Lady and the Champ (8 page)

His ass cheeks clench in his heart-patterned boxers as he walks in front of me. I’m still trembling from the almost-glimpse of his cock and how the hard, tanned muscles felt as they glided under my palms. I pause for a moment, willing my heart to slow down. How am I going to handle him alone when I’m all worked up like this?

Austin opens a door across the hall from the workout room and leads the way in. I follow him, take a sweeping glance at the room, and my jaw drops a little.

It’s done up like a massage room at a high-class day spa. A shelf on one wall holds a variety of small vials of oils and an mp3 player on a speaker stand. Along the other walls are shelves with candles. They’re all lit, and at first I think that’s quite the fire hazard, then I realize they’re not real candles. They’re the kind with the electric bulbs inside that look just like candle flames. I can smell chamomile, lavender, and a hint of peppermint. The lights dim as Austin moves a switch down, his smile barely concealed in the low visibility. It’s a cleverly disguised room for seduction. He planned this. There is no doubt about it.

“It helps me relax,” he explains.

Relax.
Right
. The absolute opposite of what I’m doing now. My heart thuds painfully against my chest as the door snaps shut. It’s such a small room, and Austin takes a few steps forward.

My body throbs as the scents drift in front of my nose. I walk away from Austin and take a look at the oils. My eyes scroll back and forth over the labels, but I can’t seem to read them, and I know it’s because of Austin’s overwhelming presence. His body is like a heat lamp, standing right next to me.

“Do you like it?” He sounds like he’s a bit disappointed I didn’t comment on the room as soon as I walked in.

I turn and find myself looking straight at the middle of his naked chest. “I think you did this on purpose.”

His crooked grin widens. “Did what?”

“You set up this whole room to put me in the mood!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, please. The candles, the dimmed lights!”

“I like to smell flowery shit while I’m being massaged. What, are you going to shame me on my scents, too?”

I’m going to kill him.

“Just—get on the table!”

“Do I need to lose the boxers?”

My face goes red-hot. Dammit, why does he keep doing that? Why do I keep responding? “Um…” I trail off.

I’m distracted by his thumbs, hooking underneath the waistband of his absurd boxers. They pull the fabric down, exposing a length of mouth-watering thigh and a patch of dark hair that makes my pussy clench.

He’s taking them off. And I just stare at him, because I apparently suffer immediate paralysis at the potential sight of a penis.

He slides the boxers down and kicks them off, then settles onto the table. I glance at his thick cock.

What are you doing
?

I jerk my attention back to his face. He’s smirking so hard his face is probably going to stick that way.

“Turn around,” I snap, and he stretches out on his stomach.

At least while he’s on his stomach, I can’t see his cock. I grab a towel and position it over his bare ass. I would have preferred he left his shorts on, but I’m going to need to massage his glutes, so in the long run having him naked makes that a bit easier. I remind myself he’s an athlete—dozens of people see him buck naked every day, so he doesn’t care. Still, I know damn well he’s pulling this shit to try to get a rise out of me.

I hate to admit it, but it’s working. I’m risen. At this point, just looking at him, I’m having a hard time not thinking about what he’d feel like between my thighs. What it would be like to ride him. I feel myself blush again. Thankfully he can’t see it anymore with his face pressed into the table.

I pick out a couple of oils—chamomile and lavender—and mix a few drops on the palm of my hand. Once the oil is nicely warm, I start working.

All I can see is miles and miles of oiled bare skin, flecked with freckles, patterns of small brown moles, the arched curve of his ribcage as it rises on either side of his spine. The flat planes of his shoulder blades.

God, he’s beautiful. All I can think about is how alive he is, how the soft smell of his skin drifts to me, enhanced rather than smothered in the scent of lavender and chamomile.

My hands start to tingle as I slide them down his back. My thumbs dig into the muscles on either side of his spine, but my brain is interpreting it as sexual rather than therapeutic. I can feel my breath quickening, my heartbeat speeding up. My fingers touch the edge of the towel I tossed over his ass, and it’s all I can do to keep from moving it aside and grabbing his glutes. I need to massage them, but with my brain where it is, I don’t dare touch him under that towel.

Stop it, Chloe. Get it under control.

While my breath has quickened, Austin’s has slowed, and I wonder if he’s drifting off to sleep. Sleeping while I think about molesting him. Could this get any more fucked up?

Austin makes a small noise in the back of his throat, and I get an immediate answer to my question—
yes
, it could get more fucked up. Because that soft sound sounds like a sex noise, and I don’t need that added to the mix.

“You’re
really
good at this,” he says, his voice fuzzy and quiet.

“Thanks,” I manage, just barely. I work back up his spine, settling again on his shoulders, and he reaches up and pats my hand there where I’m digging my thumbs into his trapezius.

I freeze. That touch is like a live electric current running up the back of my hand through my arm, through my whole system, until it hits my pussy and leaves me sitting there so wet and needy I can barely breathe.

The doorbell rings. The sound jars through my mind, and I jerk my hands back as though burned. Have I lost my mind? He’s a
client
.

Austin swears, not quite under his breath. “Who the fuck…”

He swings out from under the blanket, almost flashing me the full monty, then grabs a terrycloth robe from a hook on the wall and throws it on. He yanks the waist tie so tight it almost looks like it hurts him. It’s not hard to see why; he’s trying—and mostly failing—to keep from tenting it.

He spares me about half a glance, as if he doesn’t want to make direct eye contact.

“You were expecting someone?” I say dryly, annoyed. He looks at me sidelong.

“No. Pretty definitely no.”

I watch him stalk toward the door, not sure what I should do. It’s not like I should just traipse out to greet whoever has just invaded our privacy. It’s not my house, after all.

“I’m not in the habit of inviting people over during my physical therapy appointments,” Austin throws back over his shoulder. He leaves the door partially open. I wipe the oil off my hands onto a towel and look out into the hallway.

He jerks the door open and a woman barrels her way in. She looks like she’s in her mid-twenties, and she’s carrying a baby.

A baby? What the fuck?

Quietly, like I’m eavesdropping on something that isn’t my business—because I’m totally eavesdropping on something that isn’t my business—I slip a little farther down the hall so I can hear.

“What the fuck?” Austin echoes my unspoken sentiment, and for a second I think he’s as much in the dark as I am about the identity of the woman and her offspring. Then he continues, “What are you doing here, Megan?”

“I need you to take Emma,” she answers.

“I can’t take Emma.”

However, as he says it, Megan shoves Emma into Austin’s chest, and Austin takes her automatically. She’s probably no more than six or eight months old, and she holds her hands up to him, smiling. There are a couple of teeth on her lower gums, and I barely hold back an “awwwww.” Which is good, because if I “awww” over baby Emma, I’ll get caught eavesdropping, and we can’t have that.

I’ve got to know what’s going on. It looks like Austin Sherwood is somebody’s baby daddy, and if that isn’t the biggest gossip scoop I’ve ever seen in my entire life, then I don’t know gossip. This Megan woman is petite but curvy, with long black hair and eyes that flash up at Austin as she speaks.

“Don’t you walk out of here, Megan!” Austin snaps, because Megan has turned and has a hand on the door. “You can’t just dump her off here any time you want.”

“You always tell me you’d like to see her,” Megan says dismissively. “I don’t see why it’s a problem.”

“It’s not my scheduled day,” he shoots back. He’s still cradling Emma against his shoulder, and she’s playing with the curls of hair at the back of his neck.

I envy her a little as he strokes her back with his big hand. She seems happy enough, oblivious of the verbal warfare going on between her parents. Her
parents.
Good God, I still can’t get my head around this.

“So? You’re her father—take care of her.” Megan tries again to pull the door open, but Austin slides a foot forward and shoves the door back shut with a sharp kick.

“You need to at least call me first, Megan. I have shit to do. I have work. I have…” He glances down the hallway and I jump, flattening a little against the wall, but he just continues, “…physical therapy. You’re interrupting. And if I don’t get this knee sorted out, I don’t play, I don’t get paid, and
you
don’t get paid.”

Megan also glances toward the hall, but she doesn’t seem to see me, either. “I see. Physical therapy.” Her gaze rakes over him, taking in the robe and his state of undress. “Is that what you’re calling it these days?” She tosses her hair back, glaring up at him. “Don’t be doing any of that shit in front of my baby.”

“Oh,
now
she’s your baby?” He shifts a little, pointing Emma in Megan’s direction. “I can take her tomorrow. Not today.”

“Tomorrow doesn’t work for me. I’ve got an appointment in fifteen minutes. It’s either leave her here or take her to Mom’s.”

Whatever “take her to Mom’s” means to Austin, it’s obviously something undesirable. “Fine,” he says through gritted teeth. “But you need to start planning this shit ahead of time, or we’re going back to the mediator.”

She just makes a face. “Whatever.”

This time when she pulls the door open, he lets her go. After the door falls shut behind her, he turns his attention to the little bundle of adorable in his arms.

“It’s okay, honey,” he says in an ultra-sweet voice. “Mommy doesn’t mean to be a raging bitch.” Then he looks up, and this time his eyes meet mine.

“You have a daughter?”

He gives me a proud smile. “Yeah.” Then he glares at the door where Megan disappeared moments before.

I lean against the wall just inside the living room, crossing my arms over my chest. “What happened?”

“She wasn’t planned, that’s all.” He strokes a hand over Emma’s round head. “Well, I have my suspicions.”

She seems content, not flailing or crying or acting like she needs something. Her big eyes are a dark blue-gray, and there’s a string of drool hanging from her chin. She’s adorable, and utterly alien to me.

“So you think Megan got knocked up on purpose?”

He rolls his eyes. I realize I’m making light of the situation, but I still haven’t gotten over the shock. Austin Sherwood as a daddy. It’s not the kind of thing that’s easy to get your head around. Especially when you were damn near having sex with him not five minutes ago.

“Considering how she’s acted since Emma was born, yes, I suspect that’s what she was after.”

He moves toward the living room, where he takes a seat on the couch. I can’t help but notice the flash of the insides of his thighs as his robe flaps.

He’s not just holding her now. He’s got her propped in his lap while she plays with his face, her little fingers grabbing at his nose and his lips. She pulls at them, then he crosses his eyes at her and she bursts out in peals of giggles. God, she’s cute.

I settle onto a corner of a recliner on the other side of the room. “She’s adorable.”

He gives me a smile that tugs at my heart. “Thank you.”

“How come you never talk about her? From everything I’ve read about you, you’re footloose and fancy free and fucking your way through most of the city.”

Austin claps a hand over Emma’s ears. “Don’t talk like that in front of the baby.”

Both my eyebrows shoot up, and it’s all I can do to keep from laughing at him. “Coming from the guy who just said
b-i-t-c-h
.”

Emma makes a sound, sort of a grunt but also something like an attempt at vocalization, and it sounds so much like “Uck” that I can’t hold back the laughter anymore.

“Look what you did!”

“Oh, come on. That wasn’t really a word. And she’s precious.” I reach out, wiggling my fingers, and Austin hands Emma over to me with a sigh. “Does she need to eat or anything?”

“Yeah. I’ll go get her dinner ready.”

Emma and I sit and play on the couch while Austin goes to prepare a bottle and some rice cereal. After a few minutes, the baby starts to get restless, so I get up and meander over to watch Austin, balancing Emma on my hip.

“Is that all she eats?” I ask.

“At the moment.” He carefully tests the temperature of the bottle, then the cereal. “I think it’s getting close to the time where we can try some vegetable baby food, but I’m going to check with her doctor first.”

Emma starts wiggling, hands reaching toward the food.

“I think she’s hungry.”

Austin fetches a high chair and sets it up next to his table. I slide Emma into it, buckle her up, and watch while Austin spoons cereal into her mouth. I can’t believe it’s really happening. Austin Sherwood feeding a baby right in front of my eyes. And he’s good at it. Emma burbles and coos, eating her cereal, mooshing it out of her mouth until it runs down her chin, then wiping at it with her hands and painting abstract rice cereal art all over the high chair tray.

When she’s done eating and painting with the cereal, Austin cleans her up and takes her back to the living room, where he sits on the couch and gives Emma her bottle. She’s getting sleepy, eyes drooping shut as she sucks happily.

I can’t resist. “May I?”

Austin gives me a small smile and eases Emma over into my arms. I’ve never given a baby a bottle, and it feels nice, with her heavy little body growing progressively heavier in my arms as she drifts closer to sleep.