Fighting Attraction

by Sarah Castille

  Jack releases my hands and helps me up as Renegade makes a discreet exit. Blinking, I stare at the empty room, and heat flushes my cheeks. God. I was so far gone I missed the end of class. And now we’re fodder for the Redemption gossip mill. For nothing.

  “I’ve got to go meet up with my coach,” Jack says. “I’m training all day tomorrow, usually cool down around six with a run. You want to come for a run after work?”

  Run with Jack? Like on a date? At the very least, though, it will keep him away from the club. “Okay.” I smile brightly. “Tomorrow. We’ll go for a run. And afterward, you can take me to the hospital because I have a feeling your idea of an easy cooldown is going to be like running a marathon for me.”

  “I’ll tell Blade Saw to meet us at six. I always run with him.”

  Blade Saw? Bam. My heart crashes into my stomach. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Not a date. I scramble for a way to hide my misunderstanding.

  “I’ll ask Cora to come, too. She loves to run.”

  Jack smiles. “Maybe we can get the whole team out and then head over to the Protein Palace for a shake when we’re done.” He holds up his fist, and we bump. Just like old times. Just like we were before the night he chained me to his ceiling.

  “Great,” I say with feigned enthusiasm. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Group run. Looking forward to it.”

  Not.

  12

  You’re a funny girl

  PENNY

  “I hate running.”

  Cora wheezes out her words as we jog along the pavement, the rhythmic thud of our feet matching the frantic pounding of my surprisingly still-beating heart. Ahead of us, Blade Saw and Jack haven’t even broken a sweat, although we’ve been running for at least thirty minutes in the evening heat. We are running the Bay Trail, which is one of the most beautiful places to be during any dry day. Not that I’m paying much attention to the scenery as I struggle for breath while trying to navigate around the other runners, dogs, bikers, and kids.

  “You wanted a double date,” I huff. “I got one for you.” I gesture vaguely around. “Baby blue skies, water, boats, amazing views of the coast…what more could you want? I think it goes for five hundred miles, so you’ll have lots of time to spend with him.”

  Cora glares. At least I think she glares, but her face is covered in sweat, and I’m not sure if she’s angry or crying. “I was thinking of having a few drinks, listening to a band, going to a club, maybe going for a walk along Pier 39, holding hands in the dark…”

  “This is what you get when you’re with an MMA fighter.” I stumble and just catch myself from falling. “They work. They train. They hang out at the Protein Palace and down a couple of shakes. Occasionally they’ll socialize at a bar.”

  “Doctor Death goes out a lot.” Her cheeks flush, and she looks away. “He was at Comic-Con, WonderCon, the Anime Expo, and the Star Trek Convention.”

  “I thought you wanted a fighter, not a geek.”

  Cora shrugs. “He’s both, and he’s kinda cute. We were having a good time trading Star Trek quotes at the gym. Blade Saw barely looked at me when I met him and Jack outside.”

  “Doctor Death will sleep with anything that moves,” I warn her. “And he won’t be back for more. He’s a noncommittal kind of guy.”

  “You okay back there?” Jack does a little spin, sprints past us, and then doubles back to catch up.

  “Yeah,” I pant. “Blooming marvelous. And you?”

  His eyes glisten, amused. “We can stop if you want.”

  I wipe the sweat off my face with the back of my hand, no longer concerned about appearances since there is no part of me that is now not totally soaked. “I don’t need to stop, but Cora might need to stop. She tires easily. Do you need to stop, Cora? You don’t have to feel bad if you do.”

  Of course, Cora’s still annoyed that I dragged her into running, so she’s not on board the “save Penny from making a fool of herself” train. She shakes her head. “I could do the entire five hundred miles, I feel so good.”

  “You both look tired.” Jack jogs backward beside me, as confident in his stride as I am when I can see. “Maybe we should have turned back with the others and gone for a beer.”

  We definitely should have gone back with the other fighters who started the run with us but sensibly turned around after twenty minutes, but how could I when he asked me if I wanted to continue on? Of course, my plan to impress him with my fitness quickly gave way to a plan not to fall flat on my face when I realized he’d considered the group part of the run a warm-up.

  “Are you trying to make me feel bad?”

  Jack frowns. “Of course not.”

  “Then stop dancing around and stop asking me if I want to quit. Just go run with Blade Saw. Silently. Maybe a bit slower. You could also try to sweat a bit and pant so I feel like you’re exerting yourself in some way and not out for a casual stroll.”

  Jack chuckles and falls into step beside me. “It isn’t a competition.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have asked me to come,” I snap. “I have a competitiveness problem. I’ll keep running until I fall or you stop or I win.”

  “She’s not lying,” Cora says. “Sometimes she’s a danger to herself.”

  “What?” My head snaps to the side, and I stumble, try to catch myself, and land on one knee, hands scraping across the pavement. Before I have even a moment to wallow in my misery, Jack wraps his arms around my waist and lifts me off the ground.

  Bleeding, exhausted, drenched in sweat, and humiliated yet again, I don’t even put up a fight.

  After making sure I’m okay, Cora races ahead to catch up to Blade Saw. Jack carries me to a secluded bench under the trees and kneels in front of me to inspect my injuries. “You scraped your knee pretty bad.”

  “I like the skinned look,” I say. “It’s different. It screams ‘total lack of coordination’ with a dash of ‘lack of class.’”

  “Let me see your hands.” He grabs my hands and turns them palm up, frowning at the scrapes. “I’ll take you back to Redemption. Doctor Death is working tonight. He can fix you up.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be delighted to fix me up,” I mutter.

  Jack pulls out his phone and bashes his finger on the screen. “Not anymore.”

  “What do you mean ‘not anymore’?”

  He plasters a stiff smile on his face and gives instructions to someone—I hope an anonymous stranger—to come and pick us up. “I mean,” he says after he puts down the phone, “I told him I’d rip his balls off and shove them down his throat if he went anywhere near you.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” He gives me a curious look. “Because I don’t want him touching you. That’s why.”

  “I’ve been friends with Doctor Death for a long time. You never threatened to rip off his balls before.”

  “You weren’t mine before,” he says.

  With nothing left to lose, I lay it on the line. “You feel possessive because you spanked me?”

  Jack sits beside me on the bench, scrubs his hands over his face. “You don’t hold anything back, do you?”

  “I’m sorry.” My shoulders sag, and I mentally add another failure to my day. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “I like it. It’s refreshing.” He leans back, casually drapes his arm over the back of the bench. “I can’t talk about the club with anyone, especially now that I’ve gone pro. No one knows—not my close friends, not my agent or my manager, James, not even the team at Redemption. My family disowned me when they found out about my kink. They are very old school, very Southern, very concerned about their reputation. That kind of scandal could bring down everything my family has built over the generations.”

  “What did they build?” Although I’ve been hanging around with the Redemption team for almost two years, I know very little a
bout Jack.

  “Bourbon.” He pulls out his phone and shows me the website of one of the country’s top bourbon companies. “That’s us. Them. They’ve been in the business for more than one hundred and fifty years.”

  His fingers brush over mine as he hands me the phone, sending a zing of electricity straight to my core. “It was supposed to be my business, handed down from father to eldest son. I was involved as soon as I could walk. My dad took me to work with him every day.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got engaged to a girl who used my kink as an excuse to break off our engagement and marry my brother, Beau. She told my family, and they disowned me. Beau got my position in the company as well as my girl.” He gives me the sordid details about Avery, and I wish my hands weren’t bleeding so I could hunt her down and punch her in the face.

  “Oh God, Jack. That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

  “Learned my lesson. Love isn’t worth the pain.”

  “You’re right about that,” I say quietly. “My dad hated me for being born because he never wanted me. My mom lied about being on birth control so she could have a baby. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, nothing I did made him happy. Nothing could make him love me. My mom kind of faded away under all his physical abuse, and by the time he started abusing me, she wasn’t in a position to help. He drove a wedge between my sister and me, played us off each other. I think that’s why I’m so competitive. I was glad to leave England. Glad to leave them behind. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t get to finish law school. I had just started when I had to leave.”

  “Jesus Christ.” He pulls me against him. “He hit you?”

  “Yeah, he did.” My chest tightens when I think about those horrible years. “But that’s all in the past. I have a new life here.”

  “Yeah, me too.” He sighs, and his fingers tighten on my hip. “I came out here, got a job with a local distillery since that’s all I knew. I took up MMA and met Blade Saw at Redemption. His family is in the liquor business, too. We bought a small distillery together, and it’s been doing pretty well. We keep it quiet though. If word got out around Redemption that we made booze…”

  “You keep a lot of secrets.” I hand him his phone and he tucks it away.

  “So do you.”

  More than he knows. My fingers close around my wrist, hiding the scar that changed my life, the cry for help that no one else could hear.

  Homicide Hank’s white van comes barreling down the street and Jack squeezes my uninjured knee in a totally nonsexual, buddy-buddy kind of way. “Let’s go. We’ll get you fixed up, and you’ll be ready for another run tomorrow.”

  “Great. A second long run in two days, here I come.”

  Jack snorts a laugh. “You’re funny, Pen.”

  Ah, the kiss of death. “Thanks.”

  “And sweet.” He waves Homicide Hank over to the curb in front of us.

  “Innocent,” he continues, half to himself. “Quirky, sexy, strong, brave, and a bit naive.”

  “I’m my very own romantic comedy.”

  Although right now, I wonder if I’m a tragedy instead.

  * * *

  Jack growls when Doctor Death runs his hand up my leg in the Redemption first aid room. A real, honest-to-goodness growl like something out of a movie.

  “I need some space to examine the patient,” Doctor Death says when Jack leans over to watch, almost knocking me off the examination table. “As you may have noticed, the first aid room is meant to accommodate only the patient and medical personnel.”

  “Don’t hurt her.”

  “Then don’t get in my way.”

  Jack’s head jerks up, and he gives Doctor Death a menacing stare. What the hell is wrong with him? Twenty minutes ago he was all about being friends, and now I’m worried Doctor Death might not make it out of here alive.

  “She hurt her hands and her knee.” Jack slides an arm around my waist, pulling me against him. “No examination required. Your fingers shouldn’t be anywhere north of her thigh.”

  “He’s a doctor,” I say. “I’m sure he’s seen plenty of what lies north of my thigh.”

  Wrong thing to say. Jack’s muscles tense, and for a moment I think he is going to explode. I backtrack quickly because I do need some medical attention and I sense an imminent threat to Doctor Death’s life. “I mean that in the generic sense, as in other women’s thighs but not mine.”

  Doctor Death, with the worst possible timing, decides this is the moment to examine the area in question.

  Bam. Jack bats Doctor Death’s hand off my leg. “Below the fucking knee. How many fucking times do I have to tell you?”

  “Call off the guard dog.” Doctor Death shoots me an exasperated glance. “Or better yet, tie him up outside and give him a chew toy.”

  I look up at Jack, and he brushes a loose strand of hair behind my ear. Damn, he’s gorgeous. And furious. So unlike the Jack we usually see at the gym. I always wanted a protective boyfriend, someone who would have stood up to my father and told him it wasn’t okay to hit your daughter. Instead, I wound up with Adam, who turned out to be exactly the same.

  Doctor Death cleans the scrapes on my hands and covers the worst of the cuts with tiny bandages. I try not to cry out when he dabs stinging lotion on my knee, but I do suck in a breath.

  “You hurt her.” Jack grabs a fistful of Doctor Death’s shirt and I slap at his hand until he releases him.

  “Stop it. You’re acting crazy. It’s not that bad. I’ve had worse.” I glance down at my thighs, still covered by my gym pants, which I’ve pushed above my knees. Curious how the pain from Doctor Death’s treatment does nothing for me either sexually, like the pain Jack gave me, or emotionally, like the pain I give myself.

  Doctor Death picks up his tweezers. “Between Torment, Renegade, the Predator, and you all acting like a bunch of testosterone-laced cavemen around your women, it’s a wonder I can even do my job.”

  “She’s not my woman,” Jack says. “She’s a friend.”

  I don’t even try to keep up. One day I’m his friend. The next he says “you’re mine.” And now I’m a friend again.

  “Yeah. I’m getting that message.” Doctor Death picks at a piece of gravel in my knee, and I break out in a sweat. “Loud and clear.”

  “Hold my hand.” Jack pries open my fingers and wraps his warm palm around mine, careful not to press on the bandages. “Squeeze when it hurts,” he demands.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.” I hiss in a breath when Doctor Death digs into my knee again.

  His lifts a challenging eyebrow. “Try.”

  So I squeeze. I clench his hand so hard I’m surprised I don’t break any bones as Doctor Death works all the little pieces of gravel out of my knee, alternating with squirts of the stinging disinfectant. Finally, I give up the challenge and sag against Jack’s body. He puts one arm around me and tucks me into his side, as he curses Doctor Death under his breath. He is warm and solid. In the circle of his arm I feel like nothing can hurt me, and despite the pain, I wish I could stay here forever.

  “All done,” Doctor Death says ten minutes later. He tapes big white bandages over my knees. “Come back if you see any signs of infection. Your knees will feel stiff for a few days as the skin heals. Palms won’t be so bad.”

  “Thanks very much.” I give Jack a nudge, and he mumbles something that I think is meant to express gratitude, albeit couched in filthy language about Doctor Death’s man whore ways and all the things that might happen to him if he touches me again.

  “Gonna take you home,” Jack says as I limp out of the first aid office.

  “It’s okay, I’ve got my car.”

  “Then I’ll drive you home and come back in a cab.” He clears a path down the hallway with the fierceness of his scowl.

  “You don’t have to,” I say. “I�
�m fine. Really. You didn’t even need to stay with me. None of this is your fault. It’s just me pushing myself too hard and then paying the price by falling on my face in front of the hottest guy in Redemption.”

  “Hottest?” He pulls to a stop, his eyes glittering, amused.

  Did I just say that? Well, there’s no taking it back.

  “Yes.” I watch him, waiting to see what he’ll do. His gaze drifts to my lips, and electricity sparks in the air between us, the same energy I felt in the club. I lean closer, tilt my head back just the tiniest bit. His chest heaves, and his scent fills me—soap and sweat, masculine and raw.

  “Let’s get going,” he says.

  Disappointment floods me, and my cheeks flame. I’m about to turn away when I feel his fingers under my chin. Gritting my teeth, I force myself to meet his gaze, surprised to see his soft smile. “I’m driving,” he says.

  “Okay.”

  He bends down, brushes his lips over my cheek, sending a rush of heat through my body that shimmies up my spine. “When we get there, I’m coming inside.”

  Every part of me tingles, and when he pulls away, I can barely breathe. “Okay.”

  “Pen?”

  “Yes?” I whisper.

  “I need your keys.”

  13

  Please. Please. Please.

  PENNY

  Jack drives like he fights. Full on. High intensity. Steamrolling anything that gets in his way. Good thing I’ve got a car that has a bit of punch. My Mustang is my absolute pride and joy.

  “This is a fucking sweet ride.” He weaves in and out of traffic so fast the world becomes a blur. Or maybe that’s because my hair is whipping in my face. No way could Jack fit in my car with the top up, so we’re kicking it cold style.

  “You’re the only person I’ve allowed to drive it.” I grip the padded armrest as he takes a sharp turn. “I bought it with money my grandfather left me when he passed. He would have loved it. He was a big car collector. Every weekend he would take me for a ride in a different car. My dad hated him. He was furious when he found out Grandpa left everything to me. He got Mom to contest the will, but the judge threw the whole thing out of court. I would never have been able to move to America without that money. He took care of me, even when he was gone.”