by Ashley Hall
But it was hard. Hard when Griffin showed me new heights of pleasure every day, babied me because of my rapidly healing injury, and constantly heaped praise the likes of which I’d never heard on me. Certainly, the man could be crass. He could be a brute and an absolute asshole.
But he was my asshole.
“Don’t put any clothes on.” As we lounged around in bed sometime around noon on the fourth day, I pouted at his demand. I’d been naked for almost as long as I’d been in his apartment, and the man never let me wear so much as a robe.
“Griffin, I’m cold.” My complaint might not have been very genuine, but I thought I was being pretty adventurous just by being naked with him half the day in bed. In the city, with tons of people and the media peeping, walking around his apartment naked was still something I would have to get used to.
“Like hell you are. The air isn’t even on,” he drawled, reaching over to pull me back into bed. His mouth found the curve of my hip, remarking the love bite there so I shuddered before he clutched me closed. His breath fell hotly against the back of my neck and I sighed in contentment. Despite how demanding he could be, there was no place I felt safer than in Griffin’s arms. “I’m so fucked.”
At his low murmur, I turned in his arms to face him, arching a brow. “How’s that?”
Griffin straightened slightly to look down at me. In the few days we’d barely emerged from the bedroom, he’d acquired quite the scruff over his cheeks and chin, and I had the beard burn to prove it. He reached down to tug my good hand to his mouth, sucking first one finger, then two into his mouth, and I bit back a moan. “’Cause…sweet Sadie…I gotta admit…before you, I didn’t really hold to the idea of monogamy.”
The word made both of my brows shoot up to my hairline.
“I was a bastard. I can’t deny that. I’m still a fucking bastard—you probably know that better than anyone. But…maybe I’m a little less of one because of you.”
Slowly, I shook my head, even as my heart started to thud rapidly in my chest. “I’m…not sure I follow.”
Griffin smirked. “All that schooling and you don’t even know when someone’s telling you they’re in love with you? Damn, baby. What a fucking waste.”
I stared at him as my brain summarily shut down.
Griffin…Griffin Webb had just admitted…he was in love with me?
My lips parted slightly in surprise as I stared at him, trying to reconcile my head and my heart. While the former was still recovering, I didn’t think my heart had ever felt so full.
Griffin was in love with me.
“You…” I couldn’t even get the words out. “I…”
“Will not be putting on a stitch of clothing.” He cut me off firmly, pressing his mouth firmly to mine and affectively re-scrambling my brain. “Unless it’s a sexy white dress.”
I almost fell off the bed in shock. “You’re joking.”
At my expression, Griffin burst into laughter, reaching across the bed to yank me back into safe territory. I’d never seen him so unabashedly…happy. So carefree. “I am,” he revealed lowly against my neck, before nipping at my ear intimately. “But I might not be in six months or so.” While I was still stunned, he kissed me again.
We were still kissing, his tongue stroking against mine deliciously, when his phone buzzed on the bedside table.
With a low groan, Griffin parted from me only reluctantly to reach over and check the caller ID. The sight of whatever number it was made him scowl. “It’s Riley. Gotta take this, babe.”
“Sure.” Sitting up, Griffin perched on the edge of the bed, about a foot from my head. I took the opportunity to watch his back muscles work gloriously beneath his skin. Reaching out, I stroked over the line of his spine, reveling at the velvety feel of skin pulled taut over pure steel. So absorbed was I in my task that I didn’t catch a word of Griffin’s conversation.
He turned around to catch my hand and press his talented mouth to my palm in a relatively chaste kiss. “You catch any of that?”
I shook my head. After all, honesty was always the best policy. Griffin smirked. “Riley’s entered me in an impromptu tournament tonight. He thinks it will be a good way to get back in the public eye, keep my skills up until the trial.”
Right. The murder trial. I pursed my lips together at the thought. There was no way they would find him guilty. He’d been acting in self-defense.
Instead of worrying about it, I asked about the match. “Tough opponents?”
He shrugged massive shoulders. “No idea. I won’t know the fighting roster until I show up.” He stood, sliding out of my grip to stretch, and my mouth watered at the lines of his bare body. “Which means I have some training to get in before tonight.”
I just gazed up at him plaintively, slowly inching the sheet down over my chest until I freed a nipple for his perusal. Griffin’s eyes narrowed and he growled at the sight, his cock twitching in interest. Instead of attacking me, however, he just turned back to the bedside table, slamming a drawer open to extract his wallet.
A gleaming black credit card landed on the bedspread next to me and I stared at it curiously. “What’s this?”
“What you’re going to use to buy a sexy-ass dress to wear to my fight,” he replied tautly. When I opened my mouth to refuse, Griffin merely fixed me with a hard glare. “Not a request, Sadie.” When I pouted, his gaze softened somewhat and he reached across the bed to stroke my cheek briefly. “Inspire me to win, sweet thing. You don’t want me to lose, do you?”
Well, when he put it like that…
***
A few hours later, I found myself along with my police escort in the green room behind a smaller arena in which the tournament would take place. I’d decided that I was going to kill Griffin. When he’d given me his credit card to go shopping, he hadn’t told me that I’d have to take a cop with me. It was intimidating enough to have to search for a sexy dress on my own, but knowing someone was following me? Even if they were undercover?
It had been embarrassing as hell.
I only hoped the dress I wore was what he was looking for. I bought a slinky black number, dangerously low cut in the front and back, along with a pair of black spiky pumps that cost more than I made in a week. To top it off, I’d gone and had my hair done, tamed into an elegant updo with a few wisps framing my face; along with my makeup. I had no idea what the woman at the counter had done, but I didn’t look like Sadie Warner.
I looked like someone who belonged at the side of one of the world’s foremost MMA fighting champions.
As I waited for the pre-fight press conference to start, I took my place along the back wall. At eight o’clock exactly, a number of fighters entered, both amateur and professional. When an impromptu tournament like this one was thrown together, there was a chance for amateurs to move up the ladder, as well as for professionals to get knocked on their asses. I could only hope that didn’t mean trouble for Griffin.
I recognized my cop bodyguard a few seats away, pretending to be an astute reporter as he cased the joint for danger. It would have been almost comical if I didn’t still carry the very real evidence of how real the danger was around my left upper arm.
Once the press conference started, all of the fighters were given an opportunity to make a statement, and I only half-listened to most of them. After all, I had never been terribly interested in the sport, only in Griffin. When the reporters finally reached Griffin, however, he looked up and his gaze caught mine across the crowded room. I raised my good arm to waggle my fingers at him coyly and he stared at me, absolutely slack-jawed, for almost a full ten seconds.
“Mr. Webb?” An insistent reporter repeated his question. “Do you think you’ll have any trouble maintaining your standings through tonight’s event?”
I watched with no small amount of amusement as Griffin snapped back to the present, all but glaring at the reporter as he growled his answer.
He was looking in fine fighting form—but in my opinion, Griff
in’s form was always pretty fine. He wore his customary dark shorts and silk robe, and between every question, he stared at me like he was on the cusp of shoving his way through the room and taking me against that very wall.
The thought made my panties immediately wet and I drew in a shuddering breath. No need for that. I wouldn’t get my hands on him for a while, so I didn’t need to work myself up. When the press conference dispersed, Riley tried to rush Griffin back to the locker rooms, but he jerked back for a moment to fix me with one final, heated glance before he went.
When I took my seat in the VIP section, I had not one single iota of inadequacy. There might have been ten women in the same section as me, all dressed to the nines and, as usual, fighting for Griffin’s attention. I had no issue playing it cool, my eyes fixed on the cage as I waited for him to appear. Unlike my previous experience in the VIP section, this time, the few male reporters there salivated over me as openly as they did the other women—if not more so.
Griffin was one of the first fighters in the tournament, and when he appeared, the entire crowd leapt to their feet. His name was like a catalyst, a shot heard round the world. I was on my feet with the rest of them, and before Griffin inserted his mouthpiece, he took the mic from the ref. “This one’s for you, baby.” He thrust a hand out, pointing unmistakably through the crowd in my direction.
All at once, my image was up on the Jumbotron. My cheeks flamed even as pride burned in my chest and Griffin winked at me, kissing at the mic before handing it back to the ref.
He was trying to embarrass me—and I loved it.
When I sat down, I ignored every murderous glare from every woman in the VIP section around me. Who gave a shit about them?
Griffin had made his preferences perfectly clear.
Griffin
I was off.
As I threw a punch, then a roundhouse kick, I tried in vain to clear my mind.
All those hours of training with Riley before the tournament and I’d been utterly and completely focused. I’d hit all my marks; my strikes had been up to speed. Then, the moment I got in the ring, something was just…off.
Well, if you wanted to get nitpicky, I’d lost my concentration the moment I’d seen Sadie in the press ready room.
What the hell was she wearing? When I asked her to get a dress, I hadn’t thought she’d be out to take my dick in her hand in front of ten thousand people. She looked like a complete goddamned knock out, her tits ready to fall out at any minute. I kept wanting to look at her, to really look at her.
But that shit was impossible when some guy was trying to take my head off.
He was good.
Almost got me in a headlock not once, but twice—then again, I wasn’t quite on top of my game. When the round went past twenty seconds, even I was exasperated with me. My moves were sluggish, and instead of concentrating on the man in front of me, I was concentrated on the golden haired beauty across the stadium.
In a fit of frustration, I lashed out, kicking my opponent’s feet from beneath him before catching him across the jaw with a powerful blow.
He was out like a light, and the crowd roared.
But I only had eyes for Sadie.
As the ref held my hand above my head, I spit out my mouthpiece, weaving and bobbing until I finally caught her eye. I jerked my head backwards towards the locker rooms before I was ushered off the stage and hoped she got the message.
The next round of the tournament started right after I stepped down, and I strode into the maze of back rooms behind the stadium. The next two guys to fight were both pros—Joey Yates and Magnus Wright. I beat Yates by knockout but Magnus is a big guy. He’d never picked me for a fight and I wasn’t too eager to go toe to toe with him either. If he got disqualified early, I wouldn’t have to, but, somehow, I doubted that would be the case.
I watched his fight start on the monitors backstage, wincing as he almost immediately knocked out of few of Yate’s teeth. To his merit, Yates kept his feet and rushed at him, and they went at it like fucking men.
I, however, rocked on the balls of my feet, watching the match with half my attention.
It was five long minutes before Sadie finally strutted down the hallway towards me, and I took her in from head to toe like a leopard stalking its prey.
Goddamn.
That dress hugged her every curve, the deep V of the neckline dropped almost to her waist. Her hair was perfectly coiffed, and those scarlet red lips…
She waltzed right up to me, cool as a fucking cucumber, before jutting a hand out on a hip to arch her brow imperiously at me. “You needed me, Griffin?”
Understatement of the century.
Without a word, I yanked her into the nearest available rub down room, locking the door behind us. There was little in the room besides the actual massage table and a shelf of towels, but I didn’t need much. “You fucking minx.” I could barely get the words out, I was so goddamned hard. “I haven’t been able to think straight since that little stunt you pulled at the press conference.”
“Stunt?” she replied innocently, unable to keep from smiling slightly. “I waved at you, Griffin.”
Taking hold of her hips, I hoisted her upwards to carry her over to the massage table. “You eye-fucked me.”
Breathless laughter burst from her lips a moment before I dropped to me knees before her, shoving her dress up over her hips. Beneath, she wore a minute scrap of white lace that made me snarl. “You’re going to pay, Sadie.”
Without any pretense, I shoved my face between her legs.
Sadie let out a shriek that echoed around the small room. Within an instant, the thin material of her panties was drenched with both my attentions and her readiness, and I yanked it aside to get at the sweet cream beneath.
Sweet fucking Sadie in such an ungodly position, her knees over my shoulders as I ate at her like a man starved.
That would teach her.
My tongue slid over the creamy cleft of her before fastening onto her clit, licking and sucking hungrily.
“Griffin!” She gasped, squirming against the table. “Fuck, Griffin! Be gentle!”
“Should have thought about that before you wore this damn dress,” I rasped, my tongue flicking at the tiny bud of her pleasure. I nipped at her thigh and she yelped as I turned her over onto her stomach, careful of her injured arm.
The massage table was built to have someone lie prone with a hole for their face. That hole was convenient enough for one of Sadie’s knees, and I guided it there, leaving her standing on one leg and beautifully spread for me.
I barely took the time to free my cock from my shorts before I was thrusting into her, driving her hips flush against the table. She screamed my name, clutching at the opposite corner with her good hand as I seated myself. “Fuck,” I groaned, my eyes momentarily rolling backwards in my head.
She was always so wet and hot and goddamned perfect.
But right now, unfortunately, I couldn’t linger. Leaning over her, I reached forward, spreading her lower lips to find her clit, right above where we were joined. “Sorry, baby. Gotta make this quick.”
I fucked her hard and fast, the wet sound of our fucking filling the room as the mirror steamed up. Every time I filled her, Sadie let out a strangled cry, and I showed her little mercy. I delved hard and deep with every stroke, until the leg she stood on was trembling and her juices were sliding down her thighs. Her inner muscles soon started spasming around me, clenching at me almost desperately, and I knew she was close.
I put more pressure on her clit, rubbing firmly as my thrusts migrated the table across the room. “Come for me, Sadie. Come now.”
My sweet thing didn’t disappoint me. She seized up around me so tightly I thought I might have died and gone to heaven, milking my orgasm from me in long, satisfying spurts. A silken sheen of liquid gushed down her thighs and I groaned at the sight of it as she all but wailed in pleasure.
When I pulled out of her, Sadie’s legs wavered for a long
moment before collapsing completely and I caught her to pick her up and set atop the massage table once more. Her expression was dazed and well fucked, and she tried to glare at me as she caught her breath. “You’re a monster.”
I grinned wickedly as I reached past her for a towel to hand to her. “And you’re a mess. Gushing all over the place. Sweet squirting Sadie.”
She threw the towel at my head and I figured that was a good time to take my leave.
God, I loved that woman.
On my way out, I glanced at the monitors and saw, unsurprisingly, that Wright had beat Yates by knockout.
