Legend (Real Book 6)

Maverick

The two-story Denver home is pulsing with music inside. Fighters I know and fighters I don’t know bustle around with their teams, groupies, and the high-end Denver crowd. I’m not talking to anyone. Everyone knows better than to come near me. I suspect I’m putting out some major back-off waves, and there’s a wide radius around me that people are steering clear of.

I watch her in a lounge area. She’s with a couple of other women she just seemed to meet. The group is talking, but Reese isn’t. I watch her tuck her hair behind her ear, and not for a second do I miss the way her eyes slide over to meet mine. Her breasts coming up and down with each breath. Her eyes escape me again. Then come back.

To find me still watching her.

Every time they do this . . . her eyes, come back and hold . . . I get harder and harder.

I’m stone-hard and still waiting to make a move until she can’t take my stare anymore.

She shifts in place, then messes with her hair. I want to mess that hair too. I was taking it slow. But now she knows who I am. And I know who she is.

If I don’t grab her now, I’ll lose her from my grasp.

I don’t want more distance between us when there is already too much as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve wanted her closer. Every second since she said that I was with her.

She’s drinking a bottle of water, meeting my eyes across the rim as she takes a sip. She sets it down and stares at me. My blood is heading south faster than a thousand-ton drop. I’m slammed. I probably look like shit. Oz sewed up my cut, and for sure it’ll scar this time around from his hands. That scar brings to mind the girl who said, He’s with me.

I am with her. And tonight, she’s with me.

She breaks her gaze, at last goes to her feet, and starts down the hall. I push away from the wall and start forward.

She looks back at me, and her eyes widen and her lips part, and I like that they part. I like that she knows, with every step I take, what it means.

♥   ♥   ♥

Reese

I COULDN’T SIT there anymore. Avoiding the bar, drinking my water while everybody talked about Avenger. And I felt his eyes on me, giving me a thousand knots in my stomach. I glance back, and he’s following me. He’s like a legend already. The juiciest, naughtiest word on everyone’s lips tonight is “Maverick.” The fact that he’s Scorpion’s son is threatening enough, but the fact that he has amazing talent and caught Remy’s attention is just cause for more gossip.

I don’t know a lot about his father. Only what I’ve heard from the team, and before tonight, I hadn’t really paid close attention.

All I know is that he was a bad man, and that what I feel when I look at Maverick just now should be bad.

Bad.

I head to the ladies’ room, safe. Away from his eyes.

But not away from this aching, throbbing want inside me.

No sooner do I step inside than Maverick comes in behind me. I hear a pair of startled gasps from the two ladies by the sink.

Maverick opens the door and levels them with a gaze. “Out,” he says, firm and oh so quiet.

My eyes widen and a thread of fear and anticipation unfurls inside me.

He narrows his eyes as the girls quickly shuffle outside, then he kicks the door shut. We’re alone. So alone there could be nobody else in the world.

He has a massive presence. He’s lean and young but acts old and wise, as if he’s traveled to the future and knows exactly what he’s supposed to become.

What else does he know?

Does he know he will one day kiss me?

Will he still want to one day kiss me? Taste me?

“I’m pissed off, and I’m high on the fight, and you’re not making it easy to come down from that high.” His voice breaks with huskiness.

“No?” I ask in a silky voice.

I don’t know where this voice comes from; I never even knew I had it in me to speak like this to a man.

He exhales. He sounds frustrated. Is he frustrated? He drags a hand over his hair and then takes a step, leans forward—our eyes level. “No.”

“Maybe it’s the sugar from the sports drinks.”

“It’s not the sugar,” he dismisses.

He remains without touching me for a moment.

I’m sad and frustrated about what I learned, and I’m frustrated and desperate and feeling reckless and I don’t know. It’s an inexplicable turmoil of feelings as I look at him.

I want him more than I’ve wanted anything, and I’ve wanted things that were bad for me before. But I want Maverick Cage now like a sickness.

I don’t move when he reaches out.

His hand moves from the back of my head down to my neck, where he squeezes a little, causing his touch to make me tremble all over. His hand is warm and gentle, both familiar and new. I react so strongly my lips part and he notices.

He inhales slowly, and his eyes start darkening and darkening as he spreads his fingers on the back of my neck and slips his hand into my hair. As he pulls me a few inches closer, I catch my own breath. And the breath smells of him, hot and spicy.

He exhales through his nostrils and narrows his eyes. It’s as if he’s losing some form of inner battle. He lowers his head and every inch of my body—from my head to my toes—grips and squeezes in anticipation.

Oh god. I don’t even know what to do with my fingers. I clench them at my sides, exhaling a nervous breath.

I’m stunned by how good my body feels as he pulls me closer. Feels good when his fingers touch it. I feel good when he touches me.

I don’t know my name. What’s going on between us. All I know is Maverick. Maverick looking at my lips. Maverick opening his hand on the small of my back possessively. Maverick leaning his head down. Maverick . . . about to kiss me.

And I want to kiss Maverick.

I know I want Maverick’s lips on me.

So when they touch mine—Maverick’s lips on me feel like the most incredible, amazing thing that has ever happened in my life.

He’s kissing me. . . .

His tongue, dipping inside my mouth. His mouth is possessive; his grip is possessive; he is acting so possessive. My tongue has never given me so much pleasure than when it’s stroked, slow and sure, by his tongue.

He shifts me closer, his hand splaying on my waist. And he . . . groans. He groans into my mouth and crushes my body against his. And I like possessive Maverick so much I can’t think or breathe, only soften my lips so he takes everything.

There’s a change in pressure in his grip that speaks to me on such a primitive level, I’m twisted inside. He takes a ragged breath. His nostrils flare a little bit as he seems to fight for control. He wraps his wounded knuckles around my hips and edges me closer.

My tongue slips into his mouth, and he draws it in deeper.

It’s like he’s pouring all his frustration into this kiss.

I don’t want him to get turned off by my inexperience, so I try to rub his tongue back. He groans. He slides his hands over me as if he likes the curve of my ass, and my breasts squish against his chest pleasurably. He edges back, takes a breath.

So many words I’ve heard before.

Toe-curling.

Panty-melting.

Heart-pounding.

Breathtaking.

I can apply them all right now. To this guy. This moment.

His muscles tighten, and the warmth of personal contact, of our mouths, our bodies closer than close, the pounding of his heart is the pounding of mine, his breath my breath, our space the same . . .

Placing long, calloused fingers along my back—a rough touch is not supposed to feel this delicious, this feathery, this good.

Lust. It’s not soft like the touch of a raindrop. It’s not easy like floating aimlessly on the water. It’s weighted, and heavy, a spark that catches on the forest of your body. A wildfire.

I have never been marked by lust like this.

I can’t speak.

Even Maverick’s voice is extremely thick right now. “Tate and his wife left earlier.”

“Yes. I promised her I’d be careful. I have pepper spray.”

He smiles, then scans my face, his eyes as dark as I’ve ever seen them. “Did you tell them you’d meet them later at your hotel?”

I nod.

“Do you want this like I do?” He looks at my lips, and then into my eyes as he curls his fingers around the back of my neck and gives me a gentle squeeze. “Do you?”

Say no, Reese.

This can go nowhere.

I open my mouth and say, “More. I want it more than you.”

He exhales, then he leans his forehead against mine and looks deeply into my eyes. “That’s impossible on every level, I’m breaking every existing record.”

He eases back and looks genuinely tormented by this same lust I feel, and I say, “Maverick, I haven’t done this before.”

“I know, Reese, but god, I need it to be me.” He presses his mouth to me and groans rather than kisses me, groans and embraces me against him and whispers in my ear, “Please let it be me.”

We start kissing feverishly again. I push my tongue into his mouth and grab his hair, suddenly needing him more than he needs me. He tears his lips free, stares down at me with liquid metal in his eyes, takes my hand, unlocks the bathroom, and leads us out of there.

♥   ♥   ♥

MAVERICK SITS BESIDE me in the back of a cab. Devouring me with his eyes. And I sit here. Devouring him with mine. My diaphragm hurts when I try to breathe. He’s cloaked in shadows, but some of the lights outside fall on his neck, his square jaw. His lips. As I grow accustomed to the dark, I slowly study the clear-cut lines of his features. He’s so handsome with those platinum eyes and a secret expression, dark and brooding. He looks like he just committed murder and is daring the world to come lock him up. No, actually . . .

He looks like he’s ready to take a girl to bed and fuck the living daylights out of her.

God, and that girl is me.

To lead me out of the cab, he takes my hand.

My hand, in his hand.

I like his touch so much I feel an internal combustion from this alone.

Tomorrow, I won’t be a virgin anymore. I wanted to wait for it to mean something. I wanted to feel beautiful and to give it to Miles. And instead . . . I need this like I need oxygen right now.

His grip is strong and rough, like Maverick Cage.

I follow him across the lobby, and his grip is as firm and steady as his stride, and my heart is pounding like a living drum inside my chest, and wherever it is he’s taking me, I can’t believe how much I want to go.

We take the elevators and he leads me into a room on the second-to-top floor. I step inside as he shuts and locks the door behind me. It’s a nice room that I’m sure he’s easily affording now, thanks to the fighting money. His duffel bag sits in a corner. It’s misleading to think that’s all he owns. That everything he is and wants is tucked inside the bag. Because when I turn to look at him, I know he is so much more. I know he wants so much more.

And I want him more than I’ve wanted anything.

He starts forward. My knees grow weak. I want to take a step back but I hold my ground because I want his touch more than I want to take a step back. I hate him for making me feel like this, and I love him for making me feel so alive too. The air crackles between us as he stops a few feet away. Pure anticipation floods me. I stick my chin a little higher, meeting his gaze, holding it.

He reaches out to grab the back of my neck. He sets my nerve endings on fire beneath his fingertips. He never takes his eyes off mine as he draws me the rest of the way to him. I don’t miss the meaning. He brings me to him—he doesn’t come to me. It excites me and I don’t know why.

He bends and nibbles my lip, barely getting started, his head bent to mine. Reason checks out as waves of feelings rush through me, and I feel my hands fill with his hair, my throat close with things I want to say that I have never said—dirty things, sexy things, and intimate things, and just . . . things. I can’t. I feel rawer with this man than with anyone.

He walks me to the bed, and when he sits me on the edge, the rough fabric of his jeans grazes my jean-clad thighs; I can feel his hard quads beneath. Liquid fire warms my body, consuming. My heart skipping, jumping, fluttering.

His fingers brush over the tips of my nipples and shoot a delicious shockwave through me. A seductive smile touches his mouth. His fucking perfect mouth.

I shouldn’t be here.

I shouldn’t want him like this.

But not a single part of me—of the ones that are working right now—cares.

I grab him, and the muscles in his shoulders tense under my fingers, and the air is burning, primal. When we kiss, there’s no hesitation or uncertainty. Our lips fit perfectly, his body crushes me into the bed, his erection against my stomach, and as he’s kissing me, he doesn’t tease, or play, he just takes.

My fingers slide over the back of his neck, and it’s warm beneath my fingers, and I want him to touch more, touch everything at the same time. He eases his hand to the small of my back, and I feel alive, the touch firm but achingly gentle, intimate, possessive, and our control starts slipping when he shifts and fits his erection between my legs. I can feel him through my jeans. His fingers skim over my top, then he pulls it off.

I unhook my bra, discarding it.

There’s no one else here, just us, and I am a hostage to this, this lust, as he fills his mouth with a breast and shifts again, the move bringing his hips closer, nestling his erection deeper.

My eyelids shut. He handles my breast a little roughly, sucking the nipple. Stars flicker across my eyelids and I convulse from the pleasure. He eases back and jerks off his T-shirt and kicks his jeans aside, and I can’t believe how good his skin feels under my fingers.

God, he’s so gorgeous, my eyes ache when I look at him. His muscles hard as granite, hot as fire, smooth as velvet.

He’s sucking my breasts again, both. Hungrily as he spreads above me. Soon we’re all hot flesh and hands and mouths on the bed. And he’s prepping me with his fingers. I don’t need prepping; I’m so ready I can’t see, my vision is hazy, and all I know is how warm and male he smells, how much I love the way he’s breathing fast, how totally he melts me in every spot he puts his mouth on.

Then Maverick reaches out and puts on a condom. And I devour him with my eyes, my first time seeing a guy. I will never be able to love the look of one like I love the look of Maverick, naked and hard.

“I’ll make it good for you, Reese,” he promises as he stretches out his long muscles above me, and I nod breathlessly and touch the scar on his face.

He groans and shuts his eyes, and then Maverick Cage is kissing me. Saying Reese into my mouth.

Maverick Cage prodding me open with his fingers again.

Maverick Cage just growled.

He parts my legs wider with his hand. I feel his fingers slide, first one, then two. Then he’s plunging deeper and slower. Rubbing my clit with his thumb. I’m so wet I hear his fingers moving inside me as his lips graze my ear. He presses a kiss there and then he looks down at me, heavy-lidded.

“God, Reese.” He ducks to lave my breasts with his tongue as his fingers plunge deeper. Maverick eases back again to watch me as he touches me. “Look at you.”

He’s so hot above me. He’s so tender when he touches me.

He looks just as undone as I am.

I come quickly, and while I’m coming, he settles between my legs and I can’t breathe.

I feel him there. So hot and so big and so hard.

I tense up in anticipation, waiting.

He hesitates for a painful few seconds, then he scans my face and clenches his jaw. “This is your first time. You should be treated right, on a nice bed with nice sheets—”

I cover his mouth with my hand. “No,” I plead anxiously, searching his darkened silver eyes with an ache in my chest and between my thighs.

I should be afraid. I had always been afraid, wanting the right moment, the right guy. This is the moment and this is the guy and I’m not scared. All I’m scared of is this never happening between us.

He grabs my face in one hand and uses it to open my mouth, and he kisses me, his tongue thrusting wetly into my mouth.

I claw at his skin, down his back, shifting beneath him as I slide my hands down the small of his back to grab his muscular ass and urge him closer.

He nips my lips on a loss of control and watches me as he starts going in. My vision blurs. My body burns, from where he enters and to my heart. It’s everything he’s giving me and everything he’s taking. Every time I said no was for him, every time I wondered about it was for this. “Oh,” I whisper in his ear, surprised at the feel of him.

He stops, cups my face in one hand, and looks at me, a little raw and a lot hot. “You okay?”

“More than okay.” I nod so fast I’m dizzy.

We’re both breathing hard. I’m quaking with need and his body vibrates with self-control. Maverick’s eyes smolder, but I’m the one on fire. He sucks one of my breasts, and I buck from the pleasure. There is pressure as he advances, and heat and length and him, pulsing and alive and perfect and male and right now mine. So mine. So wrong. And so, so right.

He braces his arms on either side of my head as he withdraws. I feel my body clutch around him in the most exquisite way when he slowly drives back in.

It feels even better this time, and he goes an inch deeper. “Oh god,” I gasp as I rear up, biting his shoulder, clenching one of my arms around the back of his neck.

“Tell me,” he gruffs in my ear, caressing my breast in one palm, watching me like he needs it to be good. “Do you want more?”

I can’t speak; I’m too busy trying to hold back another orgasm, waiting for him to go there with me.

But I nod wildly up and down.

He moves his hips and enters me some more, his jaw tight, nostrils flaring, eyes heavy. I can tell he’s trying to take it slow for me and that it’s taking every ounce of his willpower to do so.

“How’s that?” Taking my face back in his hand, he kisses me wildly. “You sweet, gorgeous little thing.”

“Oh god. You feel so good, Maverick.”

He’s big and wide and engulfing me, breath by breath, inch by inch. I’m dying an exquisite death. My breath rasps in my throat. “More. Don’t stop.”

He grits his teeth, his eyes brimming with passion as he pushes the last of the way in, his jaw squarer than ever, his neck straining with his effort, every muscle on his torso taut as he takes me.

“Oh god,” I say in wonder as my orgasm starts quickly building. I grab his shoulders and press my face into his neck.

When he goes all the way in, I stop breathing. He’s inside me and I can feel him inside me, thick and pulsing, stretching. He groans and clutches me to him. “God, hold on to me,” he says, starting to slowly move in and out of me.

“Maverick,” I rasp, and rock my hips.

He’s almost crushing me against his body, moving his hips faster. He watches my face for any signs of pain as he withdraws and thrusts all the way in . . . again . . . and again . . . and again.

“Maverick,” I gasp, and arch and writhe, rubbing my fingers all over his muscles. We move together, and his breath is my breath, his body is my body, and we’re all instinct. I’m only feeling, hazy and raw and alive.

I can’t find words to say how I feel, how I need, how glorious he feels, smells, looks right now.

He grabs a fistful of hair and keeps my head in place as his lips come down to fasten on mine. I expected them to be crushing, but when they touch mine, they’re achingly hungry and gentle as he moves inside my body. I feel full when he’s inside, so full I can’t breathe. I exhale when he leaves me. Then I hold my breath and rock my hips anxiously because I want him in me again.

He drives forward, no hesitation now. He’s instantly picking up speed, his eyes pools of liquid fire, his steel eyes, and I’m flying. My body sweaty, tinged pink; this man, who kisses me like he needs me, looking down at me. Metallic eyes cut and pierce me.

“Still okay?” he asks.

His voice, so gruff and low, does a number on me.

Pushes me to the edge.

I’m writhing for him, dying for him. “Oh god, more than okay.”

He’s taking me now, deep and powerful. “Am I hurting you?”

Maverick Cage. The Avenger.

We’re a part of each other. No teams, no past, no future.

I rasp out, “Only in the best ways.”

He increases speed, stroking his hand over my breasts greedily. I feel his thighs flex as he moves, his biceps, slowing down into a powerful rhythm that pushes me over the edge.

I come. It’s violent and fast, taking over me. Causing me to make a sound—a gasp—and to twist beneath him, and to clench and relax, and to lose my vision as stars flicker behind my eyes. And I realize he slowed down to watch me, then he hungrily kisses my ear, presses his nose to the back of it, and comes with a soft growl, his body jerking over me. He exhales and presses a kiss to the side of my neck, then the top of my head, and when he inches back, we stare at each other.

I don’t know who looks more intensely at the other.

And he smiles at me. His kiss is wet, hungered, as if I didn’t just come in his arms. As if he wants to encompass as much of my mouth as possible. He raises his head and looks down at me.

“How long do you have until you need to get back?”

“A few more hours.”

He unwinds one muscle at a time from my deliciously relaxed body, rolls to his back, and then stares at the ceiling.

“Did you know who I was?” He’s staring at the ceiling, a muscle in his jaw working fast.

“No. Did you?”

“No,” he says.

I swallow. “But you know now,” I whisper.

“A part of me wishes I didn’t.”

I roll to my side to look at him and then slowly lift my leg, and entwine it over his.

He turns his face away as if to get some semblance of control back, exhales, and then pulls me to his side and rubs his jaw against the top of my head. “Reese,” he whispers in my ear. “You shouldn’t be here with me right now.” And then he squeezes me, as if he wants me to be his and is frustrated that I’m not.

“I like it here.”

It’s raining outside, the sound soothing on the windows and hitting the street and the rooftops.

I want to say something. What are we doing?

Do we know?

I think we don’t.

I think we’re here because it feels right. Because we are impossibly, irreparably drawn to each other.

I think it won’t last.

So I just lie here and make this one moment last.

On impulse, I reach down to my jeans on the floor and pull out the penny, showing it to him.

He looks at it in my palm.

Why haven’t you cashed it in? his silver eyes seem to ask as he takes it between his thumb and forefinger.

Because it feels like that’s all I’ll get from you, this unspoken promise, this blank check, and I don’t want to give up all I’ll get from you, I think.

I just take it from his hand and tuck it into my pocket, saying silently, I won’t give this back to you. I’m keeping this.

♥   ♥   ♥

MAVERICK LOOKS LIKE a gourmet meal on the bed, all male, testosterone-laden, dark, and tattooed. And asleep. I watch him, trying not to make noise as I quietly get dressed—and I try not to remember how good it was. How fucking great it was. I am simply doing my best to get dressed and get out of his personal space and back into the safety of mine. Where I’m not the one dating a fighter, sleeping with a fighter, dangerously close to being in love with a fighter. The one fighter I can’t have.

I’m acting recklessly. The other times in my life I’ve been reckless, I’ve paid such a huge price, I’m still recovering.

I shouldn’t have admitted I wanted this.

I shouldn’t have followed him out.

I shouldn’t be here at all.

But at the same time, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be but here.

I look at the tattoo on his back as he sleeps prostrate on the bed, one arm haphazardly stuck under the pillow, his ass hard and muscled, the backs of his legs dusted with hairs. And my eyes go back to the tattoo, the most beautiful tattoo I’ve ever seen.

It’s a burning phoenix, I now realize, with a black scorpion riding on its back. It almost feels as if the weight of the scorpion is dragging the phoenix into the flames, or maybe the phoenix is the one lifting the scorpion from the fire. Reviving it.

I watch the tattoo and the way it moves, like the feathers of the phoenix, rippling as he seems to sense my gaze and props up on one arm and turns. I step back into the shadows and see him groggily drop his head down, and quietly I tiptoe to the door, making sure I have my penny in my pocket.

♥   ♥   ♥

A HALF HOUR later, I tiptoe into the Tates’ three-bedroom suite and make my way through the darkness into my room. I lock the door to keep Racer from coming in without notice, strip to my panties, and slip into bed, sighing as I hug my pillow. I shove it under my head and stare up at the ceiling, reliving every moment and every kiss and the way his body moved above me.

Did we just do it?

Did he love it as much as I think he did?

I stare at the ceiling, smiling like a dope.

I dream of the phoenix in flames, burning me, and I wake up, sweating, to the buzzing of my phone. Maverick doesn’t have my number, but I’m still breathless when I pick it up because he’s the first thing I thought of. “Hello?” I ask hopefully.

“I thought of texting, but I really wanted to hear your voice,” I hear on the other end.

“Oh, hi,” I say, leaning back on my pillow as the reality of the reckless hot sex I had last night comes crashing in when I recognize the voice.

“Well, you don’t sound too excited, Reesey,” he teases, pretending to be sad. “Have you already forgotten about me?”

It’s Miles.