Broken Fighter: BBW, New Adult Romance (2 page)

“Yeah,” Jackson said with a small nod of his head.

“Good!” Bookers yanked the door open again and pulled it closed firmly behind him. A half second later had the tumbler moving into place within the door’s frame as Booker used his key to lock it. A final yank of the door was given and Jackson heard a second small clink as the locking mechanism clicked fully into place this time. No one else would be barging in unexpectedly.

Without otherwise moving from his position, Jackson finally allowed himself to glance at the young girl standing inside the shower next to him. His jaw fell. Gone was the shapeless, pudgy girl. In her place, standing less than two feet away, was a drenched angel capable of giving teenage boys around the world wet dreams. Jackson could see now that instead of pudgy, she was voluptuous with large luscious breasts that strained against the clinging fabric of her wet and heavy t-shirt, the V of which exposed more cleavage than his grandfather would have approved him staring at without invitation. But the cleavage was nothing for where the t-shirt ended, the flimsy cotton skirt began—soaked, clinging, and nearly as translucent as air. Through its wetness, Jackson could now make out every line and curve of her delicious thighs, the smooth roundness of her hips, the small V at the apex of her thighs.

Closing his eyes, Jackson took a deep breath. It had been awhile since he had embarrassed himself in front of a girl by getting wood at an inappropriate moment. Given that the only thing he was wearing was a silky set of boxer shorts that would do nothing to hide his want of her, he was determined to control the ache and throb that overran his thoughts with a hunger that included nothing less than stepping into that shower with her and throwing all their clothes out to dry.

Opening his eyes again, he nearly groaned. She was looking at him with large round eyes and red, parted lips.
Those damned lips….
Jackson turned and walked away, keeping his back to her.

“Time for you to go,” he said, his need taking over his voice, dropping it low.
Keep it together, man. They said she’s eighteen.
Jackson did the mental math—seventeen years of life between them.
Fuck,
he realized,
she could be my kid.

“You in some kind of trouble?” he asked, turning around to face her again.
Craps!
He knew he’d made a mistake the second his eyes found her—but there was no looking away this time. He couldn’t make himself. She was too beautiful, too luscious, too in need of being eaten alive.

Her plump little mouth stretched into a wide, cheery yet forced grin. “Nope! Not at all! Just a little practical joke,” she said, giving her shoulders a shrug.

Beautiful….
Jackson did a mental face palm as he reminded himself of her age. Mirroring her smile, he slapped his hands together before rubbing them. “Okay then! Off you go!” With a wide sweep of his arm he motioned toward the door. Despite the allure of her alabaster bounty, in all its goodness right before his eyes, he needed her gone. He had enough complications in his life.

Her smile faltered before cocking her head to the side with a half shoulder shrug. “What’s the rush?”

He could hear the strain in her voice, saw her entire body tighten as even her breathing grew more shallow, raising her heavy breasts up just a little more toward his watering mouth as she unconsciously arched her back. A growl nearly escaped him when he spotted the shadow of her tight peaks being hinted at through her wet drapings.
 

Her expression grew coy as a spark of heat reached her eye. “There’s time for fun,” she said, letting her gaze travel his long, muscular length from the floor to his head.

It was all the invitation he needed. Four long strides had him under the shower’s warm spray with her head cupped in his hands, her back pressed against the cool tiles. Her softness was a welcome contrast to the hard form he had fought so tirelessly to build, and given that she was 5’3 at most, he folded his shoulders over and around her as he bent to capture her mouth with his.

His lips moved over hers, enticing her, inviting her but then he froze. She wasn’t kissing him back, Jackson realized.
She’s not even breathing
. Pulling away to be able to see her face, the shocked fear he saw in her wide eyes had him immediately releasing her and stepping away until his bare back was pressed to the water-warmed tile on the opposite wall. “What are you doing here?”
First she’s hiding, then she’s coming on to me and now she’s scared? What the fuck!

Yelling sounded from the hallway, and Jackson stuck his head outside the open faced stall to look at the locker room door as someone pulled hard on the handle, rattling the door. Staying in position to be able to see if the lock would give way, he turned his eyes back on the girl, suspicion brewing that she might be a demon instead of an angel. “Talk fast,” he warned, shooting his gaze back toward the door as an unspoken threat of what would happen next if he wasn’t satisfied with what she had to say.

“My brother killed my dad and my mother is trying to frame me.” The words spilled from her mouth, each one falling over the next in their haste to be heard. “I’m adopted,” she added as an afterthought, her voice trailing off. “Five years ago,” she shrugged.

Jackson returned to his position inside the shower with his back once more against the warm, wet wall, the water beating on his long torso. His eyes searched her face for the telltale signs of the lie he knew had to be there.
Nothing.
A chill ran through him despite the shower’s heat.

Needing more, Jackson cleared his throat. “Why’d he kill ‘em?” Waiting for her answer, his eyes eagerly searched her face again for any chance that she was lying.

“I, uh, I’m not sure but…I think my dad was messing with him.”

Jackson’s gut twisted but he said nothing. Lifting an eyebrow, he let the space between them fill with his silence. He was pretty sure he knew what she was saying but he still needed to hear it.
 

The young girl’s gaze fell away as her nails dug impotently into the tile behind her. “I found him crying in the laundry room one day. He was naked and cutting up his bed sheets with a knife. He turned it on me,” her voice faltered and she paused before continuing. “He wanted to know how to live on the streets as a runaway.”

“What did you tell him?” Jackson asked, intrigue overriding his ebbing disbelief.

Her eyes lifted once more to meet his. “I told him he wouldn’t make it,” she said flatly, unapologetically as she shrugged her shoulders. “He didn’t have any friends. He would have been all alone—and he’s…he’s
pretty
.”

Jackson reached one long, powerful arm to a spot just below her shoulder, savagely quelling the sudden urge to protect her when he saw her flinch away from his nearness. Twisting first one knob and then the other, he turned the shower’s water off, leaving in its place a quiet that filled the space like echoes waiting to happen.

“What’s your name?” Jackson asked, his voice gentle.

“Emily.”

“Emily, I’m Jackson. I’m going to strip naked and take a shower now. If you’re still here when I get done, we’ll talk.” Jackson felt his groin tighten again when her eyes fluttered in response to his plans, hope rising within him that it was due to the part about him getting naked.

“Okay,” she smiled, her pale cheeks glowing with a hint of pink as she sidled out of the shower to give him space and privacy.

With his would-be seductress clear of the stall, Jackson pulled the stall’s curtain closed, aware that the narrow strip of opaque white plastic left nearly half of the stall’s interior completely visible. He positioned it as best he could in the center of the stall door. It wasn’t enough coverage to protect anyone’s innocence but was enough to add an insinuation of modesty…although for who’s benefit he wasn’t sure.

Coy little tart,
Jackson snorted to himself, thinking about her myriad of signals running back and forth between hot and cold.
That girl’s as innocent as a ten dollar hooker.
He’d seen far better actresses than her play a guy.

Pulling his shorts down and draping them over the curtain rod, his mind’s eye filled with the dark shadows of her nipples as they pressed into her wet t-shirt.
Innocent girls don’t look like that,
he told himself, fully aware of how stupid the logic was. Turning his hip as he stood, he made sure that his growing desire for her wasn’t visible to any outside eyes. As his hands ran over his lean muscles to wash away the night’s sweat and grime, he thought of her softness when he pressed her to the wall. He thought of how her mouth had tasted, the fullness of her lips giving way to his…he thought of how she refused to kiss him back.
Such a fucking tease
, he swore, hoping she’d be gone by the time he finished his shower.

Three minutes later and he was turning the water off, giving his body a moment to drip dry, realizing too late that he was without a towel
.
He hadn’t seen one anywhere and the spare he carried in his bag was ten feet across the room. Glancing down the length of himself, he saw that the “man” was in a state between happy and oblivious slumber, enough to give her an idea of what he had to offer but not enough to humiliate himself if she wasn’t interested. Rolling his massive shoulders back to ease the tension he carried there, he raised one muscle girded arm and jerked the shower curtain aside.
 

Not giving hesitation a chance, Jackson stepped out of the shower, allowing the room’s cool air to caress his wet skin. He didn’t need to scan the room to find the girl. His eyes locked to her before the hot pink flushed her cheeks, deeper and more crimson than the pale flush he’d seen earlier.
 

With a sudden suck of air, Emily spun around, turning her back to his raw nakedness.

Glancing down the length of his body, Jackson was happy for her demure act. Seeing the way her wet clothes accented the swell of her full, round bottom made his body wake in ways he didn’t feel like putting on display.
Eighteen man. Get it together.

“So, what’s your plan?” Jackson asked, moving the short distance to his duffle bag. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Emily’s hand twisted and pulled at the fabric at her hip. The action only accentuated her bottom even more, pulling the water-heavy fabric up into the half moon of her cheeks. He suppressed a growl. No way in hell was he giving her the chance to shoot him down again.
Hell will freeze over first.

It took Jackson only a second to find the small forest green towel buried deep within the near black duffle bag. Meant just for drying, it did nothing to cover him. Putting first one foot and then the other onto the low lying bench, he made fast yet thorough work of drying the droplets from his skin. The towel wasn’t big enough to pull across his back and he suppressed the urge to ask her to dry it for him, a smile coming to his face at how flustered she would feign being if he did.
Hell of a player.
Glancing at the graceful line of her back, he wasn’t even convinced that there had been a murder…or that she herself wasn’t the murderer. Whatever the answer was, one thing was true. People were looking for her.
Dickweeds,
he thought to himself, remembering how they had barged in as if they had owned the place.
 

Digging through his duffle bag some more, Jackson pulled out and donned fresh boxer cut underwear and a pair of faded and worn jeans that hung low on his hips, the worn fabric displaying every curve and flex of his powerful thighs.

Glancing at Emily, Jackson saw that she was still pulling at the wet fabric at her hip. “Well?” he prompted, tired of waiting for an answer.

“I, uh, I figure I’ll hide out in here for as long as I can and then sneak out sometime late.”
 

Jackson let the space between them fill with silence again as he repacked his bag in preparation of escaping from her and the legion of problems sure to come with her. With his fighting career in its death throes and his bank account sucking vapors, he didn’t want the added drama.
 

A loud stomach grumble filled the locker room, stilling his hand on the duffle bag’s zipper.
 

Don’t do it!
Jackson’s mind yelled even as the words found their way from his mouth. “How long since you ate?” His mental self punched imaginary fists into a cement wall.

Emily shrugged one small shoulder. “Maybe around six last night.”

Over twenty-four hours
, Jackson thought, glancing at the wall clock. “How long you been running?”
 

“It was about five this morning. That’s when I heard the screams. I left maybe twenty minutes later,” Emily answered, turning around slowly but then quickly averting her gaze when she saw Jackson’s state of partial dress, her pale cheeks growing hot pink again.

Glancing down at himself, Jackson failed to suppress a grin. It was true he was still half naked and it was true that as men went, he was more muscular and taller than most. He returned his gaze to Emily, looking pretty and sweet despite the seductive cling of her wet clothes.
 

Maybe I should rethink the ten dollar hooker thing
, he thought but as if in answer, his mind travelled to his own time on the street as a teen, his escape from an abusive father to find a mother who had abandoned him to save herself. He remembered the cold, dead eyes of the other teens he’d met while on the run, their calculating methods to get what they wanted, what they needed. He’d learned the hard way that there had been nothing innocent about the girls. Life and families had seen to that. And while Emily appeared to be easy and sweet, no longer sharp at the edges, he could see something of those kids in her. Certain he already knew the answer, Jackson asked anyway, “You ever runaway before?”

Emily’s hand pulled at her heavy, wet clothes at her hip some more, refusing to look at Jackson. “I’ve spent some time,” she said quietly, shrugging her shoulders. “It’s no big.” Her eyes dropped to the floor as she bit on the corner of her lower lip. Her stomach grumbled again. “Look—“