Until the Bell Rings: An MMA Fighter Romance

by Roxy Wilson

  It was working.

  “Be quick about it,” I snapped, unwilling to give him any more inches than this one.

  He walked in, looking around my hallway. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  It was. I loved my little home, where I’d singlehandedly raised my daughter. I worked damn hard with my brother, running our family’s diner in town to keep up with the mortgage payments and bills. I’d struggled, but ultimately done fine all these years without Mason. Surrounded by the people I loved, Anna, Ethan, Justin, my parents, I’d brought up my daughter to be smart and bright and full of life.

  “The kitchen is straight ahead.” I pointed towards it, trying to keep him out of the living room, where he’d have to look at all the photographs of Daisy. There were plenty in the hall, too, but I urged him quickly through the house.

  He stood with his back leaning against my kitchen counter, and I folded my arms to hide the tremble in my hands and the unevenness of my breath.

  His presence was palpable, a torment on my frayed nerves. He was so damn beautiful, just like he ever was, and I couldn’t stop myself from wanting him. I felt sick over it, my stomach in knots.

  That kiss at the church yesterday—it should never have happened. It had brought back to many memories, too much of the past worming its way through the cracks he’d caused by showing up.

  “You ruined your sister’s wedding, by the way,” I blurted out, mostly to remind myself of the agony he’d caused before I got too carried away in the subdued, medium green of his eyes and the lush shape of his mouth. “I had to tell her you were there, and you can imagine how that went down.”

  Mason bowed his head. “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Taryn, look, I can’t say sorry anymore because it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a word. You know me—knew me. Words aren’t my thing, actions are, and I came here to tell you something today because I have to believe you might trust me again. I want to be totally honest with you. No more lies.”

  “You can’t make up for ten years of lies with one truth.”

  “I can try,” he said fiercely, his hands balling into fists. He still spoke with so much bluntness, never beating around the bush because, no, words were never his thing, and the ones he gave were always meaningful in some way. I struggled to reconcile that with the man who deceived me for so long and I couldn’t. “Ethan Foster is on a hit list. I’ve been asked to kill him.”

  “Ethan?” I choked.

  “I’ve taken the job, for now, but only long enough to buy some time to figure out what the hell to do.”

  “What’s he done?” I shook my head. “He’s a good man.”

  “What if he isn’t,” Mason said flatly. “What if he’s just like his father.”

  “I didn’t know Mr. Foster that well, but I do know Ethan. Your sister knows Ethan.”

  “I thought I knew Mr. Foster. You can’t be sure of anything, Taryn.”

  “No,” I snapped, looking up at him through a frown. “I can’t, can I?”

  He was still stubborn as always, too, folding his arms to mirror me, pressing his lips into a tight line. “You’re not listening to me.”

  I spluttered in outrage. “How dare you—”

  “Taryn, I am telling you that someone is paying good money for this man to die!” His voice raised, making my skin bump up all over. It wasn’t out of fear. “Generally, good men don’t end up on hit lists.”

  “You’re telling me you’ve never murdered a good man because you didn’t look hard enough,” I challenged, and his expression darkened.

  “I kill bad people.”

  “You kill people.”

  “Don’t make me regret coming here,” he snapped.

  “I didn’t ask you to come here!” I realized I was taking steps towards him, closing the gap between us. “You are not welcome here, Mason.”

  He fumed, his pupils dilating. At my next step forward, he swallowed thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

  “My sister could be in danger,” he said slowly, low and rough.

  “I think you being here puts us all in danger,” I countered.

  The whole kitchen felt charged, Mason’s whole demeanor a challenge. The air was thick with it, too warm against my bare arms and legs where I was very aware I was still in my pajamas. I didn’t even know why we were arguing anymore, but I knew I was getting closer to him. I knew I was trying to make him furious.

  Mason’s eyes raked me up and down; he knew exactly what was going through my head.

  “I think you should leave,” I said slowly, trying to enunciate every word as if that could make me mean it. “Death just seems to follow you everywhere, Mason, and I don’t want it around our daughter.”

  “Where is she?”

  “With my brother, until I’m sure you’re far away from here.”

  “But Ethan,” he stressed.

  I cut him off. “Leave.”

  My voice shook atrociously, but not from fear. The longer he stood there, the more difficult it became to hate him, the intensity of that emotion wringing through my body until it turned into something else—just as sharp as hate, just as fierce. I was angry, blood-hot and bright red. I was a whole load of other things, too.

  Mason’s eyes narrowed. “You sure about that?”

  “Do I sound sure?” It was a dumb question, because I didn’t sound sure in the least. I sounded shaky, begging to be questioned.

  He stepped forward. “Okay then, I’ll go.”

  I nodded firmly, tensing all over as I realized I’d positioned myself to block the doorway to the hall, forcing him to squeeze past me in the tight space. Mason came close, looking down from his seemingly impossible height. He angled his body to step around me, his chest brushing against the skin of my shoulder, goose pimples breaking out all over my body. His breath ruffled my hair, sounded heavy like a shudder, and his heat was consuming, too much for my frozen stillness.

  I lashed out without thinking, fisting a hand into his t-shirt and turning into his body.

  Mason stood, waiting, as I slowly uncurled my hand against him.

  What was I doing? I swallowed hard. His heart was beating rapidly but he didn’t move, letting me decide how to go on.

  “If you want me,” he started, his hoarse voice so satisfying, “just for now, even if it’s never again, you can have me. You can have anything, Taryn.”

  The earnestness, so unlike the hot and cold demeanor he’d presented so far, swept all the reason from my head. I moved into him, and like he remembered just how we fit together, he pulled me into his arms with a long-fingered hand against my lower back.

  This was so dumb. I had never done anything this dumb in my whole life. Those hands that were touching me were the hands of a killer. The mouth I wanted to kiss was the mouth of a liar.

  It didn’t matter.

  I kissed him, or he kissed me; we clashed in the middle somewhere, me arching up and him leaning down. I didn’t want gentleness; I wanted him, raw and punishing like those painful days after he’d abandoned me.

  The thought renewed the anger in me and I shoved his leather jacket off his shoulders until it hit the floor, my meaning to him explicitly clear.

  Mason tucked both hands under my thighs and picked me up. I wrapped my legs around his waist and we stumbled, my back hitting the wall beside the calendar with a crack.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered against me.

  I bit his bottom lip. “Shut up.”

  I couldn’t bear to hear it, gripping the back of his neck and devouring his mouth again, rolling my hips as he ground me back against the wall. I felt his cock stiffening in his jeans and tried my hardest to focus on that, to lose myself in just the physical. The alternative was too terrifying to contemplate. I tried to cling to my fury and I couldn’t—it kept slipping through my fingers like fine sand.

  Between us, I wrestled off his t-shirt and started attacking his buttons and zipper. Mason was always a strong young man, throw
ing around hay bales on the Fosters’ ranch all weekend long and clearing plates at the diner, but now his muscles stood out sharp under his tanned skin, shifting as he held me up so effortlessly.

  I knew beyond a doubt that he wouldn’t drop me; it was absurd that the pure instinct to trust him still ran so subconsciously deep.

  “Taryn,” he gasped, as I palmed his cock within the suffocating space between our bodies.

  “You missed me, huh?” I asked sharply, stroking him quickly, hard. God, I’d missed him; I ached between my legs, the dull press of him there torturous.

  “More than you would believe right now.”

  I shook my head, so torn between wanting to hear his sincerity and wanting this to be the last time, the closure I so desperately needed.

  “Then show me,” I demanded.

  His expression turned determined, a small smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth—dammit, he had me. Heat flooded all through my body at that familiar roguish smirk.

  The first time I met him he was wearing that smirk.

  No, I couldn’t think of that. I couldn’t allow that to cloud my feelings.

  He hauled me up against him, securing me in his arms, before turning and propping me against the breakfast island in the middle of the kitchen.

  Mason’s fingers hooked into my pajama shorts, peeling them and my panties slowly down my thighs. I spread my legs, a moan caught in my breath, and he sunk a hand into my hair and kissed me, soft and wet and endlessly thorough.

  He leaned his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop it,” I choked, dizzy on the taste and anticipation, the warm air of the kitchen against my exposed lower half.

  He cupped his palm between my legs, rough skin against my clit and fingertips teasing gently through my folds. “Stop this?”

  “Absolutely not that.”

  “I can’t stop apologizing. I won’t.”

  His eyes were fierce, pupils dilated. He meant it—God, how was I supposed to cope with that? He was supposed to be cold and aloof and wanting nothing but a quick fuck, leaving no doubt in my mind that we were all better off without him. I didn’t know what to do with this version of him, so eager to make me believe his regrets.

  I ran a hand across his bare shoulders, his skin dampening with sweat, and tried to arch into his stubbornly teasing palm, desperate for him to do something.

  “You’re so damn hot like this,” he told me roughly.

  Ditto, I thought, his dark expression so intently focused on me, his cock hard in the V of his open fly. I wanted more of it, to show him what else the years had changed, and I tugged off my shirt to expose my breasts, completely naked now and leaning back on my elbows, splayed out for him to see.

  Maybe this was a punishment too, letting him see what he’d been missing all these years.

  He swallowed, his tongue wetting his lower lip. The tip of his finger pushed inside me slowly, like a reward, and the slick slide of it all the way in felt so satisfying I couldn’t help but drop my head back.

  “If you mean it,” I gasped. “If you’re as sorry as you say—”

  “I do.” Another finger, and then he fucked me properly, pressing deep inside with his fingertips stroking my walls. “I am.”

  I had to ask, even with the pleasure soaking my senses. “Then tell me how it felt to leave me.”

  “Like my whole future was going up in flames with that ranch. Like I was actually dying.”

  The heel of his palm ground against my clit and I moaned. It wasn’t enough, but it felt so damn good my toes curled.

  I gripped the back of his neck, yanking him down over me, wanting him close, wanting his mouth on mine. I didn’t know if I could stand any more words, and I told him, “Fuck me, right now. No more talking.”

  He shrugged his jeans down his thighs, pulling a condom from his pocket.

  “I didn’t bring this for us,” he explained, but I didn’t care. All it meant to me was that he was always safe, whoever his partners.

  And there were probably countless partners. Mason was insatiable when it came to sex; there was no way he was living celibate and miserable.

  I wondered how he was living, but I cast it from my mind. It was none of my damn business, and beyond fucking him, I wanted nothing more to do with him.

  I held his cock, helping him roll on the condom and guiding him to my entrance. He trembled on the first slow thrust, his groan passed into my mouth with our kisses going careless and messy.

  “I’m sorry, Taryn,” he said again, and again I bit his lip, trying to silence his regret but still desperate for it at the same time. I was a paradox, and so was he. I didn’t know what either of us really wanted.

  “Harder,” was all I could manage, and he obliged, his strokes pushing me up the counter.

  I wrapped my legs around him and gripped his shoulders for support, fingernails digging into his hot skin as he held me close and fucked me, his tongue slick in my mouth and his cock filling me up with delicious friction. All my nerves lit as I clung to him for dear life, as he drove me helplessly upwards until I was gasping and trembling.

  As a young man he’d been an awesome lover. We knew each other so intimately that the sex was always amazing.

  This was new and thrilling, but familiar too. He knew how to angle his cock to hit me where it felt good and I knew how to kiss him, how to claw at his back, how to clench my muscles to make him crazy. But he was still a stranger to me, a dark figure with feverish eyes and danger on his lips. A killer for hire.

  I moaned, my breath hitching. The thought should’ve made me sick but, in that mad moment, it didn’t.

  Mason kissed my throat, my collarbone. He cupped my breast and sucked softly on my nipple. I imagined him with a weapon, swiftly taking the life of some criminal, and arched my back.

  It was wrong. I was so messed up I couldn’t see straight.

  Sweat slicked between us, a sheen across Mason’s strong chest, and I raked my fingernails down it, dragging a hot moan out of him.

  “Taryn,” he said breathlessly, his barely coiled body telling me how bad he wanted to come.

  “Harder,” I told him, wanting everything he could give.

  I was going to come, feeling my muscles tighten around him, and he matched his thrusts to long, purposeful strokes, his hand pressing into the sweating heat between us to rub two fingers over my clit.

  “Oh God,” I groaned, throwing my head back as I rocked on his cock and his fingers, feeling all the heat in my body sink and flood between my legs.

  Mason groaned, too, his movements going erratic as the squeeze of my muscles pulled his orgasm out of him right after me.

  He buried his face against my throat, his body shaking as he came. I found myself stroking his back, easing him through the aftershocks. It was too tender, too raw, but I couldn’t stop myself. Even the amazing sex couldn’t take the edge of how bad I wanted to hold him close.

  He eased back to look at me, his expression shocked and wary.

  I knew exactly how he felt.

  I pushed him away from me to get some much-needed breathing space. I covered myself up with my arms as best I could, feeling far too vulnerable now. “Where’s my—” Mason picked up my shirt and shorts, handing them back to me. I smiled sheepishly. “Thanks.”

  It helped, to be dressed again. Mason fastened himself back into his jeans, pulling on his t-shirt. It was far easier for me to think straight with the temptation of his body removed.

  With the memory of what we’d just done so raw, I needed at least one concession.

  “I didn’t mean that to happen,” Mason said stiffly.

  Ten seconds before the sex, we’d been fighting. I tried to call up that anger again but found only self-admonishment.

  “Me either,” I sighed

  “Still want me to get out?”

  I considered him. He looked a lot more relaxed now, and for that I didn’t blame him, but his easy slouch and swollen-red mouth wasn’t
helping me to want him gone.

  I sighed roughly. “Fuck you.”

  Mason laughed, and it wasn’t long before I was laughing too. “I think you just did.”

  “Don’t push it, Mason,” I drawled.

  “I think I just did.”

  I didn’t want to find him funny but I couldn’t help it. The sex had made me stupid or something, sent my guard crashing down. That’s what Justin would most likely say if I divulged this to him.

  Don’t let your guard down.

  It was good advice.

  “I mean it,” I snapped. “I’m so fucking mad at you I can’t even think straight.”

  “Look, I know this doesn’t mean anything,” he said reasonably.

  “I didn’t say that,” I blurted out quickly, wanting to slap a hand over my damn wayward mouth.

  Mason nodded, like he understood, simply saying, “Okay. We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want.”

  I stayed seated on the kitchen counter, my legs hanging down. “We do have to talk about Ethan, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want you to look me in the eye and tell me for real if what you’re saying is true.”

  He stood in front of me, his shoulders squared, and looked me dead in the eye. “It’s all true. No word of it is a lie. I told you because I want you to know that, despite everything, you can trust me.”

  I stared at him, trying to spot any tic or twitch, any sign that this all might be some cosmic joke.

  It wasn’t, though, and deep down I knew that. I just didn’t want to deal with it.

  I took a steadying breath, knowing Mason wouldn’t like what I was about to say. “We should go to the police, then.”

  Without missing a beat, Mason immediately told me, “No.”

  “This is a police matter, Mason!”

  “The police won’t do shit,” he said roughly, suddenly animated, running a hand through his already messy hair. “You think I wouldn’t have gone to them before, if I’d thought they could help?”

  “Mason—”

  He stepped forward, hands held out like some show of reason. “Look, I’ve been in the underworld a long time, so you have to trust me when I say this: the police can’t stop this operation. If someone is paying for Ethan’s head on a plate, no cop in the world can sway them.”