Aggression was the fuel for his sport. Outside the ring, it could be damning. It was what turned some women off boxers and mixed martial artists. It was what his ex-fiancée had blamed as the cause of pain and suffering in her attempt at a civil suit against him for punitive damages in the wake of losing custody of her baby. Fear, she’d claimed, had motivated her to cheat with the man who’d once been Joaquin’s real estate agent and friend.
Martha dropped her hands. “Boxing’s violent. And the risks you take scare me,” she said unashamedly. “But I’ve never felt unsafe with you. Am I being misguided now?”
“At the gym the other night, you told me to do what’s right for me,” he said. “I will if you will.”
“Okay.” Pale pink silk and sugary perfume swamped his senses when Martha eviscerated the distance between them. Opening his suit jacket, she said, “Your royal guard thinks I’m sexing you up. Wouldn’t want to mislead him.”
One taste. That’s all he would need to get him through to…when? To the day he moved along to someone who wasn’t his mentor’s daughter and who didn’t buy into a fairy tale he wasn’t equipped to deliver? To next month when he was fresh from his fight at the Garden Arena? To the next time he could have Martha alone like this and taste her again?
Sliding the jacket down his arms, she stretched upward and he saw the flirty glint in her dark eyes dim with concern. “I don’t think I should want this, but I can’t not touch you every chance I get.”
Oh, God, this was how he needed her. Honest. Raw. Unscripted. Moist lips and warm skin and hungry hands.
When his arms sprang free of the jacket, he caught her waist and took her with him to the plush chair that rocked back on two legs at the force of their weight. It righted with a firm slam that shook them both.
Surprised, Martha laughed as she straddled his thighs. “That was exhilarating.”
Joaquin pulled the straps of her dress over her shoulders and down until he uncovered her bra.
“Mmm, searching for something in particular?” she murmured as his hands cupped her.
“Your piercing.” But he was after more than that. Though he shouldn’t be, he was desperate for her, as though she was a damn necessity.
Unhooking the bra, he peeled the garment off and closed his mouth over the tip of one breast, then the other.
A hand over her mouth, Martha stifled a moan that he felt pulse through him.
“Give me your mouth, Martha.” He urged her closer, kissing her hard.
“Take it. Take more.” She clutched his hand and brought it down to her ass. “Keep taking until you’re reminded that you’re still a man, not a hard-hearted machine.”
But a knock on the door had her springing up in an instant.
“Sir?” the security specialist who’d trailed them called through the door. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes. We’re—”
“Leaving,” Martha cut in, from the corner of the room where she’d escaped to, looking like a sexy wood nymph with her skin flushed and breasts exposed.
“Okay,” the specialist said, then all was quiet for a good, agonizing five seconds.
“We’re crazy,” she announced. “We have to be. This is trouble.”
“So we stop here? Don’t ever take things as far as they went that night four years ago? Or even as far as they went the other night?”
“That would be the noncrazy choice.” Martha ditched the corner to snatch her bra from the floor.
“All right.” He should’ve kissed her longer, held her tighter. “But seeing you with your lipstick messed up, your beautiful tits wet from my mouth, your body shivering for me? That reminds me that I’m a man, not a machine.”
Confusion flooded her eyes. She put on the bra, straightened her dress. “So we’re done.” Another sharp, conflicted glance. “Aren’t we?”
He had to say it—and believe it. Holiday miracles and happy endings weren’t in their future, because those things were meant for better men. Martha was meant for a better man. “We’re done.”
But he walked away troubled with the sense that they were both liars.
Chapter 8
When Martha went to bed on Christmas Eve, visions of sugarplums weren’t dancing in her head. Dangerous impulses were.
She blamed it on the European necktie she’d successfully laundered herself—thanks to an internet tutorial—and had had professionally gift wrapped at a high-end specialty boutique.
Okay, perhaps on the surface it wasn’t usually good taste to pass off a person’s own possessions as Christmas presents. But gifting Joaquin the tie that had tumbled from his jacket pocket during her mission to sex him up good and proper at MGM Grand? And including a note that read “I resuscitated your necktie”? Well, it would be more of an inside joke, a way to shrug and airily say “No regrets.”
Yesterday she’d been struck with the wicked inspiration to do so during her parents’ party. While a fleet of award-winning designers transformed Marshall and Tem’s main floor into a spectacular Christmas wonderland, she’d helped Tem’s assistant with the guest list and had spotted Joaquin’s name with the word confirmed beside it.
At least she’d taken the care to clean the tie—and she’d done so without ruining the fabric. That in and of itself was a gift.
Anyway, what to give a man who was more naughty than nice and had practically anything he could want in the free world?
A reason to laugh the kind of laugh that baited the dimple in his cheek and teased her like a million little kisses. Could a necktie and a sarcastic note accomplish that? Setting the gift at the foot of the bed and snuggling under the covers, she’d hoped so.
But now, at six can-I-go-back-to-bed o’clock, with Christmas being ushered in on gray skies and her mood preset to crappy, she was having reservations.
What if he didn’t find the joke funny? What if someone at the party asked him about the tie? Worse—what if he brought a date and she asked about it?
As far as solutions went, primping and driving to Ryder’s Boxing Club at an early hour was the most reasonable, even if the most inconvenient. There were perks, though: pit-stopping for fresh bakery doughnuts and leaving the tomb-like quiet of her house behind.
Sure, she’d appreciated the silence of the house when she’d taken ownership last month. It had been a perfect environment for studying, and would be again once the next term began.
But if the place was going to be her home, it needed more noise, disorder and character. Waking up to a completely silent Christmas morning, with no family or friends within reach, had introduced her to loneliness. And she despised it.
So she gladly traded a few laidback do-nothing hours for a place rich with noise, disorder and character.
The gym was unlocked and, expecting to find Joaquin all sweaty and focused and sexy, she added a little pizzazz to her strut. Which was for no practical reason, because they’d chosen the “un-crazy” route that prohibited getting hot and horny together.
No one stood in the ring or milled around the weight-training stations. Muffled voices came from the rear of the building.
Drawn to the bulletin board, to the flyer advertising the Ryder vs. Brazda event, she waited. It was the same image that had begun appearing on billboards in November. People had started to predict a winner before the matchup had even been officially announced. Once the fighters had greeted the media, the hype had grown exponentially.
Eliáš Brazda was a dangerous boxer, determined to usurp the power of Las Vegas’s prince.
Joaquin Ryder was a living legend. America’s rags-to-riches champ, a man who could retire at any moment and enjoy the prime of his life at the precipice of unlimited luxury. But he called himself a beast, defined himself as something engineered for fighting…for violence.
She’d seen him box before. She’d watched his strength mercilessly immobilize warrior-like men and his fists damage without relenting. She had seen him fight as if victory was oxygen.
Mart
ha knew that undefeated only applied to boxing. Outside the ring, he could be humbled and hurt, capable of honor, respect, compassion.
Quit, Martha. A man laughs at a stupid joke and gives you an orgasm, and suddenly you know him completely?
Giving herself a mental kick, she turned away from the board. Carelessness was letting attraction shake loose everything she’d already decided about sex and love and her future.
Joaquin might satisfy her kink for rough-around-the-edges men, but incompatible couples didn’t usually find their way into fairy tales. He was ten years older, lived across the country, didn’t want children and beat the crap out of fighters for a living. The violence of him alone should’ve sent her running. Instead she was at a gym on Christmas morning with doughnuts and the necktie he’d left behind after groping her in a dressing suite.
Martha stood stationary as Joaquin’s uncle and a lean, hard-faced man trudged in through an entrance at the rear of the building.
Jules Ryder preceded the other man, who carried what looked like a child-size backpack, which he jerked out of reach when Jules made a grab for it.
The men disappeared into an office, and she heard more muffled conversation.
Where was Joaquin?
She started to approach the office, but the door swung open and the stranger strode out, sans backpack. Staring after him, puzzled, she didn’t see Jules materialize in the doorway.
“Ordinarily I welcome beautiful ladies who bring me—what’s that, doughnuts?—but the gym’s closed,” he said, advancing quickly.
“Who was—”
“Repairman. Washer’s gone to hell.”
“Got the feeling he’ll be back soon.”
Jules held her gaze, as though trying to read her thoughts. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He left without his toolbox.” Or his backpack, now that she thought about it.
“I’d hate to lug around a stocked toolbox just to give estimates, too,” he said with a liberal amount of agitation. “No labor on Christmas.”
“Didn’t mean to offend.” She was taken aback at his tone and the taut tension clearly visible in the way he shifted from foot to foot and flexed his fingers. “I have something for your nephew—”
“Doughnuts?”
“No. A gift.”
“Joaquin’s not coming in. Tor and Othello took him to Reno last night. A man trains hard, he needs to get the edge off.”
Edge?
Martha almost dropped the doughnuts. The suggestion made her entire anatomy sting, and damn it, that really pissed her off.
I’m not supposed to care. We agreed to be done. So he’s free to sample Reno women and I’m free to eat this whole box of doughnuts.
Except for the doughnuts-bingeing part, it was sound reasoning. After all, she was standing in Ryder’s Boxing Club now to return his tie and get on with her professional life, her sex life…the life she had before he’d crashed into it again and twisted her inside out with mind-blowing foreplay.
“They’ll be back in Vegas in time for your folks’ get-together,” he said.
Get-together. Martha could almost see the disapproval that’d saturate her mother’s face if she were to hear that.
“Is that the gift? I’ll put it in my office.” Jules was already prying it and the box of doughnuts from her grip.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” she protested.
“No one goes into my office if I’m not there, if you’re worried about it disappearing,” he assured. “Give it.”
Jules carried the items to the office, then the door slammed shut. Martha was on her way to knock and demand the gift back—she could write the doughnuts off as a lost cause and have an excuse for a gourmet breakfast on the Strip—when her phone erupted in a rap song.
“Merry Christmas,” she greeted her sister Charlotte.
“Martha, I’m at your house, but you’re not.”
And here Martha had assumed the early-morning pop-in was their mother’s signature move. “I’m at the Ryders’ gym.”
Charlotte paused. “Doing what?”
Having the weirdest ever encounter with Jules. “Delivering doughnuts, but the boys all went to Reno to play.”
“I need you back here.”
Only something drop-everything serious could strip Charlotte’s voice of its confident strength.
“Okay,” Martha said, jerking around to head for the exit.
Driving as fast as she could without winding up with a Christmas speeding ticket, she returned home to find Nate Franco’s ride behind her gates.
She rushed into the house. If her instincts were wrong and this was a let’s-check-up-on-Martha ambush—and Charlotte had recruited her man to assist—she was going to change her locks.
“Guys,” she said, joining the pair in the living room. “What’s up?”
Charlotte pushed off the sofa. “It’s about Nate’s father.”
Oh, goody. The man who’d sold the Las Vegas Slayers to the Blues and then accused Marshall of acquiring the franchise by force. His lies had only led to the actual truth—that he’d been involved in an illegal gambling network and had bribed coaches and players to manipulate games. “Not to offend,” she said to Nate, who sat with his fingers steepled and his handsome face dappled with fury, “but your father isn’t someone I want to concern myself with.”
“Afraid that’s not an option right now,” he said. “My brother found out Dad’s attorneys are issuing a statement to the feds and the NFL that says Marshall was a coconspirator in the misconduct prior to being approved to buy the team.”
“Bullshit.” Martha looked to her sister. “Clearly it’s another lie.”
“I know. Nate knows—”
“So why are we wasting Christmas morning on this ridiculousness?”
“We need a game plan in place before the media gets wind of it. Ma and Pop are probably on a call with the GM or their lawyers. We need you and the PR team to get ahead of the media on this one.”
Approaching the play-offs, their men didn’t need a distraction and the franchise didn’t need to be engulfed in this kind of hell.
Charlotte bowed her head, and pushed her fingers through her mane of curly hair. “Uh, look, Martha…the angle Al Franco’s going with claims Pop showed interest in buying three seasons ago.”
Three seasons ago, the Slayers’ record had sunk. The team had become the joke of the league and hadn’t shown signs of resurrection until the Blues had taken ownership.
So what did that mean for Alessandro Franco’s scramble to bring the Blues down with him?
Ah. “Marshall Blue shows interest in the team two years before he acquires it. Because buying a winning team isn’t as marketable as buying the crappiest team in the league and taking it to practically perfection,” Martha said, visualizing how the situation could be interpreted. “To lay the groundwork, he gets Al Franco onboard to bring that record down, down, down and keep it at the bottom beyond one season—’cause only one losing season could look like a fluke and not hold the media’s attention.”
“Then,” Charlotte said, “Marshall brings his wife on as co-owner, employs his daughters, and he’s making a statement about gender equality in football. The franchise has its most stellar season, and Marshall looks like the man with the golden touch.”
Frustrated, Martha sank into a chair. “Except Al Franco is a liar. Pop and Ma bought the team because they were willing to put in the work to make it successful in ways Franco never achieved.”
Again she eyed Nate. She almost wanted to hold him accountable, because he was accessible and she was desperate to do something that didn’t make her feel defenseless. But he was here now because his loyalty was to her sister, her family. “My feelings wouldn’t be hurt if you left. I wouldn’t want to sit silently while people tore down my father.”
“When a man’s wrong, he’s wrong,” Nate said, but he pushed to his feet. “I need to drive out to Henderson, talk to my brother—”
; “Go,” Charlotte agreed. “I’ll get a driver to swing by if sis can’t give me a lift.”
Nate started for the foyer, but Charlotte said his name once, then sprinted to him. Colliding, he gripped her, locked her in his arms and in his kiss.
It knocked the wind out of Martha’s sails, damn near sank her ship in guilt. Nate wasn’t a strictly by-the-book man. He’d manipulated and deceived and done things he said he regretted, but he hadn’t inherited his father’s maliciousness.
Al Franco’s actions wouldn’t take a toll on just the Blues and their football team, but also Nate and Charlotte’s relationship.
“I didn’t fall in love with you because I take the easy route,” Charlotte said to Nate.
“Good.” He squeezed her booty and let her go. “Don’t ever say I’m easy. You’ll scandalize my rep.”
Charlotte laughed at the irony, and Martha wanted to, also.
Except jealousy choked her. Would she ever feel secure in the resilience that came with love? Would she ever know the rewards that came with trusting her risky heart, even when it wanted a man who wasn’t storybook perfect?
Or would she keep the habit Chelle had described: boot men out of her life all day long, then dream about fairy tales at night?
After walking Nate out, Charlotte returned to the living room sofa. “I— Damn it, never mind.”
“Lottie?”
“Before we take action, let’s forget that Marshall and Tem are our parents. Who are they?”
“A mega-successful husband and wife. A man and woman who mastered the skill of getting what they want.”
“Mastered it how?”
“Fundamental stuff. Perseverance, sacrifice, risks, tough choices. Charlotte, this is all leading to what?”
“Their methods can be Machiavellian. Ask Danica. Ask yourself, Martha. They demand family loyalty, but it’s the business that they put first.”
“Completely true, and that might seem two kinds of screwed up, but it’s also how I know Marshall and Tem—Pop and Ma—didn’t do what Al Franco is claiming.” She plunked down on the sofa, nudging her sister playfully. “Move. I prefer this cushion.”
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