Chapter Eleven
Gabe
I draped my leather jacket over Aubrey’s shoulders as we walked the final two blocks from the subway to her apartment.
It swallowed her up as she pulled it around her and flashed me a grateful smile.
The night wasn’t too cold for early March, but it was chilly enough to have her shivering beneath her own leather jacket in the best and worst dress to ever happen to me.
The best because I’d never seen a woman look so fucking sexy, and the worst because the longer I stared, the more certain I was it would kill me.
Despite her small size, her legs were endless in it, her heels only adding to the illusion, while the short skirt hugged her ass and revealed the tattoos along her legs and back. Somehow her arms and chest being fully covered made the whole thing sexier.
It had taken every shred of discipline I’d honed as a professional athlete not to offer to thread her hand with mine, lead her to the back of the restaurant, and show her just how good bathroom sex could be. Especially after hearing about her experience with her ex.
She had no idea how fucking sexy she was. How sensual and desirable without fucking trying. How I’d been hard throughout most of dinner just from her sweet scent and the accidental grazes of our skin, and from those shaky breaths she took whenever I said something that turned her on.
She deserved to feel all that from sex and more. To come a hundred times in a hundred different ways and locations and positions. She deserved to have fun with sex. To feel freedom in it. To fall in love with it. Not to feel like something was wrong with her for not knowing what was possible.
Not that I’d been much better as a sexual partner. I wouldn’t say I’d been with a lot of women, but I’d certainly been with enough, and I probably hadn’t given half of them the attention they deserved.
When I’d been pro, boxing had been my life.
I hadn’t cared about girlfriends or getting laid.
If an opportunity came to have a night of fun, I took it, but it was never about more than what felt good to me.
At the time, I’d have told you I rocked their world, but that was because I’d been too single-minded in my own world to pay attention.
With Aubrey, I paid attention to everything. Like the little hops she did on her toes when she was excited but tried to play it cool, or how dilated her eyes grew just from kissing me on New Year’s. Little things I never got to witness through texts.
It was how I knew that Christian guy was more than some stranger she’d bumped into. Her shoulders had tensed, and her ankles had locked like she was reinforcing her body for a fight.
I didn’t know what he said, but I’d been around enough competition to recognize something friendly versus a personal grudge.
And while I had no doubt Aubrey could handle herself, as long as I was around, she’d never have to fight alone.
The second Christian had blocked her with his body, I’d wanted them both to know she had backup.
If Christian wanted to mess with her, he could mess with me too.
Letting him believe I was her boyfriend was simply the easiest way to make that message clear.
I tried not to focus on how good it had felt for her to go along with it. Or how much I wished he was still around so I’d have an excuse to hold her hand the rest of the walk home.
When we reached Aubrey’s building a few minutes later, I couldn’t help but laugh. “How did you manage to find a pink apartment building in Philly?”
She grinned as she stepped onto the marble stoop leading to the sole pale-pink stone building on a street lined with red brick. “Haven’t you heard of manifestation?”
“I’ve heard of luck.” I joined her on the stoop with my hands in my pockets.
“There was some of that too.” She peered fondly at the building. “I found it after my grandma died, right when I was putting her house on the market. I’ve always thought of it as something she put in my path. Like her way of looking out for me after she was gone.”
She dropped her chin, her smile fading with a longing I recognized. One for the past. For a person in it. Her grandma, who filled so many of her stories and whose absence would always be an ache that never fully went away.
My own ache throbbed in my chest.
“Anyway.” Her smile grew shy. “Thanks for coming with me tonight. I had a lot of fun.”
“Me too.”
She lifted her gaze to mine, those hazel eyes stealing my breath.
Goddamn, I wanted to kiss her. To fall back into the softness of her lips I still recalled from New Year’s.
I recalled it way more often than I should—every one of her touches and sounds, the press of her softness against me.
None of it was mine to ask for more of. My only move was to say good night, turn around, and pour this restless energy into training. I was about to do just that when she cleared her throat.
“There’s, um, something I want to ask you,” she said as she played with her keys.
It was hard to tell in the dimness of the porch light, but her neck looked flushed.
“I just think maybe it’s the sort of thing that would be better to ask you upstairs so we could talk about it—I mean, if you’re even open to it.
But it’s also the kind of thing that might make you uncomfortable, and I don’t want you to feel trapped or something, so it might be better for me to just ask you here—”
“Hey.” I tucked my finger under her chin and, with a graze of her skin, nudged her to look at me. “Whatever it is, it’s okay. Go ahead and ask.”
Her eyes remained hesitant, so I gave an encouraging nod. If I wasn’t so curious, I might have been worried.
She forced out a breath. “Well…you know that stuff about my ex and how I didn’t like having sex?”
“Yeah.”
She rolled her lips together as if still not sure she should let the words out. Then she released them in a rush. “I was thinking I might be able to figure out what I like with you.”
It took me a second to process her meaning. “You want to have sex with me?”
She gave a faint nod.
My mind went fuzzy as if I’d been jabbed in the head, the ground no longer solid. That wasn’t where I’d expected this to go. Despite my head spinning, my body had no problem keeping up. My cock was half hard and getting harder each second she stared at me with that hopeful gaze.
There was uncertainty too, as if she was trying to figure out a way to undo saying it and pretend this never happened.
Which was the absolute last thing I wanted.
The first involved any of a dozen scenarios that had been playing through my head since I saw her in that dress.
“Would you…be open to it?” she asked, timid.
My answer would have been the same even if it weren’t for the vulnerability in her eyes. Seeing it just made me want this more.
I plucked the keys from her grasp and took her hand in mine. “You’re right. We should go upstairs.”
Aubrey led the way to the second floor and unlocked the door to her own little fairy garden.
More kinds of plants than I could name filled the space, hanging from tall curtain rods and perched on her shelves.
There were overhead lights that would flood the small apartment, but she flicked on a few lamps instead, adding to the glow of the white Christmas lights lining the high ceilings.
Anything not plants was color. The green velvet of her couch, the deep reds and purples of her rug, the warm amber of her furniture and bright fabrics of her throw pillows. Where the gym I slept in was faded and dull, this space overflowed with vibrance.
None of it was more breathtaking than the woman in front of me.
She took off my jacket then hers underneath, and hung them in the narrow closet off the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?” she offered. “I have wine or beer.”
“Water’s good.”
Tomorrow, I would have to get strict about my diet again. No more alcohol or rich restaurant meals. Not if I wanted a real shot at winning this tournament.
She avoided my gaze as she filled two gold-rimmed glasses from a pitcher and handed me one. Her own, she took to the coffee table and placed beside a vase of wildflowers before dropping onto the couch and tucking her legs under her. A fuzzy white pillow landed in her lap.
I wanted to join her on the couch, tug her to the cushions, and lick my way beneath her dress.
If I were honest with myself, I’d wanted it since long before tonight. Not even just since New Year’s.
Since all the way back to the last time I was home before my mom’s funeral, one year before she died.
It’d been my first Thanksgiving home in four years, and in had walked a gorgeous woman with flowing blond hair and a smile that lit up the room, wearing a long-sleeved dress that hugged soft curves, and holding an arrangement of flowers that looked lifeless compared to her.
I’d stared for a full minute before realizing it was Aubrey, all grown up.
The whole day, I’d been drawn to her, my gaze following her like a compass seeking true north, my smile matching hers as she schooled me in Hardt-style Clue.
It was like the world somehow lifted with the edges of her mouth, and every time our eyes met, I became aware of the growing heat of my skin and the way my muscles tightened as if holding their breath.
I’d texted her after, not wanting to release that breath, knowing I’d have to in order to give my all to the High Hitter event, but holding onto the possibility of maybe.
Maybe she’d come to Japan. Maybe we’d connect. Maybe this tug in my body would reveal a chance for something more.
Then my mom got sick, and “maybe” disintegrated with the rest of reality as I knew it.
Now here Aubrey was, carrying that same quiet authority I couldn’t look away from while asking me to help her enjoy sex, and knowing she felt safe enough with me to ask for it brought me right to the edge.