Back in Black

by Lori Foster

  “Drew?”

  “Shhh.” Clasping her knees, he drew her legs up to bend them and then opened them wide.

  Gillian turned her face away, but when nothing more happened, she looked at Drew again.

  He’d been waiting for that, apparently, because he whispered, “Better,” in approval.

  And . . . it was. Seeing his face, what he felt as he looked at her exposed body, heightened her arousal even more.

  She was on the verge of asking for his touch when, with one hand, he covered her sex, and with the other he came back to her breasts. She wanted to feel his fingers inside her; she needed to feel that.

  He pinched one nipple lightly—and just held her like that. It was excruciating, needing him to do more, but almost unable to bear it.

  He pressed his palm to her. “I can feel how wet you are already.”

  “I’m ready,” she agreed. More than ready.

  Every so often, the fingers at her nipple tightened or released, rolled or rubbed. By shifting her shoulders a little, she could make it happen, but not to the degree she needed.

  He took his gaze off her face to look at her sex, and Gillian held her breath.

  When he began lightly petting her, she wanted to melt. It was incredible, but nowhere near enough.

  “Open your legs a little more. As far as you can.”

  She tried to do as he asked—and he rewarded her by sliding two fingers into her, thrusting deep in one smooth move.

  Her hips lifted off the bed. “Drew.”

  “Don’t move, Gillian. Not until I’m inside you.”

  She was getting frazzled enough that she snapped, “When will that be?”

  He brought his thumb up to her clitoris. “When I’m done having fun this way.”

  That was all she needed, that one additional touch just there. Her eyes sank shut and her lips parted. It wasn’t easy to stay in such an awkward position, especially knowing that he took in her every expression and could see every inch of her. She knotted her hands in the sheets to ground herself and strained to keep her legs sprawled wide.

  “Come for me, Gillian.” His thumb moved over her; his fingers moved in her.

  She felt herself tightening.

  “That’s it, honey.” He sounded as turned on as she felt. “That’s it.”

  The climax slammed through her with startling strength, rocking her body and clenching her muscles so that her thighs closed around his hand. They both groaned.

  Just as the release began to fade, he pulled his fingers from her and put them in his mouth. His eyes closed as he licked away her taste. When he opened them again, their gazes met.

  He moved between her legs, but not to enter her.

  Lifting up, Gillian asked in confusion, “Drew?”

  He raised her hips in his hands and, after one long, heated look at her wet sex, leaned down and put his mouth to her.

  She dropped back on the bed. His tongue slicked into her, tasting her deeply, and that was enough to set off aftershocks of pleasure. When he stroked over her clitoris, she jerked from the too-intense sensation. But he held her secure, and there was nowhere for her to go, no way to escape the rasp of his tongue and then, all too soon, the gentle suction of his mouth.

  She sobbed as the sensations escalated too quickly again. She twisted, alternately lifting to him and drawing away until, faster than she realized possible, another orgasm shook her.

  Drew kept her locked to him, taking everything from her, moaning against her as her body quaked.

  This time when the orgasm waned, he rushed to get a condom, cursed as he rolled it on, and then came back to her. He hooked an arm through one of her legs, opened her again, and thrust deep. He gave her no time to recuperate, already driving fast and hard, shaking the bed, gasping with each penetration.

  “Christ, Gillian . . .”

  Overcome by lethargy, Gillian barely managed to get her weakened arms around his neck. Amazing. And yes, outrageous. Wonderfully so.

  Not with any other man could she have so completely let go. But with Drew . . . well, she loved him, so much so that it scared her.

  Drew’s face tightened; his jaw locked.

  She knew he was close, she could feel the power building in his body. “Kiss me, Drew.”

  With a growl, he took her mouth. Even as his release hit him, he continued with a rapacious kiss that left her lips swollen and her heart soft with emotion.

  Sinking down onto her, Drew struggled to even his breathing.

  Gillian stroked his back, smiled to herself, and whispered, “You were right.”

  Half a minute passed before he worked up onto his elbows. “Always.” He took a few more deep breaths. “What was I right about this time?”

  Gillian couldn’t help but laugh. The man didn’t lack confidence. “I am very relaxed right now. Not a tense bone in my body.”

  Instead of smiling, he gave her a profound, intense look chock-full of emotion. “Just remember that I’m the one with the cure, all right?”

  “Oh, definitely.” The way things were going, they would both be tense again in no time.

  It was going to be one hell of a day. But thanks to Drew, she at least had a plan. Now that her anxiety had lessened, she couldn’t wait to implement it.

  “MY brother was such a fan of the sport, and he thought he was so invincible. He badly wanted real recognition, but the SBC wasn’t interested.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Bill was nineteen. So young.” Her small laugh was one of irony. “I was only twenty—but I always felt way older than him.”

  It wasn’t unheard-of for fighters to be that young while building their careers at smaller venues, on a path to the SBC. Brett wondered if her brother had gone through the right channels, with the right training, or if, like many, he thought he could find a shortcut to fame. “Who did he train with?”

  “I don’t know. None of us really knew what he was up to. Bill was always a quiet kid who struggled with fitting in. He wasn’t the best student or the most popular guy in school. He wanted . . . I don’t know. A way to get recognized, I think.”

  To Brett, that didn’t factor in. MMA fighters comprised every personality type imaginable. Some came from wealthy families, some from poverty. Some had known great popularity, where others were total misfits. What the successful ones had in common was talent, training, and heart.

  “He was so excited when a small group of organizers invited him to participate in an unsanctioned night of bouts. He . . . he told me about it, and he begged me not to say anything to our parents.”

  Shit. Brett rubbed her shoulders. “Even at nineteen, he was a legal adult, Audrey, able to make his own decisions. You can’t blame yourself.”

  “I knew it wasn’t a good idea, but I believed him when he said it was safe, when he . . .” Tears welled in her eyes. “When he told me he’d be fine and nothing bad would happen.”

  Now wasn’t the right time to point out the gulf that lay between an unsanctioned amateur fight night and the professionalism of trained athletes competing.

  Instead, he pulled Audrey over to sit on his lap. “You were there? At the fight, I mean?”

  She nodded. “It was so awful, worse than I’d ever imagined. Things were okay at first, even though I flinched over every hit either of them got in. Then the other fighter hit Bill right in the temple, and when it rocked him, he leaped in and kept on hitting him. My brother just sort of covered up, trying to deflect the blows. The announcer called it a ‘flurry of punches,’ and that’s what it was. One strike right after another, over and over again.”

  If her brother had turtled up and wasn’t intelligently defending himself, the fight should have been stopped by the referee. But an untrained amateur ref was as bad as an untrained fighter, maybe even worse since the fighters’ safety depended on him recognizing when a fighter was in real trouble.

  “Bill collapsed, and while he lay there, unmoving, everyone screamed and cheered in excitement.�
� She looked at Brett with hollow remorse. “The other guy had won.”

  “What happened to Bill?”

  She swallowed hard. “When people realized he wasn’t coming to, emergency medical technicians finally came in, and they . . . I don’t know, worked on him in some way. I saw that his eyes were finally open and he even stood up, but he was so wobbly.” She put a fist to her mouth. “I wanted to go to him, but I didn’t want to humiliate him if he was okay.”

  “And you were only twenty yourself, Audrey.” He wanted her to understand the limited expectations for a woman so young. “You were unfamiliar with the fight scene, what was wrong or right.”

  She lowered her head. “He always complained to me about babying him too much in front of other people.”

  With his fingertips under her chin, Brett brought her face back up. “But that’s what big sisters do, right?” Like he had a fucking clue. “They show their love.”

  She nodded. “But that night, I didn’t. That night, I tried to stay out of his way.” Her eyes briefly closed. “He had a seizure.” More tears welled. “Right there on the mat. Before he could leave the ring, he crumpled and then started jerking in spasms. Everyone was screaming and . . . excited. And by then, I couldn’t get to him.”

  The image appeared in Brett’s mind, and he could only guess the helplessness and dismay she had to have felt. “Christ, Audrey, I’m so sorry.” He put his forehead to hers and wished for a way to take some of her pain.

  She dashed the tears from her face and rushed through the rest of the telling. “They took him to the hospital by ambulance, but he didn’t get better, Brett. And my poor parents . . .”

  Her entire body tensed in remembered heartache.

  Again Brett rubbed her back, offering the only thing he could: understanding and comfort.

  “They didn’t even know Bill was fighting, that he was in danger, and then they had to come to the hospital and see him like that, being hurried off for brain surgery because of a clot on his brain.”

  Brett had known her long enough now to know how she’d dealt with it all—she’d taken full responsibility, and in her protesting of the sport, she hoped to atone.

  “It was not your fault, Audrey.”

  She didn’t even hear him. Voice now lower, numb with agony, she said, “He lived through the surgery but went into a coma not long after. A few days later, he died without ever regaining consciousness. My parents didn’t get a chance to tell him good-bye, and I never got a chance to tell him how sorry I was.”

  Brett pulled her closer and tucked her head in under his chin. The minutes ticked by, but he could only hold her until she’d regained her composure.

  When she finally stirred, it was to look up at him and ask, “Now do you understand?”

  He cared about her, Brett realized. A lot. Beyond enjoying her company and the physical compatibility, he was fast falling in love with her.

  Hard as it would be for her, he couldn’t let her go on thinking that the situation with her brother had any resemblance to the sport of professional MMA fighting. He searched for the right words and decided honesty would be his best bet.

  “I understand that, because of your experience, you have a skewed perception of the sport.” He smoothed a hand over her hair and kept her close when she would have leaned away. “Yeah, I get that, Audrey. And I know that emotions have a way of coloring things.”

  “I am emotional about it, but it’s also fact.”

  The tears left her lashes spiked and her brown eyes glistening. “My brother loved MMA. That was clear enough when he explained his plans to me. I know this was an amateur setting, too, but I saw how the crowd got pumped by the bloodshed and how, while my brother was collapsing onto the mat, no one cared.” She scrambled from his lap to stand before him, hurt, determined, smothered in guilt. “They were all too busy screaming for the fighter who’d beat Bill nearly to death.”

  Brett stood, too. “You’re a smart woman, Audrey.”

  She slashed a hand through the air and turned away.

  Brett brought her back around again. “What happened to your brother—that isn’t the sport any more than a kid jumping off the roof of his garage in a cape is Superman. The SBC doesn’t support unsanctioned fights or amateurs trying to emulate professionals. In fact, they go out of their way to try to discourage that stuff.”

  “If it isn’t about bullies and jerks, then why does your president, who represents the sport, need a handler to change his image?”

  Ah, hell. It would have to come back to that. “Drew Black is a strong personality, and thank God for it. Most of the fighters are as responsible and caring as anyone else. But, as is the case with most athletes, they like to play hard and negotiate harder. A slick, smooth-talking businessman wouldn’t make it a year. Drew . . . he manages everyone and everything around him. Sure, he polarizes some people in the process. They either love him or they hate him, and if you attack his sport, you’ll hear from him. On his terms.”

  She gave him an Exactly look of satisfaction.

  Brett shook his head. “Honey, Drew isn’t the devil. He doesn’t beat women or kick puppies. He pays his taxes; he raises a shitload of donations for more charities than I can count; he’s not a drunk or on drugs. He’s a brilliant entrepreneur with standout leadership quality, who’s passionate about his business. He’s flawed, like we all are. The difference is that his flaws are highlighted in the media because he’s a celebrity of sorts.”

  He could see that doubt blossom in her demeanor and pressed his point.

  “Gillian Noode is a woman hired to do a job. No way should she be a target for WAVS.” He put his hands on his hips. “Look at it this way, Audrey. You’re sleeping with a fighter who will defend the sport to anyone. Does that mean that a crew of reporters and cameramen should converge on you, dig through your past, and invade your privacy?”

  She paled. “No.” Shaking her head, she repeated more strongly, “No, of course not. But it’s not that easy, Brett. This is Millie’s story. She’s excited about it and, given her history with Drew Black, she feels totally justified in exposing every aspect of his life. This is the big bomb she’s been waiting for to . . .”

  “Get even?” Even he hated how that sounded. “And using an innocent woman to do that is okay?”

  Audrey wrapped her arms around herself and paced away.

  “You realize, of course, why this is important to me.”

  She glanced at him with empathy. “Your past?”

  “My dad caused more damn scenes than a circus elephant on the loose. I could never bring anyone around to our place, even after he split, because I never knew what shape my mother would be in.” God, he hated talking about this, but he needed Audrey to understand. “I know what it is to be publicly humiliated.”

  “You were a child, Brett. No one would ever fault you for your parents’ . . . shortcomings.”

  He almost laughed. Fault him? No, most wanted to put him up on a fucking pedestal for surviving it.

  Brett decided it was time to lay it out there. “Bottom line here, honey: I can’t be involved with trashing Ms. Noode. I won’t be. Not even by association.”

  Her head snapped up and her brows came down. “Meaning your association with me?”

  “Meaning your association with WAVS.” He caught her shoulders. “Protest the SBC and Drew all you want, hate him for what you think he is. I can deal with that. Drew can deal with that. But if your group uses Ms. Noode just to hurt Drew, then how can you point the morality finger at anyone else?”

  “You’re giving me an ultimatum?”

  “I’m telling you how I feel. I’ve been on the hot end of scandal, and it sucks. I can’t condone doing that to anyone else. Not for any reason.”

  “That’s not what I do.”

  “It’s what Millie will do if you don’t kill this story.” She rubbed her head. “I have to think about all this.” Rigid and offended, she turned away. “But for now, I really do need to go or i
t’ll be a moot point, because Millie isn’t going to wait on me forever.”

  Brett hesitated, but damn it, he didn’t want to drive her home in strained silence. Pulling her around for a quick hug, he said, “I’m sort of missing you already.”

  Her frown eased away. In a sincere whisper, she said, “Same here.”

  CHAPTER 15

  WHILE Gillian showered and changed clothes, Drew returned phone calls on his cell and took a self-guided tour around her modest home. They’d made it out of his place with only one return-reporter trying to snag a scoop. The guy wore Coke-bottle eyeglasses and a wrinkled dress shirt, but he knew his MMA. He asked some great questions, to which Drew replied, “I’ll be doing a press conference later. Give your card to the lady and she’ll let you know the time and location.”

  When he started to take a photograph, Drew stepped in front of Gillian and blocked him. “None of that or you’ll be uninvited. Got it?”

  The lanky kid scowled. “For sure you’ll call me?”

  “And give you dibs on the first question after I’ve explained things.” Drew stretched out a hand. “What do you say?”

  The kid accepted his hand.

  He had a knack for handling the press—when he didn’t let his temper get in the way too much. He’d be tested today, Drew knew, because the first jackass to insult Gillian would get cut out of the loop—for eternity. He didn’t give a fuck if it was ESPN. He wouldn’t let her be hurt by this.

  Since the early morning nooky, she’d been in good spirits. He intended to keep things that way. And thinking about it, how she’d felt and tasted and sounded in her lust . . . yeah. It might have left her relaxed, but it had damn near made him shatter with the effort to keep control.

  Taking her like a marauding fiend afterward hadn’t really been part of the plan. Not that she’d complained.

  In fact, about the only time Gillian complained was when he knew he had it coming. And then she came at him full-go, never whining or teary-eyed the way some women did. Gillian had more than her fair share of feminine wiles, but she didn’t use them to manipulate.