Legend (Real, #6)(26)

I look at him, wide-eyed. “What is this?”

“Just gauging competition,” he says simply.

“There’s no competition,” I lie. “I’ve known him forever and I just met you. I can’t like you more. I don’t love him, if that’s what you mean. But I’ve always thought that we could have more and it would work.”

“How often does he call?” He’s been frowning ever since I said there was no competition and I can’t believe how easily the lie slipped out since I’m so uneasy myself right now.

I stop in my tracks and face him as he—hot and big—turns and does the same.

“He doesn’t call . . . often,” I admit.

Not ever. Only text, now that I think about it.

Maverick exhales, his eyes darkening even more, and then he starts forward, in three steps closing the distance between us. God.

His walk.

His talk.

His stare.

“I think of you.” He reaches out with his bruised-knuckled right hand and touches my face. All of Maverick Cage’s fingers are on my face. “I think of you a lot.” He searches my face and his thumb caresses my chin so briefly, but so powerfully, my knees feel like overbaked cake. “I think of kissing you,” he says.

I feel like he’s kissing me now, with his metal eyes. Kissing me and making me fly.

His lips are so beautiful, I can’t take my eyes off them all of a sudden.

I tremble, and when he notices and his eyes flash a little predatorily, I drop my gaze and then start taking the trail down with a vengeance.

We’re silent as we hit the end of the trail. All this time, Maverick has been smiling to himself. Did he dismiss Miles as competition? Why is he looking so smug? Because he saw me tremble?

“Maverick?”

“Reese?” His lips curl.

I want to erase his smirk of superiority against Miles. I lean up, resting my arms on his shoulders—hard as rocks—and kiss his jaw. “That’s all the kisses you’re going to get.” I punctuate my next words with a few more kisses. “On this . . . very hard . . . jaw.”

I’ve never been so bold before. It took all of me to follow the impulse to do that, and I don’t have anything left to look back at him with as I walk away, but I stop and close my eyes when he calls my name.

“Reese?”

I pull myself together before I turn, and when I do, Maverick eye-f*cks my lips. His eyes stroke them so leisurely, time stops. My breath catches. Maverick’s eyes wandering over my mouth, my lips, top to bottom, corner to corner. My knees feel wobbly by the time he looks smolderingly back into my eyes.

Holding my gaze with an intensity that makes my whole body shiver, he retraces the space between us in three long steps and ducks his head to me. “Give me a real kiss, for luck.”

“What?”

He’s staring down at my lips again, fiercely so.

And he just spoke to me in the hottest voice anyone’s used with me.

He grabs my hips and pulls me close. “Kiss me for luck, Reese.” I watch his lips speak—nearly growl—the words, his beautiful, perfect bow lips that some * can crack open tomorrow.

Feeling a huge anxiety settle in my gut, I stare at his mouth with a reckless urge to kiss him there. What will he taste like? Feel like? He’s got so much fire I’ll be in cinders upon contact alone.

I edge a little closer, my heart pounding, fear choking me.

His hands are on my hips.

Spanning my waist.

All it takes is a match to light a fire, and He. Is. The match.

Maverick waits, looking down at me impatiently, his chest heaving with his breaths. As beautiful and male as ever and looking at my mouth.

And I can’t.

I can’t.

I just can’t.

A guy like him could totally wreck a girl like me.

I take his huge hand, uncurl his tightly curled fingers, and set a quick, almost haphazard kiss in the same place he held the penny. “Good luck.”

He curls his hand and smiles at me, and I turn and walk away, smiling too.





SIXTEEN


THE DENVER FIGHT APPROACHING


Reese

The next morning at the gym, he’s already inside. I take a treadmill while I see him gloving up, and I see the girls looking at him and going over to talk. I can’t take the way he actually removes his earbuds and talks to them. He keeps glancing my way, curious about something.

And I don’t know why I can’t hold his gaze.

I dreamed of yesterday all over again. In my dreams things got heated pretty quickly, and I’d actually had the balls to kiss him. On those perfect lips.

I’m scared as he looks at me that he’ll see what I’m feeling.

That he’ll see what he makes me feel.

I glance away when I feel his eyes on me, but when he actually starts training, I watch him, the heavy bag swinging side to side. He drives his fists forward. I know that he uses the earbuds to block out distractions, and he seems to be listening to the sound of his fists. They make different sounds depending on how front and center he slams the bag. He’s testing out hits.

He shifts positions to take on the back of the bag, facing the room, and our eyes catch when the bag swings to the side and his face is revealed.

He’s wearing the most bloodthirsty expression I have ever seen.