The Brawler Read online

  “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, Aly. I can’t be a fucking 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 warm, greedy tongue. “I want what I want.”

  Chapter Ten

  Aly couldn’t tell him the truth, that from where she was, on her knees with his callused hands cradling her head and his dark eyes 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 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 Jackson 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 stroked 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 fucking fairy tale.

  “What else is mine, Aly?”

  Carefully slinking back, she watched him, watched desire wrestle restraint. The house was dead-silent, the rush of her pulse in her ears deafening.

  “Aly…” he said again, his voice riding a jagged groan. He closed in, his footsteps light, his body all power and threat.

  “Show me.” Jackson 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 across her mouth. Then down her throat. Then circled her breasts. “Please, baby. Show me where you want my mouth.”

  Oh, my God. Had she dreamed this? Was it real that Jackson Batiste, the Brawler, Las Vegas’s king, was begging her?

  Aly 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 going be there a while.”

  All Aly could do was hold on tight when Jackson curled her into his arms and took off in a sprint. He moved too fast for her to register more than the cavelike 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. “Are you shy all of a sudden? Don’t want anyone to see how your tits bounce when you walk, or to watch me slide three fingers into your cunt while I suck on your nipples?”

  Aly 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 eating your cock and letting you ride my ass. Imagine what that’d do to my virgin-pure rep.”

  As daring as ever, she swept the mistletoe across her breasts. “Kiss me here.”

  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 pussy, what had been a soul-shaking experience then now paled to a dim, muted memory.

  Aly 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 fucking 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. “I’ve wanted your cunt for so damn long. It was fucking hell to remember right and wrong.”

  “Did you want me before I stepped in your ring?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before I came back from college?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before I went to New York? Before I learned to drive? Before my breasts filled out?”

  “You just went too far back and made this conversation weird as fuck.”

  “Then when did you want me?”

  “I was at your house and saw you climb out of a pool with a soaked T-shirt plastered to your body. You didn’t look like the kid I remembered. You were the same girl but in a woman’s body. I wanted to get in that pool with you and fuck you in the water—until I remembered you were sixteen fucking years old.”

  “I would’ve let you do it.”

  “Stop.”

  “It’s true. Because I wanted you first.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe I’ll be a stubborn ass like you. Maybe I won’t tell you how many years I’ve wanted your cock inside me…to feel you stretch me and make your mark inside my body.”

  “Tell me,” he said, and God, was he unfair. “Tell me and I’ll let you get me off.”

  “I was thirteen when I first realized I wanted you to fuck me. There was this plastic princess wand you’d gotten me for my birthday, and I refused to throw it out because at night I’d put the handle of it inside me and pretend it was you.”

  He picked up his cock and smacked her mound with it. “Does this feel like a princess wand?”

  “Thank God, no.”

  “Doing this… It would’ve been wrong back then, Aly. So fucking wrong. You get it, don’t you? It would’ve fucking destroyed us…me.”

  Because when she was thirteen and masturbating with a birthday gift from him, he’d been twenty-three. He could’ve lost his career, his freedom, maybe his life.

  “If it’s all the same to you, Aly, I’m going to fuck every thought out of your head. Need to get a condom.” He furrowed his brow. “We are gonna be needing it this time, aren’t we?”

  She shoved his shoulders, though she’d already pushed him too far. “Yeah, we’re gonna need it. Them. Bring plenty, champ.”

  Returning to her, Jackson sprinkled a fistful of condoms onto the sheets. Jokes and laughter and dangerous questions abandoned her, and when he pushed 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 fuck you like
a stranger, Aly. Like I don’t care.”

  “What if I asked you to?”

  “When you ride my dick. When I bend you over and eat your ass. Not now.”

  A blend of passion and affection was what she’d wanted four Decembers ago, and what she was stunned to extract from Jackson 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 Batiste’s Boxing Club. Waking up semi-hard, Jackson had reached for Aly. And found her side of the bed vacant.

  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 silky red hair back from her face, was pissed off that sleep had cost him a few more hours inside her pussy.

  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, fucking frozen as he replayed stripping Aly in front of it. Urging her to her knees. Filling her mouth as she 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 Pax…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.

  Pax, in his Batiste Boxing Club sweatsuit, was in the ring, mitts on, with an amateur when Jackson came into the gym.

  Waving him off, intending to skip rope before getting his ringside gloves on, Jackson 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 a 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 Jackson 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,” Pax shot back with authority. “Get loose, bastard, then let’s go.”

  America’s champ or not, Jackson expected an almost daily earful of hell from his uncle in the weeks leading to an event. Pax Batiste wasn’t afraid to cut his boys to size. From the day Jackson had been rescued from a crack house and brought to live with Pax, he’d been lumped in with Dez and Corbin—treated like a son.

  Considering Jackson was Pax’s nephew and trainee, public chastisement was guaranteed.

  Jackson 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 Pax in the ring. The noise he could always tune out was a din.

  “Shoulders too tight,” cautioned Pax, who’d traded the mitts for gloves. “Keep your head moving. Stay fluid. Strong start’s going to beat Brazda.”

  Jackson exhaled hard, focused on his uncle from beneath the furrow of his brow, and jabbed. Sparring, they engaged Pax’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!” Pax swore, backing out of the line of Jackson’s assault. “Break. Break. Get in the fucking office.”

  Ringside gloves off, Jackson 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 Pax set up two amateurs to spar in the ring.

  “You’re gonna watch the tapes later,” Pax 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.” Pax got into his stance, mimicked Jackson’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 the fuck is this?” Pax 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.

  Pax 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?”

  “J.T.’s little girl. Aly.”

  Opening the box, Jackson lifted a necktie from the satiny interior.

  It was his, the tie he hadn’t realized he’d left at MGM Grand.

  Pax 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 clear your pipes?” Pax said around the knot of candy bulging in his cheek. “Any woman can do what Little Red’s doing for you. If what folks say holds any truth, her pussy stopped being special a long time ago.”

  Jackson’s fists went up before he’d realized he wasn’t outfitted in gloves and they weren’t sparring. “Never, Uncle Pax. Never insult her.”

  Pax frowned as Jackson relaxed his hands. “You’re fucked if you want to barehanded hit the man who put food in your mouth, dragged you out of juvie, and kept you in this gym.”

  Pax 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.” Pax 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 fuck shit up in a heartbeat.” Pax shrugged. “Now, I like Aly, she’s family. But she’s privileged. You know what I mean. You fought—literally fought—for half of the respect she got just by being born a rich white girl. 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 Little Red.”

  As effortless as it would’ve been to swing the conversation to Pax’s son’s recreational activities with Ciera, Jackson accepted some hits full-on. This conversation was one of them. “Uncle Pax, 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.”

  “Keep Aly out of the conversation.”

  “Keep your cock out of her and I won’t say another untoward thing about her. Or J.T. Greer can encourage you.”

  “Yeah, Uncle? You’re going to involve him? Why? The. Fight. Is. Mine.”

  “What’s outside the ring for you, Jackson? Kids, a steady woman, a pet rock? Nothing. You’re in Sports Illustrated, on commercials. You don’t have a reason to stop fighting.” Pax crossed his massive arms. “Ain’t nothing wrong with that. Thing is, Aly’s as high-maintenance as the rest of your women—probably more. If you’re thinking she’s something sacred…Son, she ain’t.”

  “I’m not, either.”

  “Okay. I’m trying to talk to you, man to man, and you wanna be funny.” Pax pointed to the supersize Plexiglas rectangle that protected a poster advertising Jackson’s match against Brazda. “See that? Look at that machine. Nothing’s behind those eyes, except fire.”

  Jackson 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!

  Maddie 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 out a new-with-tags pair of clogs?

  Only a few days had passed since the declutter staff Renata’s asshole of a son had hired had swiped over half of Maddie’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.