Sweet Jesus.
My eyes rove her from head to toe, taking in every minute detail. Except for the night we met, her hair has always been straight, but it’s not today. It’s longer, untamed waves flowing down her back and almost reaching her elbows. Thick, dark coils cling possessively to the silky curve of her throat and to her arms, touching all the places I hope to claim. Those eyes, flecked with autumn—amber, gold and green—startle me with their clarity under a dense sweep of sooty lashes and brows. Her skin has this glow. She’s always been beautiful, but there’s some new dimension to her. I can’t put my finger on it, but it adds this layer of irresistibility, and I clench my fists so I won’t reach for her.
My eyes drop to her mouth. It’s too soon to kiss her. There are explanations and questions and details. There’s all of that shit, but really, I want to set it all aside and just devour her mouth. I want to suck those lips between mine, plunge my tongue down her throat, and lick around until I’ve sampled every hot, slick inch of her.
I hazard a glance below her neck.
Holyyyyyyy shit.
Iris has one of those bodies. She’s one of those women men recall in perfect detail years after they’ve seen her. Even a glimpse would burn an impression into your memory. But to stop there is to literally skim the surface because under the fineness of her skin and the unflawed shape of her lives an opulence of spirit—a richness of strength you could overlook if you let her beauty distract you.
“August?” she asks for the second time.
I don’t know. Maybe she’s said my name five times, six. Maybe she’s snapped her fingers in my face. I’m so damn wide open for this woman, I’ve lost track of time and space just taking her in after so long.
“Yeah.” I smile down at her. “Hey.”
“Hey?” She shakes her head and presses a hand to her forehead as if that will help things make sense. “You’re not from human resources.”
“Uh, no. Not exactly.”
“Not at all.” She swallows, her dark brows pinched together. “I’m glad to see you, but—”
“I’m glad to see you, too,” I pounce on the positive. “You look . . . amazing, Iris.”
She blinks at me owlishly. If you’re a goddess-like owl, that is. “I’m glad to see you, but really confused,” she finishes. “What’s going on?”
“Well, Jared and I are brothers,” I say. “Stepbrothers, actually.”
“I don’t understand.” She takes a shallow breath. “Go on.”
“I didn’t realize you two even knew each other until the day before you disappeared.” I leave my last word dangling in the air. You know. In case she wants to elaborate on where she’s been for the past damn year or so and tell me why she never showed up again.
She tilts her chin up, silently telling me she’s the one demanding explanations right now.
“Yeah, so, the day before you disappeared,” I resume, “Jared picked me up from the community center and saw you. That’s when we pieced together how we both knew you.”
I smile, knowing there is more to say, but really just kind of losing my train of thought. We’re finally in the same room when I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again.
“And now I work here?” she asks, her brows lifted. “Isn’t there a lot you’re leaving out?”
“Isn’t there a lot you’re leaving out?” I ask right back. “Like why you wore Caleb’s ring, but said you weren’t engaged? Or how we kissed and I ate you out and you came in the closet, but then I never heard from you? Couldn’t find you anywhere? Are there some details you might want to share?”
It’s only in the silence tightening around us that I realize that underneath my rampant desire to fuck Iris, to hold her possibly for the rest of my life and never let her go, I’m also a little pissed. Well, now we both know.
“You first.” A muscle flexes along the delicate line of her jaw. “Why am I here, August?” She clasps her hands together in front of her, her eyes fixed on the Louisiana iris cupped in her palms.
“Is there even a job?” she asks.
“Of course there’s a job. I’m a silent partner in Elevation. Jared and I never advertised our connection and decided he wouldn’t be my agent when I first came to the league, but we dreamed about this company for a long time.” I shrug and go on. “We were gonna wait, but my injury put everything in perspective and made me realize just how short this career can be. So we started it last year.”
“You own Elevation?”
“Part-owner, yeah. Jared handles all the business stuff. I’m just kind of our poster child to make other high-profile athletes want to work with us.”
“But Elevation is yours.” Her dark lashes flutter in quick blinks, and she bites the corner of her mouth. “Is that what you want me to be? Yours? I’m just here . . . for you?”
My first instinct is to bang my chest and say damn right she’s mine, but then I realize she doesn’t mean it in an I find cavemen sexy kind of way.
“Not like that.” I blow out an uneasy laugh.
When she looks back up, I hate the hurt and disappointment darkening her eyes, detracting from that glow she wore when I first saw her. And now I get it. That glow, it was pride—in herself.
When I graduated from college, I went to the NBA just months later, received a ridiculous amount of money, set up my home here in San Diego, became a brand, racked up endorsements, and now I have one of the highest-selling jerseys in the league.
She never had that.
Not the money or the fame of any of that shit. Most people never get that—the independence.
After college, Iris was pregnant and on bed rest, unable to earn money, then responsible for a baby, dependent on Caleb, and living in his house, guarded and kept. That’s the way she probably thought of it. The night we met she said she never wanted to be like her mother, a woman kept by men. On some level, she probably thinks that’s what she was.
The idea that she was standing on her own, making her own way, it made her glow.
And she thinks I’ve taken that from her.
“It all makes sense now.” She huffs a disparaging breath. “I’m such an idiot. I knew I shouldn’t have been able to afford a house in that neighborhood.”
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.”