Just for Christmas Night

by Lisa Marie Perry

“It means,” Joaquin said casually, “I gave Uncle Jules enough cash to cover the cost of a new bag.”

  “Plus a new pair of sweats, ’cause I’m pretty sure he pissed his.” Tor reached around his wife to slap Joaquin’s shoulder. “Man, let me tell you what. Whoever was in that building left with zero doubt about who’s going to leave the Garden Arena a champion.”

  “Let them doubt. It doesn’t change what I need to do and how I get it done.”

  Brit slid her phone from her purse and started swiping and tapping. “Someone posted the vid online.” Then she swore, the word hardly audible over the live band’s saxophone. “Um, Joaquin. If you intend to do to Eliáš Brazda what you did to that bag, tell me so I can stay home with all the TVs off.”

  He laughed. “Brazda’s more durable than that.”

  A waitress finally delivered menus and silk napkins, then another followed up with two bowls of strawberries.

  A sexy long-legged woman whose every feature was now imbedded in his memory waved from a few tables away. “Not that I don’t love jazz, but I’m calculating the probability of being fed before midnight.”

  “Come over,” Brit encouraged. “We have food.”

  “Truly? I was beginning to think food was a glorious myth here.” Martha discreetly met Joaquin’s eyes through the shadows. Is this okay with you?

  In answer, he shifted to the side, and then she was beside him in a silver dress that hung off one shoulder. Tor and Brit were on the opposite side of the tall brick table.

  Brit slid a bowl of strawberries to them. “Tonight must be exciting for the Blues. Congrats on the win.”

  “Thank you,” Martha said graciously. “I’m celebrating by starving in a restaurant called Appetite.”

  Tor and Brit chuckled, but tension coiled around Joaquin and he remained silent.

  “Tough crowd.” Martha glanced away from him and gave the couple a soft, hesitant smile. “My jokes are usually funnier. The extreme hunger is messing up my delivery. I could grab a fast-food burger and come back on fiyah.”

  “Don’t mind the beast beside you,” Brit said, teasing. “We’re sticking out the grand opening experience.”

  “Brit’s going to be the first one to give up. Heels this high.” Tor held his hands a good six inches apart. “Or it might be Joaquin. All-day workout topped off with heavy-bag murder.”

  Before Joaquin realized what was unfolding, Martha had Brit’s phone in her hand and was replaying the video. “What’d the bag steal from you?”

  It was a joke, but he heard the seriousness hidden in her words. “It’s just what fighters do, Martha.”

  His duty was to remember what he was, to make sure she remembered. The text message she’d sent him the day after Christmas remained dangerous and erotic on his phone.

  It triggered memories of her pliant body in his bed and her naughty mouth on his skin.

  You might be good to her, but you’re not good for her.

  But the thought began to fade when he shared his menu with her, continued fading as they ordered dessert and hard liquor, disintegrated completely when she splintered him with one of those rich arm-patting laughs.

  Life was laughter and flaws and dreams for Martha. She weakened his resolve, but at the same time strengthened some other indiscernible part of him.

  She loved. She trusted.

  She was brave that way, and he a damn coward underneath his cold perfection.

  His phone vibrated, and he darted a glance from the screen to the woman beside him. Her fingers sheltered her phone, and she was carrying on a conversation with Tor and Brit.

  Forget what I texted about the mistletoe. I made you uncomfortable?

  Joaquin inconspicuously replied, Turn my way and answer that.

  Noticing her phone glow beneath her palm, he angled his hard body toward her and responded to something Brit said.

  A soft vibration had him checking his phone.

  We said one night.

  Quickly, he typed.

  Were we wrong again?

  A subtle glance through the candlelight, then Martha was turning her phone facedown on the table and going for a bite of her gooey dessert.

  Okay. Just because he’d asked didn’t mean he would get the answer he wanted.

  Swiping a chilled strawberry, he bit into it and watched her address Tor’s question about wild-card weekend.

  And he stopped chewing as his periphery found her fingers slipping carefully off the table and drifting to his crotch.

  Oh, damn… Swallowing, he studied her profile as she explored the front of his pants with firm, quick strokes. Zipper to thigh. Harder, slower.

  Taking another strawberry, he brought it to his mouth and used the other hand to cover Martha’s.

  One night. Christmas night. It was supposed to release him, yet it hadn’t.

  Joaquin stared at the curve of her lips, stole a glimpse of that tight, rounded ass. One night of feeling the silky softness of her thighs, of taking hold of her mouth with his, of hearing his name on her shattered moans?

  No, he couldn’t go out like that.

  Rays of candlelight streaked Martha’s face, but he had a perfect view of her bottom lip rolling between her teeth then reemerging wet. His hand tightened on hers, then he moved it off his crotch.

  A heartless bastard, a machine, shouldn’t be this caught up. He shouldn’t want her more than he’d wanted his ex-fiancée. He shouldn’t be thinking she was right for him, because he wasn’t right for her.

  Facing the table again, Joaquin knocked back a shot and let his cousin lead him into a conversation about the prefight media workout.

  “Repeat what you did at the gym today, and they’re going to lose it,” Tor predicted, taking down a third shot. “What brought that on?”

  “Want.”

  Tor and his wife wore surprised expressions, while Martha seemed to be strangely close to tearing up the way she had at her parents’ dinner when he’d given her a candy cane.

  “Want?” Brit repeated. “Wanting to win?”

  “Wanting something I can’t have.”

  His cousin gave a snort of disbelief. “That Venom you took out on Christmas says you’ve got just about everything you want.”

  “Just about.” Joaquin reached for a napkin, seizing an opportunity to touch Martha’s hand—the hand she’d just had on his body. Her fingers grazed his.

  “Quite a motivator,” Brit commented, and breezed on to praise the coconut concoction on her plate.

  That launched a conversation about food, and Joaquin hung back, preoccupied with the way Martha’s palms lay flat on either side of her dessert plate.

  Fixated on her, he reached for a strawberry. Pinched the luscious, supple fruit between his fingers. Cautiously brought it down, over the edge of the table…lower still, until he brushed Martha’s thigh.

  Watching her fingers splay, he knew her thighs were imitating the movement. He envied the strawberry as it skimmed her. When it reached her core, he maneuvered the string of lace aside and nudged the strawberry deeper.

  Martha’s fingers curled; the tendons on her hands tautened. He stroked her with the fruit, not stopping, not retreating, until her hands started to shake. And when she gripped the table, he felt her control slip.

  “You okay?” Brit asked Martha, squinting through the jump of candlelight and glaring beams of red light crisscrossing the bar.

  Martha’s gaze landed on his.

  As slickly as he’d maneuvered the strawberry off the table, he brought it up…and bit into it.

  “Oh.” Unsteadily, she rubbed her throat. “I—I need to get some, um, air.”

  Joaquin laughed.

  “Want me to walk with you?” Brit offered.

  “Finish your dessert.” Martha plucked a strawberry from the bowl, started to stagger toward the exit. “Joaquin can take me.”

  “Want me to?”

  A solemn, powerless nod. “Yes.”

  Taken. That was exactly it. She was
taken. So was he. Completely captured, too far gone.

  And so damn wrong.

  *

  They made it to The Grey Crusade, escaping to the arched recessed wall of a corridor boasting a wrought-iron art easel displaying a concert announcement.

  It hit the floor with a clatter, bumped off balance from the impact of Martha’s butt as she scaled Joaquin.

  What passion was this? It infused her with a wildness and defenselessness she’d never encountered, couldn’t handle. It bit, scratched, raged. All she could do was grip and ride—the passion and the man who tempted it. One arm around his shoulders, the other pulling his shirt, she said through ragged sighs, “I wanted to move on. I wanted to let go.”

  “Not yet,” he growled, pushing her dress up to clutch her ass as she folded her legs around his waist. “Not while I’m still here.” He kissed her hard. “Not when I can’t let you go, either.”

  “Okay.” She’d break her own heart to give up a few more weeks of this…of him. Flesh to flesh, vulnerabilities exposed, nothing to hide except her love. “After the fight, we stop being crazy.”

  His mouth on her neck, his hands tight on her bottom as he buried himself deep inside her, he echoed, “After the fight.”

  Chapter 12

  Lockdown sucked. Avery’s foster mom had never been as livid as she was the night Avery had run away from Faith House. Renata was so weak that some days she couldn’t leave her bed, but on that night she’d had her son chauffeur her through Las Vegas, searching, until Avery had been found.

  If Avery had planned every detail right, she would’ve had a solid head start—would’ve gotten much farther than Hadland Park, where she’d caught a side stitch and had cried herself to sleep.

  DFS was on her ass, and now that school had resumed, counselors were stalking her—showing up in her classes, haunting the cafeteria, making sure she wouldn’t bolt.

  Renata had grounded her, restricting her to the condo and school. No television, which meant no Food Network. No Faith House, which was all gravy, anyway, because she’d be too mortified to show up there again. Who’d welcome her back after she’d stolen a pair of shoes from a donation bin and bitch-screamed at a tutor?

  The only benefit to her epic fail was that Patrick had backed off with the rude comments and general asshattery. Maybe it had something to do with social workers crawling the place like ants. Or maybe he realized that she wasn’t going to stick around to be picked on anymore.

  So today, when Patrick had given her cash and asked her to bring home tacos after school, she’d been jazzed to kiss lockdown buh-bye.

  Enjoying freedom, she ordered Patrick’s takeout and an extra taco for herself, sat alone at a table in the restaurant and ate as the sunset died outside the window.

  The taco restaurant’s distance from the condo tacked an extra fifteen minutes to her commute, but Patrick could warm up his food or eat it cold. After she handed over the tacos and his change, she would check on Renata then finish her homework in her bedroom.

  At the condo, she set the tacos and money on the entryway table, hoisted the strap of her textbook-stuffed tote bag over her shoulder and found the place oddly quiet. Between Renata, her son and her nurse, Avery was never left alone.

  Where was Patrick? The nurse?

  Walking through the living room, she did a double take. Her blood iced.

  No… An interior door was propped against a wall, missing its hinges and knob. A few feet away lay the knob. It was brass, with a lock.

  Avery’s instinct was to go straight for the front door, but she instead thundered through the condo to Renata’s room. She’d wake her and finally show her who Patrick was.

  Barreling into her foster mom’s bedroom, she skidded to a stop. Renata wasn’t there. “Renata?” Crap, why was her voice so shallow? Why did her stomach hurt so much? “Renata!”

  Swallowing past the fear in her throat, she went to her room. Relief soaked her. Her stuff—what was left of it, anyway—remained how she’d left it all this morning.

  Jostled from behind, Avery tripped into the room. “Hey!” Regaining her balance, steadying herself on the desk chair, she glared at Patrick. “Where’s Renata?”

  “With her nurse. The tacos are cold.”

  “Use the microwave,” she said, her voice so uneven she hardly recognized it. “Put my door up.”

  “Can’t bring home a decent taco. Can’t go to tutoring without causing a scene. Can’t keep yourself out of trouble.” He advanced, crossing the threshold, catching her by the front of her jacket. “Avery Paige. What can you do?”

  “Leave.” That’s what he’d better do, and if he didn’t, she would—and she would never come back. Whatever safety she’d once had here was gone.

  “No, Avery.”

  Run.

  Flinging the chair at him, she spun and raced for the fire escape.

  *

  Martha was bringing a crowd to Club Indiscretion, the nightclub and pavilion hosting the Las Vegas Slayers’ pre-divisional game celebration. The last member of her party to be collected, she was met with a chorus of cheers when she sashayed out to the Hummer limo in a couture snakeskin minidress, her tallest stilettos and a row of diamond biceps bracelets on one arm.

  The vehicle was roomy and plush and provided ultra comfort for her guests. Settling in between Soixante Neuf waitress Odette and Leigh Bridges’s boyfriend, Bart, she asked the group, “How do I look?”

  “Hot,” Bart said, and when his girlfriend laughed, he added, “She asked.” Confused, he rubbed the back of his neck and looked to Gideon, the only other male, with a shrug that pleaded, “Help me out here.”

  Gideon glanced at his date Chelle. “Is it kosher to tell a girl she’s hot in front of your date?”

  “Depends on your date.” Chelle, who’d quickly given up her forced crush on Enzo the cook, had come to Martha’s office to beg for an insta-date for the company celebration. Since Gideon was usually up for anything with free drinks and hot music, he’d been all good with coming to Las Vegas for the weekend and escorting Chelle and Odette.

  In fact, as he eyed Chelle now, he appeared a little too all good. Martha found herself in a predicament, securing Chelle a date without being upfront about her friend’s true sexual orientation and struggles with labels. Chelle’s issues were hers to publicize or keep under lock and key, but there was Gideon to consider, too.

  As the conversation coasted over Martha, she thought back to her own struggles with labels when she’d felt too alone and afraid to empower herself. All water under the Brooklyn Bridge, she liked to think when the memories seeped through. Must’ve staunched them too late, because she suddenly didn’t have a taste for the limo’s appetizers and booze.

  Club Indiscretion was all class and promiscuity, stamped with the sponsor’s silver-and-bloodred team colors. Gourmet food was available inside the nightclub, and both it and the pavilion offered an array of liquor.

  Security combed the premises and bouncers flanked every entrance, but determined paparazzi still finagled their way inside to be hustled out again.

  Tonight was not only a celebration of the team’s accomplishment, but it was to Martha a reward to reap for the hours she’d invested in securing the concert headliner.

  Yesterday at the administrative building, her parents had journeyed to S-Dubs to shake her hand in commendation for the accomplishment and her apparent attitude that only the best was acceptable for a Slayers event.

  Martha had worked tirelessly to get what she wanted, but in the end, DZ Haze’s stubbornness had forced her to call on the ace up her sleeve.

  Hair tamed into a Grecian-inspired style and makeup unflawed, Martha walked through the nightclub to greet her ace with a warm smile. “Glad you could make it,” she said to her ex-brother-in-law, Marion Reeves.

  Personally, she thought him an unfaithful asshole deserving of someone who was exactly like him. Yet professional interests begged her to shower the music mogul with respect. He’d in
fluenced DZ Haze to honor his commitment to the event, and Martha had invited him and a guest to a gratis VIP night.

  Only, as she realized the congregation of suited men and refined women behind him were his idea of “a guest,” he was intending on getting the absolute most of the courtesy.

  “You didn’t tell your people that I’m a part of the VIP experience, did you, Marion?” she asked him discreetly after a third man in his party tried to spirit her off to the dance floor.

  “No,” Marion denied. “They see a beautiful young woman and wanna know what’s wrapped up in that tight dress.”

  “That’s for me to know and no one here to find out,” she said.

  “I don’t roll with scrubs,” Marion told her. “Any of these men deserves a good woman. Marshall and Tem raised three, and you’re the last one standing single.”

  “Didn’t you let one of them go?” she returned pointedly, but in the sweetest of tones.

  “That’d be the one coming up behind you now?” Marion bowed slightly and the club’s lights glared down on his bald head.

  Martha steeled herself for the fallout, but hoped Danica wouldn’t ream her out in a jam-packed nightclub during a team event.

  But Danica marched past her. “Marion, you and your group need to leave. The Blues are sponsoring an event here tonight. Club Indiscretion’s closed to the public.”

  One of Marion’s security hulks stepped forward. “Is there a situation?”

  Danica’s hip slipped and angry fire flickered in her eyes. “There will be if you don’t leave this venue.”

  “Danni,” Martha interfered, easing between the exes. “He’s not part of the ‘public.’ He and his crew are, uh, they’re invited guests. With a VIP booth.”

  “Why? Who did this?”

  “I issued the invite. It was business.”

  Danica stared, dumbstruck, then shook her head and hurried off in the direction of the teeming pavilion.

  Arranging for Marion and his guests to be well-handled during the celebration, Martha introduced him to a member of the event concierge team who’d personally attend to his needs. Glad she wouldn’t have to deal with him further tonight—unless it was after too many vodka shots and she was yelling in great insulting detail her opinion on what he’d done to her sister—Martha wandered the spectacular grounds.