Dirty Brawler: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (with bonus novel!) (18 page)

He takes his hand back, reaching into his robes. “My mistake.” Here, he hands over a card with nothing but a phone number on it. “If you change your mind.”

He nods and stands, drifting back into the heart of the party under a giant chandelier.

Ew.

I spot Andy near the back of the room beside an alcove. He’s speaking to a man but doesn’t seem particularly engaged, as if he’s simply going through the motions. He does look good. I’ll give him that. The measurements were right, a touch out on the hips perhaps, but close enough. I noticed in Melbourne how the navy in the suit brought out the blue in his eyes, but the slate number he’s wearing tonight from our latest collection casts him in an entirely different light. He looks resolute, dark—a man not to be messed with.

You’d so go there. Why are you even denying it?

I would. Who wouldn’t? It’s like the guy was crafted by Michelangelo, stony chest and arms to match, a jawline so sharp you could cut diamonds with it, azure eyes deeper than the ocean. Cliché, maybe, but I could use one right now, anything to get off, but that’s the problem. I’ve worked too hard for this job for a one-night stand to screw everything up, and that’s all it would be. No long-term relationships, no respect for others—Andy Fortes is the playboy the world wants him to be. I’m not about to become part of his lore.

A woman in a striking strapless turquoise dress takes his arm and together they move deeper into the alcove.

Don’t get dragged into the politics. Don’t get dragged into the politics.
I can’t help it. I stand and shift for a better look, but my path is blocked.

I see him turn on her, one hand next to her head. It’s hard to tell, but the conversation seems animated.

Another sheik approaches, smiling. I escape through the center of the crowd and place myself on the wall beside the alcove, moving so I can better hear the conversation between Andy and this mystery woman. I don’t even know why I care, truthfully. I’m not one to be swept up in gossip. Still, I crane my head out a little and listen.

Andy’s keeping his voice low, but I can make it out. “What the fuck are you even doing here, Stacey?”

“Working,” comes the slick reply.

Andy scoffs. “I bet you are.”

“Look, I’m sorry about the article. It was a mistake.”

“You made me look like a fool, Stacey. How did you say I was in bed? What was the phrase?”

“
They
wrote that.”

“But you gave them the story, right?”

“Like I said, a mistake.”

“You made me look like a
fucking
idiot.”

The woman waits before replying. “Andy, forget what I said last year, forget about the article.”

Andy’s voice strains, the anger getting to him. “Forget about it? Do you know the damage that one fucking article caused to my reputation? And what, because I rejected you? Because you needed some quick cash?”

She slurs out her words, practically fucks him with them. “One night wasn’t enough, baby. I wanted more
then
and I want more
now
. That’s what I wanted to tell you. Whatever you want, I’ll do it. Just tell me.”

No reply from Andy.

She lowers her voice. “Are you telling me you didn’t enjoy it, that you didn’t like my lips around your cock?”

I almost vomit on my Stuey Weitzmans.

“It was one night, Stacey.”

“I’ll blow you right here if you want.”

“Stacey,” Andy’s growing impatient, “I’m leaving”.

Her tone changes. “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?”

“Goodbye, Stacey.”

“I’ll tell them you raped me.”

I stiffen. I’m close to kicking this girl’s ass all by myself if she thinks that’s going to win him over using those guerilla tactics.

“Go right the fuck ahead.” Andy storms out of the alcove clearly fuming. I press against the wall, make sure he can’t see me.

The woman, looking younger than she did across the room, emerges, shouting, “Andy! Andy!”

He ignores her and continues to walk through the crowd. A waiter offers him a flute of champagne, but he slaps the hand away, the glass shattering on the floor and a space opening up punctuated with short gasps.

I watch him disappear through the front doors pulling his jacket off.

The woman stops beside me. She looks sideways, up and down my body. For a second I think she’s going to bring out ‘What the hell are you looking at?’, but she simply snorts and walks off in the opposite direction.

I don’t really know what to make of it all. I expected drama to some degree, but damn. This is next level.

Guess that’s why they call it the circus.

Andy

I walk into the hotel dining room, the smog so thick outside people pass through it only in shadow. You take stuff like that for granted in the States—actual, breathable air.

The mechanics are loading their plates at the buffet. It looks like they rounded every bar in Shanghai last night and probably have herpes to show for it.

At the back of the room Sara sits scrolling through her phone while a lone croissant watches on.

I grab the three breakfast essentials—bacon, eggs, toast—and make my way over. I place my plate down. “You know they’ve got an actual beehive over there?”

She looks up completely blank. “I do.”

I sit, take a bite of toast. The honey’s actually pretty fucking incredible. “I’ve got a sweet tooth, you see.”

She puts her phone down. Half the battle is won.

Take that, iCock.

“Is that so?” she purrs.

I nod. “Ever since I was a kid. I used to put icing sugar on my salads. Mom said it was the only way she could get me to eat my greens.”

She raises her eyebrows, the aquamarine rings in her eyes daring me to throw her across this table and fuck her senseless. “Hope you grew out of that one.”

“I grew out of a lot of things.”

She takes a bite of her croissant, defies all natural laws by managing not to make a mess.
I’ll fix you, witch.
“Clearly you didn’t grow out of the whole big-boys-playing-with-their-toys thing.”

Now it’s my turn to raise an eyebrow, placing my toast down. “My, don’t we have our head in the gutter this morning.”

She starts to blush, the ice breaking. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

I wink. “I think you did. I think you can’t get me out of your head. Am I right?”

She looks to the window. “You wish. Like I said, I’m here for business, not pleasure.”

I smile.
Gotcha.
“So you are conceding I would bring you pleasure?”

“I didn’t say—”

“Your face says otherwise.”

“Could you be any more of an ass?”

I love it when she’s on the offensive. “No. What you see is what you get.”

She runs her hand across the table and all I can picture is it doing the same across my chest, running lower, her slim fingers curling around my cock. I twitch, kneeing the table, the cutlery shaking.

“You okay over there?”

“A little excited, that’s all.”

She changes the subject. “You enjoy Shanghai?”

“The back straight’s a winner. I can easily hit one-eighty-six, maybe more with the new car.”

She rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t talking about the track.”

I lean back, my cock doing its best military salute under the table. “As a city? Sure. There’s this cheese butter lobster they do,” I pucker my lips, “incredible.”

She speaks in what I imagine is fluent Chinese, repeating in English, “It’s actually a Cantonese dish, a Chinese-Western creation very popular in Japan and Southeast Asia.”

Day-um.
“Color me impressed. Now tell me you want to see me naked.”

She rattles of a rapid-fire string of Chinese but I’m pretty sure it’s far from ‘You’re a sexy beast, Andy Fortes’.

A passing waitress laughs, smiling at Sara.

“What’s so funny?”

Sara calls the waitress back over, talking with her in the local language, whatever it is. Sara points to me and the woman nods, “Ah, ah,” still smiling. I have no idea what they’re saying.

Sara draws her hands apart and the woman has a fit, nodding with excitement. She starts to thrust her hips and both of them have a grand old laugh at what has to be my expense. She leaves and Sara turns her attention back to me.

“Okay,” I tell her, “so you can speak Chinese.”

“More Shanghainese, but yes.”

“Annnnd, what were you saying?”

She winks. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

She starts to stand.

“Let me drive you to the track,” I offer.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“I’ll let you ask me whatever you want, three questions.”

Her eyes narrow, the curiosity blooming. I’ve got her. “Whatever I want?”

“Anything.”
Please ask about my dick.

“I don’t know. All you seem to be interested in is food and sex.”

“You don’t enjoy good food and even better sex? Come on.”

“Okay,” she relents. “Pick me up out front in twenty. I’ve got to shower first.”

“Need company?”

She slants her gaze at me. “Don’t push your luck.”

She walks away.

No, ma’am.

*

As I collect the car from the valet I can’t recall a time when I was so obsessed over a single girl. I really have to work out the supernatural hold she’s got on my balls. She’s hot, off-the-charts attractive, but she doesn’t use it. She dresses well, but it’s with restraint and yet impossibly sexy at the same time. Half the girls I sleep with show up to my room in lingerie, many in nothing at all. What makes her so special?

She’s worldly, which is interesting, but it’s more than that.
She’s off limits. That’s why, you fool. You think you’d feel the same way if she begged to blow you the first time you met?

I exhale at the thought of her lips around me.
Ice up, big boy.

She’s waiting on the steps in a white blouse and flared pants, a dark leather purse slung over her shoulder and her hair swept up into the same ponytail she always wears. I wonder if she ever lets her hair down, what she does for fun.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

I reach over and pull the latch on the car door. It lifts into the sky like a gull’s wing.

She crouches and slides into the passenger seat, hand running over the ruby leather. “It’s low. What is it?”

The door closes and I lift an eyebrow. “You really have to ask that question?”

“Could be a Honda for all I know.”

I shake my head. “Blasphemy. It’s a Goodall, of course, limited-edition AMG, 7L V8 a little too lethargic for my liking, but the forced induction helps.”

She puts her handbag between her legs. I’d give anything to trade places with it. “It’s all gibberish to me.”

I turn the key, the engine barking into life. “Now you know how it feels.”

I hit the throttle, shooting us out onto the main road, the tail kicking out.

Sara grips the side of her seat looking completely terrified.

I weave through the mid-morning grind heading by the bay, the roadster barking in satisfaction at being let off its leash.

Sara attempts to make small talk, voice squeaky and strained. “I suppose it’s not as fast as a Formula One car.”

I downshift crisply and laugh. “An F1 car is a special kind of fast, but like everything, you get used to it. We have a dual-seater for promo work. I’ll happily take you out some time.”

I take a corner hard, push the tires to the limit of adhesion before reining the torque back in.

“Not unless you want me to puke all over you.”

“Fair enough,” I nod. “What about you? What do you drive?”

She clears her throat. “A Prius.”

I almost stop in the middle of the road. “A Prius? You’re serious? The vehicular equivalent of a pap smear?”

For the first time, she smiles. “I love him.”

“Him?” I question.

“Thomas.

I throw my hands up. “You call your joke of a car Thomas?”

“Like the train.”

“In god’s name, why?”

“He’s dependable, adorable… everything I want in a man.”

“You’re lucky I don’t pull over and kick you out right here.”

The smile remains. “You wouldn’t.”

“Is that a challenge?”

She lifts a finger. “In fact, I recall you saying I could ask you three questions, whatever I want.”

Shit.
Forgot about that. “Yep,” I reply, popping the ‘p’.

She turns in her seat, the traffic thinning out on the motorway. “One, if there was any place in the world you could go, where would it be and why?”

“I’ve been around, you know.”

“So they say.”

“Poor choice of words, but to answer your question, there’s a salt lake in Bolivia I’ve yet to see.”

“Salar de Uyuni,” she adds.

“That’s it. Someone once told me it’s the most beautiful place on earth. You been?”

She shakes her head. “No, but I’ve heard about it, like a giant mirror, right? The sky and land as one.”

“Correct.”

“You could fly there in the off-season. You’ve got your own private jet, the means…”

I look at her, desperately want to pull over and press my lips against hers and sink inside her body. “It’s an experience that needs to be shared. Guess I’m waiting for the right person to share it with.”

“Interesting,” she says. “Two, who was your first crush?”

“We’re not in junior school.”

“You said ‘anything’.”

“Fine. Gracey Adams.”

“And?”

“We were like five-years-old. She had this Dora the Explorer backpack I liked.”

She stifles laughter, the ice wall ever so close to collapsing.
Come on down, motherfucker.
“She was your first kiss?”

“No, that was Amanda Manders.”

“Her name was Amanda Manders?”

“Cruel parents. They owned a chain of sports stores but couldn’t fork out a couple of hundred to fix her buck tooth. Always got in the way when we were kissing, and her braces, her hair…” I laugh. “It wasn’t such a pleasant experience, come to think of it.”

I’m tempted to ask Sara the same question, but no, I have to let her fall into this.

“Three,” she says, genuinely enthusiastic about the conversation now. It’s good timing, Shanghai International Circuit looming in the distance. “What’s your family like, truthfully?”

“I’m surprised. Any question and you go with that classic. You in PR or journalism?”

“Family defines someone, don’t you agree?”

“
I
define me.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“My family’s wealthy, but I’m sure you know that. I’m a single child. Both my parents still live in the States on the ranch they’ve owned since I was a kid.”

“You see them much?”

I shake my head. “No, they don’t really take an interest in what I do.”

“They don’t come out to see you race?”

“Not once.”

“But they say your father pulled strings, got you into Goodall.”

“My old man likes racing, Indy Car more than Formula One, and he has friends in high places. I’m sure he helped, but he’s not the one out there driving. There’s a reason I was headhunted by Renault in my teens, a reason I took out the championship in my second season. It’s because I worked my ass off.”

My back’s up more than it should be, but I can’t stand the insinuation I was somehow handed everything.

“Can I ask why they don’t come out?” she continues, legs pressing together against her handbag.

“I can’t say. Dad’s a good man, but he sees what I do as frivolous, that I’m not ‘making a difference’ in the world.”

“You donate to charity, millions paid out, I’ve read.”

“You
have
done your research on me?”

She turns sheepish. “I was provided some material, yes.”

“So you know my mother was injured in a car accident when she was sixteen. She hates the fact I’m a turn of the wheel away from hitting a wall at two-hundred miles per hour, and it can get nasty out there. It’s safer than it was ten, even five years ago, but drivers still die. Jesus, this has become far too serious.”

She relaxes into her seat as the gate to the circuit approaches. “I like this Andy, open and honest, far from the pervy flirt.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

She looks at me, eyes smoldering and so overtly sexual I’m certain if I was to stare too long into their depths I’d turn to stone. “Take it however you want.”

*

Shanghai has always been an easy circuit for me, but not this time.

I’m thinking about Sara as I come into the hairpin during qualifying. I’m too late with the change, the rear left kicking out and precious milliseconds squandered. I make up time down the back, but the damage has been done. All I can hope for is that Carl drops the ball.

He doesn’t.

The prick’s on fire out there, carving up the track like he’s driven it his whole life. By the time he crosses the line he’s got me by half a second.

It’s only qualifying,
I tell myself, but I’m pissed. I punch the side of the garage wall harder than I should’ve and wind up losing the top layer of skin on my knuckles. I should have been in the game, not thinking about Sara and all the ways I’d make her come. We’re not even together and she’s already messing with my head.