“Candles and flowers don’t make sex perfect. I’ve had great sex without ’em.” A gentle smirk doubled the appeal of her beautiful mouth. “That bother you?”
“No. I’ve had great sex without candles and flowers, too.”
A smirk doubled the appeal of her beautiful mouth as she toyed with her dress straps again. The jewels glittered under the tree’s lights. “You know what I mean. Some men are fixated with what they have going on down there.”
Unhooking his belt, he took her hands and laid them over his crotch. “And I’m satisfied with what I’ve got.”
Firmly, she stroked him rigid. “So.” Again. “Am.” Again. “I.” Again.
“Dress. Off.”
Martha’s hands lifted, and his rod leaped in protest. She turned, exposing a delicate zipper. Bringing down the zipper, he peeled back shimmery fabric to reveal smooth skin.
What had he done to deserve her—her lust…her trust?
Joaquin thumbed the straps over her shoulders, watched gravity lure the dress down her body to the floor in an inconsequential puddle of fabric.
She started to twist around, but he held her there, facing the tree. “Bra? Underwear? Not even a look, Joaquin?”
“I want what’s underneath.”
Quickly he found what lay underneath the metallic dress, scanty bra and open-in-the-ass panties: the only woman who could crack his guard by simply standing naked in front of him.
And another provocative surprise, when he gently turned her around again: a drop of platinum on her navel. A belly-button ring.
So this was her hidden piercing. Raking his fingertips over it, he said, “When I get inside you, when I make you come the first time, this is what I’m going to be looking at.”
Martha yanked on his shirt, laying a kiss on each button before freeing it. “Give me as many rounds as you can last, Ryder.”
Joaquin watched her sink to the floor after she worked the last button loose and stripped off his shirt. “A new boundary… We need one. Where do we stop? When?”
“Tomorrow,” she said, and the regret that touched her eyes before she glanced down to unfasten his tuxedo pants told him she struggled with the one-word decision. “We take everything tonight.”
One night. It didn’t seem right that for all their history, all she meant to him, she’d end up a one-night stand.
But he had to accept, because— “I can’t give you what you need, Martha. I can’t be your fairy tale. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want what I need for Christmas.” Tugging down his underwear, she broke him down with a flick of her tongue. “I want what I want.”
Chapter 10
Martha couldn’t tell him the truth, that from where she was, on her knees with his calloused hands cradling her head and his gaze blazing into her, there was no distinction between want and need. They were halves of a whole, yet laying them together still didn’t quite define the threads of thirst and possession weaving through her.
So what defined their connection?
Craving?
Appetite?
Obsession? He’d said that, confessed that he was obsessed with wanting to kiss her.
No other man had hooked her this way, but then she’d been told that love changed and customized itself.
She’d wanted to ban the word love from her heart, the way Joaquin had cut it from his vocabulary. Because love was the beautiful hell she’d plummeted into four years ago—when she’d been reckless and desperate and weak.
When he’d told her to get out of his life and take her love with her.
That love isn’t this love…
It was different. It had to be. She’d changed, and so had he.
From thighs to shoulders, she caressed him as she stood. There were more scars on his body, more hardness to his face. More respect and fascination in his eyes when he watched her handle him.
This time she wasn’t asking for something he couldn’t give, or wanting him to be someone he wasn’t. Because he was right—he wasn’t her fairy tale.
“What else is mine, Martha?”
Carefully slinking back, she watched him, watched desire wrestle restraint. The house was dead silent, the rush of her pulse in her ears deafening.
“Martha…” he said again, his voice riding a jagged groan. He closed in, his footsteps light, his body all power, threat and erotic persuasion.
“Show me.” Joaquin wrecked her hairstyle to get to the mistletoe, then ran it lightly over her skin. The waxy texture of the leaves, the scratch of the tiny berries, brushed her mouth. Then her throat. Then her breasts. “Please, baby. Show me where you want my mouth.”
Oh, my God. Had she dreamed this? Was it real that Joaquin Ryder, the Sinner, Las Vegas’s prince, was begging her?
Martha took the sprig of mistletoe, twirled the skinny branch, and the leaves tickled her neck.
Then his mouth was on her, firm pressure and hot pleasure.
Breathlessly, she released a half moan, half scream. Well, he’d said he wanted to unravel and unleash her.
“And now where?” he asked.
“Get me to a bed first,” she demanded. “A big, fluffy one. We’re gonna be there awhile.”
Cling. All Martha could do was hold on tight when Joaquin curled her into his arms and took off in a sprint. He moved too fast for her to register more than the cave-like stairwell he mounted two steps at a time and the shadows of the hallway he carried her through.
Master suite. Lair. Point of no turning back. That’s where he stopped running, where he put her on her feet and let her move next.
Mistletoe in hand, she crossed to the larger-than-life bed. It was all she cared about, the only feature she focused on besides the room’s soaring windows.
“Can anyone see in here?”
“Maybe. If they really, really wanted to.” He molded his hands to her ass. “What don’t you want anyone to see?”
Martha heard the banter in his voice, and answered by yanking the top quilt off. She took a dive, landing in the middle of that luxurious marshmallow of a bed. “I don’t want anyone to see me naked for you.”
As daring as ever, she swept the mistletoe across her breasts. “Kiss me here.”
Again, all she could do was cling, hold on, grip. Roughly, thoroughly, he sucked her flesh, adding a few stinging bites and soothing touches.
Coaxing him, massaging his scalp, she managed to slide the mistletoe down past her platinum navel ring. “Taste me here.”
Four years ago he’d made her come with his mouth, but as he spread her thighs, exposed her and indulged, what had been a soul-shaking experience then now paled to a dim, muted memory.
Martha grabbed a pillow.
“What are you gonna do with that?”
“Bite it.”
“Aw, hell, no.” Chuckling, he stripped it from her hands and let it bounce off the mattress. “Want to bite something? Here I am. Or scream, ’cause that little moany scream you make drives me crazy.”
“That dimple in your cheek drives me crazy.” Rearing up, she kissed the indentation, grazed it with her tongue. “The stupid things I’d do to see this dimple.”
Angling his head, pressing her deep into the mattress, he took her mouth without restraint. “Stay just like this. Need to get a condom.” He furrowed his brow. “We are gonna be needing it this time, aren’t we?”
Impishly, she shoved his shoulders. “Yeah, we’re gonna need it. Them. Bring plenty, champ.”
Returning to her, Joaquin sprinkled a fistful of condoms onto the sheets. Jokes and laughter abandoned her, and when he nudged himself into her, she closed her eyes. “Just take.”
Bracing on one elbow, he reached for her. Their hands met in a collision of gentle and harsh, and their fingers laced. “I’m not going to screw you like a stranger. Like I don’t care.”
“What if asked you to?”
“Next round. Not the first.”
A blend of passion and affection was what she’d want
ed four Decembers ago, and what she was stunned to extract from Joaquin now. She was no virgin; her middle name was considered ironic.
But entwined fully with the man she loved, she felt…new.
*
An audience was waiting at Ryder’s Boxing Club. Waking up semi-hard, Joaquin had reached for Martha. And found her side of the bed empty.
Her side. Things had gotten so twisted already that he missed her naked body beside him and her fragile whispers in the dark. He ached to rake her soft, springy hair back from her face, was pissed that sleep had cost him a few more hours with her.
Showering off the night and throwing on shorts, a cutoff shirt and sunglasses, he’d jogged downstairs and nearly sideswiped his housekeeper, who’d prepared him a protein shake. She arched a brow as she carted off last night’s discarded clothes.
Then he’d stared at the Christmas tree, freakin’ frozen as he replayed stripping Martha in front of it. What she’d done… The way she’d looked up at him…
Wound tight, he’d been primed for a brutal heavy-bag workout. But he’d arrived too late to beat the crowd that usually started flooding in the moment the sign flipped to Open. Vehicles, motorcycles, bicycles—they filled the lot to capacity and lined up on both sides of the street. Inside were amateur boxers who belonged, a few trainers who wanted to jive around with Jules…and a crowd of people who wouldn’t darken the door if not for the man with all the hype.
He’d come for a workout; they’d come armed with cameras and social media apps to see a show.
Jules, in his RBC sweatsuit, was in the ring, mitts on, with an amateur when Joaquin came into the gym.
Waving him off, intending to skip rope before getting his ringside gloves on, Joaquin went over to claim the bag he used on off days. Off days usually meant the days he didn’t spar, but from the second he’d reached for the woman who’d probably bailed at the first sign of dawn, he’d felt wired with energy, but askew in the head. Thrown off.
Cheers and hollers erupted. People looking to make asses of themselves and get roughed-up on the way out the door tugged the ropes and booed the amateur—as if his training was some get-by entertainment until Joaquin arrived.
“Get loose,” his uncle yelled, “then c’mon in.”
“Nah,” he said, crouching to get the rope from his gym bag. “No sparring.”
“You keep learning, you stay undefeated,” Jules shot back with authority. “Get loose, damn it, then let’s go.”
America’s champ or not, Joaquin expected an almost daily earful of hell from his uncle in the weeks leading to an event. Jules Ryder wasn’t afraid to cut his boys to size. From the day Joaquin had been rescued from a crack house and brought to live with Jules, he’d been lumped in with Tor and Othello—treated like a son.
Considering Joaquin was Jules’s nephew and trainee, public chastisement was guaranteed.
Joaquin rattled off a few harsh swear words, the audience heckled and he got to work. Ten minutes of cardio had him coated in a light sweat and declining water and towels left and right.
Everyone wanted a connection—whether they got it standing close to him and snapping a goddamn selfie or by handing him a bottle of water and trying to bait him into a conversation.
Most days he obliged, accepted a water and posed for a picture. Today he wanted a gym where he could train, clear his head, get back to fighting perfection.
Taped and gloved, he faced Jules in the ring. The noise he could always tune out was a din.
“Shoulders too tight,” cautioned Jules, who’d traded the mitts for gloves. “Keep your head moving. Stay fluid. Strong start’s going to beat Brazda.”
Joaquin exhaled hard, focused on his uncle from beneath the furrow of his brow and jabbed. Sparring, they engaged Jules’s no-mercy routine, striking to injure, dodging knockouts, holding in the background the January matchup that’d decide his fate in this sport.
Throwing his right hand, he landed a jab, and was going into a left hook when his uncle threw an overhand right, connecting hard.
“Keep your position tight!” Jules swore, backing out of the line of Joaquin’s assault. “Break. Break. Get in the office.”
Ringside gloves off, Joaquin leaped out of the ring ahead of his uncle. Not wanting to stop moving—and finding no place to sit with clutter on the office chairs and a scatter of penny candy on the desk—he practiced footwork while Jules set up two amateurs to spar in the ring.
“You’re gonna watch the tapes later,” Jules said, striding in, his dark face drawn in a scowl.
“Taping today?”
“You need to see earlier footage, watch for the absence of the amateur shit you haven’t thrown since high school.” Jules got into his stance, mimicked Joaquin’s left jab right hook. “Too easy to read, lax position, no damn chin coverage—how’s that face feeling?”
“Cool.” Hurt like burning hell.
“Your diet stable?”
“Yeah.”
“Weight? Body fat? Last check you were perfect.”
“Still am.” His only perfection was physical.
“So what is this?” Jules grabbed for a handful of random fruit chews, dumped three in his mouth. “You hearing the noise?”
“Out there with the free neighborhood show?”
“The streets. Critics.”
“Always do.” But his emotional armor protected him from criticisms that he was too old, too predictable, too undeserving to live to fight another day.
Jules inhaled several more fruit chews. “Oh, yeah. Got a delivery yesterday.” He shoved aside an empty doughnut box and surrendered something with fancy gift wrapping.
“No card. Who brought it?”
“Marshall’s little girl. Martha.”
Opening the box, Joaquin lifted a necktie from the satiny interior.
It was his, the tie he hadn’t realized he’d left at MGM Grand.
Jules was holding a stark white card between his index and middle fingers. “Can’t forget this.”
I resuscitated your tie.
A grin hit his face, and aggravated the soreness from the jab his uncle had landed to his chin.
“Reno didn’t do the trick?” Jules said around the knot of candy bulging in his cheek. “Any woman can do what Martha Blue’s doing for you. That’s a pair of panties you should’ve passed up.”
Joaquin’s fists went up before he’d realized he wasn’t outfitted in gloves and they weren’t sparring. “Never, Uncle Jules. Never insult her.”
Jules frowned as Joaquin relaxed his hands. “You’re screwed if you want to bare-handed hit the man who put food in your mouth, dragged you out of juvie and kept you in this gym.”
Jules went for another fistful of candy. “Filthy rich or dirt poor, a woman will break a man faster than anything else.”
“Your wife—”
“Knew her place, and I could keep her out of my head when I needed to.” Jules rubbed his forehead. “My sister was a woman, too. Go ahead, boy. Name her virtues.”
“She was my mother.” That was the start and end of her virtues. She hadn’t been able to figure out who’d fathered her kid, and had raised him in a crack house where drugs, violence and raids were the norm, until she’d overdosed.
“Wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts—family or friends, doesn’t matter. They’ll muck up stuff in a heartbeat.” Jules shrugged. “Now, I like Martha, she’s family. But she was born into money. You fought—literally fought—for it. Let her close and she’ll start working on you.”
“Working on me?”
“To get you out of the ring. You didn’t let India or Ciera or any of the others break you in. Don’t let Martha.”
As effortless as it would’ve been to swing the conversation to Jules’s son’s recreational activities with Ciera, Joaquin accepted some hits full-on. This conversation was one of them. “Uncle Jules, with all due respect—”
“When people say ‘with all due respect,’ it damn near always means they’
ve got something disrespectful to say. I don’t want to hear that coming from you.”
“Leave Martha out of the conversation.”
“Leave it in your pants and I won’t say another untoward thing about her. Or Marshall Blue can encourage you.”
“Yeah, Uncle? You’re going to involve him? Why? The. Fight. Is. Mine.”
“What’s outside the ring for you, Joaquin? Kids, a steady woman, a pet rock? Nothing. You’re in Sports Illustrated, on commercials. You don’t have a reason to stop fighting.” Jules crossed his massive arms. “Ain’t nothing wrong with that. Thing is, Martha’s as high-maintenance as the rest of your women—probably more. If you’re thinking she’s something sacred… Son, she ain’t a prude.”
“I’m not, either.”
“Okay. I’m trying to talk to you, man-to-man, and you wanna be funny.” Jules pointed to the supersize Plexiglas rectangle that protected a poster advertising Joaquin’s match against Brazda. “See that? Look at that machine. Nothing’s behind those eyes, except fire.”
Joaquin studied the poster. Deep creases on his face, cold fire in his narrowed eyes, his expression both arrogant and savage.
Machine. That’s what he was. A man wouldn’t defeat Eliáš Brazda next month.
A machine would.
*
Ca-ching! Bingo! Jackpot!
Avery bowed her arm into the donation bin at Faith House, as a fisherman would cast a net into water. Peering into the bin, she’d already identified her big bass.
She just hoped her arm was long enough to reel in the shoes. Seriously, who would toss a new-with-tags pair of clogs?
Only a few days had passed since the de-clutter staff Renata’s son had hired had swiped over half of Avery’s belongings, but she’d already become a pretty savvy donation-bin searcher.
Maybe she was stranded in Dummyville, population one, but she imagined if she looked carefully and exhaustively, she’d recover some of her stuff.
In the meantime, she had a replacement jacket and a pair of skinny jeans, thanks to a department store that had given her the items free of charge. And if she could reach just a little farther, she’d have a pair of designer clogs.
Just for Christmas Night Page 14