by Vanessa Vale
Yeah, he was all bad boy and made my nipples hard. I hadn’t had this reaction to a guy in a long time. Perhaps ever. Perhaps it was time I reevaluated my social circle because I’d been missing out.
“It wasn’t you,” I said sheepishly.
He looked skeptical, especially when he arched one dark brow, and the corner of his full mouth tipped up.
“I have a problem with elevators,” I admitted.
He stared at me for a few seconds, rubbed the back of his neck, offered a small smile. “Elevators?”
I nodded in confirmation. “Big problem.”
“I was not expecting that answer. Claustrophobia?”
I offered a slight shrug. “Something like that,” I provided, not wanting to tell him the real reason. Now that would scare him away. He thought I was crazy enough already. “What were you expecting?”
He shrugged, and I didn't miss the play of his muscles beneath his collar. “I'm a pretty scary guy, Harper.” Pointing to his face, he continued, “This mug's been in lots of fights, most of them outside of the ring.”
I imagined he held his own pretty well, but I got what he was saying. He was a bad boy. Had a history that wasn’t homecoming king and graduate school.
“What do the other guys look like then?”
His smile slipped entirely.
God, I’d said the wrong thing. I’d just been joking.
“Some of them, not so good,” he told me. “That's why you should be wary. Your first instincts about me may have been right.”
Even though he’d scared the shit out of me earlier, I wasn't getting any danger vibes now. What had he done to make him feel I should stay away from him?
“Emory’s a good judge of character,” I countered, tucking my hair behind my ear. His eyes followed my action. “Like I said, it wasn’t you. It was the stupid elevator.”
He stepped out into the stairwell with me, pulling the door to the apartment closed behind him. “Come on,” he said, his voice echoing off the concrete walls.
I frowned. “Where are we going? Isn’t Emory expecting us?”
He went down a step, looked over his shoulder, so we were eye level. In the fluorescent lighting of the emergency stairs, his hair looked almost black.
“We’re going to pick up the pizza Gray called in. Just down the street.” Reed angled with his chin. “Emory worked today, her third in a row in the ER, so she’s in the shower.” He leaned in. “I have a feeling Gray’s in there with her.”
I felt my cheeks heat again. I wasn’t a prude, but I hadn’t really thought of my neighbor getting it on with her fiancé before. That set me in motion, so I followed him down the three flights of stairs. My legs were a little rubbery from my run, and I grabbed the railing, so I didn’t fall on my face.
“Wednesday’s are her no-cook day,” he said. “Kind of like Taco Tuesday.”
He stopped at the bottom, held the door open to the lobby for me.
“I never had Taco Tuesday growing up,” I admitted, walking past. Yeah, it was more like eat-what-the-cook-served kind of thing in my house. We never ate together; my parents were always at some kind of fundraiser or dinner at the country club, my brother in his room playing a video game. And tacos? My mother would never eat food with her hands or anything she considered ethnic.
“Me either.”
Reed started to push open the door to the parking lot then stopped. He shrugged out of his coat. “Here. It’s cold out.”
I stared at the jacket for a moment. It was cold out, and I had no idea how far “just down the street” meant. I hadn’t grabbed a coat because I’d had no idea I would be leaving the building.
“Thanks,” I murmured, pulling it on. It was big on me, proving Reed was not a small man, that he was so much larger than me. The sleeves hung down past my hands, and he reached down, grabbed the cuff and rolled it up. Did the same for the other side.
With the scent of him surrounding me—kind of a mixture of dark woods and soap, and the way he was taking care of me—made my heart stutter. God, he was sweet. And dangerous. No, he wouldn’t hurt me, I was sure of that now, but I could fall for him. That was bad. Falling for someone meant letting them in, and letting them in meant only heartache. People left or did something stupid like sell me to drug dealers.
Yet I savored his attention, his remarkably gentle actions for one who considered himself bad to the core. I took a deep breath, let it out. He was just rolling up coat sleeves, not slaying a dragon.
I glanced up through my lashes, saw his intent gaze, watched it lower to my mouth. What was it about him? We’d been in each other’s presence for less than two minutes—when I wasn’t having a panic attack—and somehow, it was as if he could see into my soul. I imagined what it felt like to be opposite him in the ring, with all that focus squarely on his opponent. My heart stuttered, and I forgot to breathe. This man was dangerous to me. To my safely guarded emotions.
Sex was easy for me. Something to do with a guy for a release. Quick with an easy orgasm to clear my mind and to feel something. For a few minutes, I wasn’t numb, and my mind went blissfully silent. There was no sleeping over at their place. Definitely not at mine. When it came to sex, I was the guy. Wham, bam, thank you, sir. I didn’t even mind a janitor’s closet to get the deed done. I preferred it that way, somewhere only the most important bits were uncovered long enough to fuck. The release was all I looked for. No strings. No connections. But Reed?
Even after having a panic attack because of him, I felt a connection, which was insane. And chemistry? God, the man oozed testosterone, and I wanted him. There was no doubt he’d be good. He’d know just how to make me come hard. My pussy clenched at the thought. But he was complicated, and I didn’t need that.
“Thanks,” I murmured then turned to the door, breaking the spell.
The air was cold, that sharp snap of winter making me stuff my hands into the pockets. There was no snow, and we hadn’t seen more than a dusting of the white stuff this year. It didn’t seem like it would be a white Christmas although there was still time for things to change.
We walked in silence down the sidewalk. Reed stood on the street side, and I noticed he kept his pace slow to match my shorter legs. I wasn’t tiny at five-eight, but still.
“I heard you’re a professor,” he commented. “Impressive.”
I glanced up at him, but he looked forward, almost scanning the block.
“Impressive?”
A couple came out of a restaurant, and I stepped out of their way. Reed put his hand at my back, and I felt it through the soft layer of his coat as he guided me around them.
“I teach Art History and have been told it’s really dry. Stuffy.”
“You don’t seem the stuffy type,” he countered without delay, as if he hadn’t taken time to consider.
“Oh?” I couldn’t help but smile. “What’s the stuffy type look like?”
I saw the corner of his mouth tip up. “Tweed jackets with arm patches. Old.”
“That’s more my English counterparts than me.”
“You like to run.” He switched topics as we stopped at an intersection, waited for the light to change. The wind kicked up when a car sped by.
“I do. Good exercise.” And stress relief.
“I run as part of my training,” he said, glancing down at me. “But I hate it. I do it for the endurance and only three miles at a time.”
“But then you do other things… as part of your workout. I mean, it takes a lot to win those matches.”
I hadn’t known who he was at the time, but I’d seen him once at the gym. He’d made my head turn. He’d been in a class and someone was demonstrating a skill, so everyone had been sitting on the mat watching. He’d had his eyes on the teacher, and I’d had my eyes on him because… wow. I hadn’t been around when he trained with Gray or got in the ring and fought. Emory had said they trained in the early mornings. That was definitely not my time to work out.
He shrugged. “
You teach. I fight.”
We stopped in front of a pizzeria, and he held the door open for me. The scent of garlic and marinara sauce surrounded us as we entered the crowded restaurant. It was warm from the ovens and the windows were a little fogged. It was casual, low key and my stomach rumbled. After my seven-mile run, I needed calories. Gooey, cheesy calories.
“This is your job then, fighting. It’s not a hobby for you.”
He shook his head.
“Surely, you’re more than just a fighter,” I replied, having to raise my voice over the din.
I joined him in the line at the take-out counter.
He glanced down at me, eyes roving over my face, dropping to my lips for a moment. “Nah, I’m just a fighter.” He held up his hands, showed me the big knuckles, blunt fingers. “Always have been. That’s all I know.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I didn’t say anything.
“Everything I learned came from the streets not books. I see you as a prep school kid.”
“That would be me,” I told him. There was no reason to deny it because it was true. “Went to a fancy place in Denver.”
It was a fancy coed private school that required uniforms and a huge chunk of cash for tuition. My parents had the means and the expectations that came with that kind of program although while I’d gone on to Cornell, an Ivy League school, I’d chosen to study art history, a complete disappointment to them.
What else was new?
“Prep school, then college, right? You have a PhD?”
I nodded.
“In what?”
“Medieval and Byzantine art specializing in gothic architecture.”
It was a mouthful, and his eyebrows winged up.
“Impressive,” he said slowly. “My fights? Let’s just say I’m getting my PhD in fighting.”
“When’s your next competition?” I asked. The people in front of us took their pizza box and left. We stepped up to the counter, waited for one of the busy workers to come over.
“Fight,” he explained. “January.”
That wasn’t far off, only a few weeks, and the idea of him in the ring made me nervous for him. “I’ll come watch, but you have to win.”
He looked down at me with a sly smile, but his eyes didn’t meet mine, they were squarely focused on my mouth. “I always win. Especially when it’s a hard fight.”
I swallowed, thinking he might not be talking about MMA any longer.
“Hi, Reed.” The counter girl interrupted us and gave Reed a very bright smile. “It’s been a while.” And a perfect view of her breasts in her snug t-shirt. The restaurant logo stretched snugly across her ample curves. She was probably twenty-one, blonde and smart in a way I never could be.
There were book smarts, which I had, then street smarts. Reed was all street smarts, I was sure, and this girl would be considered a genius. She knew the game. By putting her forearms on the counter and leaning in, she flaunted her assets. It screamed I’m available. I was always impressed by women who used what they had to get what they wanted. I saw nothing wrong with it, even envied them a bit for the skill, but this time, it only made me mad.
I was standing right next to Reed—we’d even been talking—and she knew I was with him. I was even wearing his damn coat. She didn’t care. I had to wonder if their familiarity extended beyond pizza carry out. I shut that thought down because I didn’t really want to go there.
“Hey, Claire. Yeah, not too much pizza during training.” He patted his flat stomach. I wasn’t sure if he knew her by name because he’d gotten friendly with her for a reason I was trying not to think about or because he actually did eat a lot of pizza and was lying out his ass.
“I’ll be at your next fight.” She flashed him a bright smile then bit her lip.
I barely suppressed an eye roll.
“Yeah? That’s great,” he replied without any feeling.
“Think there are any openings for a ring girl?”
And there it was. She wanted something from him, and it wasn’t his brain. Nor his dick. Well, she probably wanted that, too, but she wanted his connections. She wanted a job as one of the women who, during a fight, walked around the outside of the ring carrying a sign with the round number on it. They wore minimal clothing, and her boobs would look perfect in the skimpy outfit.
She had no interest in him. It was fine to work connections to find a job, but she did it in the wrong way. Flirting with a guy to get a job only pissed me off since it only made her look stupid. Made it so a guy thought a woman could only get a job by flaunting her sexuality not her brains.
“Are the pizzas ready?”
He hadn’t answered her question, and the way her coy smile slipped, she’d noticed, too.
“Yeah, let me check.”
When she turned to grab the two boxes, bending down to retrieve them from a rack, her ass stuck straight out. It was a nice ass, damn her. Even running fifty miles or more a week, I didn’t have an ass like that. If I tossed a coin at it, it would definitely bounce right off.
Reed just sighed and looked away.
We were quiet on the walk back to our building. I was thinking about how he must have girls flinging themselves at him, some, like Claire, wanting him for their own gain. If there hadn’t been a counter separating them, I had no doubt she’d have jumped his bones if there was a chance he’d hook her up with that ring girl job. He didn’t seem all that interested, so maybe he had a girlfriend.
Of course, he did. He was gorgeous and a gentleman, no matter what he thought of himself.
I was a stuffy university professor who studied seven-hundred-year-old cathedrals and was afraid of elevators. I definitely didn’t have a ring girl’s body. I had boobs, but not the right cup size for the job or a guy like Reed.
4
REED
Harper had the sexy librarian thing down. Fuck.
I had no idea that prim shit worked for me. It was eight in the morning, and I was in the gym jumping rope, ten minutes into my stint based on the timer on the wall. She caught my eye through the windows to the parking lot. Yeah, she wore a knee length black coat and only an inch or two of her skirt’s hem showed beneath. Her hair was pulled back into a simple, sleek ponytail, and I saw a glint of diamond at her ears. She was gorgeous in that expensive, elegant way. She didn’t go flashy, no bedazzled shit. No tousled hair. She looked… effortless. It was her shoes that had me practically panting. Damn. She looked all prim and proper except for her four-inch heels.
Were all professors of medieval art this fucking hot? I had to wonder how many college boys filled her classes and had their dicks get hard just listening to her talk about stained glass windows and flying buttresses. Yeah, I’d looked that shit up online before I went to bed.
I wanted her to turn her fierce dark gaze on me, tell me I’d been a bad boy for talking in class and shut me up the only way she knew how—by sliding up the hem of that pencil skirt, climbing in my lap and taking me for a ride.
Fuck. I got a hard on just watching her unlock her car. That was something that had never happened to me before while jumping rope.
No, she wasn’t stuffy. No fucking way.
Gray came over, followed the direction of my staring and glanced out the window. While he might be my trainer and made me suffer on a daily basis, he worked out with me every morning. We’d already run our usual three-mile circuit on the streets, done a few rounds in the ring, and I was cooling down with thirty minutes of jump rope. It was mindless, so I couldn’t think of a better way to make the time pass than to watch my sexy neighbor leave for work.
The pizza had worked out well the night before. Besides it being low key and easy for Emory since she’d worked in the ER all day, it had given me the chance to talk with Harper alone. Taking her with me to pick up the order had made it casual. No expectations. But when she’d put on my coat and I saw how damn small she was in comparison to me, every protective instinct I had came out. I wanted to wipe away all her fear, t
o keep her safe, even from elevators or whatever the fuck happened to her to make her so damned scared of them.
With Gray and Emory, Harper had been funny and witty and relaxed as we all talked, but she didn’t come out and say why she was afraid of elevators. Not that I’d expected her to, but it would have explained a lot. Claustrophobia? Trapped once? Free fall?
At first, I’d assumed it was a lie, a lie to hide the fact that she really was scared of me. But as we’d walked to the pizza place, I hadn’t seen a hint of fear in her eyes. If she really was afraid of me, she’d have bolted again, not let me put my hand on the small of her back as we walked down the street. No, I’d seen surprise and interest instead. That interest, that spark of heat had me feeling, shit, something. She was gorgeous. She turned heads, especially mine, which was a fucking problem. Yeah, I wanted to get in her pants. Half the guys in the gym probably did after seeing her in those running shorts.
But that wasn’t it. She was interesting and quirky. Who the hell got a doctorate in some obscure art topic? I wanted to know how she liked her coffee, whether she liked the beach or the mountains and whether she preferred satin or lace.
She wasn’t the kind of girl to fuck and forget. She was more, and that was bad. I didn’t want more.
Hell, even if I did, I couldn’t. I was wrong for her. A bad choice. A dead end. If she knew my past, she’d all but sprint away from me. She was smart as fuck, gorgeous and deserved the whole two and a half kids and the dog and the picket fence shit. She deserved everything. And I was nothing.
That didn’t mean I couldn’t look and couldn’t wonder, couldn’t imagine pressing her over the hood of her car and sliding into her hot pussy. I groaned at the thought then quickly hid that sound from Gray with a cough.
She tossed her bag onto the passenger seat and climbed in, started her car.
“What's up with Harper?” I asked, lifting my chin in her direction. I was breathing hard but even. I wasn’t too worn down that I couldn’t hold a conversation as I kept pace. Sweat dripped down my temples, and there was no way I could wipe it away. I had my rhythm, the plastic rope clacking on the concrete floor.
