Uncaged Love #2: MMA New Adult Contemporary Romance Read Online Free

softly. “Come here.”
    His always-changing eyes are almost pure green right now, just the tiniest bit of brown around the rim. He’s close enough that I can smell him again. His hands cover mine where they are gripping the back of the chair. His sleeve shifts, and I see something black on his wrist.
    It’s my ponytail holder. He’s put it on his arm. My heart squeezes.
    When I still don’t move, he lifts my hand, examining my fingers. “You doing okay after the fight?”
    I nod.
    “Brittany’s face is pretty banged up. You have to be hurting from that blow.”
    And from half an hour of smacking the bags, I think, but I still don’t answer.
    He begins kissing my knuckles, and the heat bolts straight from my fingers to my heart. No one has ever kissed my hand. That fairy-tale feeling comes over me for the second time that day.
    “Why aren’t you married?” I blurt out, trying to stay in control.
    He looks up. “A lot of fighters are single,” he says. His lips return to my hand.
    “Why is that?”
    “It’s hard to watch someone get the pulp beaten out of them, over and over.”
    “I kinda liked watching Brittany lose.”
    He smiles over my fingers, his eyes sparkling. I know I’ve lost the battle. Everything in me is warm and loose. He lifts my hand and leads me around the chair like it’s a dance. And I go, like I’m a partner being turned in a circle.
    He pulls me close. “That’s better,” he says against my forehead. And, same as that morning, he pulls at my ponytail to free my hair.
    “Now they’ll know who I am,” I whisper.
    “Nobody’s going to see you like this but me,” he says.
    My head is on his chest. I think his heartbeat may be the one I’ve heard the most in my life. And this after knowing him only a few weeks. I can’t remember being small, although I have impressions of my grandma rocking me. Perhaps I once knew her heartbeat just as well.
    He keeps it easy. His fingers flow through my hair, then massage my neck. He touches my shoulders, feeling the muscle there, making his way down my arms. “You’ve come so far so fast.”
    I pull away a little. “Is that why you’re like this? Because I have fighter potential?”
    He runs his thumb beneath my chin. “It’s the first thing I knew about you. I saw you cutting into that group of guys and thought, ‘This girl has got something like nobody else.’” His eyes are earnest as they gaze into mine. “And I’ve seen a lot of fighters.”
    I can barely swallow. His lips are so close, and I’m remembering what it felt like for them to kiss me. I want it again. I want it now.
    Colt knows. I can see that he knows. He leans forward, and there it is, that soft connection of our mouths. This time, though, everything rushes at me very fast. Heat blasts through my whole body. I realize that if the kiss is this incredible, the rest could be so much more.
    I refuse to be shy anymore. I’m not avoiding some jerk guy who makes me uncomfortable or afraid. This is different, and now I want to know what everyone else has always known. I press into him, hard, letting my tongue go to him first this time. He groans, and his arms come around and pull me in tight.
    We’re touching everywhere, our chests, our bellies. I realize that he’s erect against my hips. His legs are slightly bent so that we connect, and now he’s pressing into me. Even through his jeans I can feel all of him.
    I can’t breathe, so I break the kiss. He steps back to the sofa and sits down, taking me with him. I shift so that my knees are on either side of his thighs. His hands move beneath my hoodie to my waist. “You’re so impossibly tiny,” he says. His mouth moves to my neck, nudging away the collar.
    I want to move faster, to grind against him. But I hold back. I can’t seem more experienced than I am, or else it will happen too fast. I don’t know what I’m ready for. But this is bliss, pleasure erupting along my skin where his kisses fan around my neck.