Below the Belt (11 page)

At last he slid a finger inside her, then another. Her hands fisted in his hair as he sucked her clitoris into his mouth and flicked it over and over again with his tongue, his fingers moving in and out of her all the while.

She gasped. The tension in her ratcheted tighter and tighter. He slid a third finger inside her and she came, a wordless cry flying from her lips. Her body shuddered. Her back arched.

He eased her gently back down to earth, kissing her mound, soothing her with his fingers, pressing kisses against the tender skin of her thighs. She watched lazily as, at last, he shifted away from her. His eyes were heavy-lidded with desire. She waited for him to undress and rejoin her.

But he didn’t start to strip. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed. She only understood that it was all over when he stood and collected her discarded jeans and underwear.

She propped herself up on her elbows and stared at him as he dropped her clothes beside her.

“You are not doing this to me again,” she said. “No way.”

“You’re fighting tomorrow,” he said.

As though that explained everything.

“Having sex is not going to stop me from fighting,” she said.

He ran a hand over the back of his neck.

“I don’t want you to get hurt, Jamie. It’s bad enough as it is, and tonight will only make it harder.”

His voice was quiet, low. For a moment she didn’t understand what he meant.

“I already told you, I don’t do love, Cooper,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about me getting clingy or taking things the wrong way.”

“Jesus, I
wish
that was what I’m worried about,” he said. “I meant I don’t want to watch you take hits tomorrow night.”

She blinked. Then the full import of what he’d said and what it meant sunk in.

Cooper had feelings for her. Feelings that went beyond wanting to have sex with her.

She reached for her underwear. The lazy languor of a few minutes ago was gone, big-time.

“I can’t control how you feel,” she said as she slid her legs into her jeans.

“I don’t recall saying you could.”

“You feeling responsible for me is not part of our deal. I need a trainer, not a protector.”

“This isn’t something I saw coming, either,” he said.

“I don’t need you to look after me. I don’t want you to. All I need is for you to help me train and get fights.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something? You want me to have sex with you, too, when you want it, how you want it,” he said, his jaw set.

“You wanted it as much as I did,” she said. “Don’t pretend you weren’t hard for me every time. You could have walked away.”

“I should have,” he said. “I had no business sleeping with one of my fighters.”

She stared at him. Something caught in her belly at the haunted look in his eyes and the tense set to his shoulders.

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just sex,” she said.

He eyed her silently. She had to look away.

“I need to get some sleep,” she said, heading for the door.

He didn’t say another word. She waited until she’d closed the door behind her and walked around the corner before stopping and leaning against the cool brick wall.

There was a time in her life when having a man like Cooper Fitzgerald confessing he had feelings for her would have made her heart sing.

Those days were over.

It didn’t matter if there had been just a moment there when he’d said those words and a part of her had unfolded, warm and welcoming and hopeful.

Swearing at her own stupidity, Jamie pushed away from the wall.
Warm
and
welcoming?
How about gooey and weak and pathetic? How about soft and willing and perfect victim material?

What’s it going to take for you to learn? What else do you need to lose before you smarten up?

Her back straight, Jamie made her way to her room.

Cooper would get over it. He’d have to, because he wasn’t ever going to get what he wanted from her.

C
OOPER WAS DAMNED
tempted to punch a hole in the wall when Jamie walked out the door.

There was something broken in her. Maybe it was the same thing that had once been broken in him, but he trusted himself and life enough now to take a risk. Jamie did not. Or could not. Same thing.

He’d seen her eyes go blank when she’d registered what he was saying. His feelings for her were about as welcome as a dose of the clap. Hell, she’d probably
prefer
the clap to his reluctant, ham-fisted declaration; at least she could treat that with a couple of doses of antibiotics. Him, she’d have to face day after day.

Shit.

Even though he’d never been the kind of man who drowned his sorrows, he poured himself an overpriced glass of bourbon from the minibar. Sitting on the bed, he tossed back a mouthful and hissed at the burn.

He nursed the glass in his hand and tried not to remember the sweet sounds of Jamie’s desire. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the bed, rumpled from her passion. She’d been so hot, so turned on. It had nearly driven him over the edge. Never had he got off on a woman’s pleasure so much. Every sound she made, every hitch in her breathing, every twitch of her hips, the way her hands had clutched at his hair. Without a doubt, one of the most intense sexual experiences of his life, and he’d been fully clothed the whole time.

He raised the bourbon to his mouth, then stared down at the golden liquid. He stood and poured it down the sink in the bathroom. Was there anything more tragic than a lonely, horny ex-boxer sitting in a shitty motel room tossing back room-service bourbon? He couldn’t think of a single thing.

Grabbing his room key, he strode out into the night. Two miles up the darkened highway, and two miles back. Hands jammed into his pockets, his thoughts circular.

Was he falling in love with Jamie? Was that what all this bullshit was about? He had no measuring stick, no benchmark to go by since he’d never loved a woman before. Never trusted it, never wanted it, never pursued it. In the back of his mind, there’d always been too many dark shadows from the past. Images of his mom being slapped around, or passed out on the couch, a needle lying beside her on the carpet. Domestic harmony hadn’t exactly been the catch cry of his childhood.

He’d avoided love. Until now. Then Jamie had skyrocketed into his life, undeniable from the very beginning.

Which left him where, exactly? He snorted an unamused laugh as he saw the lights of the motel looming ahead.

Who was he kidding? He was nowhere, with a fistful of nothing, with no expectation of anything changing.

Not once had Jamie given any indication that she saw him as anything more than a handy hard body to get off on. And no, the undeniable chemistry and passion between them meant jack. Especially when her first reaction to the news that he cared for her was to hightail it out of his room as though he’d pulled a gun on her.

To top it all off, he had to watch her fight tomorrow.

Fan-freakin’-tastic.

He finally fell asleep at around one in the morning. He woke feeling gritty-eyed and short-tempered. Jamie was out by the pool, lying in the sun with a boxing magazine. He spared one glance at her super-fit body in a black bikini before walking in the opposite direction.

On the day of a fight, a boxer’s only responsibility was to stay loose and to chow down on carbs before the match. Arthur had already located a pasta restaurant in town and Cooper knew that the Sawyers planned to be there at midday for Jamie to load up. They didn’t need him to watch her eat. He stayed away from her ’til late afternoon when he spotted her once again out by the pool, this time sitting in a yoga pose, doing some kind of meditation.

He made plenty of noise so she knew he was approaching. Her ponytail swished over her shoulder as she glanced at him.

“How are you feeling? Rested?” he asked.

“Yep. Had a good lunch, plenty of fluids,” she said.

“Okay. Your bout’s at seven. I figure we should get over there about five or so,” Cooper said, shoving his hands into his pockets.

She nodded and stood in one fluid, graceful movement. “I’ll go grab a shower.”

He turned to leave.

“Cooper,” she said.

He glanced back at her, and she held his eye. “If the fight goes hard, if she hurts me, I don’t want you throwing in the towel,” she said.

He jerked his head as though she’d taken a shot at him.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. If it gets ugly, I don’t want you trying to protect me,” she said. “I need a chance to win this fight.”

“And you think I’m going to take that chance away from you?” he asked.

He was a boxer. He knew the work she’d put in, how hungry she was for this. He’d never do that to her, no matter how much it killed him to see her in pain.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I figured, in light of what happened last night, that I should lay it on the table.”

He rounded on her and moved in close. She held her ground where a lot of men wouldn’t have.

“I will do my job. If you’re hurt and you can’t fight, I
will
give up the fight. Do not have any doubt about that, okay? And there is nothing you can say that will change that, Jamie. Equally, if you’re just getting an old-fashioned pounding, I won’t take away your chance. After all, I know how much all this means to you.”

Her chin came up. “It does. It means everything,” she said.

“Exactly,” he said.

He walked away from her. He didn’t trust himself to say anything further. She needed to get her head on straight for the fight. Maybe he should have bitten his tongue altogether, but there was no way he could have let that comment stand. Did she honestly think he was going to hand the fight over to Liana Nelson because of what he’d said about not wanting to watch her get hurt?

He fought the urge to turn on his heel and go back and list for her all the shit he’d had to endure in his life, all the moments that had made it possible for him to stand by tonight and watch her have pain inflicted on her, even though it would test his will to the nth degree.

He kept walking until he was in his room. For the next ten minutes, he concentrated on putting his kit together. Towels, water, Jamie’s mouth guard, gauze tape for her hands, coach’s tape for the laces on her gloves and boots, Vaseline for her face, an ice pack and, finally, the No-Swell, a piece of metal that he would keep in a bucket of ice beside the ring and press on her cheekbones, brow and jaw between rounds to reduce swelling.

Jamie was waiting beside the car with her grandfather when Cooper emerged with his kit and a bucket in hand. She was dressed in a warm-up suit and her hair was braided tight to her skull. The look she gave him was challenging. He sent it straight back at her.

They drove the ten minutes to the auditorium in silence. There were a lot of media vans in the parking lot. Cooper frowned as he parked in a slot near the front entrance. He turned to Arthur.

“Any of the guys fighting tonight have a profile I don’t know about?” he asked.

Arthur shrugged and looked equally bemused.

Then they walked through the double doors into the foyer, and reporters swarmed them from every direction, snapping into action like well-trained soldiers the moment they caught sight of their prey.

“Ms. Sawyer, can you comment on why you’ve started your boxing career using a pseudonym? Are you trying to fool the boxing public or are you ashamed of your father’s history?”

“Ms. Sawyer, is it true you couldn’t find anyone to train you and that Cooper Fitzgerald only took you on as a favor to a friend?”

“Ms. Sawyer, what do you say to the comment that you’re simply cashing in on your name to try and score cheap points in the boxing ring?”

Flashes popped, reporters jostled forward and Jamie stood rooted to the spot, her face pale, her eyes wide with panic. Beside her, Arthur was red in the face. He pushed belligerently at the most aggressive of the reporters, yelling at them to back off. Cooper glanced around, spotting a pair of security guards heading their way.

“Hey. You want to do something about this?” he demanded. Then he turned on the reporters. “Ms. Sawyer has nothing to say. As you will see from tonight’s fight, actions speak louder than words.”

He forced his way between Jamie and the pack. Angling his body, he slid an arm around her shoulders and urged her toward the nearest door.

They emerged into the vast, empty silence of the auditorium. The moment they were through the door, Cooper let Jamie go and shot the bolt to prevent any reporters following them.

“What the frig was that?” Arthur demanded, his face a dangerous shade of red.

Remembering the old man’s heart attack, Cooper grabbed a nearby folding chair and shoved it toward him.

“Sit,” he ordered before turning to a pale-faced Jamie.

“How? No one knows, except for Ray and you and my grandfather,” she said. Her voice quavered with uncertainty.

Damn it, he should have been more cautious. He should have at least gone inside on his own to check out the situation. That way Jamie would have had the chance to prepare herself. As it was, she’d been a sitting duck.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters except for what goes on between you and Liana Nelson in that ring tonight,” he said. He had to refocus her and move her past the shock.

“Those questions. Did you hear what they were asking? My God,” she said. Her hands were shaking as she worried at the handle of her sports bag.

He’d dealt with the media for a long time, and he figured she’d had her fair share of dealings with them after her father’s fraud charges and his death. As far as Cooper was concerned, there was no such thing as journalistic ethics. It was all about headlines and selling newspapers. None of them gave a damn about who they stomped on along the way.

“Forget ’em,” he said. “They’re a pack of assholes, and they have no idea about you or your family. What they think or say is not important.”