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“He’s twenty-two and full-blooded Italian,” Romeo reminded Clay, thinking it was obvious. “No, he can’t.”
“What the hell did he do when we were on the tour?”
“Oh, he got plenty when we were on the tour.” Romeo laughed that Clay even had to ask. “Groupies everywhere. He had a great time.” One of the classes released and young, pretty women who looked like cheerleaders playing dress up poured out. In their white karate
gis
tied tight with either black or brown belts, it was like a martial arts parade as they giggled and eyed Tino.
Clay snorted at the spectacle. “Doesn’t seem like he should have a hard time finding someone interested.”
It was true, Tino attracted attention anywhere he went, and Garnet was no different. Romeo spied the girls giggling in the corners, making no move to leave as they watched Tino do his thing.
Romeo wasn’t real sure how old these girls were, high teens, early twenties, but it was odd to see an all-female martial arts class. Every class Romeo had ever taken or taught had been unisex, no special favors. If you were going to learn how to fight and defend yourself, you learned the same things regardless of your sex.
“What sorta class is that?”
“That’s one of Jules’s,” Clay said with a snort. “It started as a self-defense class.
She’s got four going a week, but this one’s for all the high school and college girls, and they’ve been taking classes since they could walk. All of ’em are advanced. Lot of ’em compete and are just looking for one more way to get a practice in. So this class isn’t really self-defense even if that’s how it’s labeled; instead it turned into all that kill-and-maim shit Jules loves. If you’re gonna volunteer to be an
uke
for training,
that class
is not the one you wanna volunteer for. Wyatt and me avoid it like the plague, and she’s always looking for fresh meat. Chuito did it for a while, but he got wise real fast.” Romeo turned to Clay in disbelief because the girls looked a little too pressed and perfect to be hard-core. “Really?”
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“Oh yeah,” Clay said with a laugh. “Those ones are all on the offense. All their daddies got ’em convinced every man’s out to take advantage of ’em, and Jules has every single one of ’em hitting low and stomping when you’re down. It’s a dangerous combination, and lemme tell you, Garnet girls ain’t ones you wanna piss off. They’ll hurt ya.”
Romeo laughed, shaking his head and trying to push down the surge in his bloodstream that stirred at the idea of Jules stomping on some guy when he was down.
One thing he’d discovered since he’d started working out at the Cuthouse Cellar ten hours a day—watching Jules fight turned him on.
“This is a very different sorta dojo you guys got going here,” Romeo said, mostly out of pride, knowing Jules had been part of the driving force that created this beautiful place in the middle of nowhere. “You got chicks learning how to kill with their thumbs in one room and taking aerobics in the next.”
“Well”—Clay shrugged—“there ain’t much else to do ’round here. Ya kinda got to cater to everyone.”
“Right,” Romeo said distantly as he watched Jules walk out of the class. Flushed and sweaty, with her long blonde hair in a ponytail, she reminded him of how she looked panting and breathless after sex. “Think I’m gonna take a break.”
“Be my guest,” Clay said, rolling his shoulder, making it obvious he was still fighting the ache from the shooting in December. “Fuck, Wellings, but ya got a way of making me feel like I ain’t all that retired.”
“You love it,” Romeo said knowingly. “I see you fighting with Conner. It’s like you’re still training.”
Jules was by the scale, taking long, gulping drinks out of her water bottle. It drew Romeo’s attention to her mouth and the way her throat worked as she swallowed. He jumped up and headed toward her like a moth to a flame. Trying to seem inconspicuous, he stepped on the scale, just looking for an excuse to get closer. He messed with the weights, not really seeing the numbers as he stared at the back of her 174
neck, shiny with sweat. He’d love to bury his face against it as he was fucking her from behind, licking, tasting the adrenaline that always bled off her when she got worked up.
Jules looked over curiously, and her eyebrows rose. “Why do I see a sauna in your future?”
Romeo frowned at Jules’s comment and then looked to the scale automatically, finally paying attention to how far down the number scale that weight was sliding, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,
SHIT!
This couldn’t be right, eighteen, nineteen—
“Is this fucking thing broken?” he whispered in horror.
“It’s a regulation scale,” Jules said and then let out a low whistle. “Two seventy.
That’s five pounds over weight class, big boy.”
“This isn’t funny, Juliet,” Romeo snapped.
Her eyebrows shot up for an entirely different reason, and she looked around to see if anyone had heard him. When she saw they were alone, she stepped closer, her eyes suddenly soft. “It’s five pounds. That ain’t nothing. Wyatt used to take ten pounds off the night before a fight just sweating it out in a sauna.”
“What sorta heavyweight goes over the upper limit?” Romeo looked at his bare stomach in concern. He’d been eating at that Hal’s place nearly every day, and he was feeling very content and complacent with Jules. Didn’t guys gain ten pounds the moment they fell into a real relationship? “Am I getting fat?”
“No.” Jules giggled and poked at his side. “Don’t know why you’re glaring at that scale like it’s lying to you. You’ve been working out with Clay six days a week doing different exercises than you’re used to, building different muscles. More running, less bench pressing, you’ll be fine. Talk to Wyatt if you get too big. He could write a damn book on how to take weight off before a fight.”
“Pass,” Romeo said with a grimace. “Your brother’s been treating me like I polluted his town by dragging my fat
guido
ass down here.”
175
“You’re not fat.” Jules poked him in the ribs again, not bothering to deny the rest.
She leaned into him and said in a low voice, “I think ya look sexier than ever.”
“You working late tonight?” Romeo asked, wagging his eyebrows suggestively.
“I might be.” A ghost of a smile quirked at Jules’s lips. “What’re you gonna do if I am?”
“Maybe I can help?”
She laughed. “What the heck can you help with?”
“I was thinking something along the lines of manual labor. I could vacuum, take out the trash, or maybe…clean under your desk.”
“Sensei?”
Jules jumped. Romeo did too, and the scale rattled from the force of it as they both turned around guiltily. A young, pretty brunette, with long, curly hair tied back in a ponytail, and a black obi wrapped around her waist, winced at Romeo. “Sorry.” Romeo shook his head, knowing she was one of Jules’s advanced students. “It’s okay.”
“Wow, look at you.” The brunette leaned forward, staring at the scale. “You’re five pounds over your weight class. I ain’t never heard of that happening to a heavyweight. What happens when—”
“What’d you need, Danielle?” Jules interrupted her.
“Oh.” Danielle smiled, as if only now remembering what she’d come to talk to Jules about. She pointed over to where Tino was. “He said he’d volunteer to be uke.” Jules looked over at Tino curiously. “Really?”
Romeo stepped off the scale and glanced back to the punching bags, finding that Tino had abandoned his workout and was talking to two of Danielle’s friends. Romeo narrowed his eyes because he’d deliberately told Tino not to fuck around at Jules’s place of work. That could cause complications they didn’t need, because Tino tended to create drama when it came to women, but Romeo supposed he was getting desperate.
176
With as hard as they’d been working, Tino hadn’t had the energy to look for a party.
That left the Cuthouse Cellar as his sole source of socialization.
“Uke for your class,” Romeo said, remembering Clay’s warning. “But—” Danielle shrugged. “He just offered.”
“It’s sort of a tough class,” Jules said with a wince. “Do you really think—”
“He offered.” Romeo laughed. If Tino wanted some action, it sounded like he was going to get it. “Let him be uke. He teaches at the dojo back home. He’s fully certified.
You can’t do anything to him that hasn’t already been done.” Jules beamed. “Then great.”
“Yay!” Danielle turned around and shouted across the room. “She said yes!”
“Danielle!” Jules scolded.
“Sorry, sensei.”
Danielle ran off before Jules could change her mind, and Romeo frowned as he watched her run up and jump on his brother triumphantly, full of the same unabashed energy Jules was. “How old is that girl?”
“Twenty, why?”
“No reason,” Romeo said, thoughts of Tino forgotten as he turned back to Jules. “I think it’s sexy when you’re being all bossy and teacher-like.” Jules laughed again, looking around before she leaned forward and said, “My desk might need cleaning.”
“Maybe after I’m done cleaning it, we can play our own little game of sensei and uke.” Romeo gave Jules a wide, naughty grin.
Jules gave him a very serious lawyer look that she knew turned him on. “Whose gonna be the sensei?”
Romeo held up his hands in defeat and laughed. He was sort of hoping they could take turns being sensei, but he said, “We’re both black belts. Either way works for me.
What time?”
177
Jules looked at the clock across the room. “I got another class. I need a shower, and I’m closing up tonight. Ten thirty?”
“That’s good for me,” Romeo said, even as he winced internally knowing Clay was going to be calling him at six the next morning telling him and Tino to get their lazy asses out of bed. No fucking wonder he was gaining weight like crazy, but he wasn’t going to complain, not to Jules, because he didn’t want her to think he couldn’t take what this town dished out at him. “Meet you—here?” Jules was the only person he knew who worked at so many jobs he wasn’t real sure what desk she was talking about. She had an office here at the Cellar along with her personal law office up the street. He was fairly certain she had her own desk at the sheriff’s office too, but he’d never stopped by to see her working there.
Jail cells.
Romeo had enough post-traumatic stress to break out in a sweat just thinking about willingly walking into a sheriff’s office.
“Here’s good.” Jules spread out her arms to show off the Cuthouse Cellar. “We’ll have plenty of room to play. Money
finally
well spent.”
“It was well spent before now,” Romeo told her warmly. “This place is fucking amazing. You even got a cage in it.” He pointed to the eight-sided cage that was just like the UFC-regulated cages he fought in for all his professional fights. “That’s awesome.”
Jules gave him a smile and shrugged self-consciously. “It was kinda an indulgence, but the three of us couldn’t let ’em close it down and once we started dumping money into it, we just decided to make it into everything we loved.”
“It’s always packed here.” Romeo wished they weren’t out in the open, more so wishing they weren’t still meeting in secret so he could hug her and praise her accomplishments the best way he knew how. “And there’s jack shit to do in this town, so I know they appreciate it.”
“There’s things to do,” Jules argued, giving him a mock glare. “If you’d get out from under Clay long enough to go sightseeing, I’d show you.” 178
“Ha ha,” he said, though it wasn’t far off. Romeo spent so much time in the cage he was starting to feel like he was dating Clay instead of Jules. “Like you’d be seen in public with me.”
“I would, actually,” Jules said softly. “I’m gonna tell Wyatt ’bout us.”
“God,” Romeo groaned, holding up his hand to that. “Not this week. That’s gonna start shit I can’t deal with.”
Jules laughed. “Are you scared of my brother?”
“Yes,” Romeo said without hesitation. “He carries handcuffs, a gun, and a badge.
Bad combination in my world.”
“I carry handcuffs, a gun, and a badge. I carry
several
guns.”
“I noticed,” Romeo said, arching a dubious eyebrow. “You’re the only chick I know who carries a .45 in her glove compartment and a shotgun in her trunk.”
“You can never be too prepared.”
“For what, World War III?”
“Wellings!”
Romeo looked across the Cellar, seeing Clay holding up his hands expectantly, and he groaned under his breath.
“Your boyfriend’s calling,” Jules said in a singsong voice.
A half sob of exhaustion slipped out of him. In an attempt to look for some hidden reserve of strength, Romeo said, “I’m playing sensei tonight.” Jules narrowed light eyes at him, a smirk tugging at her lips before she said,
“Fine.”
“Really?” Romeo said, feeling very awake all of a sudden when he thought of Jules on the mat with him.
“Are we doing this?” Clay called out once more, his voice echoing across the room like the growl of an angry bear. “’Cause we ain’t getting any younger!” Romeo rolled his eyes and sulked off. “Speaking of being uke.”