Page 30 of Turn Me On

After a beat, he nods, dragging a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he mutters. “I’m sorry. I told myself I’d treat you like a bud.”

Part of me loves that he needed a pep talk before we met up too, and that he laid down rules just like I did before his game tonight. But that’s the part of me that let him smell my hair.

I shake my head, exonerating him. He’s young, barely twenty-five. I’m thirty-two. I should lean on age and wisdom to press the brakes on us. “Don’t be sorry. I let it go too far,” I say. No matter how two-way our attraction is, I need to be the one to stop it. I could lose my job. I could lose this deal for him.

He stands. I do too.

“Maddox?” he asks.

“Yes?”

“Thanks for coming to my game. And for being all…agent-y. I’ll get it together.”

“I’ll get it together too,” I say.

It’s a promise I truly hope we can keep.

6

CRIMINALLY SEXY

Maddox

This car is my prison and my salvation.

I’ve got handcuffs on my baser instincts for the next twenty minutes as I drive Zane to his hotel. I need to use this time to douse the blaze between us, reset us to agent-and-client mode.

“How long have you lived in San Francisco?” I ask. I know the answer—ever since the Dragons called him up after they drafted him out of college. But it’s an impersonal and easy question that shifts to business and away from sex.

“Three years,” Zane answers.

“You want to stay there?” This is a standard agent question. Asking it will remind me who I am—someone who handles his career, not his balls.

“Yeah, my brother lives in Sacramento,” Zane says. “I try to see him a lot. It’s easier with him nearby, especially in the off-season.”

Family. Baseball. Goals.

These are the topics I need to discuss with clients. Not my desire to be dominated. “Your brother played in the majors for a year, right?” I ask as I drive past a strip mall, the neon lights of a massage parlor winking on and off.

“One year, one month, and a day,” Zane says, resigned and a little wistful. “Gage was drafted by the Los Angeles Bandits. He had one hell of an arm. Won eighteen games, then, bam. Blew out his elbow.”

I wince, feeling the phantom pain for both Zane and his brother. “That’s hard, when a career’s cut short.”

“He tried to rehab it. Did PT. Did everything he could. But his arm was never the same,” he says with a heavy sigh. “He wound up in therapy.” Zane taps his temple. “For his head too.”

I knew about Gage’s injury, but I had no idea the toll it took on his mental health. “That sounds terrible. I’m sorry that happened to him.”

“Thanks. Baseball was his dream. But he’s healthier now. He’s gotten a handle on the change.I think.”

“What’s he up to these days?”

“Tending bar. He’s a manager at a place in Sacramento. He’s got a little girl. She’s six. His wife died when Eliza was one,” he says, biting out each painful detail.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. I’m sorry for his loss,” I say, with another pang of sympathy for Gage.

“Thanks,” Zane says, then sighs. “I was going to tell you all that tonight. I wanted you to know. But then you were all…agent-y,” he says, adding a self-mocking laugh.

“But I want to know that as your agent,” I say, but that sounds…too impersonal.