hole, filling it more. Soothing the empty ache of it. She takes me by surprise, grabbing my chin and clenching her inner muscles around my dick possessively, making me groan. “And I won’t share you.”

  The idea that, with all the women I’ve fucked and never felt even a fraction of this intensity, I would jeopardize my connection to Banner is laughable, but I don’t laugh because I see the same questions, the same need for reassurance, for more, in her eyes that I know is in mine.

  “It’s just you, Ban.” I reach between us, stroking and pinching her clit as an electric bolt strikes from the base of my spine and down my legs, strangling my next words. “I promise.”

  That vow steals the last of my control, and every doubt, every hesitation leaves as I spill into the warm welcome of her body. My release triggers hers, and we both cry out, our voices loud and echoing on the empty terrace. We’ve forgotten the server could come back any minute. We don’t consider some misguided diner possibly stumbling into our private space. There is only the Caribbean Sea, a sheet of blue-hued glass beneath us. Only the sweat-damp parts of us soaking up the breeze. There is only a promise we whispered before we both came, stronger than steel and as fragile as the beam of moonlight illuminating us.

  30

  Banner

  “Did you save room for dessert?”

  My question reminds me of our server who must have been horrified when he realized what we were doing on that terrace. Since I was under the table with Jared’s dick in my mouth, I couldn’t see his face. The memory burns my cheeks, but an irrepressible grin spreads across my lips.

  “What’s so funny?” Jared asks from his side of the table. “And I’m good for now on dessert. Stuffed actually.”

  “Okay.” I rise from my seat, pick up my plate and reach for Jared’s.

  “I got it,” he says, gathering his plate, wine glass, and fork, and heads toward the kitchen. “Now what made you smile like the cat who ate the cream?”

  An uncharacteristic giggle pops past my lips.

  “Ironically, I was thinking about that poor waiter from the restaurant.”

  “He was anything but poor after that tip I gave him.” Jared laughs and loads his plate into the dishwasher. “His eyes got bigger when he saw his gratuity than when he realized what you were doing under the table, believe me.”

  I cover the portion of the enchiladas we didn’t eat and set down the buñuelos I prepared for dessert.

  “These do look good,” Jared says, plucking one of the doughnut-like sweetened balls from the basket I placed them in.

  “They’re so good.” I breathe in their aroma and sigh. “Mama used to cook them for us all the time. I haven’t had them in years.”

  Jared chews one, groaning his approval.

  “Delicious.” He grabs another one, biting half and offering me the other half. “Taste.”

  I hesitate, unable to turn off my inner calculator, tallying points.

  “Just one bite,” Jared persuades, rubbing the sweet fried dough across my bottom lip. “We’re on vacation.”

  I nod and accept it, squeezing my eyes shut when the flavor explodes on my tongue along with a thousand memories from my childhood.

  “So good,” I say, swallowing
the last of the dessert. “It’s been forever since I had them. A few Christmases ago when Mama made them.”

  I look up and catch a thoughtful expression on Jared’s face, the one I’m learning usually precedes a probing question.

  “How do you think your family will react to you and Zo breaking up?” he asks.

  I’d left that question with my points, checked at the door of this island villa, but now it intrudes. The closer we come to leaving, to returning to LA and dealing with the inevitable fallout of what we did, the harder it is to forget I have several difficult conversations awaiting me, including my family.

  “They’ll be surprised.” I turn off the light in the kitchen, and we stroll back to the well-appointed salon. As we walk, Jared takes my hand, linking our fingers and drawing me into his side. He touches me constantly, possessively. Each caress and kiss and touch subtly establishing ownership. I don’t mind. I touch him the same way. I feel the same way, like I need to mark my territory even though there’s no one here to threaten my claim.

  “Surprised and upset?”

  Jared flops onto the leather couch positioned prominently in the center of the room and pulls me onto his lap. There was a time I would sit tense and tight, wondering the whole time if I’m too heavy, if my weight is too much for him, but I relax, sitting sideways, my shoulder pressed into his chest and my head tucked into his shoulder.

  “They will be upset. As I’ve thought about it, my family was part of the reason I ignored the little voice that kept telling me not to start with Zo. They’ve wanted us together for years.” I toy with the collar of his T-shirt and squeeze the hand linked with mine on my knee. “I can’t sugarcoat it. They’ll have a million questions, and I need to think about how I’m going to answer them.”

  “Honestly,” he says. “Tell them about the doubts you had and the things that convinced you to ignore them. Tell them about us. I mean, you don’t have to go into details about how we practically broke your desk.”