“Hold on tight,” he said as he pulled the bike onto the road. The wind whipped my long hair around, and my blood pumped with excitement. I lay my head against his back, closed my eyes, and caressed the rippled muscles of his abs through his shirt. His smell, the roar of the bike as it vibrated between my legs, and the feel of him beneath my fingers spiked my arousal. My clit was throbbing with need, and I squeezed my legs tightly around him to keep from rubbing against him to ease the ache.
My hand glided down, and I cupped his impressive erection. His sharp intake of breath excited me, and I began to massage him. When he stopped at a light, he looked over his shoulder at me. He covered my hand with his and groaned loudly.
“If you don’t stop, I’ll lose control of this bike and we’ll both be all over the pavement.” His voice was raspy and vibrated through me like the bike’s engine. I quickly pulled my hand off his warm flesh.
Okay, Lexi,
no more martinis for you.
The last thing I needed was to be responsible for someone else’s death.
My alcohol-blurred mind couldn’t decipher if it took five minutes or thirty to get to Ryder’s place, but I did know I enjoyed every second I got to hold his strong body as the powerful engine roared beneath us.
We pulled up to a huge warehouse-like building. Hayes Elite Boxing, the sign above the entrance read.
This must be the gym Ryder always talked about.
The brick building took up half the block. In the front, two large glass windows were darkened on either side of the double-door entrance. Ryder pulled around back and into one of the three garage doors. He parked the bike next to an old car that was gleaming black but looked vintage. Next to the car was an expensive sports car. He helped me off the bike, then led the way across the garage toward a steel door. Behind the door was a long hallway with a three big glass cutouts in the wall, looking into the gym.
At the end of the hall, an elevator slid open as soon as he pressed the button. He entered some numerical code into a box on the wall, the doors closed, and the elevator car began to rise.
He stood at the opposite side, studying me. His thumbs hooked into the loop of his jeans, his booted foot rested against the wall, and his eyes were undressing me. He may have been pretending to be a perfect gentleman, but he wanted to do dirty things to me. I saw it in his eyes.
His tattoo peeked out from under his shirt. His right arm was covered in a full tribal sleeve. I wanted to rip off his shirt and see what other artwork he had under there.
Our eyes met, and he licked his lips, causing an involuntary shiver to run through my body. He was trouble, and I was the new toy he wanted to play with until it broke. I had no doubt it wouldn’t take much for him to break me, but I didn’t care. I’d be left with all the broken pieces with no clue how to put myself back together, but the tradeoff might be worth it. The elevator stopped, and he walked off without looking back. He knew I’d follow. My body wouldn’t allow me to stop following him. I hadn’t felt this much passion in so long, if ever. He opened the door to our right, and we walked into his apartment.
The apartment was really chic and unbelievably neat for a bad-boy bachelor. The gleaming dark wood floors gave me an urge to take off my shoes—
they were that spotless
. A couple of sleek, gray couches were set up in front of a huge flat-screen TV that nearly covered the whole wall. Just beyond the living room was an open kitchen, with all white cabinets and gleaming black countertops. He was impossibly neat. He’d hate living with me.
Wait. Did I just imagine myself living with him?
Yup… way too much to drink.
“Let’s get you to bed.”
I took the hand Ryder offered me, and he led me around a half wall that ran along the back of the living room. On the other side of the wall was Ryder’s bedroom. The bed was hidden by the wall, but there was no door, so it was mostly just a huge studio apartment with a semi-private bedroom. A massive black bed dominated most of the space. A large closet with glass doors ran along one side of the room, a door leading to a spacious bathroom on the other wall. There was a wide array of karate belts, trophies, and three championship belts in one corner.
“You’re pretty awesome, aren’t you?” I said as I admired his shelf of accomplishments.
He shrugged it off, but any man with this many accolades had to be a pretty badass fighter. I wanted to see him in action, all sinewy muscles and graceful lunges. I pictured it in my head. He was probably as graceful in that huge bed. Why would someone need a bed that big? How many people does he have in it?
Cut it out, Lexi.
How many women he puts in his bed is none of your business.
I jumped on his bed face first and buried my head into the pillows. The bed was fantastic. It smelled just like him. I stilled when Ryder’s hand touched my ankle. He slid it down and removed my black pump. My body heated up as he did the same with the other shoe.
“You want to take off your dress?”
Hell yeah!
My head snapped up, and I looked over my shoulder at him. “Are we going to have sex?” I asked as I got up on my knees and began to pull my dress up my thighs.
He smiled and shook his head. He walked over to the closet, pulled the door open, and took a T-shirt off a stack of perfectly folded clothes and threw it at me.
“Put this on. I’ll be right back.”
He was really killing the bad-boy image with the extremely neat apartment, well-organized closet, and then turning down my drunken advances. I pulled my dress over my head and put on his shirt. It was huge on me but way more comfortable than sleeping in my dress.
By time he came back, I was drifting off. He tapped on my shoulder and handed me a bottle of water and two pills.
“Take these. It will help with your hangover in the morning.” I tried to reach for them, but my stomach clenched. I jumped off his bed and raced into the bathroom. I threw up everything I’d consumed, plus some. As I made friends with the toilet, Ryder’s hands gently pulled back my hair. I wasn’t too drunk to be embarrassed. I was going to hate myself in the morning for letting him see me like this.
“You okay?” he asked after several silent minutes with me hovering over the toilet. I was too exhausted to pull my head up. I probably looked like I passed out in there.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled as I forced myself up with Ryder’s help. If I were alone, I would’ve slept on the bathroom floor. I rinsed my mouth out at the sink, then trotted back into his room, grabbed the pills, and threw them into my mouth. I tilted the bottle of water to my lips and drank them down.
“I’ll be on the couch if you need me.”
“What? Why? There’s plenty of space for you to sleep here. Four people could sleep here and not touch.”
He looked at me like he was going to argue, but I gave him an incredulous look and he sighed in resignation. He swiftly pulled his shirt over his head and took my breath away. His body was a work of art. Intricate artwork inked from his wrist, up his arm, and over his shoulder. On the other side, the tattoo didn’t run down his whole arm, it stopped over his bicep. He also had a small tattoo on his lower abdomen that was mostly covered by his jeans. But more beautiful than the tattoos was his body. Every muscle was prominently outlined underneath his tattoos, well defined under his smooth skin.
He loosened his belt, unzipped his jeans, and pulled them down over his hips. His thighs were thick and strong with a light dusting of dark hair. His boxer briefs hugged his body, and the thick bulge between his legs caused moisture to pool between mine.
How much
will he take off?
Unfortunately, he stopped there.
He positioned himself at the far end of the bed, but it made no difference. My body was so aware of him that he may as well have been on top of me.
Chapter
Nine
Ryder
Alexis Cole…
That name haunted me for years. I watched as she slept, sprawled out across my bed, and I knew I’d just bought myself a shitload of trouble. What I felt for her was lust, but it was laced with something so intense I was almost afraid to pursue anything physical with her. I was pretty sure I was going to fuck her. I just knew I shouldn’t.
I’d been here before, and it didn’t end well. I didn’t do well in relationships. I wouldn’t allow myself to get to the point where a woman could cause my world to crumble. No matter how sexy she was and no matter how much my dick wanted to claim her. She moaned softly and cuddled deeper into my pillows. Her shirt had ridden up to her hips, exposing the soft swell of her ass. The tiny black panties she was wearing barely covered anything, but my hand itched to grab them and rip them off.
I jumped off the bed and decided a shower was in order before my morning workout. The cold water spraying out of the showerhead hit my skin like sharp icicles. The frigid torture did nothing to cool the fire ignited by the beautiful creature in my bed.
I should’ve known better than to get close to the one woman who made me feel more than lust. The moment she approached me at the bar, I knew I was in trouble. The way she pushed her soft curves against me on the dance floor made me feel delirious, like I had more than two drinks. Her movements were intoxicating, her touch powerfully stimulating. Sleeping in the same bed was a big mistake.
I turned the hot water on because the cold water was making everything numb except my hard dick. I wrapped my hand around my cock as the water began to warm my blood. Images of my Alexis spread open on my bed, moaning as I pounded into her soft, moist heat, brought me quick release. I stroked my cock until I’d unloaded a small fraction of the ache she’d caused.
A couple minutes later, I wrapped a towel around my waist, walked quietly into the room, and pulled on a pair of track pants and a T-shirt. I left Alexis sleeping in my bed, my dick calm enough to venture down to the gym, but my body was still highly aware it didn’t really get what it was craving.
Two hours later, with an eight-mile run, two rounds on the speed bag, and a hundred push-ups behind me, Ty was struggling to hold the heavy bag as I pounded it. I’d been trying to exert all my pent-up frustration to no avail.
“What the fuck is up with you today? And where’d you disappear to last night?”
“I had to take care of someone.” I let out a few quick punches and switched over to power kicks.
“Is that some kind of code for getting laid?”
“No. It means I had to drag a drunken Alexis out of the club and let her sleep it off upstairs.”
“Alexis? David’s stepdaughter Alexis?”
“Yeah,” I answered, panting heavily, but not ready to cut the workout.
“I thought you refused to look after her.”
“I did, but after last night, maybe she does need someone to look after her.” If she would’ve offered herself to any other man the way she did me, I was sure they wouldn’t have cared how many drinks she had. What was more frightening was how much I wanted to protect her from anything that might happen.
“She’s going to fuck with your head and the fight you have coming up,” Ty said quietly. He was there when I withdrew because of my shoulder, and he’d been devastated. All the work we did that year got shitted on when I jumped over that railing to save Alexis.
“She won’t mess up the fight.” I huffed, punching the bag so hard Ty got pushed back.
I wasn’t so sure about David fucking with my head, though. David always had a way of getting anything he wanted, and I was awed by it until my mother and I became a casualty to it. This time he was throwing Alexis at me to get back into my life, and it might flip my world upside down.
Chapter
Ten
Alexis
I tried to make a quick escape from Ryder’s place without being noticed, but I’d forgotten the glass screen from the hallway made me visible to the whole gym. Not many people were in the gym, but my eyes were immediately drawn to Ryder anyway, so the place could’ve been empty as far as I was concerned. His flexing muscular body, his sharp jabbing movements, and his excellent form paralyzed me.
I gaped at him as if in a helpless trance. I couldn’t get my feet to move toward the exit. His dark hair was drenched with sweat. His muscles tightened and strained as he slammed his fist into the huge bag over and over again.
How does he manage to be even more appealing while violently mashing a bag and sweating profusely?
He’d grown a little dark, scruffy hair on his strong jaw overnight. His tanned skin looked so smooth. I wanted to run my hands over the ridged valley of his abdomen and feel the warmth of his skin under my tongue. He was the perfect recipe for disaster, and I was aching to be destroyed.
His muscles were tightly cut everywhere, and I wondered just how well shaped he’d be under those shorts. As if on cue to my ogling, he stopped hitting the bag and turned his head toward me.
A wild rush of heat flowed through my body as he smiled at me.
Oh, shit.
He knew I’d been checking him out. No. I was standing there practically fucking him with my eyes.
He nodded toward the door, ordering me to come into the gym. Damn. I wished I hadn’t let my hormones rule me and made the quick escape I’d planned. I’d spent way more time than sane smelling his pillow, imagining what it would be like waking next to him. I felt my common sense disappearing as I approached the door and met him halfway across the room. He had that kind of effect on my senses.
He stopped in front of me, crowding me with his big body. I felt the energy radiating off his skin, or maybe it was all the testosterone in the room that made me feel dazed. It had to be caused by something more than his cocky smile and sparkling baby blues.
He bit his lower lip, his eyes traveling over my dress, making me feel naked. My nipples pebbled as though he caressed them with more than a hungry gaze.