Gabe
I drapedmy leather jacket over Aubrey’s shoulders as we walked the final two blocks from the subway to her apartment. It swallowed her up as she pulled it around her and flashed me a grateful smile. The night wasn’t too cold for early March, but it was chilly enough to have her shivering beneath her own leather jacket in the best and worst dress to ever happen to me.
The best because I’d never seen a woman look so fucking sexy, and the worst because the longer I stared, the more certain I was it would kill me.
Despite her small size, her legs were endless in it, her heels only adding to the illusion, while the short skirt hugged her ass and revealed the tattoos along her legs and back. Somehow her arms and chest being fully covered made the whole thing sexier.
It had taken every shred of discipline I’d honed as a professional athlete not to offer to thread her hand with mine, lead her to the back of the restaurant, and show her just how good bathroom sex could be. Especially after hearing about her experience with her ex.
She had no idea how fucking sexy she was. How sensual and desirable without fucking trying. How I’d been hard throughout most of dinner just from her sweet scent and the accidental grazes of our skin, and from those shaky breaths she took whenever I said something that turned her on.
She deserved to feel all that from sex and more. To come a hundred times in a hundred different ways and locations and positions. She deserved to have fun with sex. To feel freedom in it. To fall in love with it. Not to feel like something was wrong with her for not knowing what was possible.
Not that I’d been much better as a sexual partner. I wouldn’t say I’d been with a lot of women, but I’d certainly been with enough, and I probably hadn’t given half of them the attention they deserved.
When I’d been pro, boxing had been my life. I hadn’t cared about girlfriends or getting laid. If an opportunity came to have a night of fun, I took it, but it was never about more than what felt good tome. At the time, I’d have told you I rocked their world, but that was because I’d been too single-minded in my own world to pay attention.
With Aubrey, I paid attention to everything. Like the little hops she did on her toes when she was excited but tried to play it cool, or how dilated her eyes grew just from kissing me on New Year’s. Little things I never got to witness through texts.
It was how I knew that Christian guy was more than some stranger she’d bumped into. Her shoulders had tensed, and her ankles had locked like she was reinforcing her body for a fight.
I didn’t know what he said, but I’d been around enough competition to recognize something friendly versus a personal grudge. And while I had no doubt Aubrey could handle herself, as long as I was around, she’d never have to fight alone. The second Christian had blocked her with his body, I’d wanted them both to know she had backup. If Christian wanted to mess with her, he could mess with me too. Letting him believe I was her boyfriend was simply the easiest way to make that message clear.
I tried not to focus on how good it had felt for her to go along with it. Or how much I wished he was still around so I’d have an excuse to hold her hand the rest of the walk home.
When we reached Aubrey’s building a few minutes later, I couldn’t help but laugh. “How did you manage to find a pink apartment building in Philly?”
She grinned as she stepped onto the marble stoop leading to the sole pale-pink stone building on a street lined with red brick. “Haven’t you heard of manifestation?”
“I’ve heard of luck.” I joined her on the stoop with my hands in my pockets.
“There was some of that too.” She peered fondly at the building. “I found it after my grandma died, right when I was putting her house on the market. I’ve always thought of it as something she put in my path. Like her way of looking out for me after she was gone.”
She dropped her chin, her smile fading with a longing I recognized. One for the past. For a person in it. Her grandma, who filled so many of her stories and whose absence would always be an ache that never fully went away.
My own ache throbbed in my chest.
“Anyway.” Her smile grew shy. “Thanks for coming with me tonight. I had a lot of fun.”
“Me too.”
She lifted her gaze to mine, those hazel eyes stealing my breath.
Goddamn, I wanted to kiss her. To fall back into the softness of her lips I still recalled from New Year’s.
I recalled it way more often than I should—every one of her touches and sounds, the press of her softness against me.
None of it was mine to ask for more of. My only move was to say good night, turn around, and pour this restless energy into training. I was about to do just that when she cleared her throat.
“There’s, um, something I want to ask you,” she said as she played with her keys. It was hard to tell in the dimness of the porch light, but her neck looked flushed. “I just think maybe it’s the sort of thing that would be better to ask you upstairs so we could talk about it—I mean, if you’re even open to it. But it’s also the kind of thing that might make you uncomfortable, and I don’t want you to feel trapped or something, so it might be better for me to just ask you here?—”
“Hey.” I tucked my finger under her chin and, with a graze of her skin, nudged her to look at me. “Whatever it is, it’s okay. Go ahead and ask.”
Her eyes remained hesitant, so I gave an encouraging nod. If I wasn’t so curious, I might have been worried.
She forced out a breath. “Well…you know that stuff about my ex and how I didn’t like having sex?”
“Yeah.”
