Beast: An MMA Stepbrother Romance Page 6

  “You’re going to get me fired on the first day, asshole. This is a prestigious internship.”

  “Tell me where these go so I don’t have to guess.”

  Emma points to the other side of the store. “Over there, behind the table, but you can’t just put them down. There’s going to be a book signing, and the author wants them in the shape of a giant pyramid because the book is set in Ancient Egypt.” I look over to where Emma’s pointing, and see a bunch of copies of this same book stacked into a half-finished pyramid.

  “Are you fucking serious? I thought this was a publishing internship.”

  “It is. It’s just, you know, you start at the bottom.” I can tell Emma’s disappointed, and that makes me want to find whoever’s responsible and dispense some fucking justice.

  “You know, you’re getting paid the same as the people who built the actual pyramids. And they didn’t fucking call that a prestigious internship.”

  I dump the books down on top of this bullshit pyramid, and Emma scrambles to arrange them in perfect order behind me. “You know what I think you should do? I think you should tell these publishing guys to fuck off and come to the beach with me.”

  Emma’s eyes dart around the bookstore, making sure her boss isn’t nearby. “What are you even doing here? Why aren’t you up in Palo Alto?”

  “It’s fucking empty up there, sis. Besides, there aren’t any good gyms in the neighborhood, and I need to train for my next fight.”

  “But isn’t it stupid to drive all the way down here just to train?”

  “Of course it is. That’s why I’m staying at your house.”

  “Caleb!” Emma cringes and lowers her voice to a whisper. “You can’t just decide to stay at my house. We don’t even have a spare room!”

  I reach into my pocket and pull out a set of golden keys. “I talked to your mom about it. She told me I could sleep in her room while they’re on that continental honeymoon thing.”

  Emma glares at me. “You’d better not bring any gross MMA fighters into my house.”

  “Trust me, that’s not going to be a problem. I’m not doing anything like that again for a long time.”

  Emma sighs. “Moving books back and forth all day and then putting up with you when I get home. I can’t believe I actually thought this was going to be the perfect summer.”

  Emma starts walking back to go get some more books, and I follow behind her, pretending to browse the shelves as I go. “You know, if I were you, I’d be a little more polite to me. After all, it just so happens that I could get you a much better gig than this.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not interested in being a ring girl.”

  That makes me laugh, but when I’m done laughing, I catch up to Emma and cut her off, backing her up against a bookshelf full of detective stories. “I’m talking about Poodle, sis. When Dad left for the honeymoon, he temporarily promoted all his management people, to see who could handle an increase in responsibility. And that means I’m now in charge of the entire PoodleMatch program, including hiring interns.”

  Emma’s jaw drops. “You’re in charge of the entire program?”

  I nod. “Don’t look so fucking shocked, sis. I happen to be very good at my job with Poodle.”

  I can see the little gears turning in Emma’s head. “So you can hire me.”

  “Hypothetically, yes. And hypothetically, I can even pay you. I know I’d definitely rather see you doing that than stuck here hauling books.”

  Emma narrows her eyes at me. “What’s the catch?”

  “The catch is that you have to quit this bullshit right now and come to the beach with me.”

  Emma takes her sweet time contemplating my offer. I’m trying to play it cool like I don’t care either way, but I really, really want to see her in that bathing suit I picked out for her.

  “Fine. Let’s do it. But I’m not officially quitting until my position with Poodle is final.”

  As Emma goes into her boss’ office, I lean up against the wall outside and pretend to read a cookbook I picked up off the shelf. I can hear her making up some story about how she has urgent family business and she needs to leave early. Personally, if I was her, I’d skip the story and tell that guy where to shove his pyramid, but whatever. What matters is we’re finally fucking hanging out. The fact that we’ll both be half naked is just a bonus.

  Emma steps out of the office, eyes bright like a hamster’s. “Alright. I’m free. You want to go to the beach? Let’s go to the beach.”

  Chapter 9: Emma

  Where the hell did Caleb find this bikini? What woman with my body type would even try to wear something this tiny?

  Caleb practically snarls when I walk out of the car wearing it. “Holy shit, Emma. That’s the best $3.50 I’ve ever spent.”

  I can’t help but blush at how openly he admires my body. Doesn’t he have any dignity at all? I’m one to talk, I guess. I’ve been sneaking peeks at his abs ever since he took off his shirt on the way out of the book store. But still, that’s different! I’m just looking. I’d never actually make a move on him!

  I shift from foot to foot, trying not to think about how much my stepbrother is enjoying the sight of me in this bikini. “Let’s just get to the beach. Did you bring a bathing suit, or are you going to go swimming in your jeans?”

  Caleb smirks at me and unzips his pants, letting them slip halfway down his hips before he slides them down his legs with one hand. He thrusts his crotch out as he takes off his pants, and his technique makes me wonder if he’s also a secret stripper.

  I wish I’d walked in on that show a couple weeks ago instead.

  Wait, no I don’t, what?

  Under his jeans, Caleb’s wearing a black bathing suit that goes halfway down his thighs. This doesn’t seem fair. If I have to parade around a public beach with two little triangles of fabric barely covering my nipples, shouldn’t Caleb have to wear one of those European male thongs?

  Caleb clears his throat, and my eyes dart back up to his face. Oh god, how long was I staring at his bathing suit? “You know, if you want, we can skip the beach and get a room at one of those motels down the street.”

  I should have known it was going to be like this. I let Caleb seduce me away from my internship with promises of a harmless beach trip and a better internship, and he’s already trying to get into my nearly nonexistent bikini bottom. “Caleb, I don’t care how horny this makes you,” I gesture down at my swimsuit-clad body, “If you think the two of us are ever hooking up again, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. We’re either going to be friends, or we’re going to be enemies.”

  “Jeez, who said anything about hooking up? All I said was we should get a motel room. I didn’t say we should fuck in it.”

  Caleb locks the car and starts heading towards the beach, and I follow him. “You’re right. This is just a friendly beach trip. You and me hanging out and getting to know each other better. Trust me, I don’t go to the beach with the girls I fuck. I throw them onto the nearest bed and I make them fucking beg.”

  I really did not need that last little piece of information. Since Caleb apparently insists on being part of my life, I was hoping this little beach trip would make our relationship a little more normal. A little more like real stepsiblings and a little less like two strangers who almost fucked each other and still really, really want to. So much for that. Before we even get out of the parking lot, he wants to drag me into a motel room and I’m imagining him throwing a girl down on a bed and making her beg.

  He’s your stepbrother. He’s your stepbrother. I repeat it to myself over and over again, but the mantra starts to lose its meaning as I watch Caleb’s firm, muscular ass from behind. This is the first time he’s been shirtless around me since the night we met, when he dragged me into his locker room and sucked out my breath with his kiss. In our current states of undress, it’s hard for me to think of anything else.

  At least the beach is totally packed. I’m not sure where we’re
even going to sit down.

  Caleb scans the coast. “Fuck. I thought we were going to have some space to ourselves.”

  “That’s because you don’t live down here. It’s packed all summer. We can’t all go to private beaches like you do.”

  I walk ahead of Caleb and point to a patch of open space between two empty beach tents. “But look, we can put our towel down there. That’s all the space we need.”

  Caleb walks up between the tents and spreads his towel out across the sand. “Alright, but if people don’t clear out of here soon, we’re heading up the coast.”

  I sit down next to Caleb, careful not to pop out of my bathing suit on the way down. I haven’t been able to make any sudden movements since I got out of the car. Caleb looks out at the sea, bathed in the glowing orange shadow of the tent next to us. “So…you’re down here training for another fight?”

  Caleb looks amused. “Yeah. It’s a week from now.”

  “Please don’t tell me it’s against a guy with knives for hands.”

  “Nah. That guy you saw me fight was with another league. California Kings members don’t use weapons, but sometimes we fight guys from other leagues who do. This next fight is more important, because if I win, I fight in the tournament.”

  Caleb hands me a bottle of sunscreen and points to his back. I give him a look.

  “What? I can’t reach back there on my own.”

  Well, he’s probably right, and I’m not going to get very far in having a normal relationship with Caleb if I refuse to touch him, so I squirt some sunscreen into my hand and start rubbing it across his tattooed muscles and try to ignore the tingling heat developing between my legs.

  “Tournament?”

  “The fucking championship. The 16 best fighters in the league play a four-round tournament, and the winner gets an insane amount of cash.”

  “So you’re risking your life for money? Isn’t your dad worth billions?”

  I feel Caleb’s muscles tense against my hands. “Yeah, but right now, I’m only worth what he’s worth. If I win the tournament, I’ll have the money to get out of Poodle and do my own thing.”

  “So is that why you fight? For the money?”

  Caleb flexes his hands against his knees. “Nah. I mean, I want the money and all, but when I get up into the ring, nobody knows what my name is or who my dad is. I’m just the Beast, and everything I get, I have to earn.”

  When Caleb says “Beast,” my eyes are drawn back down to his wild tattoos, a jungle that warps and shifts with every breath he takes. “What did you do to keep it happy before you started doing MMA? Like, when you were a little kid?”

  There go his muscles again, tensing and warping beneath my fingers. It’s only now that I realize that he’s been adequately covered with sunscreen for a while now, and that I’ve basically just been giving him a backrub for the past couple minutes. I pull my hands away. Caleb takes a deep breath and points across the ocean. “You see that spot out there where the water’s a little lighter?”

  Squinting as hard as I can, I can just barely make out what he’s talking about.

  “I think so?”

  “It’s a sandbar. I don’t want to talk about this shit with all these people around, but if we swim out there, it’ll be a lot quieter.”

  “Are you sure we can make it out there?”

  “Positive. Get up on my back and I’ll swim us out.”

  Caleb’s like a dolphin as soon as he hits the water. I bet he has a pool up at his mansion in Palo Alto. Or maybe a private beach. I have to throw my arms and legs around his torso and hold on for dear life as he pulls me through the ocean.

  When I agreed to climb up on Caleb’s back, I didn’t think about the effect it would have on me. But being this close to him, with my legs wrapped around him, feeling his body heave as it slices through the water…I hope he can’t feel how hard my nipples are right beneath his shoulder blades.

  When we get to the sandbar, Caleb drags himself up onto the sands while I hop off him and stand up in the inch-deep water. “This is amazing…”

  The beach is just a tiny sliver of beige on the horizon, the noise of the tourists nearly silent beneath the roar of the ocean.

  “Peace and fucking quiet, just like I like it.”

  I turn away from Caleb and face the open ocean, trying to hide the fact that my nipples are hard as diamonds from riding out here on his back. “So, what did you want to tell me that was so secret that we had to swim out here?”

  “Fuck, I don’t even remember what we were talking about. I got distracted.” I look over my shoulder and can’t help but notice the thick tent in Caleb’s bathing suit. My breath catches in my throat. Focus, Emma. Don’t think about that. Look at the ocean.

  “I asked you what you did to keep yourself happy before you started fighting?”

  Behind me, I can hear Caleb’s breathing quicken. “I fucked. I went to clubs, took girls back to my place and made their wildest fucking fantasies come true.”

  I feel his presence come up behind me, and my body betrays me by leaning back into him, my wet, exposed skin bumping up against his. What am I doing? If I want Caleb to stop being sexual towards me, this is the exact wrong way to do it. “Okay…I’m sure you did, but back on the beach, it seemed like you were about to tell me a secret.”

  Caleb’s hand wraps around my side, resting on my hip. “A secret, huh? Yeah, I’ve got a couple of those. Why don’t you tell me a secret about you, and then I’ll tell you one of mine?”

  I can almost hear Gina’s voice playing in my head. Just fuck him. Turn around, pull his wet shorts down, and tell him where you want him to put his cock. Out here in the middle of the ocean, no one’s going to know.

  But I can’t! He’s my stepbrother, he’s about to be my boss, he’s an illegal MMA fighter, and most importantly of all, he’s a total playboy asshole who just admitted to going through girls like popcorn. Fucking him on a sandbar is probably the worst idea in the world.

  Unfortunately, that message isn’t getting through to my body, which somehow thought it would be a good idea to press my entire butt up against Caleb’s hips. You know, to help me keep my balance on the edge of the sandbar. So I don’t fall off.

  When I realize what I’m doing, and what it’s doing to Caleb’s cock, I pull away from Caleb, almost fall off the sandbar, and put a lot of distance between the two of us. “Don’t change the subject!”

  Caleb looks at me, breathing hard, bathing suit stretched to the absolute limit by his bulge. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about your childhood! You don’t have to! But I would very much appreciate it if you didn’t try and change the subject by trying to fuck me on a sandbar!”

  Caleb looks surprised at my sudden change of mood. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I was just reacting to you.”

  He looks down at my nipples, hard and obvious and aching to be touched. Okay, fair point. Or should I say points? But still, this can’t happen!

  “Okay, but we can’t do this, especially not in places where anyone could see us. I know we’re both still a little…confused…because of how we met…”

  Caleb advances on me. “I’m not confused. I know exactly what I want, and I think you do too, even if you won’t admit it to yourself.”

  I bite my lip, feeling myself grow wetter with every step Caleb takes. If we don’t get out of here now, I think I’m going to end up following Gina’s imaginary advice and ripping my stepbrother’s bathing suit off.

  “Caleb,” I say, my voice coming out breathy and low. “Let’s go back.”

  Caleb stops in his tracks, looks out towards the open ocean, and then looks back to me. “Alright, let’s do it.”

  I walk up to Caleb and climb up onto his back. Caleb grabs my calves, wrapping them around his abs.

  And just like that, Caleb dives into the water and starts swimming back to shore. This time, when I wrap my legs around him, I can feel the healing gashe
s from his fight with Chainsaw up against my thigh. I wonder if they’re going to turn into scars.

  I slide up Caleb’s body so I’m not pressing into a recent wound, and on the way up, one of my hands brushes up against another scar, ancient and jagged, running across one of his pecs. Caleb tenses up when he feels me touch the scar, so I run my fingers off of it and push my palm against his chest.

  But it’s too late. Now that I’m paying attention, I can feel scars all over Caleb’s body. Some of them are small and smooth; others are angry and thick, like the one on Caleb’s chest.

  Is that why Caleb’s body is covered in tattoos? To hide his scars from people he doesn’t want to know about his fights?

  I press my face up against Caleb’s swimming back and look into the face of a lion inked across his shoulder blade. It stares back at me with fire in its eyes.

  Chapter 10: Caleb

  Thank god for empty gyms. Without them, I’m not sure the world would be able to fucking handle me. I’m not one of those people who can just bottle up their feelings when something’s bothering them. I need to work that shit out, which means pacing, punching the air, and roaring at the top of my lungs. The type of shit that I can only do in two places: when no one’s watching, or when everyone’s watching.

  Normally, I pay a local gym to close early, wait for everyone to leave, and go to fucking town. Down by Emma’s house, though, I hit the jackpot. I found this fighting gym, totally run down but fully stocked, and struck up a conversation with the owner. He was a boxer for 15 years. When he got too old to get in the ring, he bought this gym, became a boxing coach, and things were good for a little while. Now, he said, nobody really comes by. He was still making enough to keep his head above water, but what he really wanted to do was give up coaching and open up his own Italian restaurant downtown.

  One check later, Gio’s living his dream, and I have my own personal gym.

  And it’s good timing, too, because I’ve got some shit I need to work out. Like how I can’t stop thinking about my fucking stepsister. Like how I want her in ways I don’t even understand. And like how I’m going to get demolished next time I step in the ring if I don’t get this shit under control.