Hendrix: A Raleigh Raptor Novel

  Hendrix

  A Raleigh Raptor Novel

  Samantha Whiskey

  Contents

  Also by Samantha Whiskey

  Now Available In Audio!

  1. Hendrix

  2. Savannah

  3. Hendrix

  4. Savannah

  5. Hendrix

  6. Savannah

  7. Hendrix

  8. Savannah

  9. Hendrix

  10. Savannah

  11. Hendrix

  12. Savannah

  13. Hendrix

  14. Savannah

  15. Hendrix

  16. Savannah

  17. Hendrix

  18. Savannah

  19. Hendrix

  20. Savannah

  21. Hendrix

  Epilogue

  The Onyx Assassins Series Sneak Peek!

  The Onyx Assassins Series

  Connect With Me!

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2020 by Samantha Whiskey, LLC All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you’d like to share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Also by Samantha Whiskey

  The Seattle Sharks Series:

  Grinder

  Enforcer

  Winger

  Rookie

  Blocker

  Skater

  Bruiser

  Wheeler

  Defender

  The Carolina Reapers Series:

  Axel

  Sawyer

  Connell

  Logan

  Cannon

  The Raleigh Raptors Series:

  Nixon

  Roman

  A Modern-Day Fairytale Romance:

  The Crown

  The Throne

  Now Available In Audio!

  Grinder

  Enforcer

  Winger

  Rookie

  Let the Seattle Sharks spice up your morning commute!

  To Those Who Never Back Down From A Challenge

  1

  Hendrix

  I tugged on my mask, making sure it covered my face from the bridge of my nose, over my forehead and eyes, and remained secured behind my head. The footwear was surprisingly comfortable for a pair of pirate boots. At least, that’s what the lady at the costume shop had called them.

  The gala was in full swing by the time I arrived, sneaking in the back door like I wasn’t on the VIP list. It wasn’t that I hated the red carpet, I was just…over it.

  It was unlike any charity event I’d ever been to, and spectacular wasn’t a good enough word. It was original. I liked original. Raleigh’s newest museum for modern art was lit like a nightclub, lights swirling over the exhibits in the main gallery while barely skimming the dark, smaller rooms I would have found perfect for darker deeds a year ago. But this wasn’t a year ago.

  “Hendrix!” Roman, the running back for our NFL team, the Raleigh Raptors, waved me down from the table he stood at with his fiancée, Teagan. Now there were two people so well-matched they even made me a believer in the whole love thing.

  “The Flintstones?” I grinned, hugging Teagan first just to piss off Roman. He was one of my closest friends, which entitled me to the amount of shit I liked to give him. He’d fallen hard for his best friend, not that I could blame him. If my best friend had been anything like Teagan, I’d have fallen, too.

  “The Dread Pirate Roberts?” Teagan challenged, tilting her head slightly with a bone in her hair.

  “As you wish,” I said, stepping back with a bow.

  She laughed, and Roman rolled his eyes, pulling me into a hug before securing his arm around Teagan’s waist.

  “Did anyone tell the Children’s Hospital that it’s not Halloween?” I asked over the driving beat of the music.

  “Kids always like to dress up,” Roman answered with a shrug.

  “Right, because there are so many kids here.” I spotted two girls in sixties go-go dancer outfits grinding on each other across the mirror ball-lit floor. It was a strictly over twenty-one crowd.

  “Thank God, no!” Teagan swatted my arm. “Besides, it’s a masquerade ball…uh…club.”

  I laughed. “I’m just happy you guys are here.” I took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and tipped him. Wait staff didn’t make nearly enough money, and I made way too much to not help out.

  “I happen to know at least a dozen women who only bought tickets because they knew you’d be here,” Teagan said, her gaze sweeping the floor.

  “Not interested.” I sipped my champagne but grinned at the sight of our coach in a Phantom of the Opera cape, spinning with zero rhythm on the dance floor. Okay, that was worth the large donation in itself. No doubt his daughter Savannah would come along any minute just to torment me in any way possible—the stunning, strong, sexy, and totally off-limits redhead had a way of driving me up the wall, but for right now, I was content to watch her dad and laugh.

  “Yeah, okay,” Teagan teased and waved to a friend near the bar. “Be right back!”

  Roman’s eyes were glued to her ass as she walked away.

  “Man, you’ve got it bad,” I laughed.

  “Damn straight,” he agreed. “And what’s that bullshit that you’re not interested?”

  I shrugged and took another sip.

  He lifted both his eyebrows and stared me down, which was a feat considering he was easily four inches shorter than I was.

  “It’s been a while,” I admitted with a shrug.

  “What? Like three days?”

  I scanned the floor.

  “Okay, a week?” He tried again.

  I drained the rest of my glass.

  “A…month?”

  I shook my head.

  “Holy shit, what’s going on with you?” he asked. “I’ve never known you to go for more than a week, and that was during playoffs, Hollywood.”

  Ah, yes, Hollywood. I had more than a few modeling contracts to back up that nickname, and it had never really bothered me. I couldn’t help the way my face looked, or that I stayed in shape to keep my job as a star wide receiver. But damn, I was getting sick of only being seen for those two things—sick of only seeing the same in others.

  “I have my reasons,” I said, twirling the stem of my glass between thumb and forefinger.

  “Are you seriously going to make me dig them out of you like we’re two teenage girls at a slumber party? Because now you have me just curious enough to freeze your bra.” The corners of Roman’s lips tugged upward.

  “Fine.” I spotted Teagan making her way back to us and hurried through the rest. “About six months ago, I took this brunette back to her place, and when I got her shirt off, I noticed this birthmark on her ribcage.”

  “A birthmark scared you off of sex?” He snorted.

  “No. The fact that I’d seen the birthmark before did. I’d already hooked up with her and didn’t remember when I picked her up. How the fuck does that happen?” I shook my head, the tails of my mask whipping back and forth.

  “By having a lot of indiscriminate sex,�
� Roman answered matter-of-factly.

  “Thanks, Einstein.” I ordered a beer from the nearest waiter and leaned my elbows on the cocktail-height table. “She didn’t even care that I didn’t remember her.”

  “No shit?” Roman turned slightly to look at me.

  “No shit, but I cared,” I finished quickly as Teagan returned. There was no other way to put it. It had been six months since I’d had sex, which was the longest I’d gone since losing my virginity at fifteen. Sex had always been easy, and women had always been willing, and I was just…over it.

  Not the sex.

  Never the sex.

  God, I fucking loved everything about sex.

  But I was done with the emptiness that stuck around after.

  “Let’s go, you two,” Teagan said with a grin as the song changed to a remix of The Weeknd. When neither of us moved, she arched a single brow, then held out both her hands, one of which sparkled with her engagement ring as the lights hit it.

  “Okay, okay,” I agreed, a begrudging smile working its way loose. There was nothing I’d deny Teagan when she asked—hell, even when she didn’t. It wasn’t just that Roman loved her, either; it was the way she never left me out even though I was now the fifth wheel between her and Roman, and Nixon and Liberty.

  We moved to the floor, disappearing into the crowd. I knew about half the guys on the floor—they were all the teammates that hadn’t gone home for the off-season, or to obscure places on the globe, like Nixon and Liberty. The rest had paid to be here.

  “Oh my God!” a girl in a rated R Strawberry Shortcake costume exclaimed. “You’re Hendrix Malone!”

  “Sure am.” I flashed her a smile because that was my job for the night, then held my breath for a second, waiting for the attraction to come, the thickening of my blood that recognized a good time was coming my way…but nothing.

  “Can you sign my purse?” She hefted a strawberry-shaped, hard-sided bag into my face and pulled a pen from her bra. “My name is Cherry!”

  “Of course it is,” I mumbled, but signed the thing. “Here you go!” I said above the beat.

  “And a selfie?” she asked, already turning and backing her ass into me with her phone held in her outstretched hand.

  I smiled for the picture. She snapped one, then turned and kissed my cheek for the second, then gave me a disappointed look when I turned away, looking for Roman and Teagan in the crowd.

  “You’re not dancing?” a voice called out over the beat as tendrils of smoke came in from the sides of the floor, spreading thick at our feet, then rising to catch the lasers from the lights.

  “Depends on who’s asking,” I answered, turning toward the voice.

  Fuck yes. I had no clue who she was, but I was sold. Whatever she wanted from me—it was hers, she was that damned captivating.

  The woman was tall with legs that wouldn’t quit, her curves accentuated by a purple corset that lifted her breasts to mouthwatering heights, and her skirt flared out short enough to show her garter belt and stockings. Her hair was ice blond, tucked away behind a tiara, and a butterfly mask covered her face from her high cheekbones, to flair out at the sides of her eyes, completely obscuring the rest of her face. Purple eyes looked at me expectantly, and I would have killed to know what color they were when she wasn’t at a costume ball.

  And that mouth? Fuck me. Her lips were curved in a wide smile. About a hundred different plans flashed through my mind of what I was going to do with that mouth. I wanted to suck on that bottom lip, run my tongue over the little bow on top, plunge inside and taste every secret, and then I wanted to see those lips curve in an O of surprise and pleasure before they wrapped around my cock.

  “Apparently, I’m asking, Farmboy.” She walked forward, her diaphanous wings stretching two feet on either side of her, then looped her arms around my neck. “I’ll be your Buttercup for a song.”

  “What’s my line?” I managed to ask. A song? I was taking this woman home for the night. The weekend. The month. The summer. Whatever I could take.

  There was something tickling the back of my brain, some part of me whispering I’d seen her before. The way she tugged that bottom lip between a row of even, white teeth was familiar.

  “As you wish,” she reminded me with another flash of a smile and started to dance.

  One good thing about being a professional athlete? I knew how to move my body. That’s all dancing really was, anyway, just a cross between athletics and sex, both of which I excelled at.

  I took her waist in my hands, then moved to the beat, pulling her against my body.

  She gasped, her eyes flaring wide for all of a heartbeat, but she never slowed. Her hips moved like a dream against mine, her wings blocking out the rest of the gala. A hundred other people disappeared from view, and all I saw was her. All I felt were her curves under my hands as I slid them up the sides of her ribs, my thumbs brushing the jeweled ribbing of her corset beneath her satin and lace-cupped breasts.

  “God, Hollywood, you can move.” Her lips parted as her fingers tangled in my hair, stopping when she met my mask.

  She knew who I was.

  “It’s easy with you as a partner,” I said honestly, my hands tracing the lines of her body until I gripped her hips over her skirt.

  “Oh is it?” She asked flirtatiously. “Tell me something. What would the rest of the team think if they saw your hands right now?” She arched against me with the beat, running her hands down my shirt.

  “That I’m the luckiest bastard in the city.” I grinned, dipping slightly to hold her hips to mine as we moved. At least I will be once you tell me your name.

  “Just the city?” she asked, her lips skimming my jaw.

  The sensation shot down my spine, hardening my dick in less time than it took to slip one hand under that lacy skirt to touch her warm, toned thigh. Her breath caught.

  “In the world.”

  Her laughter triggered that little whisper in my mind again. Familiar. Gorgeous. Where had I seen this woman before?

  “You have no clue who I am, do you?” she asked, raking her teeth lightly on my earlobe.

  “Holy shit,” I muttered, ready to haul this woman over my shoulder and find out exactly who she was underneath this butterfly costume.

  “Come on, Hollywood, say my name,” she taunted, her finger sliding into my waistband just far enough to tease.

  I cupped the back of her neck and drew back so I could look into those purple eyes.

  “Say it,” she said, rising on her toes so our mouths were only a breath apart.

  “Mine.” I ducked my head to kiss her, but I wasn’t prepared for how fast she moved away, laughing.

  “Say that in the sunlight, Farmboy.” She winked, then spun, narrowly missing me with a wing. Her hair flicked across my outstretched hand.

  Polyester? It was a wig. What color was her hair underneath?

  Another blast of smoke curled around us, and she disappeared into the crowd, leaving me standing with a dropped jaw and a serious hard-on.

  I followed after her, but she’d done the impossible and fucking vanished.

  “Shit.”

  2

  Savannah

  My skin still tingled from the places we’d touched on the dance floor. My blood was sizzling, burning with the need to feel him again. Exhilaration tore through my veins, my mind spinning.

  He didn't recognize me.

  I ran my fingers delicately over my blonde wig, and a crazed smile shaped my lips. My heels clicked against the marble floor as I made my way over to my best friend, London. Her petite frame leaned against a waist-high marble bar, her sapphire blue eyes lilting around the crowd, almost bored.

  Her Marie Antoinette costume did everything to show off her tiny waist and ample bosom, the skirts of her dress popping out and hiding her athletic legs. There was enough makeup on her face that would make other people look like a clown, but on London? She looked like she stepped right out of 1770 France. All she needed was a plat
ter of sweets in her hands and a sardonic smile on her lips.

  "What’s got you so giddy?" London asked as I finally reached her and ordered a drink from the bartender.

  I leaned against the bar next to her and tried to subdue the smile on my lips. "It's freezing, isn't it?"

  London tilted her head, her usually black hair hidden beneath a beehive-shaped blonde wig that nearly toppled over with the movement.

  "The costumes." I waved an arm to myself, indicating the entirety of my getup. Some might say it was overkill, but I always took any opportunity I could to become anyone other than Savannah Goodman. Daughter of the infamous Coach Goodman, coach of the Raleigh Raptors. In other words, completely and totally off limits to anyone who actually had the balls to make a move for me, or too untouchable for those who were scared shitless of what the Raptors would do to them if they tried.

  My stomach turned acidic with a fresh raw hurt that still soured my soul. Two months. Two months I’d been with Trevor. I’d thought he was different.

  I'd been wrong.

  I’d been a fool.

  "You do look completely different tonight," London said, her sapphire blue eyes scanning the length of my costume—the intricate details of my butterfly dress, the dark purple of my contacts that, while uncomfortable, gave me anonymity that I craved. Even my usually fiery red hair was stuffed and hidden under an ice blonde wig.

  "And you seem happier tonight than I’ve seen you in days." Her eyes turned soft, concerned, and she reached across the bar to gently squeeze my elbow, a silent show of support. She'd known what happened. What Trevor had done.