Griffin: Bad Boy MMA Romance

by Ashley Hall

  And I planned on staying around for a long fucking time.

  When I woke around four in the morning, she was still curled in my arms, sound asleep.

  It was the first time I’d ever seen her vulnerable, not on her guard. Not waiting for the world to crash down around her ears.

  Sadie put up a strong front, but it was pretty obvious that she was feeling the bite of loneliness, and I didn’t think that just because the sex was goddamned amazing.

  She was good at her job. Whatever I had done to possibly derail her, that remained the case. She was dedicated, she was smart, she was gorgeous…and no man had ever treated her the way she needed to be treated. That needed to be resolved.

  Just as soon as I could convince her to come out of that shell she encased herself in.

  I liked that little smile that she tried to hide whenever she was excited. When I’d accelerated the car, when I grabbed her in the locker room, when I made her show her delicious, bare body to the world.

  Sadie deserved to smile like that all the time.

  And I would make sure she did—even if she dragged her feet a little.

  I stroked a few strands of hair from her face, taking in her pert, soft mouth and the soft snuffling noises she made when she slept. Her body was warm and soft, pockmarked from all the biting and sucking I’d been doing for the past five or six hours.

  I thought about waking her up to do more of said biting and sucking, but she needed her rest, and I was fucking starving.

  As I was trying to ease my way from around her, my phone buzzed lowly on the bedside table. Looking over at it, I scowled. Who the hell would be calling me at fucking four in the morning? After a match?

  If they didn’t know my schedule, it couldn’t be that important, so I left it. Sliding out from under Sadie, I made my way to the kitchen to devour the remains of a steak sandwich I still had from yesterday. As I downed it, there was a low thud from across the living room that made me tense.

  I forgot my sandwich for a second and left the kitchen to take a look and found the second cell that Riley had given me for business vibrating against the carpet. I crouched down to pick it up, wondering what the old man could have to say to me at the ass crack of dawn. When I took a look at the number scrolling across the screen, however, I frowned.

  Unknown.

  No one had this number, save Riley and my publicist.

  For a long moment, I stared down at the phone in my hand, wondering whether or not to answer. After one of the best evenings of my life, I had a feeling that a monumental amount of bullshit was about to fuck things up.

  Ultimately, I decided not to answer, but the phone was barely silent in my hand for a full minute before it buzzed with a message notification. I opened it without hesitating.

  We got a score to settle, Webb. Get me my money by dawn, or I cut up more than your pretty fucking face.

  God-fucking-dammit.

  How I’d figured Ivan would be satisfied with just getting in a solid hit was beyond me. He’d been after me for years, getting more and more aggressive. He’d started doping in my gym and was going after the kids no matter what I said, and it was clear that I couldn’t escape my bad decisions by just fighting my way through them.

  And now, Sadie was involved.

  I didn’t know how much Ivan knew, but if he caught wind that there was anything he could use against me…I didn’t want to think about it. He’d already tried to rile me up using Ross, and luckily enough for me, the kid wasn’t as stupid as I’d been. But Sadie…all she knew about was the fighting in the cage. She didn’t know about all the gambling, juicing, and violence that went on behind the scenes.

  And I didn’t want her exposed to it.

  My mouth pressed into a tight line, I tossed the phone back onto the table before sinking onto the couch.

  I was willing to do just about anything to protect Sadie. Anything.

  Running a hand over my jaw, I fingered the place where Ivan’s goons had sliced me. The way Sadie had looked at me, concern in her expression, when she asked what happened to me…it had almost killed me. What was I supposed to tell her? That I was the criminal that she thought I was? She had freaked the hell out just seeing me punch a man. I wasn’t about to ruin my chances any more than I already had.

  She didn’t need to know.

  I was protecting her by keeping details like this from her.

  My chest tight, I made my way back to the bedroom, surprised to find Sadie half awake. She turned over to look at me with those sleepy honey eyes of hers, yawning wide. “Griffin?”

  I was immediately at her side, perching at the edge of the bed to rub a hand indulgently over her bare shoulder. Christ, her skin was like silk. “I’m here, sweet thing.”

  Sadie’s eyes fluttered shut as she fell halfway back into sleep. “Your phone’s…your phone’s been ringing.” With that, she slipped away, rolling onto her side to expose one gorgeous breast as her breathing became regular and even.

  Lucky for me.

  She wasn’t awake to see my fucking livid expression.

  Ivan just wasn’t going to give up, was he? Not until I had effectively scared him off or his ass was six feet under.

  And I knew Ivan didn’t scare easy.

  I heaved a breath, staring down at the sleeping woman in my bed. When was the last time I let a woman stay the entire night? I could barely remember. While I had no problem sharing my body, I tended not to be so generous with my space.

  But, somehow, I hoped Sadie stuck around until I got back.

  I dressed quickly, and all in black. With any luck, I could do what I had to do and be back before she woke up. Then we could continue celebrating for the rest of the evening without Ivan breathing down my goddamn neck.

  Before I left the apartment, I scribbled a quick note in case my errand took me longer than I thought, and then, with one last indulgent look at her, I slipped away.

  And once I left the safety of the penthouse, I uncaged my rage.

  Sadie

  When I awoke the next morning, the first thing I did was reach for Griffin.

  It was instinctive. I reached towards his side of the bed, looking for the solid warmth that was a body honed by years of defensive training.

  And found nothing.

  In a split second, my eyes snapped open and I remembered where I was, everything that had happened the previous day. Andrew giving me a press pass to Griffin’s fight, my attending and finding myself so righteously drawn to him that I could barely think straight…and everything that came afterward.

  Rolling over onto my back, I stared at the ceiling for a long moment as thoughts jumbled together in my head.

  Griffin Webb, notorious bad-boy bruiser, media field day, and number two MMA fighter on the planet had admitted that he might have…feelings for me.

  Out of all the things that might have surprised me in my dealings with Webb, this was by far the most shocking. Of course, I never thought that I’d get tangled up with the man in the first place. When Andrew first gave me my assignment to cover Griffin, I was in it for the story and the story alone. I planned to be catapulted to the forefront of female writers in Grind’s office, and I was going to use Griffin to get me there. I was impervious to his bad-boy allure and convinced that my drive to be the best reporter I could would lead me straight and true.

  Now, two weeks later, I realized just how naïve I had been.

  Griffin Webb was an unpredictable force of nature. From the moment I’d seen him sparring in his gym, something in me knew he was trouble. But I craved the man with every part of my being, knowing exactly what he was. That I would just be another in a long line of broken hearts that Griffin left behind him.

  And then this.

  Closing my eyes, I remembered the previous night. Standing out on the breezy balcony with him.

  I wanted you…more than anything else in the fucking cosmos I want you, and when you pulled out that ‘professional’ bullshit…God, it messed me up.<
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  Me. For whatever reason, Griffin wanted me. And he seemed pretty goddamned earnest about it. So earnest that he was inside me half the night and didn’t make up some excuse for me to leave his apartment before sunrise.

  The question was, where had he gone now?

  With a sigh, I rolled over onto my stomach to glance at the alarm clock on the bedside table. The red fluorescent numbers read around ten thirty in the morning.

  I never slept in so late. Then again, I usually didn’t spend the entire night getting my brains screwed out either. The realization simultaneously mortified and warmed me, making my cheeks flush lightly. As I gathered the sheets to my bare chest, sitting upright, I spied something else on the bedside table.

  A folded piece of paper marked with my name.

  Pursing my lips in curiosity, I reached over to pluck the paper from the table with my fingertips and opened the note.

  Sweet Sadie,

  Make yourself at home. There’s stuff in the fridge to make breakfast, if that’s your thing. I’ve got an errand to run. Back in a few hours.

  Griffin

  P.S. – Don’t put any clothes on. I’ll need you when I get back.

  His demand only made my cheeks redden further. I knew Griffin far too well to assume he might not know what effect he had on women. The fact of the matter was that the man knew exactly what he did to the fairer sex—me more than most.

  Usually, I wouldn’t even walk around my own house naked. I always wore a robe, a t-shirt, something to cover my bareness. But Griffin’s request made me bold. And so, with almost no hesitation, I rose from the bed without a stitch of clothing on, a slight smile curving my lips.

  He wanted me. Me.

  I might be completely flummoxed as to why, but after a good night’s sleep in the man’s bed and a veritable welcome mat into his home, I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Tentatively, I made my way towards the bedroom door. In the light of day, I could now see just how huge the apartment was. Mine could fit in this monster at least three times over—and yet Griffin somehow found a use for all the space.

  Apart from finding different locations to screw me in, that was. Aside from the high ceilinged, minimalistic bedroom, there was also a dusty study, an extra bathroom, a space that had been outfitted as a home gym, and then, of course, there was the main entryway, which was split into a living, dining, and kitchen area.

  All in all, probably over two thousand square feet of space for a single man. I could only imagine what they were paying him to put his neck on the line.

  Shivering slightly at the cool temperature, I searched for a thermostat to turn up before venturing to the pristine kitchen. It was so clean that I had to wonder if Griffin ever cooked in it at all. When I opened the fridge, the package of bacon there was untouched, which led me to think that he might have bought it just for me.

  I should be so lucky.

  As I wasn’t so eager to have bacon grease singe my bare skin, I opted to microwave my breakfast, settling for oatmeal, bacon, and some surprisingly posh coffee. For the mouth he had on him, Griffin had some pretty expensive tastes.

  As I sipped on my blue mountain and munched on a piece of bacon, I wandered into the living room. There were a number of leather sofas that made me hesitate to take a seat, but I ultimately sank down onto a love seat with a sigh at the cool temperature of the leather against my bare skin.

  What would happen, I wondered, if Griffin walked in right that minute? Would he be pissed that I was bare-assed naked on his expensive leather? Somehow, I doubted it. Griffin Webb was the kind of man who liked to ruin the leather and ask questions later. The notion had a small smile curving my lips as I reached for the remote to the gleaming fifty-two-inch plasma TV. It was nice, I had to admit, to see what pleasures high living could bring.

  In the space of two weeks I’d gone from thinking there was no way violence could be the answer to any issue in the cosmos to actually admiring a man who made his living from just that. More than admiring…

  Before I could follow that train of thought, I switched on the TV to distract myself. As it was Friday and I had a whole forty-eight hours before I had to submit the details of the fight to my boss to finish the article, there was little I had to do other than sit back and relax for a few hours. I would wait until Griffin got back at the very least, and then do my best to make time to finish my article. At least, that was the plan. When Griffin was involved, I found that I seldom stuck to such plans.

  I wasn’t much of a TV watcher—I was usually too absorbed in my work—but well-sexed and well rested, I found myself flipping comfortably through channels. There were a few action movies, almost mind-blowing in the high resolution of Griffin’s TV, a number of nature documentaries, and the usual plethora of news stations. I was on the cusp of turning back to a showing of Lethal Weapon Three when a very familiar pair of green eyes caught my attention.

  Pausing, I flipped back through channels until I found the city news station.

  A sharp cry of shock escaped me.

  Griffin.

  Griffin was on television! And he wasn’t knocking a man out in a ring or being heralded as one of the world’s top fighters by reporters.

  He was being led towards a waiting police car.

  In handcuffs.

  For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see or hear anything except the garbled information the reporter kept repeating.

  “Griffin Webb, world-renown MMA champion, being taken into custody on suspicion of murder. Webb cannot provide an alibi for his whereabouts around four this morning, when a murder was committed in the lower west side. Police are said to have found Webb leaving the scene with blood on his hands.”

  Jesus.

  The police thought Griffin had…murdered someone? He couldn’t have! It was impossible!

  Though I’d been half asleep when he left me earlier that morning, I remembered him clearly telling me that he had an errand to run. That he’d be back soon.

  All at once, my blood went cold.

  What kind of errand needed to be run in the wee small hours of the morning? And why couldn’t he take me with him if he needed me so badly.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes from the TV. Murder. This was bigger than any bar fight or tussle over a bimbo blonde. If Griffin had killed someone in cold blood, there would be major consequences I couldn’t even begin to fathom.

  I should have run for the hills. It would have been the smart thing to do, to run from the man, all he made me feel, and all the trouble he’d brought into my life. We’d had sex a few times, and he’d admitted that he had feelings for me. With a man like Griffin, who knew if what he said was true or not. If he’d ever meant to return to me at all.

  When I’d first gotten involved with him, I knew letting the man into my heart and bed would only bring me grief.

  But here, now, at the eleventh hour, even though every fiber of my being screamed at me to extricate myself, all I wanted to do was see him.

  And nothing on heaven or earth was going to stop me.

  I was up off the sofa in a trice, bolting back towards the bedroom, my breakfast completely forgotten. It took me a full minute of searching through the mussed sheets to realize that I didn’t have any of my clothes with me. Last night, I remembered, Griffin had given me some of his clothes to wear home from the arena.

  I decided quickly to wear said clothes to a taxi, run back home to my apartment to change—I doubted they’d let me into a courthouse dressed as I was—and then do my best to get in and see Griffin before something unmentionable happened.

  Somehow, I managed to make it back to my apartment, hop in the shower and change, and be back on my way downtown within half an hour. While I did so, I didn’t dare turn on the radio or television. I was too terrified of what I might hear. That Griffin was already in jail, the full list of charges…and I didn’t know if I was quite ready for all that. After all, who was I? A magazine writer who happened to get a little too wrapped
up in her story. In truth, I hadn’t really a leg to stand on. I wasn’t related to the man and we hadn’t even begun to discuss titles. I was pretty certain that if I professed I was Griffin’s girlfriend, I’d be laughed out of the damn courthouse. Or jail. Wherever he was.

  The place turned out to be a precinct, and when I arrived there, I could hardly see through the thick throng of reporters. My own phone was buzzing off the hook with calls from my boss and the office, no doubt urging me to use my personal in with Griffin to get the latest scoop. But I ignored them all. Instead, I parked my car in the first free space I saw and pressed through the crowd up towards the front door of the precinct. As usual, when Griffin was involved, there were a number of people guarding the entrance.