Free Dirty Brawler: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (with bonus novel!) by Teagan Kade, August Dimuro

charms any more than the people we met, which was the problem. I found it harder and harder to resist him.
    It had taken every bit of my willpower not to open the box he had sent to my office for the event. Kevin would probably never let me live it down. He thought I was nuts for rejecting the sexy-as-sin boxer who, as he said, clearly had a boner the size of Texas for me.
    As if I wasn’t already fantasizing enough about Shaun’s cock. My vibrator had been getting quite the workout ever since the magazine shoot. Things were going opposite to what I wanted, and it seemed the same could be said for Shaun. I hoped I could do enough damage control to save some of the goodwill we’d built before Shaun attempted to singlehandedly blow it all to hell.
    Although there had always been rumors around Shaun’s temper since Rio, I just witnessed how quickly he could be set off with the right set of circumstances. If someone wanted to mess with him or stir up trouble, it wouldn’t be terribly hard at all.
    It was a theory that had been rolling around in the back of my mind ever since my run-in with Nigel. I kept looking over the press from the last six months and comparing it to what Shaun told me happened every time. Each encounter seemed to start innocently enough, but there was a spark of something that hit just the right button to light Shaun’s temper. He might not have gone to the extremes that each story said he had, but from what I had just witnessed he was cruising for something big to happen soon. Even if none of the previous stories were true, one was about to be if Shaun couldn’t control his temper. I had no doubt.
    We arrived at the K Klub—a quiet, exclusive bar I knew to be discreet. The staff got paid well to be unobtrusive and to keep their mouths shut about whatever happened inside those four walls. Shaun needed to cool off and I needed to make sure that my presence wasn’t linked with Shaun any more than it already had been. I started rehearsing the story in my head of what I was going to tell my boss when the pictures of Shaun’s shouting match and me dragging him off surfaced in tomorrow’s news.
    Shaun seemed to have regained some level of composure by the time we sat down. He ordered a scotch and water, double, and seemed to be daring me to say something. I couldn’t help but comment “It’s not like keeping you sober helped anything tonight.”
    “That was your fault,” he replied.
    I gaped at him. “ My fault?”
    “What do you expect when you keep telling me no? I was pissed.”
    “So you throw a tantrum like a child? You’re a grown man, Shaun. Surely you’ve had a woman tell you no before.”
    Shaun slid across the side of the booth until he was uncomfortably close.
    I played out if I should move or not, but my body, the betrayer it was, refused to obey anything coming from my brain.
    “Everything about your body is screaming yes. From the way you have a hard time catching your breath when I do this,” he leaned into the crook of my neck, and I felt my eyes slide closed, “to the way you arch your back as if you’re offering up your body to me. I can see it in your eyes even if I couldn’t feel it from each and every move you make.”
    His lips brushed the sensitive skin on the side of my neck and I almost screamed. My body was so hungry for him. I brought my hands up, palms flat against his chest intending to push him away. But when I felt the lightest pressure of his lips skim on my collarbone, I clenched the lapels of his jacket tight in my fists instead.
    His hands gripped my hips and dragged my body into his, pressing my softness against his lean hardness. His hand cupped the back of my head under my drape of hair, and I felt his lips begin their ascent to mine. My brain said I needed to stop him, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I felt as if he was lighting a fire up the side of my body, pussy clenching in need for him.
    Shaun stopped with his lips just a hairbreadth away from