Page 18 of Free Agent

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a stranger.”

“Am I?” he countered, finally sitting back, arms stretched across the back of the booth.

It was impossible not to notice the musculature of his flesh straining the fabric of the sweater stretched across his broad chest and shoulders.

Quite nicely.

There was actually a lot that was quite nice visually about Tatum Wilder, starting with the size of him.

He was imposingly large, and stretched out like he was, he took up the whole side of the booth. Exactly like what you thought when you heard someone was a football player. Chestnut brown skin, thick facial hair, full lips, wide nose, and those eyes that had been so startlingly intense at courtside were just as expressive now.

I wasn’t startled though, not anymore.

I was intrigued.

Inappropriately.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him, needing to shift myself into a different headspace. “Booty call in the city before you head back to Connecticut for practice or something?”

Fair.

Maybe not.

But I was trying to remind myself that save a few exceptions, professional athletes—especially the football players, especially ones that looked like him—were whores.

“What?” he chuckled, shaking his head. “No, I just like the privacy of the hotel. Are you here for a booty call?” he countered.

“I’m not,” I said. “My fiancé is though.”

Tatum’s eyebrows shot up. “Like right now?”

“Yeah.”

“In this hotel?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I came to have a nice dinner to myself, and… lo and behold, there he is. There they are. And now here we are,” I exclaimed with a little flourish of my arms that very likely made me look crazy.

Definitely based on the look on his face.

“That’s…very fucked up, Aurora.”

“Rori, please,” I corrected him.

“Fine,” he said. “That’s fucked up, Rori.”

“I agree. It is.”

“You want me to kick his ass?”

I laughed. “You don’t even know me, but you’d kick his ass for me?”

He shrugged. “I’ve beat niggas up over much less.”

“Doesn’t the league have rules about stuff like that?”

“I can count five motherfuckers off the top of my head that were in the news for beating up women, and their asses are still on rosters.”