Fighting the Fire (Warrior Fight Club 3)

Or whatever they were.

Even that offhand thought felt disingenuous after being thrown together after his accident.

She knocked. The door swung open.

Sean looked…so much better. That mischievous light was back in his eyes—well, the one not covered by the taped shield of course. His color was better. He stood taller, his big body filling almost the whole doorway.

Standing there in a pair of worn jeans and a white T-shirt that set off the tan on his muscular arms, he was back to being fucking hot. And he was well enough that she didn’t have to feel like a creeper for noticing.

“You comin’ in?” he asked, amusement in his tone.

“Uh, yeah, of course. Thanks.” She moved into his family room and watched as he closed the door behind her. “You look better.”

“Starting to feel human again. My chest actually looks worse, though.” He helpfully lifted his shirt to reveal that the bruising had in fact spread. But bruises often appeared worse before they got better.

For just a split second, Dani had this stray thought: Maybe it would feel even better if I licked it. The hard pads of his pecs. The ridges of his abdomen. For starters.

Ack. What the heck was wrong with her?

He dropped his shirt and continued as if she wasn’t standing there imagining seriously violating his personal space, to put it mildly. “But I’m not coughing quite as much and I can do more than I could.”

She nodded. “Good. That’s good.” Needing to look at something besides his climbable body—oh, great, Dani, first he’s lickable, now he’s climbable—she turned towards the couch and found that he’d laid out a spread on the coffee table. Popcorn, pretzels, cookies, drinks.

“Yeah, so, I got us some snacks,” he said, running a hand over his dark hair. Was he nervous? He sounded a little nervous. Or maybe she was projecting? Gah, what was even happening here? “Uh, but if there’s something else you might want—”

“No, this looks great, Sean. I would’ve helped you bring all this down, though. You have to be careful not to overdo it.”

“I didn’t. I promise. I saved the ice machine for you, if you don’t mind. But the rest was no problem.”

“Of course.” She dropped her purse onto the chair and grabbed a few pieces of cheese popcorn and a few pieces of caramel. “Do you ever eat these together?” she asked, popping one of each into her mouth. “It seems like it should be weird, but it’s really good.”

Sean blinked and then a slow smile grew on his face. “That’s how I eat them. I only put them in separate bowls for you.”

She grinned. “Great minds.”

“Right?” He nodded. “Also, you just called my mind great, for the record. I think we need to mark this occasion.”

Dani rolled her eyes. “Don’t make me change my opinion.”

He chuckled. She grinned. Gah why does this feel like a date?!

Luckily, things felt more normal by the time she got him hooked up to the ice machine and he queued up the movie. “‘Captain America’ is first.”

“Why is that?” she asked. “Since you mentioned having a spreadsheet and all.” She smirked at him, even though their text exchange the day before had made her smile. And then she’d purposely frowned because why was she smiling at texts from Sean Riddick? But then someone had caught her smiling and teased her about whether she had a secret sexting partner and that’d made her inexplicably blush. Damnit. And she wasn’t even normally a blusher!

“It occurs chronologically earliest, in the 1940s.”

“Okay. Just how many movies are there in this world?” She eyed his laptop sitting open on the end table.

Sean blanked his expression, like he was purposely suppressing a reaction. “Uh, it’s better if you just go with the flow here.”

“How many?”

“Really—”

“Five?”

He coughed on a piece of popcorn.

“Ten?”

Clearing his throat, he said, “It’s a robust universe, okay? Leave it at that.”

“Fifteen?” She’d originally asked out of curiosity, but now she was having fun trying to make him react. Which was why she launched a surprise attack in reaching across his lap to grab his computer. Her fingers had just grasped at the corner of it when Sean’s arms banded around her mid-section—one hand on her hip and the other wrapping under her and landing on her side—and pulled her back.

“What do you think you’re doing, woman?”

His arms were so freaking strong, and God his hands were big where they held her tight. One arm brushed the underside of her breast and the other gripped her hip, and both were freaking arousing. “I was seeing how many movies there are. And this hold is unfair because I can’t fight you off without hurting you.”

Grinning, he held her tighter, forcing her to brace her hands on his thigh. “Yes, be very careful, Daniela. I’m super fragile over here. You wouldn’t want to hurt me.”