That’s why he kept wanting to stake his claim. That’s why he’d brought up marriage, or at least that’s what I thought.

Ash’s hand fisted into my hair and twisted. Pulling my head back, his lips latched onto my neck and he bit softly before running his tongue along my skin.

Grasping the bench, I met his gaze in the mirror. Lust, passion, fire, love. It was all in his beautiful green eyes.

“Ash.” I gasped, wiggling my ass against him.

He moved his free hand between us and moved his cock between my legs, rubbing the head up and down my seam.

“What do you want, Spitfire? You want it in you? You want to ride it?”

Fuck, I loved his dirty mouth. We were both very physical creatures, and sex always turned out to be a triathlon of positions when he got this riled up about something. The thing about Ash Fuller was that on the surface, he was this simple guy with his muscles and high-flying business, but underneath, there was layer after layer of complexities, and even I hadn’t explored all of them yet. He loved hard, fought hard, and hurt hard, and everything he did he threw his all into. What did they say about people like that? He had an old soul.

“I need you.” I gasped as he pressed the head of his cock just inside my opening.

“How?” he growled, inching slightly deeper.

My legs quivered, and I tugged against his hold on my hair. He sure loved to dominate, and as long as we took it in turns, then I was all for it.

I shuddered against him. “Like it’s the first and last time you’ll ever fuck me.”

His eyes widened slightly, but he didn’t break stride. “Watch me, Ren. Watch what this does to us.”

Letting go of my hair, he grasped my hips and thrust. His cock slammed home with a slap, and I cried out, sensation exploding across my entire body. Flexing, he edged deeper until we were joined completely, and then he pulled back and entered me again and again, falling into a punishing rhythm that had me rising fast.

“Don’t stop,” I cried as I exploded around him.

He stroked faster, his fingers reaching around and finding my clit. He pinched hard, the sharp pain only pleasing me more, and I was falling and falling with no end in sight.

“Ren.” He grunted, curling his body over mine and holding deep inside me.

I felt his release pour into me as mine drew it out of him, and our gazes locked. Watching this strong, powerful man come apart because of me was hypnotic.

Turning my head, my lips searched for his and when they met, he kissed me slow and hard, our tongues massaging against one another in a contented dance as our orgasms began to fade.

“I love you.” I gasped as our lips broke apart.

His eyes were blazing powerfully in the afterglow. “I love you.”

“Only you,” I murmured as he pulled out and scooped me up into his arms. “Only you.”

Six

Ren

I pushed into the cafe around the corner from Beat and inhaled the scent of fresh roasted coffee.

“Hey, Ren.”

I smiled at the barista behind the counter and said in my best chirpy morning voice, “Hey, Seth.”

Seth was one of the sweetest guys I knew, and the best thing about him was that he was not a fighter. At six-two he was this tall, lanky hipster with black horn-rimmed glasses. Not long after I first moved to Beat, we’d become friends and had gone out on a nice but ultimately disastrous date. I’d fantasized about Ash the entire time, which was totally not fair, but he was cool about it, and we’d been buddies ever since.

Seth smiled, his glasses fogging up under the onslaught of steam from the coffee machine. “You want your usual?”

“Sure.”

“Have a seat,” he said, nodding toward my usual table by the window. “I’ll bring it over.”

The machine fired up as I slid into the chair, my gaze raking over the familiar street outside. This had been mine and Josie’s table since day dot. Remembering how we first met, I shook my head and smiled. She’d been walking down the street in six-inch heels—she was this glamazon who liked wearing wildly inappropriate shoes to an office gig—and she had fallen over. Naturally, I’d helped her up, and she’d invited me to have coffee with her as a thanks. The rest was history.

Seth appeared beside me and placed a cup and saucer on the table.

“One cappuccino with extra chocolate on top,” he declared.

“Oh, and you’ve even made one of those leaf designs on the foam,” I said with a laugh.

“All the trimmings for my best customer.” He gave me a good-humored wink and returned to his post.

Curling my hands around the cup, I took a sip, and I sighed contentedly as the hot liquid ran down my throat. I had to say, once I was full-time over at Pulse, I’d miss grabbing a coffee here every morning. The company wasn’t too bad either.

“Good?” Seth called out from behind the counter.

“Stunning,” I threw back with a thumbs up. The bell rang over the door as more customers came in, and I left him to it.

My phone began to buzz in my pocket, and I pulled it out, smiling when I saw Josie’s name.

Swiping my finger across the screen, I pressed the brick to my ear and said, “I was just thinking about you.”

“Aww,” Josie said. “That’s so sweet!”

“Guess where I am?”

“At the cafe, of course. Say hi to Seth for me.”

Glancing over to where Seth was leaning over the counter, I called out, “Josie says hi!”

He waved. “Tell her I miss her smart mouth.”

“That little shit,” Josie exclaimed.

“He means it in the best possible way,” I replied, not bothering to mask my amusement.

“It’s been a while,” she went on. “How’s things?”

“Yeah, okay. Busy.”

“How’s the new guy? Caleb? He’s a bit of a hottie, right? I Googled him.”

I snorted. Of course his looks would be the first thing she mentioned, and since she’d Googled, she would know his whole sordid story.

“He’s going good, actually,” I declared. “He’s really good at the business side, and he handles the younger guys fine. Oh, the class he did the other night was rad.”

“Rad?”

“It was a term used in the nineteen eighties that means really fucking amazing.”

“I know what rad means, Ren,” Josie replied with a laugh.

“Dad chose really well,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “He’s really nice.”

“Is he single?”

“Josie! What happened to Hamish?”

“Meh,” she replied.

Hamish was a tough, happy-go-lucky fighter that Ash was buddies with from his stint at The Underground. Irish by birth, ‘Goblin’ had made his name fighting in the seedy underbelly of Melbourne and had no interest in trying for the professional leagues, not one iota. That’s where he clashed with Josie the most. Considering she worked PR for the Hayes twins, who were pretty popular drawcards in the AUFC, Hamish’s involvement in illegal cage fighting had been a sore spot since they started hanging out. I used the term ‘hanging out’ loosely as they were on and off so many times over the past two years it gave me whiplash.

“Things not going so well?” I prodded.

“It’s off,” Josie replied. “We had another argument about me being in Sydney and him being in Melbourne. I don’t understand why he can’t just go pro. He keeps getting offers, really great offers with a lot of money attached, but he turns them all down. I just…” She sighed dramatically. “I just don’t understand him.”

“Long distance is hard, and you know Hamish,” I said. “He’s ingrained into the woodwork at The Underground. He’s very happy-go-lucky in the sense he likes to give authority figures the middle finger.”

“It’s not like he’s strapped for cash,” she complained.

“No, but I know guys like him, Josie. Fighting is all they know. Take it away, and you’ve got a crisis on your hands. It’s his identity, just like it’s Ash’s.”