The words echo off the metal lockers and the tile, my accusation laced with my frustration and annoyance at more than just the few minutes we played around in that ring.
I may have been intentionally icing him out over the last several days, but it wasn’t as if I enjoyed it and didn’t spend all that time trying to forget everything that happened between us and everything I gave him of myself.
Gage slowly turns to face me, his face deceptively impassive though his eyes burn with an intensity I only ever saw that night at his place. “I’m bigger and stronger than you, Bishop. That isn’t meant as an insult, just an objective fact. You’re one of the strongest women I’ve ever met, and definitely the most skilled, but I won’t risk hurting you. Don’t take it so personally.”
Is he serious right now?
I scoff at him. “How am I not supposed to take it personally?”
He shoves his hand through this sweaty hair, pushing it off his forehead. “You think Atlas doesn’t hold back with you?”
My back stiffens.
Because of course he does.
I’m the only one in the family who gives him even a remote challenge, but I still know it isn’t what he’s capable of. Not in a fight setting. Not even fucking close. But this is different.
With Gage, it’s different.
I don’t want him to hold back with me. I don’t want him to treat me like I’m that adorable girl he sat with on the blanket in City Park. I don’t want him to look at me like I’m someone he needs to protect when I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself. When I have to be able to do it for others.
We may need his help right now with Satriano lurking around town, but I don’t need him to handle me with kid gloves.
“I don’t care what Atlas does. I care what you do!”
Shit.
I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. I hadn’t meant to admit that Gage and what he thinks has suddenly become so damn important to me.
He raises a brow. “Is this what I have to do to get you to talk to me? Piss you off?”
Dammit.
When I came to the gym this morning, I promised myself if Gage was here that I wouldn’t let this happen, that I wouldn’t cave to this pull he has or allow myself to get worked up over anything he did or said.
All I wanted was a good workout before going to real work after another sleepless night.
Instead, I’m staring at him standing here almost naked, and I can’t keep my eyes from roaming over his sweat-slickened muscles, still swollen and trembling from his exertion. The fact that I can’t tear my eyes away from him, and that my body aches for his touch even now, only makes me angrier.
I scowl at him and clench my fists at my sides, otherwise, I might do something stupid like touch him.
He nods slowly, as if responding to his own question when I didn’t.
A non-answer is enough for him to know he’s right. That getting me mad is a surefire way to make me come to him. Which was probably his plan all along.
“I see. Well, in that case, Hellcat”—he shrugs—“you weren’t a challenge at all.”
Gage gives me his back again, then shoves down his shorts and steps in under the water.
Before I even know I’m doing it, my feet are moving across the tile, and I grab his shoulder, spinning him around to face me as the hot water pelts his back and sprays all over me. “You’re lying.”
He grins, amusement dancing in his eyes, too. “I told you I was a shitty liar.” His hands grasp my waist so quickly I don’t even realize what he’s going to do until he spins me and pins me back against the tile, his mouth a mere hairsbreadth from mine. “God, I love it when you’re like this, Hellcat, all fiery and angry. You have no idea how badly I wanted to pin you down in the ring and fuck you right there, regardless of who might see.”
I groan as his words light that flame deep inside my core and send heat spreading out through every single fiber of my being. Plastering my hands to his wet chest, I dig my nails into the ink there and try to shift in his hold, to put some space between us. Because with him so close, I can’t think. He consumes all the oxygen and prevents my brain from processing things clearly.
But his large body keeps me pressed to the tile.
At his mercy here just as I was in his bed.
