“You’ve been fighting. Where?”
“None of your business.” Snatching his hand free, he removed his coat and tossed it onto the couch along with the duffle bag he held. He then removed the short sleeve shirt he wore. That too, was tossed onto the couch.
“I’m your trainer. It’s my damn business what you do!”
His sharp gaze moved to me. The flash of anger in his eyes was almost alarming and… erotic.
My body responded in kind and I had to fight from raising my hands over my breasts to stop him from seeing the way my nipples pebbled beneath the cotton material of my top. I mentally kicked myself for forgetting to put on a damn bra before leaving my room.
“There are no legit fighting gyms open at this time of night, so that has to mean you weren’t fighting at a gym. You were fighting in an underground ring?”
He stood tall, folding his arms over his massive chest and again, I fought to keep my eyes planted on his face, and not to move any lower. The last thing I needed was for my knees to go weak.
“What’s it to you?”
“Luke, you know the NFA has strict rules against fighting in any underground fights. What if word gets out or someone snapped a picture of you fighting tonight? You could be suspended. Your career could be over. Hell, you could even be sued. Do you want that? Is that what you’re trying to do?”
“What the hell is it to you?” he roared, sending me a couple of steps back.
But instead of being scared, I became pissed off.
“What the hell do you mean, what’s it to me? I don’t get up at five fucking o’clock in the morning to write up workouts for you, to study the latest research on recovery and workout techniques, to scout out the best grapplers in our area to work with you just so you can screw it up.”
“What the hell for?” he yelled. “You get paid either way. Why the hell are you putting so much time and effort into all of this?”
“For you! You idiot!”
Four words.
That’s all it took.
Most people will say the last two were an insult.
But Luke was good at reading between the lines. Because his response wasn’t another smartass comment, or an angry retort hurled my way. No, his reaction was so much worse.
In two long strides, Luke was in my face, his massive hands curling around my arms, pulling me to him as his mouth slammed down against mine. The contact pulled an immediate groan from my lips. My entire body sighed in relief, as if this was very the thing it’d been begging me for, for weeks now. The kiss wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t kind and endearing. Two things I doubted Luke could ever be.
It was insistent.
And gritty.
And messy.
And perfect as hell.
I shouldn’t have been so surprised at how skilled Luke was at kissing. I really shouldn’t have been stunned at how my body completely opened up to him either. It was receptive to whatever it was he wanted to do. My lips opened, allowing his tongue to enter my mouth, moving along the length of the roof, causing my entire body to sizzle with a heat that was totally foreign to me.
“Shit,” I cursed when Luke walked us backwards until my back pressed firmly against the door of his hotel room.
“That’s why the fuck I went out to fight tonight,” he said through clenched teeth, panting as he fought to catch his own breath. “Because it was either fight or bang on your door until you opened it and fuck you until you couldn’t see straight.”
A literal pool formed between my legs. If my pussy lips could talk, they would’ve screamed outYESto everything he’d just said.
“Luke—”
“I’m going to give you five seconds to get the hell out of my hotel room, Syd. After those five seconds, if you’re still here, I’m going to carry you to my bedroom, strip your ass bare, turn you over and shove my cock so deep inside you, you won’t know where I start and you end.”
“Luke.”
