Seduce Me (8 page)

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.”

 

A
T 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 that. 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.”

T
HE 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.”

She laughed. “I can't believe the lines you have. Do you expect me to fall for them? Really?”

“Are you saying you don't want me to return the favor?” Leaning in, he took a nibble out of her shoulder, gratified to hear her suck in her breath. “Because I've got great hands, Sam.”

A helpless little moan escaped her when he started a trail of open-mouthed kisses back up to her throat. “Are you just trying to avoid talking?”

His hands gently squeezed her thighs and then moved to her waist. He lifted her from the table and set her on his lap.

Perfect.
“Why would I do that?”

“I don't—” Another sexy little half whimper when he took the lobe of her ear lightly between his teeth. “I don't know.”

“I have nothing against talking,” he murmured, and made his way down her jaw, his hands encircling her, gliding up and down her slim spine.
“You talk all you want.” Mouth to her ear now, he added, “While I kiss you from head to toe.”

Laughing, she leaned away from him. “Your knee must feel all better.”

“Actually…” He stretched it out. “Yes. Much.”

She smiled sweetly. “Good.” Rising, she grabbed the bottle and held it out to him. “You can take this with you. Rub it on a couple of times a day—”

Her words were cut off when he tugged her back down, pulled her against him and covered her mouth with his. A little overwhelmed, Sam went still for a second.

Apparently he took this for a challenge because he softened his hold immediately, as if instinctively knowing she could resist his aggressive hunger, but not slow and seductive desire…

He slid a hand into her hair at the nape of her neck, the other arm banding low on her hips, all while gently, tenderly, playing at her mouth with his knowing, talented one. He kissed one side, and then the other, and then slowly licked her lower lip until she let it tremble open.

And only then did he glide his tongue against hers in an age-old dance that had her hips mimicking the motion, and giving away what her mind had resisted but her body had no intention of withstanding.

“Your bathing suit is still damp.” Over the ma
terial of her dress, his hand slipped down her back again, lower this time, over the curve of a buttock, which he palmed.

Her eyes drifted shut, and she let out a little shiver of anticipation.

“Cold?” he murmured, pulling her even closer, his hands warm on her body.

“No.”

His gaze met hers, his fingers spread wide on her belly now, the very tips just brushing the underside of her breast, which tightened in its eagerness. “Sure?”

She nodded, silently admitting it wasn't a chill giving her goose bumps and hard nipples.

A soft smile curved his mouth, which he touched lightly to hers, just as the hand on her back softened its grip as well, soothing now as it stroked the length of her. “You really did invite me up here just to put that lotion on my knee, didn't you. Not to have wild, uninhibited sex—”

“That's right.” She laughed, touched her forehead to his. “But I've thought about…wild, uninhibited sex. A lot. Does that count?”

“Oh, yeah.” His sigh was long-suffering. “I guess it's another cold shower night for me.”

That got a choked laugh out of her. “Another?”

“I spent a half hour in one after the midnight bodysurfing event.”

“What, the ocean wasn't cold enough for you?”

“Not with you in it.”

He saw a cocky smile break over her face, and he groaned. “Oh boy, now I've done it, I've given you even more power over me.”

“I have a feeling you never let anyone have power over you,” she said.

“Not often, I'll give you that. That lotion is good stuff. What other magic do you have?”

“That was it. My one trick.”

Cocking his head, he studied her, a small smile playing on his lips. “I doubt that. You're an interesting woman, Sam. I like that. I like you.”

“I'm not so interesting.”

“You run a café that serves sandwiches like ham, seaweed, artichoke hearts and mozzarella cheese on whole wheat, and yet you can't make brownies to save your life. You're a natural around kids and yet the thought of settling down with a man in a relationship gives you hives—”

“You're not exactly one to talk—”

“But this is about you.” He touched a finger to her cheek. “You're nervous dangling above a small tank of water and yet you'll surf in the ocean.” Laughing, he shook his head. “A bundle of contradictions, but the sexiest bundle I've ever seen.”

“You're not that different,” she said, but her
words faded away when he ran a hand from her toes up her calf, to just beneath the material of her sundress. Breathing became a challenge.

“Really?” he whispered. His fingers played with the back of her knee in a way that made her want to let her legs fall open.

She kept them together by sheer will. “No. Not that different at all.”

“How's that?” he asked softly, that little smile still dancing around his mouth. He knew exactly what he was doing to her. “Because I don't cook. And as for kids, I'm not a natural.”

That made her laugh. “Yes, you are. Kids love you. They think you're a role model.”

“I'm no one's role model.”

“And yet children love you anyway.” His fingers slipped up a few inches higher on the back of her leg, and her words stuttered to a halt. “Uh…” Where had she been? Oh, yes…“I know you had a hard time in the press, being labeled difficult—” Those fingers spread wide on the back of her thigh now. “A—and a prima donna.” Now his fingers tightened imperceptibly before purposefully relaxing. Her gaze shot to his face. “That one hurt, I bet,” she said, reaching out to put her hand on his chest. “But the truth is, you're too private for any of those things they say about you to be true.”

“I was not a saint, Sam.”

“Good, because I've never been a saint, either. Saints are boring. In any case, the past is the past.”

“Yeah, thankfully.” His hand danced over her skin to her thigh, his thumb making lazy circles on the very inside of that thigh.

Her blood hummed.

She put her hand over the material of her dress, halting his movement because she couldn't take it. “And I can say all this to you, because as I mentioned, we're very alike, you and I.”