Chapter 17
Luke
I didn’t want to know . Too many things didn’t add up about Emma. Too many things triggered me not to trust her. She was too damn evasive last night about that man seeking her out. She seemed prone to bad situations in the clubs.
When I did know was that she was scared. I saw it in her eyes and I hated that this bold, otherwise unintimidated woman could be frightened of another man.
Plus, I was confident that if I didn’t take her with her to get her friend, she’d go on her own. And I despised her being in a bad position because I didn’t want to make time for her.
The truth was that I already had. Reluctantly, at first, but I had. She stole my time by staying in my thoughts. She captured my downtime when I fantasized about what an actual commitment with her could be like.
I was already in too damn deep. I tried and failed to resist her for a month, and it was a futile effort. It seemed that I was fated to be with her.
“You want to drive?” she asked as we approached her car.
I raised my brows, volleying my gaze between her and the luxury SUV I’d never be able to afford in my lifetime.
She shrugged. “Since you know where to go...”
Unbelievable. It didn’t even faze her that I would dirty up her expensive wheels. She just kept on surprising me, not acting like the hard-to-please rich snob she first seemed to be.
“All right.” I got in and drove her to the apartment building where I lived with my mom. I expected her to sniff and hold her nose in the air, too superior to be caught in this rundown area of the city. But she didn’t. She smiled at the crocheted door hanger and small pot of flowers with a, you guessed it, crocheted wrap around the ceramic.
“Is it supposed to be a plant koozie?” she asked playfully.
“Fuck if I know.” I let her in, calling out for my mom. “Hey, Mom?”
“Hi, honey—Oh.” She smiled wider at Emma behind me. “Well, hello. If I’d known you’d be bringing company over, I would’ve gotten out of these old things.” She waved at her pajamas.
“Nonsense.” Emma stepped further into the room. “Is that season four?” She asked of the TV screen showing a hospital drama.
“Five.” Mom beamed at her.
I groaned. “Sheesh. You two will get along just fine.”
“I love Grey’s Anatomy ,” Emma gushed. “I’m a diehard for the classics too. ER is my go-to, but—”
“ Classics ?” Mom laughed. “I remember watching those when they came out live.”
“Mom, this is Emma. Apparently another fan of that crap you love to watch. Emma, my mom, Nina Sawyer.”
Emma took a seat on the couch. “Nice to meet you.”
“Oh, very nice to meet you, honey.”
“Now is this episode six or seven? Because I remember when that one woman with the rare infectious disease shows up, it’s before that one guy died.”
I shook my head, leaving them to it while I changed. As I headed to my room, I called out, “We’re only stopping by for a minute.” Once I was in my room I closed my eyes and quietly groaned. She would think this was a date we were getting ready for, and Emma and I were not there. Yet? It was complicated, but I knew already that Mom would adore her. A shared love of stupid, totally farfetched hospital dramas? Mom would find no fault in her.
As I changed, I smirked at the idea of Emma staying in my life. So far, she’d been proving all my assumptions wrong. She was a pain in the ass, but that was growing on me. I didn’t want a wallflower. She was a virgin, but that could be fun, showing her what I liked and how things could be, exploring together as she learned. And I had yet to see her look down on me or us.
“I like her,” Mom said when I came back out with my duffel bag for the fight. I’d change right after to help Emma get her friend. “You’re a nice, decent good girl,” Mom praised as Emma stood.
“Oh, you’re too sweet,” she replied.
“And na?ve,” I joked.
“Hey!” Mom said while Emma smirked at me.
No nice, decent good girl would let me finger her sweet pussy like she had yesterday.
I sighed, wishing I could stop thinking about it for more than a few moments. I was addicted, but I had to focus.
Back in her car, Emma glanced at my bag. Then me, with a slow once-over. “You look like you’re going to a gym.”
“I sort of am.”
She scrunched her face. “I’m not following.”
“You can keep your mouth shut, right?”
She mimed zipping her lips.
“I fight in a ring.”
She slapped her hand on her thigh. “I knew it!”
I furrowed my brow, glancing at her as I drove. “What?” Who snitched?
“I mean, I suspected. You knew how to fight that guy at that club. Like, really, fight. Krista and I were talking about you and—”
I grinned, feeling proud. “You talk about me with your friend?”
“Yeah.”
It cheered me up that I’d made as much of an impact on her as she had on me.
“Do you?”
“Talk to your friend about myself?”
She swatted my arm.
“No. Randy, the other guy I work with at the Tropican, knows about you. He’s been warning me not to get in trouble sleeping with a guest.”
“What about...”
“Fingering your tight cunt in the greenhouse? Yeah, I bet that’d get me in trouble too.”
She cleared her throat. “Good thing no one caught us then.”
As endearing as it was to see her flustered, I didn’t have to poke fun at her. “So you suspected I was a street fighter?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
That makes this easier, I guess. Now I wouldn’t have to introduce her to it all.
“How’d you get started with it?”
“That’s a long story.”
“I meant are you sponsored?”
Damn. She might be na?ve about sex but she wasn’t uninformed about the jargon and how illegal fighting rings were set up. “No.” Jimmy still considered himself my manager, but I wasn’t happy with him, not when he was dicking around having me fight nobodies like I would tonight.
“Your mom knows you do this?” she asked. “I bet it’d be hard for a parent to know that their child could be hurt.”
“Fuck, we can all be hurt any day. Car crash. Comet falling.”
She laughed lightly. “I think the comet thing is a little less likely of an any-day occurrence.”
I shrugged. “Probably, but you get the point. Mom’s had a rough time medically. Lots of bills... I only do it for the money, and she knows that.”
“Damn, I’m sorry to hear that. What has she been diagnosed with, if you don’t mind me asking?” She looked out the window. “I went to nursing school.”
“You’re a nurse?” She really wasn’t the spoiled brat I assumed she was. Hell, she was educated, too, going to college. She wasn’t a lazy princess doing nothing with her life.
“Not officially. I had to drop out.”
Not because you couldn’t afford it... I didn’t push for more details, sensing it was a sore topic.
“Mom was almost a nurse too. She worked as an LPN. But she’s got a host of complications to keep her home. Asthma, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis. Back and forth through cancer, too.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. She’s a really sweet lady.” After a moment of quiet, she asked, “What about your dad?”
“Never had one. Never knew him.” I glanced at her profile. “You?”
“My mom died when I was young and my father is...my father.”
“Ah. Not on good terms?”
“Definitely not.”
We arrived at the gym where the fighting would happen in a back room. I wished the drive could’ve taken longer. Getting to know Emma and opening up to her felt natural. I skimped on details and she had too, but we were making progress.
Inside, she walked alongside me like this was just any old experience. She wasn’t intimidated or concerned. She didn’t study anyone for too long. Before we headed too far in, though, I grabbed her hand and held it tight.
Her bright blue-green eyes flashed at me in surprise. “So I don’t lose you.”
She smiled slyly, releasing her hand to thread our fingers together in a tighter hold.
Fuck, this woman. I was drawn to her, so enamored with how seamlessly she fit into this aspect of my life. I was amazed by her tough attitude and unflinching calm. Yesterday, she was scared with someone following her. Here, she was at ease with the violence happening.
She came with me as I set my things in the back, and she accompanied me toward the ring where I wanted my turn.
“You okay?”
She glanced down at my bare chest and cleared her throat. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
I worried for a second that she might be freaked out about me fighting, but then I recalled how chill she was in the alley.
When she didn’t look me in the eye, I tipped her chin up. Seeing the simmering attraction there excited me, and I leaned in to kiss her.
“What was that for?” she asked, slightly out of breath.
I shrugged. “Good luck?”
She grinned. “You don’t strike me as a man who needs to rely on luck.”
“Fine.” I held the back of her neck and pulled her in for a longer kiss with tongue. “Then it was just for the hell of it. Since I can.”
She leaned against me. Tilting her face up, she sighed. “How about again?”
Oh, hell. Like I could resist. I didn’t want to. Here, not at the resort, I didn’t have to worry about anyone watching. Not many people were here since it was a low-key night of fights.
I lowered my mouth to kiss her again, getting carried away with the touch of her mouth against mine. As soon as my name was called, I parted from her. “Give me a few minutes and we can pick up right where we left off.”
She smiled, licking her lower lip before nodding.
My prediction of a few minutes were more like several, but I won and exited the ring as quickly as I could. She wasn’t standing out there anymore, and I was pleased that one of the ring girls led her back to the shower room that I was brought to.
“What’d you think?” I asked as I sat on a stool to take my shoes off.
She walked up to me, straddling me.
I held her back but remained leaning out of reach. “Careful. I’m sweaty.”
She responded by peeling her shirt off and tossing it aside. “And I can’t wipe a little sweat off?”
I growled, hauling her to me and kissing her hard. The sight of her tits in that white bra. Her slim body rubbing against mine. And those hungry lips, congratulating me on my win.
I never wanted it to end. I was kicking myself for how fiercely I tried to convince myself that she was the wrong sort of woman to want in my life.
Just as I reached my hand beneath the top of her shorts, the door opened.
“Shit.” I stood, carrying her with me off the stool.
“Sawyer. What the fuck?” another fighter said, laughing as he came in after his win.
Emma laughed, clinging to me as I carried her. I stooped low to grab her shirt, making sure she was covered by me.
“Luke!” she squealed as I ducked with her.
“What, you think I’d let you go?” I teased as I carried her into the shower room with me.
She locked her gaze on me as I set her down. In her beautiful eyes, I swore I saw my future. Like something similar to love could be brewing between us. It would be fast, catching those kinds of feelings this soon, but then why did anything need to percolate and season for a long time?
“I wouldn’t drop you,” I clarified.
She smiled and accepted her shirt that I handed to her. Then she kissed me sweetly. “I know.”
“Do you? You know me so well already?”
“I want to.” She watched as I lowered my pants and boxers, letting her see what kissing her did to me. “Oh. Um.” She strained to swallow, unable to look away from my mostly hard dick. Having her openly stare at me like this made me harder. But now wasn’t the time. I wasn’t taking her virginity in this shitty locker room.
I blinked, stunned by my thoughts, that I planned to be her first.
And maybe her last.
She rubbed the back of her neck, still gawking at me. “I, uh...”
I chuckled, entertained by how I rendered her speechless. I was still smiling as I got under the water and hurried to clean up before anyone else would want to get in here and take another stall.
Under the spray of the water, I looked back at her and hurried to reply while we had privacy. “I want to know you like that too.”