Winning It All (Hometown Players Book 4) (2 page)

I can convince myself that whole thing with the tall, dark stranger in the perfectly fitted midnight blue suit was no big deal for about fifteen minutes. I act like it didn’t happen while I check to make sure the saunas are pristine. I pretend it was just a casual conversation while making sure the women’s changing room is immaculate and the showers are sparkling. I blame the bottle of wine Audrey made me split with her at her apartment while we got ready for my overreacting to the mild flirtation. But by the time I get to the men’s changing room I can’t ignore the dampness in my thong or the way my heart is still beating furiously.

Apparently I’m not the only one who was moved by the encounter, because the door flies open and my best friend, Audrey, is standing there with her hands on her slim hips and her big brown eyes blinking at me furiously. “That guy you were talking to is sex personified.”

I smile. “Tell me about it.”

“I heard him talking to someone earlier, and he’s French, which is sexy as fuck. He’s got that whole smoldering thing going on with those intense blue eyes—which, by the way, have been glued to your fine ass all night. And I do mean your ass. Your actual butt. He’s checking you out, in case you were wondering. And don’t even get me started on—”

I raise my hand to silence her. “I didn’t mean you should actually tell me about it. Trust me, I know,” I tell her as I glance into the showers to make sure they’re pristine, and that no one is in there eavesdropping. Trey will be giving informal tours of the facilities as the evening progresses, and I want everything perfect. “Between you and me, he was hitting buttons inside me I didn’t even know existed.”

“Who the hell is he, anyway?” Audrey asks, walking over to the mirror and fluffing her long perfectly coiffed dirty blond hair. “I saw him talking with a bunch of other suits before the bar encounter, but I didn’t recognize any of them. Except they’re all hot.”

“Trey was inviting the local businesses in the area, which include law firms, an accounting firm and a couple investment bankers and the staff at the fancy restaurant in the building next door. He must be one of them,” I say absently and try not to think of that jolt of electricity that I felt when his fingers slid over mine as I passed him his drink. “If he’s a lawyer I needed to get myself in legal trouble ASAP.”

“Yeah, you do.” Audrey winks at me. “Shayne, you have to go back out there and talk to him.”

“Easy now, slugger.” I laugh but…I’m shocked at how much I actually want to. It was embarrassing, really. I’d never had such an instant and overwhelming reaction to a guy before.

My friend Audrey had. More than once. When we were in college she could go from zero to hot-and-heavy make-out session with a guy she had met fifteen minutes earlier. Shortly after we moved to Seattle, Audrey met her current boyfriend, Josh, and her wild days were over.

Josh is a great guy and I’ve never seen Audrey happier, but now she is hellbent on living vicariously through me. My unfortunate sex drought seems to upset her way more than it does me. Every time we go out for a girl’s night she tries to convince me to flirt with some random guy. It is hysterical and annoying. One-night stands are so not my thing. But then again I don’t exactly want celibacy to be my thing either.

Audrey said I liked to keep one foot on firm ground and that I’d never taken risks or leaps. Audrey’s middle name was leap. From the moment we met in the dorm bathrooms in freshman year at Syracuse University, I both envied her and judged her. I’d never met anyone with a messier life. Not even my brother, Trey, who has battled addiction issues, had as crazy a life as Audrey. Of course, if she wasn’t impulsive, she wouldn’t be here in Seattle with me. When I graduated college we’d gotten an apartment together in Syracuse and both started working. A year later I decided to move back here to help my brother start his business, and she agreed to come with me. It was nowhere near her home or family—they were in New Hampshire—and it was nowhere near anywhere she’d ever lived before, but she didn’t even blink. She just loaded her shit into my Kia Soul and hopped into the passenger seat with a smile.

“I bet your vagina has cobwebs,” Audrey announces with a sad expression, and I roll my eyes. “Do you even remember how to have sex?”

“I’m sure it’s like riding a bike,” I snark back.

“Test your theory.” Audrey is the only person I know who can trump my snarkiness with her own. “Ride
him
.”

I shake my head at her like she’s an incorrigible puppy, but as I think about how this night has gone…I have to admit I want to. Watching him watch me from across the room and then swapping innuendos felt like foreplay. It made my skin tingle and my heart race and the long-dormant space between my thighs comes to life. I might actually even masturbate tonight. I haven’t bothered to do that in…months. I blush at the thought.

“What’re the red cheeks for?” Audrey inquires and then claps excitedly. “Oh! You want to do it! You want to sleep with him!”

“Of course I do. He’s delicious,” I confess, and it makes her clap again. “But I won’t.”

Audrey sighs dramatically. “Come on, Shayne! Live a little!”

“I live just fine.”

“Nuns get more action than you,” she retorts, and I laugh. Then she digs into her purse and pulls out a tiny, square foil packet. She shoves it at me, and I take a step back like she’s trying to hand me a tarantula.

“Take it. In case you change your mind,” she urges, and I look at the condom, horrified. She rolls her big brown eyes and presses it into my palm.

I open the door to leave the changing room, planning to throw the condom into the closest trash can I find, and come to face-to-face with my future masturbation material. He stops, but not as quickly as he could, or should. I know he sees me as soon as I see him, which is about two feet away in the narrow hallway, but he keeps walking toward me. He doesn’t stop until he’s basically towering above me, his wall of a chest almost touching me. I can’t help taking a step back, but his hand goes to my elbow like he’s holding me in place so my step falters and I stay wedged up against him. I cover the silver packet in my hand with my fingers to hide it from him.

“Were you…” Why is my heart racing? I suddenly feel serious and giddy at the exact same time. This is intense, and that makes it feel ridiculous because I don’t even know his name. That and the wine, which I rarely drink, is making me loopy. I swallow and push out the rest of my sentence. “Looking for the restroom?”

“No. I was looking for you.”

He glances past me briefly, to notice Audrey. He gives her a quick nod of hello. I turn to face her, away from him, and with no other option, subtly shove the condom under the front of my dress and into my padded bra. Audrey steps up beside me grinning like a crazy person. “I’m Audrey. I’m her best friend. And I’m going to disappear now.”

Her heels click in quick succession as she darts down the hall, pausing only for a second to glance over her shoulder and mouth the words “Do him” at me.

“I never got your name,” he explains, pulling my gaze away from my crazy friend and back to his stunning face. “And I never gave you mine.”

“Shayne,” I reply, barely above a whisper for some reason.

“What?”

“My name is Shayne.”

“That’s a boy’s name.”

“My father wanted a boy,” I explain for the millionth time in my twenty-four years. “He got one later, but I was born first so…”

“I’m calling you Shay,” he announces, and I’m a little stunned that he has just arbitrarily renamed me. “It’s more feminine and soft, like you.”

I want to explain to him that I’m hardly feminine or soft. I’m a tomboy. I prefer sweats and ponytails to makeup and heels. And soft? Sure, he fills out a fancy suit well, but I’m the daughter of a professional athlete, and my job is fitness. I bet I could kick his ass. I don’t
want
to kick his ass…but I wouldn’t mind grabbing it. That’s why I don’t get too flippant with him even though I should. Desire trumps all, apparently.

His lips spread slowly into a hot little smile, and his hand slides from my elbow down to my wrist. He could circle it twice with his fingers if he wanted to, I can tell. Big hands. Much rougher than I would expect from a businessman.

“Sebastian,” he says, his voice deep and his smile growing broader. His name is like velvet coming off his tongue with a French twist to it. I have a feeling he could recite a grocery list and I would want to touch myself. Jesus.

I swallow again and smile back. “Sebastian is the crab in
Little Mermaid
.”

“What?”

“I’d rather have a boy’s name than a crustacean’s.”

His smile gets boyish and he chuckles, and it rumbles up from his chest right through me. It’s infectious, and I start to giggle. His hand at my wrist slips to my hand. We are holding hands. I am holding hands with this French lawyer-or-accountant-maybe-even-waiter stranger.

“You’ve got one smart mouth,” he tells me as I stare up at him. He tilts his jaw and dips his head a little. “I like smart mouths, Shay.”

“Good, because I don’t intend to change, Frenchie.”

“Frenchie?”

I give him a little shrug. “If you’re changing my name I’m changing yours. And it’s either Frenchie or Crabby.”

“Frenchie because of my accent?”

I nod. “Sure. Although I’m sure there are other French things you’re good at besides the accent.”

He likes that. I can tell by the way those bright eyes narrow in that smoldering way Audrey mentioned and fall to my lips. I wonder if that stupid ruby red gloss I put on is still there. Audrey said it would last all night but since I usually never wear lip gloss, or anything other than Chapstick, I have no idea if that’s the truth.

“I’d like to show you exactly what I’m good at.”

Holy shit. Is he for real? Did he just outright proposition me?

He lets go of my hand and reaches between us, cupping the side of my cheek gently but also with this unreal sense of power…dominance. And I like it. It’s making me quiver.

His thumb moves over my lips and his head dips even lower and his sexy face blurs because he’s so close. I can feel his breath as he exhales and then—nothing. No breath. No movement. His eyes are focused on my lips and his mouth is slightly open, a fraction of an inch from mine. My insides are a riptide of anticipation and fear and lust. I can’t just stand here. I have to either pull away or do the unthinkable. I can’t stop looking at his face. Besides the fact that it’s gorgeous with his dark eyebrows and his pale eyes and his plump, symmetrical lips, it’s covered in the most…sinful expression. Deliciously sinful, like he’s already doing incredibly hot, dirty things to me in his mind. And that’s why I decide to do what I would normally consider unthinkable. Because I’ve never seen someone look at me like that before, and I want to be the person he’s already undressed in his head.

I rock up ever so slightly on my strappy black heels and close the distance between our mouths. He responds instantly—with a smile. I can feel it against my lips and I want to freak out. He thinks this is funny? OMG, he better not think this is funny! His hand at my neck pulls me a little closer and his lips fall from the smile and press harder into mine and his head tilts and…he thinks he’s won.

I pull back slowly but with conviction, even though my body feels like it’s being gravitationally pulled back toward him and my brain is screaming DON’T STOP. I break the kiss. I am nothing if not competitive, and I will not let this man—this delectable stranger—feel like he’s won some kind of flirt-off. No. Absolutely not, no.

I don’t pull back far, just enough to break our contact. My eyes flutter open at the same time his do, and any hint of that smile on his lips is gone. I see the debate flickering behind those unreal crystal blue eyes and dark, heavy eyebrows. I feel the hesitation. His hand on my jaw gets looser. His thumb lifts up like it’s going to sweep my lips again, but it doesn’t. He stops because I pulled back, and it’s made him uncertain. Good. I don’t want to be the only one off-balance here. But he doesn’t want to stop—I can sense that, feel his desire radiating off of him. I can see the debate in his head dancing behind those light eyes. Does he play it cool and wait for me to make another move, or does he just go for what he wants, admitting to himself, and to me, that he can’t resist just as much as I can’t?

He tightens his grip on me, and I smile for the briefest second before it’s forced from my face when he leans in and captures my lips again. This time he’s the one who gave in. Now we’re even.

He takes a step toward me, and I think he’s going to push me up against the wall, but he doesn’t. He takes his other hand and presses it flat against my lower back and pulls me into him so tightly that the air is pushed from my lungs. It’s fine. I wasn’t really breathing anyway. When his tongue slides into my mouth I swear to God it causes actual sparks as soon as it touches mine. I feel heat rush from the contact down through the rest of my body. It causes me to make some weird noise—a soft, gentle moan—and I wrap my arms around his neck, my fingertips skimming the back of his hair where it meets the collar of his jacket.

“I need to see you. Somewhere other than here,” he whispers into the kiss.

“I can’t leave.” It’s all I can manage because I don’t want to stop kissing him.

“Neither can I…” he whispers back into the kiss.

“You’re here with your coworkers?” I question, remembering the glass of champagne he had Sara get him and finally pulling my lips from his. “Or someone else?”

“Coworkers,” he says after a pause.

“Are you with the accounting firm or the law office?”

Before he can answer, footsteps echo on the concrete and we step away from each other. Sara appears at the end of the hall. “Hey!” She pauses to give Sebastian an extra-long, extra-flirty smile before turning back to me. “Trey is looking for you. He’s in the weight room with Avery Westwood.”

I make a face at that name, but she’s too busy batting her eyelashes at Seb to notice.

“Tell him I’ll be right there,” I reply and she nods, waves flirtatiously at Sebastian and then retreats, leaving us alone again. I frown. “Trey owns the place. He invited his stupid hockey friend Avery Westwood. He’s trying to woo him into doing an ad for us.”