Seduce Me by Jill Shalvis Page B

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 homein 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.
    â€œSit,” 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.”
    â€œYou’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.
    â€œIt smells awful,” he said, wrinkling his nose.
    â€œBut it will feel heavenly.” She put her hands on him, and he hissed in an involuntary breath.
    â€œCold? Sorry.”
    â€œNo, 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.
    â€œHow long since the surgery?” she asked quietly.
    â€œThe last one? Nearly eight months now. It’s fine. It’s healed.”
    â€œAnd yet you left basketball.”
    His gaze lifted from her fingers on his flesh upto her eyes. “Fine and healed to walk are one thing. Fine and healed to play on a NBA court is another entirely.”
    â€œThat 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.”
    â€œSo what do you do now? With your free time, I mean.”
    â€œLet the general public dunk me at carnivals.”
    â€œSurely you needn’t have been forced out of basketball entirely. You could…I don’t know. Coach. Announce. Ref—”
    â€œI 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