Ice Cold (An MMA Stepbrother Romance) (8 page)

The fight with Hammer was in two days, and I felt like the last few weeks had gone by in a whirlwind. If Maury thought I was distracted before, he shouldn’t have had any reason to think that I was now. I had basically done nothing but train and sleep for the last two weeks.

I had fended off several invitations from Kyle to go out after we got done at the gym. Usually, I went out clubbing at least four or five times a week, and there were one or more girls who ended up back in my bed afterward. But I wasn’t even interested in finding a quick roll in the hay, even though I could tell that my body was keyed up and on edge.

I refused to believe it had anything to do with the gorgeous blonde bombshell who occupied a corner of my gym for ten hours a day. I hadn’t known what to expect from Alexa, but so far, she had been nothing if not professional and courteous with me as we reviewed my expenses almost daily for the last two weeks.

True to her word, she was giving me suggestions and hints on how to manage things better. So far, I had shot down every one and acted like a complete ass to boot. I wasn’t even sure if it bothered her at all, though. She just kept coming back for more. Maury was more pissed off than usual because he said after each one of those with meetings with Alexa, my attention span was shot to shit.

I had started to crave being close to her. As things were ramping up for the fight, my stress level increased too, and she was a calming presence in the eye of my storm. I stopped in to annoy her with every trip to the locker room and going around the gym to chat with my buddies. She was constantly working on some spreadsheet; her eyes focused on her computer screen with a pencil stuck up holding her long tresses in a bun. It was an incredibly sexy mix between a librarian and a lawyer, and it made me want to bend her over her desk, push up her skirt, and fuck her right there.

Of course, she hadn’t shown the slightest bit of interest in anything like that. In fact, every time I made one of my lewd innuendos, she countered with some detail about our parents’ upcoming wedding as if to remind me that our relationship had an awkward connotation to it now that would be even more awkward in a few months. I didn’t give a shit about that, but it surely seemed like she did. And that annoyed me more than anything. It pissed me off that once again my dad was in control of a part of my life. A rather important one at that.

“You are fucking distracted again,” Maury said in disgust pulling off his gloves and throwing them down on the mat. “This isn’t going to work, kid.”

I let my hands down. My arms felt like jelly. We’d been going at it all day, and as I glanced at the clock on the wall, I saw it was after seven. We were set to leave in the morning for St. Louis. This was the last workout on my home turf, and I had wanted it to be good. Unfortunately, he was right. I was distracted.

“Fuck you, Maury,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood for his bullshit. “Go home. I’ll close up and see you tomorrow.”

Grumbling, the older man slid out of the ropes and headed back toward the locker room. I started moving through a series of stances and tried to clear my mind. I barely heard him as he crossed the gym floor and headed back to the front door. I was alone in the gym, and the silence should have been a welcome change, but it wasn’t.

Ten minutes later, I heard the sound of the front door open and close. Rolling my eyes, I called out. “Yes, I’m still here, and I’m still practicing, so get off my ass, Maury.”

Alexa emerged from the hallway with an apologetic smile and gave me a small wave. “Sorry to interrupt. Just me. I forgot my phone in my office.”

I paused in my forms and shrugged. She had changed since earlier in the day and was wearing an outfit similar to what she had been wearing the night I met her. I wondered if she was going out, and that thought annoyed me even more. No doubt it was just because I haven’t gotten laid in three weeks. Not since after my last fight…with Alexa.

Keeping my movements tight as I moved around the ring, I tried to forget she was there. So I was surprised when I saw movement on the steps leading up the ring. I stopped and saw Alexa standing there watching me with a small grin on her face. “I always wondered what it looked like from up here.”

I couldn’t keep myself from returning the smile. Most chicks I talked to couldn’t care less about what actually went into what I did, outside of the fact that they loved the sweaty manliness of it all. It was a brutal sport, and something about that made them drop their panties in a flash. Alexa had been asking me a question here and there about my training or some rule she had read about. It made me think that she was developing more than a casual interest in the sport.

Motioning for her to come into the ring, I moved the ropes so she could step inside. I watched her as she sidled to the center and did a slow turn. Her eyes landed on me, and I raised my eyebrows. “What do you think?”

“It’s not as big as I expected,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Not a lot of room to move around.”

“This is a close contact sport. Too much room means there isn’t going to be as much contact.” I winked at her and couldn’t help but chuckle when I saw her roll her eyes. I put my hands up. “There’s plenty of room. Try it. Hit me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, but I could tell by the way that she pulled her lower lip into her mouth that she was intrigued. “I don’t know anything about what you do.”

“You’ve been watching me sparring for the last two weeks,” I replied. Despite Alexa’s prim and proper posture, I had caught her watching the practice matches from her office with a quizzical look on her face. She had been paying attention to the details of what I was doing, just like she paid attention to her numbers. I liked that about her. “Show me what you’ve learned.”

She laughed. I liked it when she laughed. It was as if she lit up from the inside. I found that I wanted to get to know her better. She had already carved out a little place for herself in my life, and instead of finding it irritating as all hell, I liked it. And since she knew where I spent every penny of my money, she probably knew more about me than anyone else in the world. Despite that, I hadn’t sensed the slightest bit of judgment from her. That made her even more intriguing to me. It was also surprising to realize that I had started to trust her. Our relationship was settling into a kind of pseudo-friendship.

I thought she was going to refuse my request when she slid off her jacket and tossed it into the corner of the ring. Then she took off her kitten heels and tossed them over toward her jacket. Hot damn, I remembered her stripping for me in my locker room after the fight, and I felt my cock starting to harden.

She put up her fists and faced me. “Okay, now I’m ready.” She started bouncing on her heels.

I chuckled as I moved toward her. “Think you’re hot stuff, huh?” Before I even had my hands up again, she landed a hard jab in my side that caught me by surprise. “Hey!”

She winked at me. “Full contact sport, right? Not a lot of rules from what I can see in what happens in the ring.”

“There are rules,” I said as I blocked another of her soft handed punches. She was aggressive as she went after me and that was fucking hotter than anything I ever expected. We started to spin as I slid backward and started to shuffle around the ring. I blocked another punch. I had no intention of throwing one of my own, even in mock fun. This was all about Alexa and letting her see what she could do.

“Oh yeah? I’ve watched some of the replays of your last fights,” Alexa said as she continued to chase me. I threw a mock jab into the air to her left and watched her sink in her knees and duck to avoid any contact. She had some moves. “There’s not a lot of rules that I could see.”

She impressed me more by the day. “Checking up on me, huh?”

“I had to make an educated decision on who to bet my money on for Saturday’s fight,” she said in a coy voice. “So I watched the last fight between you and Hammer. That’s why things have been so tense between you and Maury, isn’t it? You didn’t tell me that you fought him before.”

My hands dropped a few inches. “That was a long time ago. It was when I first started, and before I knew what I was doing.”

“I saw the interview before the fight. Is it true what you said then? That you joined the MMA on a dare?”

She was edging too close to some topics that I didn’t want to talk about. There were a lot of things about that time in my life that I deliberately chose not to think about. “Stop talking and focus,” I said. “Otherwise, your opponent will do something that will take you out in no time flat.”

“I’m focused,” she said. Her hair streamed down her shoulders, and the way that her skirt rode up with each one of her moves to throw a jab was driving me to distraction. I was focused too. Focused on a thrust and parry game of a much different sort.

I reached out and grabbed her arm and pulled so that her body flew forward against mine. Then I twisted her body around so that her back was against me. I slipped my other arm across her shoulders just above the rise of her breasts. I knew that she’d be able to feel how hard I was through my shorts. Maury had said I was distracted, and he was right. I had to get this girl out of my system.

“Are you really focused?” I asked as I breathed in deep the scent at the base of her neck. “You seem a little bit…distracted. If we were really fighting right now, you’d be down for the count.”

When her teeth bit into my forearm, I cursed. Then she bent over and kicked her leg back between my legs. Alexa whipped around, and I felt her knee connect with my thigh, and the movement was just enough to throw me off-balance. She pushed against my chest, and I went over. I landed on the mat flat on my back and looked up to see her smiling triumphantly down at me.

“Who’s the one who is distracted?” I saw something in her expression change as she realized that my gaze had traveled to attempting looking up her skirt. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t spent my fair share of time on my back in the ring, but this was by far the most fun. She also had another thing coming if she thought I was going to stay down for long.

I arched my back to spring up to the balls of my feet and then back up to a standing position. I had her by the elbows before she could blink. I propelled her backward onto the ropes. “You aren’t playing fair,” I growled.

“Isn’t that part of the game?” she asked. Her breath was coming in short gulps, and as she licked her lips again, I couldn’t help myself. I had to taste them. I had to see if they were as sweet as I remembered.

I dug my fingers into her hair to pull her close, and when she didn’t stop me, my mouth descended on hers. I thought that I heard a small sigh in the back of her throat, and that set something loose inside of me. All the sidelong looks in my direction. All the unanswered lust and tension that had been building between us. All the training to drive away the memories of sinking deep inside of her. Something had been set on fire inside of me, and only Alexa could put it out.

Her hands, which initially had gone to my chest, now tangled up around my neck as she pulled me closer to her. Her mouth opened, and my tongue slipped inside to find hers. I felt as if I was dying of thirst. Whatever had been started between us refused to be denied. I seemed to have a permanent hard-on when it came to Alexa, and she was just out of my reach there every day. Now that I had her in my arms, I wasn’t about to waste the opportunity.

She broke the kiss and tried to pull away. “We shouldn’t be doing this. Our parents…”

I ground my pelvis against her and felt her body soften against me again. “Aren’t here and are irrelevant to this particular situation,” I said. I started to plant short, hard kisses down the side of her neck. I pressed against her more firmly as if daring her to continue to oppose what I knew we both wanted. When I reached up to cup her breast, I felt the hard nipple straining beneath her top. No matter what she said, her body wanted this as badly as I did.

“Shayne,” she murmured. I wasn’t sure if it was a protest or to spur me on, and I chose to believe it was the latter. I pulled her leg up against my thigh and slid my hand up underneath her skirt. “I’ve been staring at these legs every day all day for two weeks. Thinking about how I wanted to feel your soft skin again.”

“You haven’t looked at me once,” she said. Her head had fallen backward giving me easier access to her throat and collarbone.