Beauty and the Barracuda (3 page)

The skill of negotiation and an obsession with sports had seemed to go hand in hand for Sansone as a child. He’d spent the majority of his time going to games with his father while contemplating how he could double his allowance. By the time he’d edged out of high school he had a good idea what he wanted to do with his life—become an athletic manager. The harder he worked, the faster he’d climbed the ladder. There were some nights where he reconsidered his choices, wanted to walk away from the stress and the anxiety, but that would’ve meant never meeting Nyssa and he couldn’t imagine life without her.

Now here they were, years later with one of the highest grossing sports management agencies in not only Pennsylvania but the east coast as a whole. He even managed his own brother’s career. With Nyssa’s remarkable skill in contractual deals and eye for new talent, she’d put them on the map. She did far more than the bare minimum for those who trusted them, which did nothing but invoke the strongest loyalty not only from their employees but their clients as well. Meanwhile Sansone’s predatory instincts and his ability to fulfill his promises never failed to keep their reputation at an undeniably high standard.

Together they’d taken the athletic world by storm, but Sansone wanted more than just a successful business with Nyssa. He wanted a successful relationship. Sadly, he’d learned long ago that you couldn’t have your cake and eat it too. No matter whose birthday it was.

***

She’d been driving for an hour before it finally occurred to her that Sansone had tracking on all of his cars and if he really wanted to come after her, he would’ve done so by now. When Nyssa rolled to a stop in front of her loft, all she could do was press her forehead to the steering wheel and take deep breaths until the inclination to drive across the country stopped. She’d kissed him.
Kissed. Him.

There was no way to sugarcoat it or downplay it into something she’d done while simply being under the influence. No. She’d pressed her mouth to his with a dead-set determination, and that very act had opened a can of worms that couldn’t be resealed. Nyssa wasn’t naïve. She’d known that at some point, she’d do something reckless to jeopardize the carefully constructed walls she’d put around her compartmentalized feelings for Sansone. She just didn’t think it would happen
now.

If anything, she’d always figured that she would get drunk and pass out on his doorstep the night of his wedding. Because
that
was a sensible way to tell someone how you feel. Exactly what
had pushed her over the edge? Maybe it was the fact that she’d preoccupied her mind with plans of spending the night in bed on her birthday, eating a slice of cake from the deli down the street and watching re-runs of
Supernatural
,
but had been coerced to go out instead, just to find that Sansone had meticulously planned an amazing
party. He surprised her with something every year but this year had been different. This year he’d rented out a club in downtown and as the party got into full swing, he stopped everything just so he could stand on stage and make sure she understood exactly how much she meant to him.

Nyssa had friends—hell, she had a little sister—but Sansone had been placed in his own mental category. She’d always been in limbo with him, wondering, stopping herself from wondering, going back to
wondering then slapping herself
for
wondering if they’d ever be more than permanent fixtures in one another’s lives.

Over the years they’d dated other people, had even tried and failed at regular relationships and always,
always,
found themselves circling one another all over again. Because of her friendship with Sansone, she’d found herself put on the spot many times and asked to forget how strong a connection they had but she could never do it. He played too big a part in her daily life for her to ever walk away so someone’s ego could be stroked into a sense of security. She’d been called an emotionless bitch more times than she could count for that reason alone. No one had ever received access to all the places Sansone did. Time after time she’d attempted to find the same coupling with someone else but she never could. For Nyssa, the smooth-talking male with the tailored suits and six-four stature was so much more than just her business partner—he was
everything
to her. But how did one express that, face possible rejection? How did she tell the love of their life that he was, in fact, the love of her life without walking away broken? When would she ever be able to look this man in the eye and put her heart in his hands without the trepidation that he’d crush it?

“Never.” Nyssa murmured to herself. Sansone wouldn’t ever intentionally hurt her, she knew that, but she also knew what he saw when he looked at her—someone to keep out of trouble. He’d been doing so since the day he’d hauled her stubborn ass home in the middle of a storm and stayed with her until it passed. The first time they’d met, despite her utter fury at being fucked over by a partner at a firm she’d been vigorously working for, Nyssa had been caught and held in that incredibly strong amber gaze of his. The moment they shook hands and his fingers curled around her own, she felt her anger melting away simply because of his smile. Then she was reminded of why he was there, what he was doing—stealing her job.

One of the dumbest decisions Nyssa had made in her career was getting involved with a superior, and throughout her entire relationship with James Woodard she’d somehow blinded herself to the possibility that he could crush her. And then he had. Her climb in the sports industry had started with one simple spark to do more, be
more.
The thrill of convincing someone she could better their career, take it to new unimaginable heights, had held an appeal for her from the moment she figured out what her career goals were. Between herself and her sister, Nyssa had always been the one girl on their block interested in running with the boys. She’d run track and played basketball the majority of her school career but knew a life dedicated to being an athlete wasn’t for her. It was more what went on behind the scenes that piqued her hard-to-win attention. She’d gone through several majors in college before finally discovering she didn’t have to pigeonhole herself or be afraid she would be playing a game that was operated strictly by men.

Every push out, every rejection, simply made her that much harder, that much more determined to prove that not only was she a damn good agent but that her sex didn’t affect her decision making nor her capabilities at bargaining. She’d had days where she’d climbed into bed and Samara had to convince her to get out, but it had all been worth it in the long run because she no longer had to seek out clients—they began to find
her.
She’d become bigger than what she’d hoped for, bigger than Beyond the Goal and James knew it, he saw it, he
felt
it. Much longer and she would’ve slipped through his proverbial fingers and found her own way.

She’d purposely kept their relationship under wraps, preferring to not have others speculate that she’d slept her way to the top even though that she believed herself and James to be in love and planning a future. But it had been all for naught in the end because he’d done the very thing others had—he’d devalued her all for the sake of his ego. He couldn’t handle that she wouldn’t run to him, so he’d attempted to put out the fire she’d started. When Nyssa managed to coax one of the biggest point guards in the NBA to sign with her after giving James a firm
no
to the one question most women waited a lifetime to hear,
he decided to let her know who had the bigger dick between them and hired Sansone in lieu of giving her a promotion. Rage wasn’t a precise enough word to describe what she’d felt.
Her relationship with a man she’d thought she could trust imploded, and her
days at Beyond the Goal Lines had been pretty much over in her mind. At least until later that week when Sansone saved her, despite the fact she didn’t want his help.

They’d sat in her old apartment and simply talked. It was something Nyssa wasn’t exactly used to doing with people she’d marked as her arch-nemesis but when she realized the insanely handsome uptown boy had no intentions of letting Woodard push her out
, her viewpoint changed.

“You leave and I quit.”

She stopped running a towel through her hair to stare at him as though he’d lost his mind. “What?”

Sansone smirked. “You heard me, sweetness. If you go, I’m going with you.”

“Which means you’re off your fucking rocker. I know how much that position pays.”

He shrugged. “Don’t care.”

Nyssa slowly blinked. “Okay, what’s your game here, Sultana? Sex? Because I have to tell you, I’m sure you have no problem finding that everywhere you go.” The man was literally whole-bodied seduction.

“You saying I’m a whore?”

“Whore is a strong word.” She tilted her head. “Jezebel is a more accurate description.”

Sansone barked out a laugh. “I am
not
as easy as I look thank you and”—he raked his amber gaze down her soaked form, the irises so dark for a moment that Nyssa got the brief image of her ovaries clicking together like marbles from the potent stare—“as pleasant as the thought of bending you over your couch is right now, sex isn’t my goal.”

She swallowed. “What is?”

Leaning forward on her sofa, he rested his elbows on his knees and gave her a sharp smile. “Vengeance, my friend…vengeance…”

Nyssa cast a glance around.

“What are you doing?”

“Waiting for the cue of ominous organ playing and a lightning strike.” She rolled her shoulders. “Both happen when I step foot on church property and since I’m clearly talking to the devil...I figured they’d take place now.”

He snorted and stood. “Heh.” When he tugged his shirt up and over his head she had to mentally slap herself. “Woodard is a cunt,” Sansone stated matter-of-factly. “Cunts and I don’t mix.”

Her brows winged. “You weren’t joking about wanting my shoes, were you?”

His mouth twitched. “Cute.”

“Why do you care about what he did? You don’t even
know
me.”

“No, but I know
of
you and that’s just as good. You’re an extraordinary agent and your talents are being overlooked because fuck-twat has a say in what goes on at Beyond the Goal Lines. The way I see it, we can both leave, or we can fuck with his head until
he
goes.” Sansone brushed a palm over his curling caramel locks. “He used me to get to you, and I don’t like being posed like an action figure for other people’s amusement so we’re going to stay and we’re going to make his life a living hell.”

Nyssa mulled over every word, saw the sincerity in his stare and simply held up a finger.

He cocked his head and she dug into her bag, searching until she found what she was looking for. A quick trip to the app-store on her phone gave her what she needed before she said, “Repeat everything you just said in that same dark tone.”

Appearing thoroughly confused, he did just that. When he was done, Nyssa hit a button on her phone and the sound of an organ floated from the speaker.

Sansone burst into laughter and she grinned. “Down with fuck-twat!”

He echoed the chant and the sound of his chuckles made Nyssa briefly wonder if something inexplicably amazing had just changed in her life.

James had,
in all actuality, eventually left after they’d fucked him around but unfortunately, the mentality at the agency hadn’t changed in his absence. Yet Sansone took one drunken suggestion and ran with it, landing them in a place of success years later that always managed to stump Nyssa into speechless gratitude.
The fact Sansone had seen her talent and hadn’t doubted it had given her the confidence boost she needed to step out on a ledge and jump headfirst.

Her best friend was her partner and her partner was her best friend, but as the days went along, she wanted to add a third category to that list of attributes—
lover.