Fearless (The Solomon Brothers Series Book 3) Read online

  He was no stranger to the onslaught of beautiful women—hard, fit women who appreciated the athleticism and grueling dedication required of people who rose to fame in his sport, women who wanted him simply because he stepped into the octagon, inside the lights and the crowds.

  He turned Maggie’s bag in his hands. Woven. Probably made from dried hemp leaves, some shit, with a lime-green peace sign stitched into the fibers. In those stitch lines, reminded of her essence, Henry had his answer: Maggie wanted him despite the octagon, despite the lights and the crowds. She wanted him for him.

  Head back, eyes closed, he sighed. He was so fucked.

  A few deep-breathing exercises later, he swiped his keys off Sol’s desk and bailed for his truck, Maggie’s bag in hand.

  He didn’t get far.

  Maggie stood silhouetted in the darkened gym.

  Henry turned inside out—spiked heart rate, a decidedly non-MMA fighter startle, a muttered string of curses on his lips. He doubled over to summon back his breath. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a shadowy figure moving around the gym. It was the first time that sensation ended up being real.

  “Probably not the best idea. Sneaking up on a fighter.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Maggie. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I made a ton of noise on the way up the stairs.”

  “I was just headed out to return this.” I hadn’t yet figured out how to give it to you with this…this overpowering need riding me like a weighted training pack. He handed it to her.

  She padded past him, into the office, and hung it on the open door of Sol’s trophy case, right where he hung his jacket most days. Clearly not wanting to leave. Clearly disregarding his request that the office remain off limits.

  “You should go, Maggie. Please.”

  Henry’s chest seared, as if he’d swallowed something bubbly and acidic, something that meant no harm but burned all the same. That was Sol’s spot; this was Sol’s space. Henry and Sol. Except one of them was no longer there.

  A fresh coil of grief snapped inside him. Henry retracted, retreated, to the dark gym, to the space that had always been his reset button. In the full moon spilling through the freshly-scrubbed windows, the bags hung like bodies, still, resting, already gone.

  Maggie followed him. For once, she said nothing. Why didn’t she say something? He mourned her sharp tongue, her ability to fill the space between them, a strong barrier to places he didn’t want to go. He heard her footfalls before he saw her, one more movement to add to the ones he set off as he punched his way past each bag. He leaned against the farthest window sill, did a few push up motions against it to reassure himself he had control where she was concerned. Like everything else about the woman, her quiet pursuit was relentless.

  He turned to find her eyes no longer cutting or distrustful but open, receptive, hungry.

  “We shouldn’t…You don’t want this. Not with a fighter.” Not with the fighter who derailed your family. Admitting it was all he had to do. Right here, right now. She would turn away, maybe never come back. But the pull of her, the idea that she wanted him, not Lawless Lorenz—for once in his goddamned life, not Lawless Lorenz—kept him mute.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I want a fighter, but not the one in the cage. I want the one who takes kids off the streets, the one who is so driven to help others that he gives up his dream, the one who doesn’t make me feel bad about my choices because he’s always made the right ones.”

  “Maggie…”

  Now was his chance to tell her the truth. Strongest fucking middleweight for two years, and he was powerless to stop what was happening, powerless to speak. The inevitability of it all pinned him in place, his back against the cold window panes, her body slinking toward him. She believed him to be good, she believed in him. For once, that felt noble, freeing. She saw him as the man he wanted to be, the man he could never be because of that mistake when he was sixteen. For once, he wanted to be that man. Worthy.

  “Why here?” The place she had always held such hostility against. He didn’t understand it. “You hate this place.”

  “I didn’t like the idea of it. But ideas are meant to be challenged, to evolve, to grow past judgment. I can’t think of a better place for you to let me inside your world.”

  His entire body itched with want. He spread his legs to accommodate his growth, damned near pleasure’s razor-edge of pain, as if the body-mind connection had tipped wildly out of balance. She stepped into the space of light, the moon so impossibly bright it rivaled the spotlight in the octagon.

  “Everything in your world.” She glanced back over her shoulders, both sides. “I want to experience it all.”

  She couldn’t have made it any clearer by spelling it out. She wanted him to take her on the equipment, to recapture the euphoria he saw on her face at the bag that day, the ultimate mind-body connection. From a woman that had once despised that part of him, it was absolute acceptance. The bell to signify the start to a match he had wanted since the moment she walked into the office, her hair fanned about her like a red-haired goddess-turned-villain.

  His eyes scanned the gym. Never before had he assessed his equipment for best fuck-locations. It was a mental exercise that made him diamond-hard before he landed on his first idea. He took her hand and tugged her toward the biggest weight-combo machine—because of the pullies, yeah, but also because it was close enough to the windows to see her body. Every inch. After squaring her up beneath the hand-held cable grips, she faced him, an eager student.

  Maggie glanced up. “Why are there so many?”

  He couldn’t believe he was about to train her and fuck her—Maggie, champion of the mind—all at the same time. She took hold above her head, pressing her cleavage together and elongating her already-lithe figure. Henry reached for the plate pin and set it to the maximum weight to keep her safe, immobile.

  “The bars are for more control, one movement in, one movement out. The straps allow for more…”

  “Flexibility?”

  A warm smile flushed Henry, head to toe. “Exactly.”

  Maggie matched his smile, gave a little tug upward, and went nowhere. She gave a heavy sigh that he promptly captured with his mouth. Her elbows bent at his ears, like one of his signature strikes. They resumed the match they had begun in the Victorian’s darkened hallway and took it to the next round.

  “I can’t…touch you…if my hands…are occupied,” she teased, her words staccato around his kisses.

  He chuckled against her lips. “No groping the trainer. Rules.”

  She braced her legs wide, the only invitation he needed to explore lower. He felt the heat of her apex at his right quad. He nestled his knee high, at her crotch, then paraded it down the seam of her tight leggings, his mind already jumping ahead to peeling them off her, already damp, already scented.

  Kisses trailed past her chin and down her neck stirred her peppery, vanilla-ish scent—something with a hint of cloves or some other earthy trace. He tasted it all the way to the heat rising between her breasts, breasts he had in his hand more mental moments than he could count. She released her grip as he released her shirt-front buttons and front bra clasp, then shed the clothes with the impatience of a contender announced before the melee. Again, she grabbed the cable handles.

  He refused to grab any part of her. Yet. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew this wouldn’t last, that Maggie would drop out of his life faster than he could say her uncle’s name. Right now, he intended this moment to carry him through all the lonely moments after she learned who and what he was. He explored her ripe breasts with his tongue, lavishing the weighty outer swells with ample, lazy attention, until he worked his way to the bullseyes like a mitt target—first right then left.

  Her silky moans echoed, filled the gym, filled him. He felt the sound at the depth of his sack, like a counterweight that could only be sated once they pounded with pleasure against the folds of her slit.

  His first finger and thumb
worked one nipple while his tongue pebbled the other. Tethered as she was, she commenced a slight swing toward him, closer, more insistent, as if she begged him to pull her nipples past the roof of his mouth, all the way past his throat.

  “Oh, God…if I’d known…this was the alternative to fighting…”

  He broke his vigorous suction on a laugh. He couldn’t help it. His hands cupped her tits and kneaded her back to the pleasured cries he had elicited moments before. No longer content to linger over explored territory, he trailed kisses down her taut abdominal muscles, past her navel—which he devoured as a precursor—down, down, down. Her natural scent watered his mouth. He had to taste her, to give her every bit of him before she knew him, really knew him.

  He peeled her ankle boots and leggings and socks free of her body, choosing to leave her sheer, gleaming-white thong in place. Her spray of pubic hair was as fiery in the moonlight as her hair—another mental torment set to rest in fact. Her juices smelled like musk and cleanness and desire. He buried his nose in her leggings. His cock shook once in anticipation of the awaiting feast.

  “You are…” He lost his breath for a moment.

  “Ready?”

  “Breathtaking.”

  “Not the body of an athlete.” A note in her tone snagged his awareness. Self-deprecating, exposed.

  “I see athletic bodies all day. I want natural, before all this stuff…” he gestured widely at the gym surrounding them. “I want someone who obsesses about other things. Good, decent things. I want you.”

  At the same time he loosened the weight against her arms—to lighten them so she could pull blood back into her limbs but still have leverage—Henry reached for another handle on the apparatus’s other side and cabled it closer. He positioned her left toes inside and set the amount of tension that would bend her knee and lift her leg comfortably, like a frozen mountain-climber move.

  She responded immediately, arching her back, thrusting her hips toward him. He dropped to his knees, not even fucking caring they landed hard against the concrete floor. His cock ached far worse. He pulled his tight fight shorts down past his dick to give it the space it needed to expand without constriction. His eyes met hers at the gesture. She licked and bit her lower lip as her eyes trailed to his offering.

  He nearly stood and went balls-deep right then. But he had other desires on his mind. On his appetite. He kissed a meandering trail along her inner thighs. With each diversion, she swayed closer until her sheathed clit played cat and mouse with his tongue. Unable to wait, unwilling to unhook her from the hand grip to divest her of the tiny strip of fabric, he took her thong in both hands and ripped it apart. When he captured her folds in his mouth, he ensured no more play. He sucked them—hard—until she wiggled and screamed an affirmation.

  “Yes…oh, fuck. Yes…”

  He smiled against her folds at the memory of him commenting on her dirty mouth. Little had he known her curses would be his litmus test for effective oral sex. With his tongue, he explored her folds then plunged into her channel. She flooded around him, a warm, dripping cocktail of her now-familiar scent and delicious cream. He lapped it up while she bucked against the fast flicks of his tongue.

  “Fingers…” she requested, more an urgent plea, really. He responded with one then two then three and doubled up his knuckles at the end until they served a greater purpose drilling her clit.

  She lost her footing. He caught her as she drizzled low.

  “I can’t feel my knees.” A celebration, an awe-filled note to her fevered exhales.

  Henry scooped her into his arms, freed her from the grips she had held so tightly, and laid her on the weight bench. She didn’t stay there for long. Instead, she grabbed his hand, still slick with her, and led him to the octagon, the torn fabric of her thong still riding her hips.

  Hot needles of want screamed through his dick at the reminder of his urgency.

  “Steps. Now, champ,” she said with a sexy toss of her untamed hair.

  Always in control of his fate from the moment he stepped in the cage, at this moment, with Maggie, who wanted everything but the fighter in him, he was more than happy to submit.

  He sat and spread his knees wide, as wide as they would go in the tight shorts he had cinched down. She reached inside them and scooped out everything he had—balls, dick, all of it like a feast to a starving woman. He cursed at the confining material—not made to rip—slid off his kicks by the heels, and removed his shirt and shorts like they were on fire.

  Her smile transitioned to something clouded, focused, a heated storm of want. Liberated from his shorts, his knees wide as a fucking gulf, she went down on him like a crusader, everything yet nothing to prove. The padded upper steps bit into his shoulder blades as he arched closer to her. She took him soft, hard, shallow and deep, rimming his head then using the grip she had perfected on the cable handles to jack his base into near-insanity. And when his pre-cum seeped from the head of his cock, she licked him and groaned like he was a popsicle of survival on a death-heat day.

  Safe sex. Holy fuck, he didn’t have a condom. His brain had short-circuited near the window. No excuse.

  “Maggie…Maggie, I don’t have a condom.”

  He watched her face carefully. Instead of the sagging disappointment he expected, she bit her bottom lip and smiled. With a jaunty wink, she positioned his hand around his cock and tutored him on the fine art he had long ago perfected of jacking himself off. One of her fingers raised to signal one minute, she hooked and bobbed around the bags like an Olympic competitor and sprinted away into the darkness. With lightning speed, she returned, square plastic package in hand.

  “Prepared much?”

  “I put my phone inside in rainstorms. That bag is nothing but leaves. Makes a good ice pack, too.”

  “For all those rowdy protesters?”

  She flushed head to toe. “Exactly. They’re non-lubed, though.”

  Henry grinned and licked his soaked fingertips. “Not a problem.”

  “Now…where were we? I should probably backtrack. Seems you didn’t do a very good job.”

  Bullshit. His dick was as straight and rigid as a barbell—mostly because he watched her tits do a nice jiggly dance on her return trip—but he liked her unhurried spirit. She resumed her oral exploration until she brought him to the brink again.

  He tugged her close, barely able to form coherent words. “Want you…now.”

  She surprised him by crawling up the steps, over his shoulder, her fragrant, sweet snatch a drive-by to his barely-contained control. He pursued her, on all fours, until they reached the center logo. She tossed a sexy smile over her shoulder and wiggled her hips backward until her round, ripe ass became the peak of her figure.

  Hell fucking yeah.

  He rolled the condom in place, stopping only long enough to dip his mouth past her strawberry hairs to her folds so her taste was fresh on his tongue. Her exhales tangled somewhere between a curse and a wanton siren. He nestled his dick in the folds of her ass and reached forward to remind himself of the ripe fullness of her heavy breasts. Each time he tugged at her nipples, she wiggled her backside deeper against his rigid cock. He outmatched her, as many rounds as he could sustain before nothing would take the edge from him but to be buried inside her. Without a tease at her opening, without needing anything but her wet, warm welcome, he thrust himself, body-deep and enfolded himself inside her frenzied, begging cries of bliss.

  She fit his cock like the leather of a new fight glove—taut, nearly choking, siphoning off his blood flow in the most euphoric way imaginable. He added more rounds to their coital sparring, alternating silky, even strokes with the mercilessly fast rhythm she begged of him, over and over. His hands smoothed and reshaped her ass cheeks, like two pliant, alabaster moons to replace the brilliant one beyond the glass.

  Unable to sustain much longer, he reached a hand around her and worked his fingertips against her folds while he hammered her opening. She reached for a hand hold, the
crisscross of the cage, but it was too far to reach. Her fingernails clawed the mat; her fingers blanched white. She bucked on her knees at the same time her insides clamped him like a fucking vice. Two more pumping, searing rounds of him battling for control and he joined her in a cry, a blinding, white-hot flash of lightning-bolt orgasm zinging to his extremities.

  His one awareness became her. He caught her when she collapsed against the mat and laid her gently on her stomach, still inside her, unwilling to leave. Another awareness replaced the first. This would be his last intimacy with her. He knew this as certainly as he knew he would never find a woman as genuine, a woman who reached his true passions, the parts of him that had nothing to do with what happened inside the octagon. He curled behind her, her back to his front, and whispered affectionate assurances in her ear because he couldn’t push the full depth of his voice beyond his tight, grieving throat. He meant every word.

  He just wasn’t sure she would ever accept them again.

  Before she knew the truth, she was already lost to him.

  10

  Maggie awoke before sunrise. Inside the octagon, under a soft cotton blanket she didn’t remember cuddling beneath, her arm around Henry’s naked mid-section. She pushed her hair aside and burrowed her face against her upraised arm she had used for a pillow, content to stay beside the delightful heat-island of his body and reminisce about their sexy uses of his gym equipment. In their multiple rounds of lovemaking, they had even revisited the punching bag. Though the punches were of a different variety, she had gotten off on it, just the same.