Read In the Zone (Portland Storm 5) for Free Online

time I felt Keith Burns’s gaze branding my body with his mark.
     
     

 
     

    “ W HAT WAS THAT about?” Colesy asked after Allison-slash-Brie walked away. He gave me a sideways glance. “Trying on new names? What the fuck?”
    “It was nothing,” I said offhandedly. I couldn’t decide if I wanted him to know that I’d already met her, and I sincerely doubted she would want anyone to know the circumstances of how we’d met. I couldn’t forget the way she’d hurried into my room after checking over her shoulder, giving me the sense that she was a very private person in general. I wasn’t sure I was ready to spill those beans, myself, and I usually didn’t care who knew what about me, unless it was something that had the potential to threaten my career. Hookups and one-night stands didn’t generally fall into that category. Athletes seemed to be given a lot of free rein in the public eye, at least in terms of that sort of behavior.
    Colesy raised a brow, taking on a dubious expression. “It didn’t look like nothing. More like a whole lot of something.”
    “Nothing you need to worry about,” I said a lot more defensively than I should have. Getting defensive about it would only pique his curiosity more than it already was, and then he’d be asking me questions. I wanted our relationship to be more of the opposite of that—me picking his brain, figuring out what made him tick—so that left me feeling extremely uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to talking about my own shit. I liked to keep it to myself.
    Hell, I could hardly talk about it with my own family. There were a lot of hurt feelings, and I got the silent treatment from them more often than not. I’d earned every bit of that scorn, too.
    Luckily for me, the room started to fill in before Colesy could pry any more, and Brie was calling for our attention. She already had all of mine, anyway. She had on those same chunky glasses she’d been wearing that night, but her hair was pulled back in a ponytail away from her face, revealing her long neck. She was in a long skirt made from some sort of soft, T-shirtlike material—similar to what she’d worn that night to the hotel—plus a baggy sweatshirt that had to be two sizes too big. Even though she was doing everything possible—at least in terms of how she dressed—to hide her figure, I doubted I’d be able to take my eyes off her the whole time we were here.
    I knew what curves she was hiding underneath all that fabric. I’d held them in my hands, licked them, sucked them…reveled in them. I knew the toned muscle beneath the curves, too. If she was a dancer that explained so much about her body, things that had left me insanely curious for months. And it made me even more furious with her ex for all he’d done to her. Her health issues had probably forced her to stop dancing, pushed her into teaching instead. And he’d told her she was fat and left her for someone skinnier, at the same time she was losing her livelihood? I might be jumping to conclusions, but still…those conclusions were begging to be reached.
    I hadn’t been able to get her off my mind in the months since that night. I hadn’t even been in her presence for five minutes today, and I was already trying to sort out how I could get her alone for two minutes at the end of this class so I could get her number.
    If she was living here, in Portland, I wanted to get to know her. I wanted to help her find her confidence again, doing more than I could ever have accomplished in a single night.
    I wanted to kiss her again. And more. I wanted a fucking hell of a lot more.
    “Let’s everyone pair off, please, so we can get started,” she said over the general din in the room. “Gentleman, select a partner and spread out. Be sure you have plenty of space on all sides.”
    Colesy took one step out toward the middle of the studio, and three of the women rushed toward him. Based on the way they were looking at him, all googly-eyed, I