"Does she know you're here?"

Those five words, delivered in a cool, crisp, almost impersonally curious tone, tinged with a distinctive East Coast accent, froze Diana in her tracks. She turned back towards the bed, surprise and mild fear widening her brown eyes, and replied, "Who?"

"If you think I've gotten where I am because I'm an idiot, you're sorely mistaken. I know about you and her. And I know that if you're reacting like that, then she doesn't know you're here, which might be an... interesting... tidbit to bring up the next time our teams play, don't you think?"

"You wouldn't dare." Diana's face had lost all color beneath her summer tan. "You wouldn't fucking dare. That- that would be the end of all three of us if it leaked, and you wouldn't do that to your team, I know you and you wouldn't fuckin' do that."

"I have everything I ever wanted. Maybe this would be the way out of a season that's gotten completely out of my control. Maybe I want to go out with a flourish. Maybe I'd be willing to sacrifice myself to protect my team." There was a rustle in the darkness as she pushed a stray bit of brown hair out of her eyes.

"I should never have come here," Diana snapped.

"No, you shouldn't. But you did. You knew what it could cost you and everyone else involved. You knew that it was stupid, headstrong, and dangerous. You thought through every bit of risk that this entailed. And that was why you did it." She smiled. "You think you know me, and you may be right. But I know you better. That's the way it works, year to year to year. Every generation, they pump out and dig up more and more information about their chosen one, and you know how short generations can be in basketball- you saw it at UConn. I know more about you than you ever will about me, just like you'll know more about the next anointed one than she'll ever know about you."

"And we all keep secrets," Diana said, and the bitterness in her voice was foreign to the thousands who knew of her and thought they knew her well. She stepped back to the bed and gingerly sat on the edge of the mattress. "We all say one thing and do another and let everyone believe whatever the hell they want to believe, and half the time it's something they pull out of their fucking ass because that's what they want to think, never mind the proof."

"I always knew you were a smart one," the other woman said, twisting herself about in the bed so that she was right behind Diana, in position to rub her shoulders and imagine that she could feel the burden placed on them. "You do have vision after all. And here I thought it was limited to the court. I guess it's not just a rumor how quick you can be on the uptake. When it comes to the rest of the world, we're not real people. We're images on the television, words on a page, pictures on a screen. And you know what? That's not always a bad thing. I've found that once people start believing what they want to believe, they never learn how to handle the truth, no matter how obvious it is. Denial's the last bit of privacy left."

"You'd think." Again, Diana's voice was bitter, and the other woman knew not to pursue the matter. As endearingly up-front and honest as Diana could be, she also had a deep reserve; there were things she would never reveal, pain she would never discuss, memories with too much sting to ever be brought back up and dealt with. Her openness on so many other topics was almost as much to deflect people's attention from the things she wanted to keep secret, a screen so cleverly designed that sometimes she seemed to forget that it was a screen.

The other woman understood that feeling all too well, though she masked her inner core differently. She would never have Diana's guileless-seeming charm, she knew that. She was as polite as she had to be, but kept to herself so as not to let anyone close enough to realize that there were topics not being discussed. She detached where Diana engaged, stepped back where Diana rushed forward. Diana reminded her a little of Lauren in her openness and fun-loving nature, except that Diana was only now having to face the maturity that Lauren had already had to assume some years ago.

Perhaps that was why she had such a connection to the young superstar. It certainly made sense. But she shook off the thought and pulled Diana closer to her, letting her hands stray down the faintly visible lines of muscle. Diana grinned at that and flexed so as to make the contours more visible. Her trademark grin creased her face. "Yeah, you know I like that," she purred.

"Are you going to stay a while, or are you going to flounce off in high dudgeon again? Because if you are going to stay, you're really overdressed for it. If you're going to leave, then let me know now so I can get some sleep. You know how to wear a woman out."

"And you know how to flatter a woman." Diana fiddled meaningfully with a button, tilting her head back to regard the other woman. "We both know I shouldn't be here, so maybe I should quit while I'm ahead, ya know?"

"Who says you're ahead?" The other woman's voice turned playful, a tone that would have surprised anyone who worked closely with her. Her hands, already under Diana's shirt, now started nudging upward, easing the shirt gradually over Diana's breasts. "Well, now. You couldn't have left anyway."

"Why's that?"

"You would have had to leave evidence." One hand left off teasing Diana, reached under the pillow, and brought forth a lacy bit of underwear. "I think this is yours. Either that, or you came in here wearing someone else's bra."

"Oh." Diana couldn't even pretend to look embarrassed properly. She reached for the bra, but the other woman pulled it away teasingly. With a little twist, she bore down on the other woman, using her body to pin the more slender woman in place beneath her. "Come on, hand it over. What the hell are you going to do with it, anyway?"

"A couple of packs of tissues, and I'll fit in it just fine."

Diana covered her eyes with one hand. "That's a picture I'm never gonna be able to get rid of now, thanks so much. I'm never gonna look at you without seein' you prancin' around in that ugly thing. I bought it 'cause Mami made me have a girly bra."

"I do not prance. I stride. I stalk. I loom when I put my mind to it. But I do not prance. No one listens to a prancer." She laughed softly and ran her free hand down Diana's back, eliciting a shiver and a low, needy moan. Her lips on Diana's silenced the moaning, but the shiver came back. Diana rolled over and let her move a little so that they were lying side by side. In the inky shadows of the room, they could see nothing, but both women could fill in the missing details by extensive and creative use of imagination. They lay separately for a few moments, gathering breath and courage to go through with this dangerous liaison, giving each other time to rethink things, come to her senses, end this before they could compound the mistake that Diana had made by coming here. Both of them knew it had been folly, no matter how tempted either of them were, no matter how convenient it was, no matter how many times their eyes had met over the course of the game with challenge and flirtation lingering in their gazes.

But those moments passed, and Diana made no move to leave, and the woman whose place this was made no move to force Diana to leave. Instead, they embraced again. Diana held the other woman tightly, feeling hard edges and harsh angles gradually softening into smooth curves and gentle contours, a feminine shape emerging from a relentlessly neutral form. A smile played around the corners of Diana's mouth as she leaned in to steal a kiss. "Now I know why they call you Big Sexy," she purred.