Free Beast: An MMA Stepbrother Romance by Michaela Scott

ass from behind.  This is the first time he’s been shirtless around me since the night we met, when he dragged me into his locker room and sucked out my breath with his kiss.  In our current states of undress, it’s hard for me to think of anything else.
    At least the beach is totally packed.  I’m not sure where we’re even going to sit down.
    Caleb scans the coast.  “Fuck.  I thought we were going to have some space to ourselves.”
    “That’s because you don’t live down here.  It’s packed all summer.  We can’t all go to private beaches like you do.”
    I walk ahead of Caleb and point to a patch of open space between two empty beach tents.  “But look, we can put our towel down there.  That’s all the space we need.”
    Caleb walks up between the tents and spreads his towel out across the sand.  “Alright, but if people don’t clear out of here soon, we’re heading up the coast.”
    I sit down next to Caleb, careful not to pop out of my bathing suit on the way down.  I haven’t been able to make any sudden movements since I got out of the car.  Caleb looks out at the sea, bathed in the glowing orange shadow of the tent next to us.  “So…you’re down here training for another fight?”
    Caleb looks amused.  “Yeah.  It’s a week from now.”
    “Please don’t tell me it’s against a guy with knives for hands.”
    “Nah.  That guy you saw me fight was with another league.  California Kings members don’t use weapons, but sometimes we fight guys from other leagues who do.  This next fight is more important, because if I win, I fight in the tournament.”
    Caleb hands me a bottle of sunscreen and points to his back.  I give him a look.
    “What?  I can’t reach back there on my own.”
    Well, he’s probably right, and I’m not going to get very far in having a normal relationship with Caleb if I refuse to touch him, so I squirt some sunscreen into my hand and start rubbing it across his tattooed muscles and try to ignore the tingling heat developing between my legs. 
    “Tournament?”
    “The fucking championship.  The 16 best fighters in the league play a four-round tournament, and the winner gets an insane amount of cash.”
    “So you’re risking your life for money?  Isn’t your dad worth billions?”
    I feel Caleb’s muscles tense against my hands.  “Yeah, but right now, I’m only worth what he’s worth.  If I win the tournament, I’ll have the money to get out of Poodle and do my own thing.”
    “So is that why you fight?  For the money?”
    Caleb flexes his hands against his knees.  “Nah.  I mean, I want the money and all, but when I get up into the ring, nobody knows what my name is or who my dad is.  I’m just the Beast, and everything I get, I have to earn.”
    When Caleb says “Beast,” my eyes are drawn back down to his wild tattoos, a jungle that warps and shifts with every breath he takes.  “What did you do to keep it happy before you started doing MMA?  Like, when you were a little kid?”
    There go his muscles again, tensing and warping beneath my fingers.  It’s only now that I realize that he’s been adequately covered with sunscreen for a while now, and that I’ve basically just been giving him a backrub for the past couple minutes.  I pull my hands away.  Caleb takes a deep breath and points across the ocean.  “You see that spot out there where the water’s a little lighter?”
    Squinting as hard as I can, I can just barely make out what he’s talking about.
    “I think so?”
    “It’s a sandbar.  I don’t want to talk about this shit with all these people around, but if we swim out there, it’ll be a lot quieter.”
    “Are you sure we can make it out there?”
    “Positive.  Get up on my back and I’ll swim us out.”
    Caleb’s like a dolphin as soon as he hits the water.  I bet he has a pool up at his mansion in Palo Alto.  Or maybe a private beach.  I have to throw my arms and legs around his torso and