Page 45 of Tarnished Reign

There's a grudging respect in his tone, and I'm glad— despite the searing pain— that we did this.

I needed to work out some of the tension building in me, and our relationship will be better moving forward now.

“Oh my God,” a feminine voice exclaims from by the door. “What the hell are you two doing?”

I turn to look at Adriana, and my jaw drops.

She's wearing what appears to be a pair of my shorts but with the waistband rolled down slightly and a t-shirt tied under her bust. Again, it looks like one of mine. I don't think she's trying to be sexy. But fuck me, she’s achieved it.

The way she's tied the T-shirt does nothing but highlight her bust and small waist. With her hair pulled back, and a flush of outrage brightening her pale cheeks, she’s the hottest thing I've ever seen.

Christ, I'm going to have to ask Jinx to fully knock me out. Even the searing pain in my cheekbone isn't enough to tamp down the desire I feel for this woman.

She walks over to us, and she is not her usual subdued self. Instead, she's angry and full of outrage. “I hate boxing. It's utterly barbaric. What do you think you're doing?” Her gaze takes us in. “Oh, look at you.”

I rub my cheek, thinking it surely can't look that bad, and then realize that she's talking about Jinx.

“You're bleeding,” she says. “This is terrible.” She storms across the room, and I watch her go, perplexed. She reaches the far end of the small gym where there's a desk with drawers and pulls them open. When she bends down to open the final and lowest drawer, my shorts pull tight across her ass, and the muscles in her smooth legs stand out sleek and long.

This girl works out. I'm not sure what she does, perhaps something like Pilates or dance. She's far too toned not to do anything.

“Haha,” she exclaims. She stands and brandishes a green box in her hand as if she's a magician. “There's a first aid kit,” she says in triumph.

She marches back to us and climbs into the ring. “Sit,” she orders Jinx.

Her fear is gone, and I see something brisk but maternal in her. It’s as if seeing Jinx injured has brought out a motherly side to Adriana.

To my surprise, he does exactly as she says, planting his ass on the stool in the far corner of the ring. Adriana opens the first aid kit and goes to work. She tilts his chin up with one hand and uses the other to gently clean the split on his lip. She dabs it with a medicated wipe, shaking her head and muttering to herself the whole time about stupid, adolescent men.

“It’s a good job I’ve had to clear up Cade’s boo-boos plenty of times, so I know what I’m doing,” she says as she works.

“Cade?” Jinx asks. “Your boyfriend?”

“No, silly. My stepbrother. He’s a gorgeous little bug, but he’s clumsy as hell. Always taking a tumble, and I’m always cleaning him up. Boys will be boys.” She pauses in her dabbing at Jinx for a moment to narrow her eyes. “Even when they’re in their thirties and should know better.”

If I was capable of it, if only my heart would let me, this woman would be the one I would fall in love with.

When she has finished cleaning up Jinx’s cut, she stands back and turns to me. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “Yours is not going to be as easy to deal with,” she says. “You don't have a cut, but there's a massive bruise forming. You might need to go to the emergency room and have an X-ray to make sure you haven't broken anything.”

“It isn’t broken,” I reassure her.

“How do you know?”

“Because I pressed the bone, and trust me, if I had broken it, I would have realized.”

“That's not a scientific way of telling whether you've broken a bone.” She huffs out an annoyed breath as she looks in her first aid box as if there will be some sort of magic that can tell whether my bone is broken.

“Trust me,” I say. “We had to do it out in the field often enough. It's not broken. It hurts, though.” I look at Jinx and smile. “You have a strong right hook, even when you're going down.”

He winks at me. “Had to take you with me.”

I laugh at that, and we shake hands. A new current of respect flows between us now. Adriana is standing to one side looking at us as if we're idiots or animals in a zoo.

“Men,” she says and shakes her head. She marches back to replace the first aid box, still muttering about idiocy and being just like kids on the playground.

“More of a handful than she first appears, that one.” Jinx smirks at me as he steps out of the ring. “Good luck with her.”

I chuckle under my breath.

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