His hand slid over her hip and along the curve of her sex. Then he thrust one thick finger deep into her slippery entrance. Marcy cried out as arousal flooded her veins.
“So wet, and we’ve only just started.” He chuckled softly, pulling away. “Stay still and don’t turn around.”
She heard the clink of a belt buckle followed by the unmistakable slide of leather. Oh god. No. Looking back over her shoulder, she tried to find him in the shadows. “Jax—”
“Eyes forward.”
She turned her gaze back to the wall, and suddenly he was covering her with his body, his chest pressed against her back, his heat soaking into her skin, his scent enveloping her. Soothing.
“Does the idea of being spanked with the belt scare you?” His breath was hot and moist in her ear as he kicked her legs apart, sending streaks of white lightning straight to her core.
“Yes,” she whispered. “But it isn’t a limit for me.”
“A belt can be used for pleasure,” he murmured as he slid the doubled thickness of the belt between her legs, brushing the cool leather along the curve of her hot, wet sex. “Or pain. But you aren’t ready for that type of pain. Not yet.”
A thrill of fear shot through her, and she moaned at the deliciously erotic sensation of hard leather pressed against soft flesh. But her relief was short-lived. Jax dropped the belt and trailed the soft suede ends of a flogger down her arms.
“Has anyone used a flogger on you?”
Marcy swallowed hard, her gaze riveted to the soft black tails caressing her arm. “Yes. Once. But he was too gentle with it.” Now there was an understatement. Preston had wielded the flogger like a feather duster, barely touching her skin, tickling her until she wanted to scream with frustration.
He brushed the flogger over her hip, down her stomach, and then wiggled the tendrils over her bare sex. Marcy tilted her hips, seeking more sensation as moisture flooded her pussy.
“I won’t be gentle,” he said softly. “But I won’t go hard. Not as hard as I suspect you’d like. Definitely not hard enough to send you into subspace. That’s something we have to work up to. I just wanted to give you a taste. Gauge your reaction.”
“Punish me?” She couldn’t keep the hopeful note from her voice.
Jax laughed. “Oh yes. If that’s what you want, I’m more than happy to punish you. Do you remember your safe words?”
Marcy swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Red to stop. Yellow to slow down. Green to keep going.”
“Perfect. Now brace yourself.”
She barely had time to draw in a breath before she felt the soft thud of the flogger against her ass, a gentle pressure as if he was pushing her forward. He repeated the stroke on her other cheek, and then he started a soft, sensual rhythm, pausing only to brush the tips of the tails along her soaking folds.
Marcy’s body heated as he increased the pressure. Although her body registered pain, the sensation quickly morphed into pleasure. She cried out as need, fierce and unrelenting, crashed over her in a pulsing wave.
“Use your safe words if you need me to stop,” he murmured as he struck her again.
She inhaled deeply, breathing in the rich scent of his cologne—of him—and tried to steady herself. But despite her best efforts, a violent shudder shook her body, drawing her precariously close to climax.
“So responsive.” He smoothed his hand over the flaming skin of her ass and then followed the cleft to her folds. Slicking her moisture up and around her clit, he groaned. “God, Marcy. Knowing this gets you off … you don’t know what that does to me.”
He pulled away and struck her with a slow, steady rhythm that left her panting and aching with need. Her limbs turned liquid as sensation chased away all rational thought, spinning her away…
No. She wasn’t spinning. Or flying. Instead, she was cradled in Jax’s arms, safe and warm as he made his way across the room.
“We have to stop.” He spoke softly, half to himself. “I’ve already gone further than I wanted to go. I never imagined you’d respond so well.”
“Please, no…” She didn’t want him to stop. A fog hovered at the fringes of her consciousness, the promise of emotional release, a place where nothing mattered. She wanted him to take her there. Set her free.
He made love to her instead.
Gently, tenderly, he laid her on the soft down duvet covering his massive bed. As he stripped off her clothes, she caught glimpses of DIY and fight magazines strewn across the carpet. Protein shake tumblers and fight gear spilled out of the suitcase on his dresser.
Before she could ask any questions, his fingers skimmed over her abdomen, sending a renewed burst of endorphins singing through her veins. His hand followed the curve of her sex to stroke her wet entrance, and Marcy trembled under his touch, her questions giving way to the throb of desire between her thighs and the slide of cool silk over her burning skin.
“Jax, please.”
But he was in no hurry. He knew just how far he could take her, teasing her with his fingers, his lips, his tongue, stopping before she reached her peak, until she burned to have him inside her, out of her mind with need. And when he finally covered her with his body, slid his cock into her aching center, filling her completely, something shifted in the air between them. She lost the coach and found the man.
“Oh god.” Her breath caught as her inner walls stretched to accommodate him, a delicious pain. “You feel so good. Perfect.”
“I dream of you.” He dipped his head to nuzzle her neck. “When I’m in the shower, in bed, even running in the morning, I imagine you’re with me.” He inhaled deeply and nipped the sensitive skin between her neck and shoulder blade. “I catch your scent on my shirts, and it drives me crazy.”
He angled his hips, pulling out and then plunging even farther than before, ripping a gasp from her throat. She bit her lip at the exquisite sensation of having him so deep, buried to the hilt, connected to her in a way no one else had ever been, body and soul.
“I wanted you the moment I saw you.” He deepened his thrusts, his cock swelling, hardening with every stroke. “And as I got to know you, I wanted you even more.”
A bubble of emotion rose in Marcy’s chest, and she choked back a sob, even as she writhed beneath him.
“Tell me what you want.” His hand drifted down between her thighs, his thumb circling her clit. “There isn’t a need you have that I don’t want to fill.”
Desire, deep and dark, curled inside her, winding through her body like a ribbon. “Take me,” she whispered, lifting her hips to ease his way in. It was all she had to say. From the way his eyes glittered, hot with sensual promise, she knew he understood.
“I’ll take you. Every way I can get you.” He quickened his strokes, pinning her to the bed with each drive of his hips, letting her know there would be no escape unless he allowed it, no release until he gave it to her.
And he did. He hammered into her hard and fast, carrying her body to its peak with an unyielding relentlessness that took her breath away. With firm, gentle pressure, he stroked his thumb over her clit, and she came in a searing burst. Shattered. Heart, body, and soul united in overwhelming pleasure.
Acceptance.
As he followed her in release, she wondered what it would be like if he stayed in Seattle.
With her.
Forever.
* * *
It didn’t take long for the panic to set in.
He held her for an hour after he’d made love to her, and for fifty-five of those minutes, he was hard. Again.
If they were going to take their relationship further—and for the first time in ten years, he wanted something more than a casual affair—he’d be the one setting the limits. Marcy wanted it all—every sensation, every experience, everything he had to offer. She submitted with a trust that humbled him and a willingness that frightened him. His gut tightened with guilt. A relationship was based on mutual trust, and he had been keeping a secret from her far too lo
ng.
He shifted on the bed, and Marcy stirred, lifting her head and gazing at him, her eyes still heavy with passion.
“Do you still doubt you’re sexually submissive?” He stroked a hand along her back, and she dropped her head to his shoulder.
“No.” She spoke so quietly he almost didn’t hear her, but he caught the hesitation in her voice.
A wave of protectiveness washed over him as she nuzzled his neck. He had to tell her the truth. Not just because it was the right thing to do but because he couldn’t stand by and watch her throw herself into a fight that could very likely lead to serious injury, even death. He hadn’t been able to save his mother and sister, but he could damn well save Marcy. And then he could take the relationship forward with a clear conscience.
“It could be that the sexually submissive aspect of your personality is holding you back in the ring.” He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “When you’re forced into a submission, your natural instinct is to submit instead of fight. I saw it the first day we met, and I don’t think it’s something training will be able to overcome. Given who you are, you may not have what it takes to ultimately succeed as a fighter.”
For a long moment, she didn’t move, didn’t speak. His heart pounded in his chest, and when she stiffened and rolled away, he knew he’d made a mistake.
Maybe the biggest mistake of his life.
“I can’t believe you’re only telling me this now.” She wrapped the sheet around her and slid off the bed, and her voice took on a bitter tone. “All the time you were training me, you never believed I would succeed.”
Jax’s throat tightened. He had waited too long to tell her the truth, breaking the trust before it had even had a chance to take root.
“Did you know that was my biggest fear?” Her voice wavered as she searched for her clothes. “That I wasn’t really cut out to be a fighter? That I really was the failure my family believed me to be?”
“You’re not—”
She cut him off with a shake of her head. “You said what you had to say. Too damn late.”
While Marcy dressed, Jax tugged on his jeans in silence, uncharacteristically at a loss for words. Helpless in a way he hadn’t been since the death of his sister. But when she stalked toward the door, desperation loosened his tongue. “Wait.”
“You’re wrong.” She spun to face him, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “You think you know me, but you don’t. You’ve seen only the tiny piece of me I allowed you to see. We’ve fought and we’ve fucked, but we missed the part in the middle where I tell you all about me, and you tell me about you. You don’t know I bake cookies when I’m stressed or that I bite my nails when I’m sad. You don’t know I have a sister I haven’t spoken to in years and who I miss desperately. You don’t know that my favorite season is winter or that I’m into Thrash, or that I cry at airports or that my favorite thing to do is watch bad movies…” She paused and drew in a ragged breath, then stiffened her spine and swallowed.
“Marcy…” He took a step toward her, his stomach clenching when she backed away.
“And I know very little about you,” she said bitterly. “You keep your cards close to your chest. Even in your suitcase”—she waved her hand vaguely across the room—“there’s hardly anything that tells me who Jax is, what he likes, what makes him laugh or cry, what makes his heart sing—”
“You, Marcy. You make—”
Marcy shook her head, cutting him off. “I made a mistake trusting you before I really got to know you or let you get to know me. I thought I’d make it as a fighter because of you. But now I’m going to succeed despite you. I’m going to prove you wrong. Regardless of what you think is my true nature, I’m a fighter. I’m going to fight to beat this problem. And I’m going to win. But I’m going to do it alone.”
Chapter Ten
When Pam “the Punisher” Jones broke her arm trying to escape a kimura in an illegal underground smoker fight in the Menlo district, two things happened. First, she had to drop out as an alternate in the state championships. Second, Marcy squeaked into ninth place on the alternate list for the state championship. She needed one more win for a place on the list, and Reid knew a promoter who owed him a favor. The next day, Marcy’s name was on the card to fight in National 60’s big event.
Marcy had always thought she’d been training hard before, but the hours she’d spent in the gym were nothing compared to the hours Reid now demanded in the month-long lead-up to the event. The Callaghan brothers gave her a leave of absence from the store to train, and she moved in with Val to save on rent. Val was more than happy to have the company, especially when Marcy’s fighter friends started hanging around their place.
Part of her new training regime involved seeing a fight psychologist she’d found after an exhaustive search, but after a few sessions, Marcy had called it quits. Although she was able to help Marcy understand that there was nothing wrong with her kink, without any actual fight experience or a willingness to get in the ring, she wasn’t able to help Marcy deal with her problem in practice. In short, she wasn’t Jax.
And Jax was still around.
He had tried to call her after she’d fled his hotel room, even stopped by her house, but even after he’d apologized, Marcy had made it clear she wasn’t interested in seeing him again. She’d expected that was the last she would see of him, but Jax had other ideas.
Two week after their breakup, he showed up at the gym as Club Excelsior’s head coach.
When confronted by an irate Marcy, Reid explained he had decided to cut back on coaching and focus more on the administrative side of the business, and when Jax had approached him about working at the gym, the opportunity had been too good to pass up. Jax now had a rental apartment a few blocks away and had bought Reid’s old Jeep. He’d cancelled his contract in Miami and the rest of his contracts for the rest of the year for the sole purpose of being there for Marcy in whatever way she allowed him. According to Reid, he’d realized he had been wrong about her, and this time, he wasn’t running away.
Although Reid had assured her he would stay as her coach as long as she needed him, Marcy wondered if she should start looking for a new place to train after the National 60 event. Seeing Jax every day was a stress she didn’t need. Not only was it difficult to move on, the effort involved in avoiding him was taking its toll on her both mentally and physically. Jax respected her wish to be left alone, but she knew he was watching, and that, more than anything, made it impossible to erase the memories.
Had she been too harsh? Had her reaction been more about receiving a message she didn’t want to hear—and didn’t believe—rather than about receiving it too late? Over the next six weeks, she found herself watching him with the other fighters, remembering what it was like to have him on top of her, teasing her, drawing out her deepest desires and bringing them into the light. He had given up a lot for her, come back to make amends. Maybe she could open her heart just a bit to forgive him.
The night before the big event, Reid pronounced her ready, and Marcy agreed. She felt ready. Not only that, for the first time, she didn’t feel ashamed of who she was. Whether she won or lost, she would always be a fighter. And if she had a submissive side, she would fight that, too. But only in the ring.
After leaving the gym that night, she called her sister, Mel, for the first time in five years. They had always been close, but after she’d turned her back on Wall Street, where Mel now worked as an investment banker, they had drifted apart. She realized now it was because of her. If she’d accepted herself, maybe her family would have accepted her, too.
She told Mel about her career as a fighter and about the upcoming event. She’d never expected Mel to say she was proud of her. And she couldn’t hold back her tears when Mel said of course she’d be there to cheer her on.
* * *
Friday night. Fight night.
Marcy’s heart thudded in her chest as she climbed into the ring. Seattle’s KeyArena was packed f
or the National 60 event, and she tried to focus on the opponent in front of her instead of the glaring lights, the cheering crowds, or her sister in the front row beside a grinning Two Step.
And Jax was here. Although she couldn’t see him, Reid had told her he was in the crowd, and she was grateful for his presence. Knowing he believed in her and cared enough to give up his career to try and make amends made her feel warm inside, supported in a way she had never been at home. Loved.
Diane “the Demolisher” Bowman, so named because she had won most of her fights by knockout, warmed up in the opposite corner. Although they were evenly matched in weight, Bowman was taller and leaner with a long reach. But more than that, she was a known submission expert.
Marcy and Reid had studied Bowman’s technique all week, looking for weaknesses and ways to escape her brutal submission holds. Although they had made a game plan, Bowman was known for pulling off unexpected moves, and Marcy had prepared herself to improvise.
The first shot of adrenaline hit when the bell rang. Just as well. Bowman was quick off her feet, taking Marcy’s back and attempting to sink a chokehold. Marcy resisted, and Bowman turned it into a neck crank, tightening her grip. Marcy fought furiously, but the more she struggled, the tighter Bowman held on, and Marcy knew in her heart she was going to freeze.
“Yield to me.” The words whispered through her mind, and for the briefest second, she thought she saw Jax at the side of the ring, arms folded, legs apart, his favorite admonishing position. She closed her eyes and thought of the moment she had given him everything and how, for those few seconds, she had felt free.
No. Jax had encouraged her to fight the submission. She twisted and flailed in Bowman’s arms, raining useless blows as her air supply slowly dwindled.
Yield.
Maybe that was where Jax was wrong. Maybe, instead of fighting who she was, she should accept it and use it to her advantage.
So she did. And as her body relaxed into the submission, an overconfident Bowman loosened her grip.
Heart pounding at the unexpected opening, Marcy managed to untangle Bowman’s body lock and shake her opponent free. The crowd roared in approval. Gripping her opponent in a headlock, she rained punches on Bowman’s head and shoulders before setting up an arm bar. Bowman struggled against Marcy’s hold, alternating fists with brutal elbows, and as the round ticked down, she worked herself free. Finally slipping Marcy’s hold, Bowman spun around and knocked Marcy to the mat in a brutal double leg takedown, quickly locking Marcy in a triangle. But this time, Marcy was ready. Taking a deep breath, she slammed her way through and pinned her opponent until the time ran out.
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