by Meg Maguire
She was staring. She didn’t care. Rich’s body, tight with desire and undulating with this basest of labors, was the most exciting thing she’d ever seen. Watching him stirred her arousal as much as the rough stroke of his erection between her legs.
She held his shoulders, his muscles restless against her palms. “Rich.”
“Tell me you thought about this.”
“I did.” At times when I shouldn’t have. Long after I’d decided it was a lost cause.
“I thought about you in every crappy motel I crashed in between here and San Diego.”
Simple flattery or the truth? All those nights she’d conjured him prowling across her covers on his hands and knees...had he been imagining something similar, three thousand miles away? She realized she didn’t care if it was a line. She felt that desire burning down at her in this strange room, and that was truth enough.
His arms were warm, roped with locked muscle. His cock was just as hard, just as hot, dragging with maddening friction along her lips and clit. The glow leaking from the gym made his skin gleam, reminding her how it shone under the bright lights of an arena.
She snaked her arm between them, and when her hand closed around his erection, he stilled his hips. She rubbed him through his shorts, just to feel it—this one part of the male body that even fighting wasn’t crude enough to expose. He began to move, the rhythm of his hips matching her strokes, quickening the contact.
She expected an arrogant remark from this brash man, a rough hand clamped over hers, forcing the touch and asking, You like that, don’t you? But his only sentiments were excitement and desperation, broadcast in every ragged breath.
This is actually happening. Rich Estrada was hers, somehow. Hard in her hand and panting with need. Wanting her.
She let him go and cupped his face with both hands, shuddering as he took control of the friction. “You feel so good.”
A tight laugh. “I promise the way I pictured this, I at least got us into a bed.”
“Me, too.”
But reality felt better. Urgent. A little twisted. And she had him just as she’d wanted—above her, in charge, pleasuring her with gruff, powerful strokes, even if those strokes drove him against her, not inside.
She rolled her hips, lengthening every motion, dragging the pleasure out, out, out. Her core gave a hungry squeeze and she imagined how good he’d feel, stripped save for the barest skin of latex, excitement buried deep, her sex slick from how badly she wanted him.
“Rich.”
“Yeah. Come on.” No smooth words of seduction, but so exactly what she wanted to hear in that harsh accent.
Hand on his shoulder, the other arm locked around his waist, she held on for dear life, filling her lungs with his scent, her ears with his low moans and ragged breaths. Reality blurred until the only force in the world was this pull, this hot ache boiling inside her, this man the only person who could end the wanting. Her hips sought the friction, chasing what her sex demanded. He read her cues and gave everything she asked for.
When she came, it was from that—from that sensation of being given this pleasure, and from his mastery of his body. Sensation gathered in a knot, drawn tight and hot, fraying and finally coming undone, one snapping thread at a time. She hugged him tight, quaking against the cruel pressure of his cock. As she cried out, he went still, sparing her anything more than his hot weight against her swollen lips through the wet cotton.
Her chest was heaving. She registered her nails biting into his back and released him, embarrassed. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
He let her catch her breath, though she felt his desire throb against her with every beat of his heart, his sexuality a living, breathing force.
She stroked his hair. “You...now.”
He started slowly, testing her. Within a minute she was desensitized and he resumed his earlier pace. In the wake of her orgasm, desire built anew, but it was his needs she wanted satisfied. And to see this capable, brazen man rendered helpless, if only for a few seconds.
She memorized the flex of his hips with her palms as her eyes took in that face, strained from something so different than combat...yet the expression so nearly identical. His lids were heavy, but every breath or two, that penetrating gaze broke through.
Who on earth are you? This man she barely knew, yet whose body felt so right. She held on, watching as he came apart.
“Oh.” He pressed his cheek to hers, overcome.
With a desperate grunt, he reached between them, pushed his shorts down and freed his cock. She felt the smooth, slick skin of his crown, then heat lashed her belly as he came.
His groans faded, muscles falling slack. Suddenly it was just the two of them, in this dim, silent room, ripe with the smell of sex.
She held his arms, feeling crazed, and saw that frenzy mirrored in those dark eyes.
Rich leaned over the armrest and grabbed his jettisoned shirt, wiping Lindsey’s skin.
She studied his gorgeous face while he was distracted. His breathing’s just the same when he’s spent from fighting.
Tossing the shirt aside, Rich settled on his forearms, dropping his chest and face to hers. He brushed their lower lips together, back and forth, and laughed, barely more than an exhalation.
She stroked his hair. “Well.”
A proper kiss, then he leaned back, glancing around the room. “This place’ll never look the same again.”
A silly wave of pride accompanied his words. Why she should feel surprised, she wasn’t sure. He’d told her he’d thought about her. Why shouldn’t he remember them fooling around, weeks or months or maybe even years from now? Perhaps every time he set foot in this room.
With a quick, sure motion, Rich flipped them and hauled her sideways on his lap, sitting up as the recliner snapped to attention. He held her under the knees and shoulders, as though he’d just carried her across a threshold. He kissed her mouth, his vibe playful once more. The desperate version of this man was fading, locked away behind the carefree shell.
Had she lost him, just like that?
Needing a distraction, she ran her hand over the squiggly black characters tattooed down his ribs. “What does this say?”
“That’s the first thing I learned to say in Thai. It translates to something like, ‘Who do I get to hit next?’”
“You were there a year?”
He nodded, fingertips grazing up and down her arms. “Got my ass handed to me for the first month. Everybody wanted to fight the gigantic American farang. Went from being a pretty damn good boxer to getting beat shitless by teenagers who were a foot shorter than me. Most humbling experience of my life.”
“Rich Estrada, humble?”
He kissed her. “Don’t tell anybody.”
She touched the ink on his shoulder, slipped her palm down the gulley of his back, where the largest design hid, all these eclectic passport stamps.
But the thought of him leaving again... It made her sad. It also made her feel warm and hungry and possessive. Her chances with this man were limited. Hell, they might amount to no more than this evening. It made her want him with a fierceness she’d never experienced.
His fingers dawdled, playing with her sweat-damp hair, and he kissed her throat. A happy sound hummed through her neck.
She toyed with his hair. “What?”
He met her eyes, smirking. “You thought about me, huh? This past year?”
She blushed. “Yeah. I did.”
“All this time.”
She nodded. She ached for him to return the confession again, cement the mutuality she’d felt earlier, believing this longing had been two-way. But all she got was a smugly cocked eyebrow and a self-satisfied smile. Rich the performer.
Or...or was that other Rich the performer? The one who�
�d professed ten months’ infatuation? Was this the real him, this shameless scoundrel not a persona after all?
What had just happened had meant something to her, for better or worse. But to Rich, it was entirely possible it had been nothing more that the latest in a long string of impulsive encounters. She needed to remember what the two of them were, first and foremost—friends. Friends who happened to want desperately to wind up in bed together. A perfectly fine thing to be. No need to get hung up, wishing it could be more.
Only, she so completely did wish that.
“It’s late,” she said.
“Yeah.”
He let her legs go, and once Lindsey had made it to her feet, he did the same. He cinched his drawstring as she slid her pants up her legs. Unison, good. Let this all look equal. Let him believe she felt as he surely did—checkbox ticked, curiosity satisfied. Let him think this had been simple to her, too. That she wouldn’t get a stomachache, waiting to run into him again, having no clue what—if anything—she meant to him.
She knew what he meant to her. A stranger in many ways, yet this man affected her as none had before.
He pulled out his phone and opened an app. “I’ll get us a cab.”
She tugged on her top and smoothed her hair. “Good idea.”
She’d spent the past couple years compartmentalizing emotions where she and Brett were concerned—surely she could do the same with Rich. She wasn’t some sloppy romantic, not the way Jenna was. Her heart was her commodity to guard and offer, not some external entity that a man like Rich could seize when it suited him and return when he was done, tender and smudged with bruises.
He found himself a clean shirt from the locker room, and they made their way upstairs, standing side by side in the balmy August night.
Lindsey didn’t know how she felt anymore. A little embarrassed, still thoroughly smitten. And sleeping in her new bed, in her new room, with Rich lying somewhere beneath her...
She wasn’t going to be making sense of this tangle anytime soon. Not as long as that body was within ten miles of hers. To say nothing of ten feet.
8
RICH ROSE EARLY, not rested enough but eager to start his day—to get his mind focused and his body lost in the endless to-dos of training.
He started the coffee and woke his sister, then kissed her goodbye at the curb outside Wilinski’s at five-thirty.
Time for work. Time to get his thoughts off Lindsey—her body and her smell, her soft skin under his palms, her voice in the dark of the gym.
He’d needed last night. Needed the release and simplicity of sex, and a chance to feel like a man again, after the way his injury had castrated him. A hit of the crowd’s admiration shining up from those blue eyes.
Sex was great. Lindsey was great. She was special, even—too special to treat like some fuck-buddy from the office upstairs, even if that was all he was to her. But special or not, she didn’t fit into his plans. She couldn’t stay lodged in his brain like a splinter, niggling at him night and day. Maybe in some alternative universe where Rich had only himself to worry about, or an imaginary future when his sister and mother were secure and he was free to start some new family... But that wasn’t the reality he lived in.
In reality, he was sidelined for months and earning a fraction of what he had been. His focus had to be singular, homed in on his recovery and nothing else.
With twenty minutes before the gym was due to open, he poked through the computer system. Scaring up members and hunting down dues had been Mercer’s arena since Monty’s passing, but after fifteen-plus years in this basement, Rich knew his way around the books. He pulled up the file where Mercer tracked their active membership, pleased to find it had gone up a healthy fraction since he’d last looked. He jotted new names, then slid open the filing cabinet by his foot and flipped through the applications.
Every form had a slot for referrals and goals, where new members were asked what brought them to Wilinski’s and what they hoped to get out of training, be it a pro career or simply a good workout. Rich pulled the newest members’ files, and laughed aloud when the very first one confirmed his egotistical suspicions.
Written in the referrals space was “Want to train where Estrada does.”
Others mentioned him, too. The happy, queasy feeling in his middle didn’t have much to do with arrogance, he realized. It was pride, to be staring at proof that he was giving back, even as an absentee. Always in the background these past ten months had been the guilt—he’d kept his mother and sister foremost on his mind, but this place was family, too. It lifted a weight to believe he’d done good, after all. He might be the most half-assed trainer the gym had ever boasted, but he was attracting new members, even if he wasn’t mentoring any.
At six he propped the doors open, and the mood carried him through the morning sessions. He couldn’t do much more than hop around, holding targets and shouting orders, but he did it with more energy than he usually mustered this early in the morning.
At one o’clock he spotted Maya coming down the steps from the foyer. Mercer was holed up in the office, meeting with the web designer he’d hired to haul the gym into the twenty-first century. Rich couldn’t tackle much of the tidying up on crutches, so the girl was welcome to the cash. Though she looked less than enthused to be here.
Rich swung himself toward the entrance to meet her. “Glad to see your smiling face.”
“I wasn’t smiling.”
“And I wasn’t serious. But I’m still happy to see you. I got a disgusting job to get done and you’re just the woman to help me.”
“Great.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ll never get used to how nasty this place smells.”
“Oh. Did no one tell you? It’s a boxing gym.”
She rolled her eyes. Ah, the charms of youth. “Not much of a gym.”
“It’s got showers and rings and shit to hit. That’s all you need in a gym. Anything more’ll make you soft.” A lie, kind of. Rich had experienced some of the nicest MMA camps in the country this past year, and Wilinski’s could stand a few more of their amenities. But in essence, he meant what he said. If fancy gyms made the best fighters, the UFC would be packed with nothing but rich guys who could afford to start at the top, and that simply wasn’t the case.
“So what do I have to do?”
“Tuesdays are quiet, and we’re overdue for a hardcore scrub-down. You’re gonna help me lift these mats, one section at a time, then we’re disinfecting everything. Top, bottom, floor, everything.”
“That’s sounds terrible.”
He smiled. “Oh, it is.”
Rich shifted everyone to a different section of the floor, and Maya took his orders, filling a couple buckets with diluted antiseptic solution. It wasn’t glamorous, but it felt good to get on his knees and just scrub, foot forgotten. It reminded him of being a kid. His parents couldn’t afford the membership, but his mom had begged her way into some deal with Monty Wilinski, so Rich got to train at a discount if he helped with this stuff on the weekends. It was humbling then, but now, not so much. This place had done so much for him, scouring this floor felt oddly like a penance.
Maya was less Zen about the task. Her face was red within a minute and she insisted the solution was giving her a rash.
“I’m counting how many times you complain,” Rich said. “When I get to five, you’re finishing on your own.”
That shut her up.
Miserable as she was...there was something there. That willful gleam in her eye that told Rich she might hate every second of this job, but she wouldn’t quit until these mats were as fresh as the day they’d been delivered. He fought for money, she cleaned for it. And though neither pursuit was pretty, both stuck at their duties for more than just a check.
The time came to turn the mats over, and Rich couldn’t hazard the task
one-legged—Maya was on her own. They were connected in sections, each weighing at least eighty pounds, and a flexible, slick eighty pounds at that. They twisted when she attempted to flip them, fell back on her or slipped from her hands. But she didn’t bitch. She didn’t quit, not even when some of the guys working out laughed, watching as the mats flopped back on her for the umpteenth time. There was hate in her eyes, but she channeled it away from a tantrum and into an ugly strain of determination. Rich wouldn’t have expected he and Maya Tuttle had anything in common aside from a home state and an attitude problem, but there it was—that grudgelike persistence, that screw-you streak that came out when someone expected them to quit.
He liked this kid.
Once the mats were done and the gym smelled more bleachy than usual, he rattled off a fresh list of tasks. “And don’t drag your feet just because you’re paid by the hour. I got my eye on you.”
Maya set to the jobs with a mighty sigh, scuffing toward the spent water cooler jugs, literally dragging one foot. Rich shook his head with a smile.
The afternoon sessions were winding down right as Maya wrapped her final chore. Rich stopped by the equipment closet, then approached her, hand behind his back. “Good work. Got a reward for you.”
She wiped her sweaty brow with a forearm. “Oh, goodie. Do I get to clean the toilets with a toothbrush?”
He tossed a pair of gloves at her chest and she caught them.
“I have to disinfect these, too?”
“Nope. You gotta put those on.”
“This is a reward how?”
“Free lesson with a bona fide celebrity fighter.”
Her expression was deeply unimpressed and Rich shot her a withering look. “You’re still on the clock. Humor me.”
She tugged the gloves on and fastened the straps, squeezing her fists open and closed. “How many other people have worn these?”
“You don’t wanna know. C’mere.” He led her to the heavy bags. “Your sister’s no slouch, so I got some faith in you.”
