Page 23 of Insatiable


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And that was before he recognized her.

“Oh. My. God,” he whispered, rising to step closer to the big screen. His eyes were telling him the truth—noting the familiar blond hair pulled back in a bun, those vivid blue eyes, the perfect mouth and soft face—even before his ears registered the name the sportscasters announced.

“Vivienne Callahan,” one of them was saying. “Sources tell us she is with the Vanguard marketing team.”

“Well, she’s certainly getting a lot of press, and maybe that was her intention,” the other guy said with an audible sneer, which just made Damien want to reach through the screen and throttle him.

As for Neeley—well, punching him wouldn’t even begin to repay the disgusting way he’d treated Viv.

“We’re waiting for the team to issue a statement regarding this shocking new twist in the situation that we now know involves a player and an employee. We will keep on top of this developing story.”

A player and an employee of the Virginia Vanguard.

Wait. A former employee of the Virginia Vanguard...because she’d been fired yesterday afternoon.

Damien thrust a hand through his hair, trying to make sense of everything he’d just seen, and what he remembered of Viv’s conversation yesterday. One thing was sure: Viv had been assaulted, and had reacted with understandable anger. Yet the team’s general manager had fired her?

What was it she’d said—she’d been accused of being a “distraction.” She was the subject of a bet among her male coworkers. Jesus, and what a bunch of coworkers. They were the tough, spoiled, testosterone-laden members of a professional hockey team, who’d placed a bet on who could get her into bed first.

“Son of a bitch,” he snarled, punching the television’s off button and throwing the remote down onto the table.

He felt sick. And not just because of what she’d gone through at the press junket, or at the hands of the team’s general manager, or at the mercy of a bunch of horny assholes who’d made her life hell for weeks.

No. The real capper was that it was his fault. The buck ended with Damien Black.

This team was the reason he’d come to town. It was the one thing he’d wanted for himself—aside from Black Star Hotels, the Black family, the foundation, the trust and the corporation. The Vanguard was how he’d chosen to indulge in his lifelong love of sports, his nostalgia for his college hockey days and his need to have something entirely his own.

Damien Black was the primary stockholder in the Virginia Vanguard.

And he’d just spent the wildest, most passionate night of his life with one of his own former employees...who had every justification in the world to sue his ass off.

5

ALTHOUGH VIV’S PLACE was nice, it was still just a basic one-bedroom, one-bath, with standard fixtures. Plus it was in Arlington, which had crazy-high square-footage prices. Which meant this hotel suite was about twice the size of her whole apartment and the bathroom here was bigger than her living room.

“I’m in heaven,” she cooed as she used the soft washcloth to smooth divine-smelling gel all over her body. “I am never going to leave this shower.”

Oh, the shower. It was one of those rainfall types, with multiple showerheads, spurting warm water on her from head to toe. It was like a summer rainfall, soft and sensuous. There was no curtain or door, just a glass-block half wall, the rest open to the remainder of the bathroom. To someone who’d grown up in a small, blue-collar Pennsylvania household with five brothers, this shower alone was like something out of a fantasy magazine or movie.

One thing was sure—Julia Roberts’s bubble bath in Pretty Woman had absolutely nothing on this. The bathroom alone put the sin in sinful opulence. There was even a TV screen set inside the mirror, which was sort of freaky, but also very cool.

Well, it was cool until she saw her own face in it.

And it wasn’t her reflection.

“No, please no!” she groaned, wishing curiosity hadn’t prompted her to flick the power on the remote as she dried off with a fluffy towel. The TV had been tuned in to a sports station, and she’d gotten a just wonderful view of herself being groped by, and then slugging, a hockey star.

It was one thing to mentally envision the slap ending up on the news. It was another thing entirely to see it—not only the slap, but also the humiliating kiss-and-grab that had inspired it.

She came across as an absolute idiot. Worse—like the type of woman men felt it was okay to grope. If Dale caught wind of this—confirming his own ideas about what kind of woman she was—she’d just die.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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