I shook my head as much as I could with his hold on my hair. “I can’t.” I blinked, holding back my pride while hiding the weakness he brought out in me.
He tucked me against his chest, my breasts slightly squished on his hard pec muscles. “You can. Just tell me you feel it, too. That’s all I’m asking for.”
Protected against his shoulder and neck, I closed my eyes against the warm heat in my eyes. If I admitted it, he’d have more control over me than I wanted him to.
“Damn it, Gray. Admit it. Admit you need me.” His husky tones shimmied up my nerves and I wanted to melt into his arms. He dropped my hair, running his hands up my body to cup my cheeks in his fingers. He tilted my face up until we stared into each other’s eyes. “Please, baby, tell me you need me like I need you.”
Maybe it was the velvety darkness of the night, or the contrast between his heat and the chilly air. Maybe it was the raspy tender way he spoke to me or the fact that he was almost begging me for an answer. I licked my lower lip and nodded as much as I could in his hold. “I do. I just… It’s not fair for me when…” I blinked back the tears still threatening to spill past my lashes.
“What? What is it?” The thunderous shadows in his eyes promised retribution, if I would just tell him who had hurt me.
I swallowed, reaching up to wrap my fingers around his wrists. “It feels wrong when… Dominick has Sara. All of it feels wrong. I shouldn’t be able to feel this… good… when she’s not safe. I don’t know what’s happening to her. I don’t know what he’s doing to her, and yet, here I am. With you.” I wrinkled my nose and then closed my eyes. He’d judge me and find me lacking. He’d know… I wasn’t strong like everyone like thought I was. I was weak. I cared too much.
“I know, Gray. Gunner filled me in on the phone.” He gently pushed me away enough to have room to look me over. His eyes tightened as he studied me. “Do you think you can fight like they need us to?”
I took a deep breath and blew it out on a whoosh, nodding. “Yeah, I can. I just can’t guarantee I’ll win.” My mentality wasn’t where it needed to be and I wasn’t sure I could get it there in two weeks.
Stryker tilted his head to the side and shrugged. “You’ll win. I have no doubt about that.” He motioned between us, his fingers drawing an invisible line that was distinctly palpable between our chests. “This can wait. We need to get ready for that fight.”
He leveled me, calming down as he also threw me into a frustrated orb of need. Was he crazy? He’d just come back from almost dying or what I’d imagined as him dying. Did he really think I was going to wait to get a piece?
He could think it all he wanted. But the more I thought about what waited for me after the fight – win or lose – I didn’t want our first time together to be any more tainted. I needed the purity of our connection to be what it should be; raw and comforting all at the same time. He could promise me that. I knew he could.
But I wouldn’t ask. No, not when he’d admitted that I made him feel what I was feeling. If he felt half the heat I did, it wouldn’t take much to push him over.
Before our fight, I intended to do exactly that.
***
Stryker
Pushing Gray away had taken strength I didn’t know I had. Breathing her in had compounded the heat in my veins. The girl was going to be my undoing and I couldn’t let her weaken me. Not yet.
We had to save Sara, prove our loyalty to the Ivanovs as well as figure out a way to beat Dominick. Not only that, but I had to somehow figure out a way to tell Gray what I knew about her mom.
Which wasn’t much, except I couldn’t help but wonder if she was working both sides of the fight. Was she actually with Dominick? Or was she for her daughter? I couldn’t tell. I had a lot to share with Gray, but I needed to do it when she wasn’t so tired and I wasn’t thinking with a hard-on.
“Where were you staying?” I physically turned her toward the house, making sure she stuck with me as we went inside. Gunner had also said they both passed out from exhaustion and that’s why it took so long for him to answer.
As much as I trusted Gunner and I hadn’t been lying when I told Gray I knew my cousin didn’t make her burn the way I did, I had lied when I said I wasn’t jealous. I didn’t want to think of the possibility that she’d been lying in Gunner’s arms, even if it had been to seek comfort. I didn’t want Gray getting too much from anyone but me.
How fast my desire had shifted from keeping her in line to getting her in my bed.
That was going to have to wait as well. We couldn’t sleep together as we both focused on training for the fight and getting our strength back. My ankle ached, but I hid the pain as we walked up the stairs. I held my face neutral even as I glanced around at the perimeter of the yard for any sign of danger.
We had some work ahead of us.
“Your room. I can go somewhere else.” She wiped at her face with the soft pads of her fingers and reached down to straighten her shirt.
The thought of her in my room, my bed, didn’t help with the stiffy I was already trying to suppress. I silently groaned and rolled my eyes back as I held the door open for her.
In my room. In my bed.
I cleared my throat and shook my head. “That’s fine. I’ll sleep in Brock’s spare.” I certainly wasn’t going to offer Brock’s extra bed to her. As much as my cousin loved me, I had no doubt he’d be tempted with a hot piece like Gray in his room. The guy’s blood ran steamy all the time.
She nodded in front of me and I tried, I really did, not to look at her tight ass as she walked ahead, but it was hard. All kinds of things were hard.
“I’m going to take a shower. Everyone needs to get some sleep. Let’s make sure we have all the advantages we can get over the next two weeks.” My command came out like a bark, but I didn’t care. We had all been through a lot. Gunner jerked his head my direction as he cut Brock’s shirt off from his perch on the kitchen counter.
Piled beside Brock, the dark bloody shirt made me feel bad. I’d made him walk and who knew what else while he was injured like he was. I closed my eyes as he moaned at the cleaning solution Gunner dumped on his wound. Brock’s knuckles paled as he gripped the edge of the counter. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw.
I couldn’t leave them to that alone. My shower was going to have to wait. Maybe in that time, Gray would fall asleep. I didn’t want to think of her sleeping only the next door over in my bed. Alone. And possibly awake.
I moved to the sink in the kitchen and thoroughly scrubbed my hands. “Okay, Brock. I guarantee this is going to hurt.”
We all laughed weakly at my attempt at a joke because we all knew it was going to hurt and we were all too tired to deny it.
It was moments like that where I missed the stable security of having my father around.
Chapter 8
Gray
The nights and days passed in a blur of attending school in a fog, training well past the standard quitting time for practice, eating as much food as we could, and trying to figure out how to fit ourselves into the awkward kaleidoscope our lives had become.
People at school ignored us. All four of us, like they didn’t see us when we walked in, sat down, or left. Stryker smiled at me from across the hall, but never really approached me as we seemed to fade in and out of a reality I didn’t understand.
The only times I felt like I was awake from a horrible nightmare was when I had my gloves on and I sparred up with whoever they’d matched me with on our team. My dad showed up for a couple practices, but the pallor of his skin and the constant sweat rings of his gray t-shirts suggested he wasn’t completely there. That and the constant musky odor of pot and alcohol seeping out of his pores had me wishing he’d leave.
The other times each day I felt the pain of my situation was when I was allowed to talk to Sara. Dominick called me at the same time every night from his phone. Something that both bothered me and comforted me. He wasn’t calling me from Stryker’s lost
phone. I had more calls from that line, but I couldn’t admit it to the guys and I didn’t want to ruin it by letting the truth out with Dominick.
When Sara and I were on the phone, she wasn’t allowed to say anything but yes and no.
The first day I’d been extremely frustrated, yelling at Dominick and calling him all kinds of names until I’d heard Sara whimper under the tumult of my tirade. Immediately, I’d quieted. I had no idea what he’d done to her, but if Sara whimpered because of me, I’d be damned if I’d do it to her again.
When I got off the phone that first night, I watched Brock slink out of the kitchen. I hadn’t realized I’d been that loud. Part of me wanted to talk to him about what I was thinking and feeling and another part of me didn’t want to say a word to anyone.
Regardless of how I felt, the next night I put the call on speakerphone, acting as if I wasn’t aware that Brock stood on the side of the kitchen with his head bowed while he pretended to pour himself a bowl of cereal.
I kept the questions short, ones she could answer with yes or no. I can’t even remember what they were, but they satisfied me that she was getting fed, not being beaten, and no one had touched her inappropriately. Yet.
Brock seemed to be around any time I called to check on her. There was something there I couldn’t ignore. Maybe if we made it out of that hell we’d gotten trapped in, I’d have to see if Sara was interested in a cousin with loyal blood and a heart-stopping smile.
My dad didn’t even ask where I was staying the few times I saw him. I couldn’t care, though, as I realized he wasn’t himself.
Aunt Danielle was hit or miss as well. The one time I’d seen her in the hall at school, Stryker had suddenly appeared and maneuvered me away from her, directing me with a hand on the small of my back. If I hadn’t been trying all week to get him alone with me, I might have taken exception to the fact that he thought he could control me. As it was, I hoped his control would snap and he would ravage me in the hallway.
Hey, I wanted it anyway I could get it at that point. Working out with him, living with him, seeing him in his pajamas, and just knowing he was within a few feet of me made the heat in my body simmer and burn. I needed a release that I didn’t understand and he was the only one who could give it to me.
I couldn’t figure out how he was able to ignore me for so long either. I barely slept at night, knowing he was in the shower, in bed, changing his clothes, who knew what else just outside of arm’s reach. The tension was starting to get to me and I wanted to run screaming down the hall – naked.
Would that even get attention from him? I had serious doubts. Except… except when I caught him looking at me at practice, in the SUV, as we sat at the table and ate pizza, or even just when we all sat in the living room and watched a few fights on the television. Something in his eyes made me promises I hoped we’d both live long enough to cash in.
“Hey, you awake?” Chris snapped his fingers in front of my eyes.
I blinked, leaning back in my seat in my last class before PE and then practice. The bell must have rung. I shook my head and tossed him a distracted smile. “Hey, Chris. What’s up?” I gathered my blank notebook and unused pencil and shoved them into my equally ignored backpack. Distracted, I stood, smiling half-heartedly at Chris.
He straightened and glanced behind him. “I’ve been trying to talk to you, but your shadows are incessant.” His intensity piqued my interest and for the first time in a long time, I actually had something to pay attention to in school. I glanced past him, looking for who he referenced. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“The Jamesons. One of them is always within twenty yards of you.” He shook his head, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I need you to meet me after practice out in the trees. We need to talk. I think you guys are in danger. You need to start looking around, Gray. You’re kind of drifting and you’re missing a lot of things that you shouldn’t be.” He narrowed his eyes after delivering his warning and then turned on his heel.
I stared after him, my lips parted in question. There was no doubt in my mind where I’d disappear to after practice. While the guys showered, I’d slip out and meet Chris in the trees.
Through class I realized just how much I had checked out from. A few girls actually lifted in the weight section, the guys moved over to make room and there were no rude comments. I had just been going through the motions so I could get to practice, working to make myself stronger, leaner, faster, and more formidable. Well, as formidable as a seventeen-year-old girl could be.
I glanced in the mirror on the side of the room, noticing the shadows under Jasmine’s eyes and the haunted desperation in Jaeda’s. Why did they seem so off? Stryker had called a halt to the factory work while we trained, hoping to keep their secret a little longer rather than give Dominick something to raid.
Jasmine shot me glare after glare as she moved into mountain pose and then into downward dog. The fact that she hadn’t moved on from hating me couldn’t have been more obvious. I’d have to watch my back with that one.
We dove into practice with a fiery determination. The guys had each taken on a skillset to master. John decided to be ambidextrous and to work on his cardio. Seth refused to lose again on the speed bags which he didn’t realize only made him better on his feet. Nick had upped his game in cardio as well, but opted more for longevity. He wanted to out jump me in the ropes.
The guys all thought they were competing with me, but what they didn’t realize was how much I wanted the team to win. Not just for Sara. Not just to beat Dominick. But because they had earned it. Them getting better was good for me, as well. Boxing wasn’t just an individual sport like so many people thought. The team won or lost based on the performance of a collective group, whether they were in the ring at the same time or not.
I paused, my curiosity about what Chris wanted from me shortening my longevity point. I shook my head, stretching side to side and jerking my chin up toward Stryker. “I’ll be back. I need to use the bathroom.” Living with the Jamesons wasn’t easy. There was a level of privacy a girl needed and I didn’t think he’d deny me that.
He watched me, but nodded, as if I needed his approval. I didn’t, but we’d all tacitly agreed to let each other know where we were going and when.
I couldn’t help feeling guilty that I lied.
Going through the girls’ locker room, I broke into a jog as I burst through the hallway and then through the double doors onto the front lawn.
For fall, the weather wasn’t too crazy. I think the clouds weren’t sure what to do as they hung heavy in the sky. Did they rain? Did they move on by? Either way, it didn’t matter, but I hoped they’d hold out a few minutes as I spoke with Chris since I was still in my tank and shorts that I practiced in. I’d have a helluva time explaining why I was covered in rain to Stryker when I was only supposed to be in the bathroom.
It wasn’t until I’d stepped into the shadows of the trees that I thought I could be in danger. What was I thinking going out there alone? Chris wouldn’t set me up, right? I mean, that was ridiculous and stupid on his part, if that was his plan.
Right?
My mouth went dry. I could take Chris, but what if he’d sold information about me and the guys to Dominick or the Russians? Anything was possible at that point.
Too late to go back. I stopped beside the trunk of the biggest tree, pleased I wasn’t breathing hard, and slammed my hands on my hips. “Chris, you out here?”
He appeared in front of me, his glasses fogged up and his blue and orange school sweatshirt splotchy from rain. Maybe it’d been raining earlier. He glanced past me. “Did you come alone?”
I raised my eyebrows. Clandestine was putting our meeting mildly. “Yeah, I came alone. You think they would have let me out of their sight, if they knew what I was doing? What do you want?” The shifty way he looked around me set me further on edge and I dropped my right leg back, keeping my knees soft and ready to throw me into a fighting lunge.
As if sensing my hackles had risen, he held up both hands at chest level. “Sorry, you have to understand what I’m dealing with here.” He reached up, wiping at the damp glass of his spectacles. True worry tilted his eyebrows just so and his eyes were wide like he couldn’t take in enough of what he was seeing.
“Spit it out. I can’t do anything about whatever the problem is, if you don’t tell me what’s going on.” Something was wrong and I just wanted the suspense to end. Get it over with already.
“Look, I’m worried about Jasmine.” Chris moved forward, but kept a healthy distance from me, as if he sensed I was two heart beats away from pounding the ever-living shit out of him.
Jasmine’s name brought me up short. “What? Jasmine? What about her?” And why did he think I’d care?
Chris shook his head and waved his hands. “Hold on. I’m getting ahead of myself.” He took a deep breath, obvious to both calm himself down and to steady his voice. “Okay, so Jasmine works at the factory, right?”
“Okay.” I folded my arms, staving off the chill seeping over my skin.
“She hasn’t been staying for her shifts. She comes, clocks in, and then disappears after fifteen-minute roundups.” He cleared his throat. “I followed her last night.”
“Wait.” I held up my hand. “The factory is closed right now.” That’s what Stryker had told me. Was he lying? I couldn’t keep everything straight, but why keep something like that from me when we’d already been through so much? Weren’t we in this together?
Chris shook his head. “That’s the packing factory. We have a distribution factory on the other side of town in a still-functioning mine. The one you’ve been to is the decoy they use every once in a while, to throw Dominick off the scent. They do some work there, but not all of it. All three Jamesons run the factory. Anyway.” He shook his head. “There’s a problem with Jasmine disappearing. I don’t care if she screws them out of some cash. Jasmine is their best supervisor there. She deserves anything they pay her.”
Her Champions: A high school bully romance (Bad Boys of Jameson High Book 3) Page 7
