Romance: Her Fighter (6 page)

Wow…

It felt so good.

There was no pause as his hips ground into mine, pounding me into oblivion with each hard thrust of his hips.

His hands rested on either side of my head, his wrists pressing into my shoulders to keep me from sliding further up the bed.

My nails dug into his skin, drawing him ever closer as I met him thrust for thrust.

Delicious pain slithered through me.

I’d never had sex with my underwear still on.

Even as the elastic band dug into my hips, I couldn’t help but feel a wicked delight wash through me.

It was erotic and wonderful.

“Wrap those pretty little legs around me, Claire,” he growled, nipping at my ear.

I did as he told me, and a shiver rippled through me as he sank deeper into my core.

He groaned.

I lapped at his skin, which was slick with sweat.

He smelled of gym equipment and sweat, but when I lapped at his exposed flesh, I delighted in his manliness.

“So wet,” he growled. “So needy. How long have you been wanting me, baby?” he asked.

He was teasing, but I could hear the curiosity in his voice.

“Since I first met you,” I admitted.

He bent down and captured my mouth once more.

I couldn’t help the reaction that rippled through me with my orgasm.

I came hard, my pussy milking his cock. He groaned against my mouth, which only brought on another orgasm.

“Yes Claire,” he snarled.

Then his back arched as he threw his head backwards.

Every muscle in his tight body clenched.

He held strong.

I felt each pulse of his cock as he found his own release.

Yes…

He thrust inside me twice more before he collapsed on top of me.

He wrapped his arms around me, pinning me against him and preventing my leaving him.

Not that I wanted to go anywhere.

As I snuggled closer into his chest, I noted that he was still rock hard inside me.

“Ready for round two already?” I teased.

He chuckled.

“Give me about fifteen minutes and I’ll show you just how ready I am.”

He held true to his word.

Chapter 8

The days that followed that first sexual encounter between Ryan and I led to many more.

He was like a drug I could not quit, and the truth was that I didn’t want to.

Being with him was wrong on so many levels I couldn’t even begin to comprehend—and not just because we worked together.

However, my mind and my body were on two different wavelengths.

He made me hot and bothered, even when he wasn’t trying to.

When he worked out in the gym, I found myself watching him boldly as he swung his fists or kicked out his feet toward the various equipment pieces scattered around.

There was no telling if he knew the effect he had on me or not. He often fought as if there was always someone watching.

Most of the time, there was.

Derrick.

The trainer was at least a decade older than Ryan, and a grizzled old fighter who’d rather be in the ring than stuck on the outside.

Ryan told me that the only reason he wasn’t was because of the heart surgery he’d had only the year before.

Now, if he wanted anything to do with the gym at all, he listened to his wife and only taught students versus fighting them.

Whenever Ryan spoke about the elder, I could hear the adoration in his voice. There was no mistaking the way Ryan looked up to Derrick.

“He’s a bit of a mean grouch, but he’s really a softy,” Ryan told me with a wink. “You’ll get used to him.”

I shook my head.

Even after a month or so, I had yet to get over the way Derrick always scowled at me, his lip curling up into a sneer as he said, “Women. If it were up to me there wouldn’t be any women in this gym at all. Unfortunately, I don’t get to make that decision. That’s something only Mitch has authority over.”

He grumbled about it at least once a day, but I had learned quickly he was more bark than bite. He really was a friendly gentleman outside of work, which scared me when I saw how he was at the gym.

Word of my relationship with Ryan spread fast.

Ryan didn’t make it a secret, and I couldn’t deny it when Jill grabbed my arm with excitement in her voice, asking why I hadn’t told her. Kate, when she discovered the truth, would be the same way, I knew.

“I always knew you two would make a cute couple,” Jill said, smacking her bubble gum and giving me a wink. I laughed. “Took you two long enough to realize it yourselves though.”

The rest of the week passed in a haze of pure bliss as I continued sorting through facts and figures while Ryan and the other fighters trained with one another out on the floor.

Several times, I caught myself openly watching Ryan.

A couple of times, I wondered if he knew about it too because he’d wiggle his hips suggestively, making me chuckle.

Lunch was spent in his company.

Sometimes, we ate alone and sometimes Jill or someone else from the gym.

Time passed, and Kate reacted the way I thought she would. When she discovered I was seeing Ryan, she screamed.

I pulled my cell phone away from my ear and waited until she calmed down to return it to my ear. “Kate, if I go deaf early, I’m blaming you.”

“Oh, Claire! I knew it! I knew you had the hot’s for that body builder!”

There was no point in correcting her.

She’d called Ryan a body builder several times since she had Googled what he looked like.

She’d drooled over him for hours and sent me several messages telling me if I didn’t fuck him, she’d personally fly down and do it herself.

That thought didn’t please me at all.

“Guess I missed my chance with him myself, huh?” she teased. I knew that if she were standing in front of me, she’d be winking.

She liked to do that.

“I guess you did,” I told her with a grin.

Of course, since we were talking on the phone, she couldn’t see my reaction—but maybe, just maybe, she could hear it in my voice.

“You sound happy,” she noted, her voice growing more somber. “You need to call Dad.” I groaned, and she was quick to continue. “I know you don’t like talking to him, and I know you’ve been avoiding him, but you need to call him. Check in. Say hi. That kind of thing.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, my smile falling from my face and anger entering my voice as I said, “Fine. I’ll call him.”

I knew any conversation with my father was going to be awkward and stilted. It had been every time in the past. What made now any different?

Now he’s got Kate beside him prodding him to keep the conversation flowing, I thought. As sad as it was, it was true.

Still, I did as Kate requested and called him as soon as I was off the phone with her. He picked up after two rings, saying, “Hello Claire.”

He sounded sober and, surprisingly, happy—which shook me up a little. I hadn’t been expecting it for sure.

“Hi Dad. How are you?” I shifted in my seat in my office, putting my back to the door and looking at the wall behind me.

It didn’t provide as good a view as looking through the doorway, but I was able to concentrate on my conversation with my father rather than watching Ryan throwing kicks and punches to the air, which was enough to make me drool as naughty thoughts entered my mind.

“I’m doing well. Kate told you the good news yet?” His voice was higher pitched than normal and excited.

I shook my head even though he couldn’t see it. “No, Dad. What’s going on?”

I switched my phone to my other ear, rubbing at the kink starting at the base of my neck. I wished for a moment that Ryan would take a break and come rub those hands of his over the knot in my neck and loosen it until I could easily turn my head without pain lacing me.

“I got a job.”

“What?” That was certainly news to me. Good news at that. “When? Where?” Questions buzzed in my mind. Why hadn’t Kate told me?

He chuckled, his old warmth back from before the divorce. “It’s nothing big. I’m a night clerk for the apartment complex, but it’s better than nothing.”

“That’s great, Dad.”

It was.

It really was.

I had to wonder what made him get out of his recliner, stop watching
I Love Lucy
reruns, and made him want to get back out into the world.

Had Kate finally put her foot down?

I’d have to ask her later.

We spoke a little longer about everything in our individual lives.

I told him about my job and about Ryan, which of course he drilled me about.

For a moment, I felt like I was in high school all over again.

He was being protective. He was being a father.

It was so different from the way he’d sat on the couch the past couple of years and slowly morphed into another piece of furniture in the house.

It was actually nice to talk to my dad.

I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had a real conversation where I didn’t completely resent him and he wasn’t being an ass.

It was good, and when I got off the phone with him and returned to work, I sat with a smile on my face and hummed as I sifted through papers.

Near the end of the day, my bliss was ripped away from me though.

It started with the high-pitched cackle of a laugh that grated my ears and had me clenching my teeth in annoyance.

It was the true definition of a New York citizen laugh.

It reminded me of the laugh of a character off a TV show Jill had tried to introduce me to.

I hated the show because of the main character’s laugh. This was no different, and I winced in pain.

“What in the world is going on out there?” I asked, standing from my chair and going to the door of my office.

I remembered closing it when I had taken a break from my paperwork in order to talk to Kate and then my father on the phone.

Mitch really didn’t care if we used our phones as long as we got our work done, which I appreciated, but that didn’t mean I wanted him or anyone else to know what I was talking to my family about.

I opened the door and glanced out at the floor.

Derrick was standing with his back to me in his usual stance: his feet spread about shoulder-width apart and I knew his arms would be crossed over his chest.

He was snapping out directions to Ryan, who stood in front of him with…

My heart dropped down into my stomach.

Who was the model draped all over my man?

Chapter 9

There she was, whoever she was, the source of my internal pain.

Tall and leggy with overly-large breasts that couldn’t be natural.

I’d call out anyone who told me otherwise; they would be a liar.

Her skin was darkly tanned, sprayed on, and almost orange.

It was scary to look at.

She reminded me a lot of some of the women I’d seen in LA that lived at their tanning salon, getting sprayed with a fake color at least once a week, and most times more often than that.

She laughed again, using the back of one hand to flip her long, straw-thin blond hair over her shoulder.

Long bangs nearly shielded a pair of bright blue eyes currently aimed Derrick’s direction.

Full cherry-red lips stretched into a smile over sparkling white teeth. She looked like she’d been taken straight out of a model photo shoot and dropped off here.

Compared to her, Jill and I looked like saggy elephants.

There was no way I’d be able to fit into the skin-tight jeans she wore.

Her stilettos alone made her seem three inches taller, and her breasts threatened to spill out of the low V-neck blouse she wore.

Not that it mattered.

If anyone tossed a bucket of water on her, her nipples would show through the thin white material without a moment’s notice.

I frowned, glaring in resentment as the woman wrapped one arm around Ryan possessively and placed her other upon his rock-hard chest.

He stood in a relaxed stance despite the clenched fists hanging at his sides.

He certainly wasn’t trying to push the woman away from him.

Nor did he seem to mind the fact that she was hanging all over him in the first place. I gulped, trying to swallow the large lump in my throat.

Betrayal flooded through me, and I didn’t know who I was angrier at: Ryan, for letting this blond bimbo hang all over him, or myself, for being stupid enough to develop feelings for a man I’d known from the beginning was a player.

He is a born player.

I’d known.

I had known.

Yet, I’d been stupid enough to fall for him anyway.

During the couple of weeks we’d worked together and then the time we’d been together as a couple—or at least I thought we’d been together as a couple—I’d come to have strong feelings for him.

I wouldn’t have called it love, but it was close, and the pain that ripped through me now only proved how strong those feelings had been.

A sob caught in my throat.

I couldn’t handle this right now.

I just couldn’t.

Why?

Why had he done this to me?

Could he really be this cruel?

It didn’t matter in the end.

I watched in horror as my worst nightmare was realized. The blond bimbo stood up on the tips of her toes, as if she needed to in the killer heels she wore, and kissed Ryan on the cheek, marking her claim on him.

My heart shattered into tiny pieces and scattered upon the dry wind that seemed to blow about me in the barren desert of emotion that surrounded me.

At that moment, Ryan glanced over Derrick’s shoulder and caught my eye.

I don’t know what I’d expected when he looked at me.

Guilt?

Satisfaction?

However, nothing could have prepared me for what was there.

His face was blank of all emotion.

It was like he was hollow.

Didn’t he know what he’d done to me?

Did he care, even a little bit?

His eyes, which were barren of emotion, told me the answer.

No.

Plain and simple.

I’d been an easy fling, his next catch.

I was nothing, something to be shit upon and thrown away.

It hurt.

Oh man, it hurt, but I wouldn’t let him get to me.

I swallowed my pain and frowned, letting a sneer replace the betrayed expression on my face.

Fuck him.

Fuck him and his new bimbo girlfriend.

I was here to do a job, not have a relationship.

“Claire?” The sound of Jill’s tentative voice pulled me out of the cloud of anger that surrounded me.

I turned toward her, wiping the hate-filled look from my face and smiling at her.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Want to join me for lunch?” she asked.

She glanced out to where Ryan stood with Miss Bimbo, but I ignored them.

“Sure,” I told her. “Let me just grab my coat.”

It was chilly out that day.

I would need the comfort of warmth wrapped around me.

I thought about Ryan’s arms around me earlier in that day and almost broke down, but I held my own and managed not to cry.

He didn’t deserve my tears anyway.

He had his new sweet thing to worry about.

A few moments later, Jill and I disappeared out of the building.

I prided myself on not looking at Ryan once as we left, even though I could feel his gaze on my back and had to fight the urge to glance back at him over my shoulder.

He’d made his decision, and I wasn’t it.

I would just have to get over it.

I would just have to move on.

Bastard.