Feint and Misdirection

by Helena Maeve

  “You’d stop?”

  Imogen was glad Jaime asked the question, because her own vocal chords seemed to be out of commission.

  Russell didn’t answer immediately. “I hate seeing her hurt,” he deflected, but that was just a polite way of saying yes.

  “It’s her choice,” Jaime insisted.

  “And it’s my choice to walk away before she does herself serious injury. She knows my terms.” No backtalk, no alcohol, no drugs. Imogen had already broken two of the three rules and Russell knew it. They bickered constantly, that was the only way they knew to communicate, and Russell had never before threatened to use it as an excuse to break their arrangement.

  He had trained her since the moment she’d walked into his gym. No wonder he counted on her dropping out of the fight if he wasn’t there to coach her. Worse, Imogen couldn’t say for sure that she wouldn’t.

  She dug her short, bitten nails into the meat of her palms. You son of a bitch, why would you put me in that position?

  “She’s not ready,” Russell said, as if peeking in on her thoughts. “As long as you’re around to distract her—”

  “She’s not giving you her undivided attention,” Jaime interjected. “Yeah, I got that.” He made no effort to conceal his annoyance. Imogen couldn’t blame him. If an ex of his had walked in and demanded that Imogen drop off the map for Jaime’s wellbeing, she would’ve rearranged her face. “You’re so full of shit,” he sneered. “Just admit you want to fuck her!”

  “That’s not what this is about,” Russell shot back.

  Jaime rolled his eyes. “Bullshit. At least be man enough to put a name to what you’re doing, you fucking coward!”

  The foyer rang out with the insult. Imogen rushed to the bannister, seizing hold with both hands, but she seemed to be moving through shifting sand she was so slow. Russell was already on Jaime, one brawny forearm pressed against his throat.

  “What did you call me?”

  “I had your picture all over my fucking wall when I was kid,” Jaime spat. “I fucking worshiped you, man! I had so many scenarios contrived to meet you. I knew what I’d say, what you’d say—I even bought your autograph on eBay. Set me back five hundred bucks. If I’d known you were just another fat asshole with a hard-on for a girl half his age, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

  Russell wasn’t the only one who stopped dead in his tracks. Imogen balked. Jaime had acted like he didn’t know a thing about the MMA. It was easy to believe it, too, what with the Savile Row suits and his collection of Omega timepieces. He was Yale and chess club material, more brains than brawn. Whatever muscle definition he had was on the lanky side, the product of frequent ten mile jogs around the city.

  Imogen couldn’t imagine him as a kid, watching a fight and hanging onto every punch like she’d once done. He was Wall Street.

  “Go on,” he snarled, tipping up his chin. “You know you want to hit me. Go on!”

  As Imogen watched, Russell obediently raised his fist, elbow pulled up behind him and stressing the seams of his cheap, tan fleece. He dropped it after only a beat, releasing Jaime, who slumped against the wall, touching a hand to his throat.

  “What? Don’t tell me you’re too washed up to finish the job!”

  Russell didn’t answer. A moment later, the elevator doors slid open with a soft hiss and he disappeared from view.

  Silence overtook the foyer, interspersed with the faint scrape of Jaime’s shirt dragging against the wall as he settled more comfortably against the wall.

  “I suppose you saw everything?” he said without raising his voice. His gaze found Imogen’s. He must’ve known she’d been up there for some time.

  “You okay?” she called down.

  “He pulled the punch.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Imogen drawled. She descended in a daze, torn between wanting to creep back into bed and blame everything she’d heard on the wine, and the desire to put her arms around Jaime. It wasn’t often that he looked vulnerable.

  In point of fact, she couldn’t remember walking down this road before. Lack of practice made her feel a little awkward as she reached the foyer.

  “He’s smitten, you know.”

  “No, he’s—”

  “You don’t have to cover for him,” Jaime said, glancing up at her. “Unless… Oh, God, of course.” He leaned his head back against the wall with a dull thump. “I should’ve seen it coming. Stupid of me…”

  Imogen bit back the urge to flex her fists. She knew it gave her away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She knew, too, but admitting it to herself was going to take a lot more than a couple of glasses of champagne and a tray of canapés.

  When Jaime didn’t answer, she found herself crossing the polished, cool expanse and sitting down beside him. Chilled marble against bare thighs was less than pleasant, but Imogen could suffer the shiver.

  “So what happens now?” The finer points of sustaining a relationship might’ve escaped her, but she knew a little something about body language. Jaime’s hunched shoulders and folded knees were anything but a fighting stance.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted softly.

  “That’s a first…” The joke felt flat. Imogen had been expecting nothing less.

  “You want to go after him?” Jaime asked. He sounded so wary that Imogen couldn’t lie. Instead, she said nothing. “You probably should,” he agreed. “He’s worried about you.”

  “I’ve reset her bones too many times. I won’t let her fight if she’s not ready.” The degree of conviction with which Russell had spoken left Imogen grasping at straws. He had never tried to impose his will on her before—or rather he’d tried, but he’d always backed off before just on the threshold of backing Imogen into a corner. She’d always assumed that was to do with his being a pushover.

  “I can call you a cab,” Jaime murmured, tearing her from her thoughts.

  “You’re kicking me out?” That was putting it a little strongly. Imogen had yet to move in, for all that she had brought her toothbrush and her gym bag, and snuck her protein bars into his pantry.

  Jaime shook his head. “If it were up to me, I’d have you stay the night, but—”

  “It is up to you,” Imogen insisted. She cupped his smooth-shaven cheek in a steady hand. “Give me a little credit here, I’m not going to throw you over just because Russell decided he’s got the hots for me.” She hated herself for trivializing something that had obviously been difficult for him to admit.

  Jaime tipped forward and their lips met in a light, chaste kiss, softer even than their first attempt. Imogen felt her heart clench in her chest as she realized Jaime was trying to find the strength to say goodbye. She knew the look of a man when he was at the end of his tether—it was right there in Jaime’s weary eyes, his lashes fanning low over his cheeks.

  “I’d like to say the night,” Imogen said, before he could urge her to leave, afraid it might sink in the second time around. “If it’s all right?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it. He nodded and together they stumbled up the stairs into the bedroom Imogen had left with heart pounding.

  They undressed each other with unsteady hands—first Jaime, then Imogen, until they could slide between the sheets naked and cold, trading shivers between them as they entwined their legs. Jaime kissed her again, licking into her mouth like he was tasting her lips for the last time, and he wouldn’t do anything more no matter how Imogen tried to encourage him.

  She gave up the attempt eventually, swallowing past the sob that threatened to leak out as she curled around his body.

  “Can you—?” Jaime aborted the question as she carded her fingers through his sandy hair, still stiff with product.

  “Like this?”

  He nodded. He’d liked it the first time she’d done it, too, lying in bed too spent to go another round. It made Imogen feel impossibly tender toward him, this knowledge that he wasn’t all jagged corners and misch
ievous smirk. While it was nice to be owned so completely, it was the slight, human imperfections just barely visible under the thin veneer of Jaime’s playboy façade that had won her over.

  Knowing that Russell had feelings for her didn’t change that.

  She kissed the top notch of Jaime’s spine as she stroked his head, keeping up a steady rhythm to help him relax. Eventually, he rolled over and pulled her into his arms, body warm and long beneath hers. He parted her thighs with his knees, guiding her into place with soft, stuttered gestures. Imogen didn’t resist. She was used to sex with Jaime being a lot more vigorous, but she didn’t mind the change of pace.

  He was barely half-hard when he entered her and Imogen had to sit back on his cock so he wouldn’t slip out. She wasn’t very wet, so the sharp burn of penetration distracted her from what might’ve been a doleful, dull affair.

  “You’re so beautiful,” Jaime murmured between kisses. “You’re so—”

  Imogen silenced him with a kiss, working her hips back and forth in an attempt to coax some feeling out of him. She didn’t want gentle and hesitant. She didn’t want soft nothings whispered in her ear like a long litany of goodbyes. “Fuck me,” she gritted out, scratching her nails down Jaime’s chest. “Fuck me, c’mon.”

  He said nothing, but it was only a matter of seconds before he slipped out, staring up at her with liquid eyes.

  Imogen shifted off his lap and put her head in her hands. Frustration flared beneath her skin. “You know, just because some guy says something stupid doesn’t mean you have to believe it.”

  “He’s not just some guy,” Jaime muttered, his voice little more than a reedy exhale.

  “Yeah, I heard that he used to get you all hot and bothered,” Imogen snapped, whipping around to face him. “Doesn’t anyone care what I want? I’m not some prize for Russell to claim. He can’t just walk in here and say he had me first, so you might as well fuck off! What does he think I am?”

  “Maybe you should ask him,” Jaime said.

  She had never wanted to punch the smile off his beautiful, wide mouth more. “I’m asking you,” Imogen retorted.

  “I don’t want you to make a choice you’ll regret—”

  “Don’t give me that crap,” she snarled. “I don’t want to hear I’m doing this for your own good. You don’t get to make that call for me. Either of you.” She slid into his lap, pinning him down at the hips and shoulders. “Do you want me?”

  She wouldn’t ask the other thing. She didn’t need to force a confession out of Jaime to make herself feel better. It was enough to know that he liked having her in his bed, where she liked to be these days.

  Jaime made to glance away, scowling, but Imogen stopped him with a hand in his hair. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” he shot back, gaze flinty. “Of course, I want you. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  “Spoken like a true one-percenter.” Imogen slammed their lips together before Jaime could lie and claim he wasn’t.

  Gone were the soft kisses they’d shared as they undressed each other, replaced by the scorch of passion rekindled. Jaime grasped her waist with bruising hands and spilled her over onto the sheets. Imogen welcomed his onslaught, scratching her fingernails into the wings of his shoulders as he rutted against her cunt.

  Fury made him rough, made him bite at her collarbones and neck with teeth bared, hungry for her. Imogen was dimly aware of him pushing her legs open and working his cock in with sharp, stuttered thrusts. There was no burn this time, no flicker of hesitation in his gaze. He caught her wrists in his hands and pinned her down, snarling. “This what you want? Is it?”

  Imogen rolled her hips against his and flexed her inner muscles. She didn’t need to speak at all after that. Jaime moved inside her at a merciless pace, slamming her into the bed and picking up force before she could catch her breath. It was wilder and more brutal than anything they’d done before and she loved it, toes curling into the backs of his thighs as she watched him arch his back and shove forward, shaking.

  “Come on,” he growled, grimacing as he tried to hold himself back.

  Imogen smirked up at him. “You want to make me come? Get on your knees.” That wasn’t how they usually played, but tonight wasn’t a night like any other. Jaime wasn’t the only one who felt a need to assert himself.

  A moment’s hesitation was all Imogen needed to slip a knee between them and push him off. There was no disguising the fact that she was the stronger between them. Until now, she’d been convinced that any thrill Jaime found in taking her to bed had to do with seeing her muscles coil and relax, knowing she was at his mercy.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that he’d go all wide-eyed and slack-jawed if she had him sprawl over the sheets and straddled his shoulders. His slicked hair caught easily in her hands as she pulled him to where she needed him most. “Get me off,” she gasped, but Jaime had already figured out what she needed.

  He wasn’t gentle about it, using his hands to steady her as she rocked back and forth against the stiff point of his tongue. He didn’t hesitate to rake sharp teeth over her clit when he heard her breaths go short and harried.

  Imogen threw her head back, a hoarse cry spilling from her lungs. She hadn’t known she liked a little pain with her pleasure—and vice versa—until Jaime had made it so appealing. Even on his back, his hair being pulled out by the roots, he still stoked her pleasure with expert hands, winding her tighter and tighter, just like a coiled spring, and easing her back down.

  Five minutes in and Imogen was steadying herself with a hand against the headboard and the other clasping her breast in a desperate attempt to put herself over the edge.

  Jaime wouldn’t oblige, though, not until she mewled, “Let me. Please, fuck, let me—”

  He fastened his lips to her clit and sucked so hard that a vulgar, wet noise ricocheted around the room. Imogen’s grip around the broad panel of the headboard went white-knuckled as she cried out, hurtling into oblivion.

  She came hard, all of the tension and the worry and the ‘this can’t be happening’ leaching out of her as she slumped forward. Little tremors rocked her body, triggered by the last of Jaime’s tender licks against her slick folds. He would keep it up as long as she stayed in place, Imogen realized through the fog of pleasure that had effectively robbed her of all thought. She dismounted, sprawling beside him in a heap of boneless exhaustion.

  Jaime followed her with his gaze, his mouth and chin wet with her juices, his hand moving hastily between his thighs.

  Imogen flashed him a tired smile.

  He came like that, gaze fused to hers as he worked his stiff length with one hand and tugged his balls with the other. It was a good look on him—desperation. She didn’t get to see it often.

  Afterward, it was Imogen who rolled out of bed and went to fetch them a washcloth. She returned to find Jaime just as she’d left him, but his eyes flickered open at her approach, a query brimming on his lips. He seemed to think better of it as Imogen cleaned the congealing mess from his chest and belly. He was quiet until she slid into bed beside him.

  “What’re you gonna do?”

  “I’m going to sleep,” she said, “and tomorrow I’m going to fight Megan Luz. And I’m going to win.” One of those prophecies had to prove true. Imogen told herself she was willing to put money on the first—and even that was touch and go—as Jaime rolled over and draped her arm around his waist.

  They’d spooned before, but usually the other way around. Tonight was a night for firsts.

  At length, Jaime’s breaths evened out, body going limp with exhaustion.

  Imogen lay beside him for a long time, just listening to his soft inhales. Sleep didn’t find her easily. She knew she should’ve been thinking about how this could change her fighting career or worrying about finding a new trainer who wouldn’t run off with her money. She couldn’t. A more pressing thought was banging about inside her skull, as restless as a caged sparrow.

  Russell Espina is in lo
ve with me.

  It made no sense. He didn’t even like her. He detested her for being so argumentative—he never let her get away with a mistake. He made her sit through her old fights over and over again, pointing out all the ways in which her form was lacking. He didn’t like her folks, couldn’t stand her roommate. And the few times she’d passed out on his couch, he had seen fit to wake her up by running the vacuum cleaner.

  “He doesn’t love me,” she whispered, her breath stirring the soft hairs at Jaime’s nape, “and I don’t love him.” Saying it didn’t make it true.

  Jaime stirred in her arms, but didn’t wake. She pressed her hips flush against his, leaching his body heat like some sort of parasite. She would figure out a way to make this right tomorrow. She had to.

  Chapter Nine

  “You’re early,” Russell said, peering out of the office as she breezed past on her way to the sandbag.

  Imogen didn’t dignify his greeting with an answer. She dropped her gym bag on the floor with a flourish and plucked out her padded gloves. She couldn’t afford to bust her knuckles again before a fight. The last time she’d done it, three rounds in the ring had been torture. The fourth had nearly knocked her out.

  It had made victory taste all the sweeter.

  “What’s with the sour face?” Russell pressed. The shuffling of his sneakers against the bare cement floors traveled up Imogen’s spine like the irritating scratch of fingernails on a chalkboard.

  He wanted to pretend nothing happened? He wanted to act like Jaime locking himself in his office this morning was perfectly fine? He was welcome to it, but Imogen didn’t have to play along.

  “Okay,” he drawled. “It’s not just the sour face, it’s the silent treatment, too… Jaime do something to piss you off?”

  “Try a little closer to home,” Imogen mumbled, smacking her closed fist into the sandbag. It barely budged.