“Oh, I have my car over at the center.” She waved off my concern like I was being silly. I continued looking at her dead serious and she realized she needed a better answer. “Or… I guess I can go home with one of them,” She gestured vaguely over toward the area where she’d been sitting. “The tree-huggers. I mean one of them can take me home.”
“I’m taking you home,” I decided.
“No, no you don’t have to do that.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“No, I’m fine.” She started to walk away and promptly tripped on nothing. I caught her with a strong arm around her waist. She brought her hand up to my shoulder and looked up at me, breathless. She felt so good in my arms. I let her go.
“You’re drunk,” I stated the obvious. “And I’m driving you home.”
With a grumble and a small pout, she relented. I watched her head back over and get her purse, say her good-byes. I couldn’t tell which one was Mike, a couple of guys sat with their backs toward me. None of them stood up to say good-bye. One of them gave her a hug but stayed seated. That’s right, I thought, watching, tense. Keep your ass in the chair.
She rejoined me, smiling now, and held onto my arm as we headed into the parking lot.
“Just sos you know,” she wagged her finger at me, “I’m the ‘sponsible… responsible one.”
“Mmm-hmm.” I opened the passenger door and helped her in. She was such a lightweight, I bet the amount she’d drank could fit inside a thimble. I liked the perc of her leaning on me, wobbly and needing my support. I was glad it was me and not some other guy.
“And I could have driven myself home.” She was finishing up a lecture to me when I climbed in my side of the car. It seemed she’d been talking to herself the whole time.
“Bullshit.” I started up the engine. “Even when you’re sober I don’t like you driving that car.”
“I like my car.”
“Your car is shit. I don’t know why you won’t use one of the others we have. They’re just sitting around.”
“Because they’re not mine.” She sounded so calm and matter of fact, her pride a seamless part of her. Never mind that the muffler to her car was practically being held in place by rubber bands and a chunk of the hood had rusted all the way through. She had a crack in her front windshield and her rear wipers were missing. “It never rains in L.A.,” she’d said to me when I’d pointed it out.
So stubborn. We had about seven cars sitting around in our giant garage. A few of them my father wouldn’t even let me touch, vintage, custom-designed, etc., but there were a few more that had her name on them. She wanted nothing to do with them. Like she wanted nothing to do with me.
As I drove us down the streets of L.A. at night, she hummed and played with a strand of her hair. Close together inside the car, I could smell her. I wanted to pull over, wrap my hands in her hair, close the distance between us and bury myself in her.
Instead I asked, “How’s Mike?”
“Great,” she replied, so upbeat. “He’s so funny!”
“You like him?” My hands gripped the steering wheel.
“Of course!”
She leaned forward and started punching buttons on my dashboard.
“What are you doing?”
“Tunes!” she exclaimed as she finally found the radio. I never used it, just synced my iPhone, but she went old school and scanned through stations until she found a pop song she liked and started belting it out.
“I love this song!” she declared, making little motions with her hands along with the beat. She was a really bad singer, off key and brash. It cracked me up. She serenaded me—the kind of serenade that would make wolves howl and babies cry—until a sad song came on the station.
Scrunching up her face, she punched it off. “I don’t like that one.”
Without the music, my giant SUV felt too small, heated, close. Her skirt had ridden up to mid-thigh. I swallowed as she crossed her long legs.
“‘s your fault,” she nearly whispered.
“What?” I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly, or even what she meant.
“Is your fault I’m drunk.”
“How’s that?”
“I’m all wound up. I’ve never been wound up like this before. But now I’m all wound up.”
I said nothing. I was too wound up. Fuck. The car ride would end soon. We were nearing our street.
“Are you coming to the fight tomorrow?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I won’t put you cageside,” I promised her. Lots of people wanted to be right up next to all the action. They wanted to get spattered by the fighters’ sweat and blood. I didn’t think Jewel would go for that. I wasn’t even sure she’d enjoy watching the fight. But I was a selfish bastard. I wanted her there.
“Cage?” She sounded confused. “You fight in a cage? Like an animal?”
“It’s not a literal cage. There’s no wire bars or anything. It’s an octagon.”
“Could call it that.”
“That’s a lot of syllables for this crowd.”
“Oct. A. Gon.” She said it slow, like she was proving to me that even drunk she could pull it off.
“Trust me. I’ll put you back a few rows, but where you can still see.” And I can see you, I mentally added. The lights were bright when you were in the cage, but I’d put her where I could still see her. I wanted to be able to look out in the audience right before it all started and see her face.
I pulled the car into our garage, the interior lights turning on, the door automatically shutting us in. I parked the car, but didn’t want to get out. She didn’t move to leave, either.
“What if you get hurt?” she asked in a quiet voice, looking over at me with those big, green eyes.
“You worried about me?”
She nodded. Sober, she’d never admit something like that. She acted like she hated my guts. This I liked much better, as she looked at me with her plump lips slightly parted. Her skirt had ridden up even more and I could see so much of those creamy thighs. It would be so easy to reach a hand over and stroke her silk. She’d part for me, sigh, melt into me.
The old me would have done it in a heartbeat. This new me, the one who was all work and no play, I didn’t even like him. He nagged, told me I shouldn’t do it, not while she was drunk. She’d be so angry at herself afterwards.
And, selfishly, I wanted her stone cold sober when I touched her. Because I would touch her, I decided. Enough of this hands-off shit. And when I did I wanted her to be alert, fully aware of every whisper of a touch, every stroke, every lick. I wanted her to feel each second of her struggle and sweet surrender as I knew she would, eventually. Fuck I wanted that.
I growled, “get out of the car, Jewel.”
“What?” she started. I realized she’d been drifting, too, her thoughts probably running parallel to my own, here together in the confines of the car.
“Get out of the car.”
“Oh!” She unbuckled and brought her hand to the latch. “Are you coming?”
“In a minute. You go to sleep.”
She looked at me with what could be interpreted as reluctance, or even disappointment. I’d like to kiss that right off her lips. Another night.
Tonight I’d let her slip out of the car and walk away from me into the house. Tonight I’d rest my forehead against the steering wheel, sitting by myself in my BMW willing my raging hard-on to subside.
Tomorrow she was coming to my fight. I realized I’d never had a girl come see me fight before. Plenty of girls in the audience watched me fight. Hell, I’d started even having some fans who came and cheered for me. I was starting to build a reputation, starting to have a following. But I’d never had a woman I’d wanted to come, someone special I’d invite and look out and see.
I’d only really ever had one girlfriend, back at boarding school. We’d held hands walking to the dining hall and shit. We’d been 17 and she’d looked like a model. Then she’d started f
ucking my roommate. Ah, young love.
Since then, I’d taken a page out of my father’s book. The less attachment, the better. I steered clear of the good girls, bee-lined straight for the ones who wanted to play. I knew a bunch of them, girls who prided themselves in having the sexual appetite and attitude of a dude, fucking the whole night then not thinking twice about it the next day. Those were my kinds of girls.
They weren’t the type you asked to come support you at a fight. They might get into the fighting, get turned on by it. But it meant nothing to see them out there cheering for you. They were just another face in the crowd.
Jewel, though? I couldn’t wait to look out and meet her eyes. I wanted to win this one for her.
Up in my bedroom, two doors down from hers, it was like I was a kid again, horny and wanting a girl but not having her. I had to let it out. In the darkness, I let myself imagine how tonight could have gone down had I not held back. Freeing my cock, I palmed its hard length.
In the car tonight, I could have leaned down and kissed her, licked her at the hollow at the base of her throat. What would she have done? Would she have pushed me away? Or would she have tilted her head back in submission, offering herself to me, her breasts pressing up against her shirt. My shaft throbbed as I stroked it, imagining squeezing her breasts, cupping and kneading until a low moan escaped her throat.
She wanted this like I did. She’d stood there watching me fuck a girl against the wall. I wanted to tease her with it, make her admit it. I wanted to take her nipples between my fingers, pinch them hard and whisper in her ear her dirty secret, that I’d seen her watching me fuck another girl against the wall.
She wouldn’t want to admit it. I could picture her panting, twisting her face to the side, her eyes closed. She’d feel so embarrassed. I wouldn’t let her get away with it. I’d make her admit it, working her until her breath came fast and ragged like mine was becoming as I touched myself.
I couldn’t wait to touch her, feel her petals, push a finger up into her sex. She’d be wet for me, I knew she would. I wanted her worked up, moving her hips against my finger, pressing against me while I made her admit it. I’d make her tell me she’d watched me. I wanted to make her frantic, make her admit she liked watching me fuck.
I was close, my balls tensing, my cock at its full swollen length, the tip wide and full. I closed my eyes, imagining her slick, needy pussy, her swollen clit under my thumb. When I told her to come, she’d come for me, all over my fingers, quivering and shuddering and screaming, creaming all over my hand. And I wouldn’t let her off easy, I’d keep at her, stroking, coaxing more out of her, obsessed by the orgasm crashing over her entire body again and again.
I came hard, my groan barely muffled against my pillow. This wasn’t going to last for much longer. One day soon, it wouldn’t just be my fantasies. I would get my hands on Jewel. And I would make her come.
CHAPTER 9
Jewel
On Saturday night I wore my white dress to the fight. Back in my room, it had seemed like the right thing to do. A no-brainer. I felt beautiful, curvy and feminine, exactly how I wanted to look and how I wanted him to see me. I could picture walking in and somehow he’d find me across the crowded room, looking like a vision of old world glamour and sexiness. Our eyes would lock and he’d look at me with all that heat, the intensity of a pent-up animal. Like a drug, I craved it. I knew we couldn’t be together, not in the way I wanted, but still I needed to feel this attraction, this pull. I was helpless against it, drawn, captured.
The white dress left my shoulders and back bare. I was a lot less covered up than usual. It was a warm night in L.A., of course all nights were, so I didn’t even bring a jacket. I drove to the hotel and parked underground in the garage. My heels made clicks and clacks on the cement as I made my way over to the elevator, the sound foreign. Flip-flops and sneakers comprised my wardrobe, but I’d bought something new for tonight. For Tuck.
I didn’t fully admit it to myself, that I was doing all of this for him, because of the growing need deep within me. I could write it off under the guise of sisterly duty. I should go to his fight to support him. He didn’t have any other family members doing it. Surely it was the right thing to do, as his stepsister.
I couldn’t be falling for him, it didn’t make any sense, I didn’t even really know him. Was he the spoiled son of a billionaire I’d met before, partying and tearing his way through women? Or was he the man I’d seen over the past week, driven and tough as hell?
As I rode up in the elevator, my heart beat fast and I had no idea what to expect. I’d never been to anything like an MMA fight. I’d barely attended any athletic events of any kind. Growing up without a father, we never had football games on in the house, never listened to baseball as we drove in the car.
In high school I’d been a mathlete. I’m not making that up, it’s a real thing. We had matching t-shirts and we traveled to other high schools to compete about things like who could solve quadratic equations the fastest. That’s what I knew about competing.
An MMA fight? Not a clue.
The elevator doors parted and I nearly gasped. The lobby teemed with people, cameras flashing and people laughing and posing, the excitement palpable in the air. The crowd was dressed up, Saturday night in L.A. how could you expect anything less, but it wasn’t anything like the kinds of entertainment industry and charity events my mother sometimes dragged me to.
This was a freaking party. The women wore next-to-nothing, I’m not even exaggerating. Some of them walked around in scraps of clothes, string bikinis and heels, more makeup than a drag queen. Most of them seemed to have fake boobs—again, no big surprise in L.A.—but these were on full, buoyant display with only tiny triangles to barely cover their nipples. I’d seen a lot of big fake boobs in my life, but here, on some of these girls, what they had could double as flotation devices.
Had I thought I was under-dressed? I suddenly felt like a spinster schoolteacher in an old wool suit, my pantyhose wrinkled around my ankles. These girls were smoking hot and knew it, throwing their long, styled hair back in laughter as they offered up their fabulous, huge breasts, their asses high and tight and perched up atop heels that made my wedge sandals look like nerdsville.
Back to being a wallflower, I skulked into the corner, hoping to become invisible. I’d noticed the women first, but then I realized I was in a room that had to be about seventy percent men. And these men were huge. A lot of them looked like fighters, themselves. Or they had the broad shoulders and arms of men who’d once been fighters, coupled with the beer gut of those who’d become spectators and fans. Either way, they were big, occupying a ton of space. I shrunk myself back against the wall as much as I could.
Holy tattoos. I realized I might be the only person there without any ink. I felt like a shy, nerdy virgin. Maybe because I was one.
What had I been thinking heading there in this virginal dress? Was I trying to be Natalie Wood in West Side Story, debuting at my first dance with the big kids? A girl walked by me with huge, glittery fake eyelashes, a pink neon bikini advertising her XXX curves and clear plastic platform heels. Trashy as hell but straight out of most guys’ wet dreams.
So this was the crowd Tuck ran with now? No wonder he thought I was ridiculous, a stumbling inexperienced idiot. These girls knew more about pleasing a man than I’d ever learn in a lifetime. And I was sure they were all over him. A rising heavyweight fighter, fresh on the circuit, they probably circled him like sharks, vying to be the first to take a bite. Or have him take a bite out of them. Either way, it was way out of my league.
The whole scene was, really. A guy jabbed me with his elbow and didn’t turn around to apologize. A man in a flashy suit stood under bright lights being interviewed, the TV camera a couple feet away. Near me a girl dropped a glass of water on her tank top, plastering the white to her black bra. She cried in mock flirtatious dismay to the semi-circle of male onlookers. On purpose, I realized. She was competing in her own
wet t-shirt contest. I’d declare her the winner.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Was I supposed to go and try to find Tuck? I’d been too drunk last night to ask him anything. I’d nearly jumped his bones in the car after he’d driven me home. Thank God he’d chased me out, but how humiliating. I’d sat there next to him, leaning closer, lips parted, the buzz from the margaritas fading, but replaced by something stronger, much more potent. His nearness, his maleness, his scent. He’d had to beat me off with a stick.
He’d left me a note this morning:
See you tonight. Your name will be at the door.
That was it. I hadn’t seen him all day.
Tentatively, I headed over to the double doors. Huger than huge men stood at them, bouncers I guessed, and others took tickets. Sure enough, they had my name and handed me a program. Trying to calm my nerves, the butterflies fluttering up in my stomach, I walked into the arena.
It reminded me of some of the large lecture halls at school, only post-apocalypse. Stadium seating sloped down on all sides into the center: a 30-foot wide octagonal ring. With black mesh sides, you could still see everything that went on inside, but it did look like a cage. I couldn’t believe Tuck would go down in there, all lights, eyes and cameras on him while he faced down an opponent. My fingernails went to my mouth. What if he got hurt? He would almost certainly get hurt.
This was a big deal, a really big deal. It was so outside the realm of my world, I hadn’t even realized it. This sport was huge, thousands of fans packing into a hotel to see an amateur fight. I’d had no idea.
“Hey, gorgeous.” I flinched against the drunk, hot breath of a big man at my shoulder. “Are you all red?” He pointed down between my legs. The big guy next to him giggled, a girlishly high-pitched laugh.
I spun away from them and headed straight for the bathroom. I shouldn’t have come. Hiding in a stall for a while, I considered leaving. With all the people and commotion, Tuck probably wouldn’t even notice I wasn’t there. How could he even see one empty seat in a packed arena? I’d pictured a handful of people, friends and family of the fighters, their coaches and teammates. I’d never expected this amount of fans when these guys weren’t even pros.
Off Limits: A Stepbrother MMA Romance Page 8
