Sadie wasn’t surprised when Caleb pulled up to a gym she’d gone to a couple of times on her friend Molly’s recommendation. She’d actually run into Caleb here a few times, but she preferred her gym, which was much closer to her apartment.

That had been both for convenience and privacy.

Three years ago, after breaking up with Wes and losing her way again, she’d had to change her life up. She’d had to learn some things about herself. Things like self-care. For her, self-care meant working out as a drugless way to fight depression and anxiety and find some peace of mind.

And she’d needed peace of mind badly .

She’d also found her inner girl power at a drop-in kickboxing class. It’d diffused her pent-up emotions like nothing else. After that, she’d taken more and had kept up with it, also taking some actual MMA workshops as well. She’d learned some great wrestling moves that she’d never had to put into action but had done wonders for her butt.

Double win.

She’d given up movies, eating out, and buying new clothes for the gym membership and it’d been about two and a half years now of going at least twice a week. She was both proud and fairly confident she could kick some serious ass if needed.

She looked over at Caleb. “You’re more than a little overdressed for this, still wearing your armor for the day.”

Caleb turned off the car and turned to face her. They’d dropped Lollipop off at his sister Hannah’s house for the night and their date had apparently officially begun. “You’re big on armor,” he said. “Your own. Mine . . .”

She wasn’t sure where he was going with this so she didn’t say anything.

There was a smile on his face but his eyes were very serious. “And you’re right. I’ve got armor, but it’s not my suit. My armor’s my skin, and it’s tough as an elephant hide, born of a life that hasn’t always been easy.”

She knew all about life not being easy, but she still didn’t interrupt him because she wanted him to keep talking forever. For all his effortless charm and charisma, he didn’t really talk about himself much. She was insanely curious to learn more about him—which was a self-revelation she was slowly coming to accept.

“I made a decision once I felt you softening toward me,” he said. “A decision to show you the man beneath my armor.”

This revealing sentence took her a moment to process. “You think I’ve softened for you?”

“I know you have.” His gaze dared her to tell him otherwise, to lie right to his face.

And she could have. She was a good liar when she wanted to be, but she didn’t want to lie to him.

He held her gaze for another beat, giving her the chance to stop this, whatever this was. When she didn’t, he got out of the car and came around for her, taking her gym bag and shouldering it along with his. Then he took her hand and they walked toward the building.

It was located just between Cow Hollow and the marina, on the bottom floor of an old warehouse building. The front was reclaimed wood paneling and patinated decorative hardware, but Sadie bet this place had come by both naturally, weathered by time and use. It was showing its age but also a whole lot of personality with the wide floor-to-ceiling windows and open beam construction. The buildings on either side had been redone in more modern styles, but this one had been left in its original glory.

“I wonder why this one didn’t get renovated.”

“Maybe the owner liked it the way it was.”

“I do too,” she said.

Caleb slowed to a stop. “Me too,” he said in a voice that had her turning her gaze on him.

He’d tilted his head back and was looking up at the gym sign hanging from the second-floor window, hands in his pockets, shoulders back in a carefree, easy stance, but something about it didn’t say carefree or easygoing. He seemed far away and . . . reflective. “When I first started coming here, this place was a dojo.” He took her hand, turning her to the front door.

“It’s closed,” she said, surprised.

“Yes, it closes early one night a week for private use.” Caleb pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the front door.

“You’re the private user?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ve got connections.”

“You could say that.”

Since she’d been here before, she knew the front door opened into a wide room lined with windows to the street and marina on one wall, the other with mirrors and a sea of gym equipment. Near the front door was an entrance area, a front desk, the wall behind it lined with pictures of people who’d been here.

The alarm was beeping at their entrance. Caleb took out his phone and thumbed his way through an app and the beeping stopped.

“That’s a pretty serious connection,” she noted.

“I created the alarm app this building uses and installed it,” he said.

A phone on the front desk buzzed and then a woman’s voice beamed into the room. “Caleb?”

“Yep,” he said.

“Just checking. Want to go a few rounds? Niles is with me and he says he wouldn’t mind kicking your white-boy ass. We could be there in twenty.”

“Not tonight,” Caleb said. “He’ll have to save that pleasure for another time. ’Night, Sienne.” He disconnected whatever connection they’d had and then did something else with the app. “Dismantling the security cameras,” he said.

“Okay.” Sadie cocked her head. “So clearly you’ve got more than just a connection here.”

“That was my sister Sienne. Her husband and I spar sometimes. A pass here is available to all of my employees in their benefits package.”

“You own the whole building,” she guessed.

“I do.” He paused as if waiting for something more from her and when he didn’t get it, he said, “Gotta admit, I figured I’d get some sort of smartass comment about that.”

“I was controlling myself.” She lifted a shoulder and smiled. “Besides, you seemed to have carved out a really great life for yourself, one that caters to your strengths. I actually think it’s great.”

“Yeah?” he asked. “And what are my strengths?”

She rolled her eyes. “Like you need any compliments or help with your ego.”

“Humor me.”

“Alright,” she said. “Well, you’re extremely smart.”

He gave a small smile. “Is that it? I’m smart?”

She shrugged. “Started with the obvious. You’re also a sucker when it comes to animals and women who can’t always make ends meet—”

He opened his mouth, but she set a finger on his lips, not wanting to go there right now. “And then there’s the thing I didn’t expect.”

At her touch, his eyes had liquefied to the color of whiskey, neat. “It’s that I’m a great kisser, right?” he asked.

She liked the feel of his lips moving beneath the pad of her finger and it made her smile. As did the fact that he was right. He was a really great kisser. He liked to do it, a lot, and it showed. When he was on his game—and she suspected he was always on his game—he could make her forget things, like where and who she was. His tongue was magical and she might have whimpered a little at the memory, but she shook her head because it was more than that. “It’s that you see me,” she said softly.

Reaching up, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and brought her hand to his chest. With his other hand, he stroked back a strand of her hair and smiled. “I do see you. And I like what I see. But I’d like to see more, Sadie. A lot more.”

“Ditto,” she whispered, the admission not coming easy. She wasn’t even sure when it’d happened, and uncomfortable with the direction of those thoughts, she turned away to look more closely at the wall of pictures.

There were many from years ago when this place had indeed clearly been a dojo, and much smaller. It hadn’t been the whole bottom floor of the building back then, but just one tiny corner of it. The recurring theme seemed to be an Asian man in various stages of the dojo. She realized there was also a small boy, dark hair, big eyes, skinny and awkward. As the Asian man aged in the pics, so did the boy, from young kid to teen to . . .

“You,” she murmured in shock, lifting her head and meeting Caleb’s eyes.

He’d been watching her take in the pictures, and gave a small smile when she figured it out. “Me. I was a scrawny, asthmatic, bullied ten-year-old, maybe forty pounds soaking wet.”

Hardly more than Lollipop weighed. Sadie soaked up that tidbit and tried to picture him as anything but this confident, successful, charismatic, leanly muscled man standing in front of her.

“This place saved my life,” he said. And on that shocking statement, he once again took her hand and walked her through the place.

When they got to the sparring ring, she slowed. Thanks to all her time spent in a gym not all that unlike this place on the other side of town, she felt quite comfortable here. Powerful. Extremely feminine, and . . . well, sexy. “Want to go a few rounds?” she asked playfully.

His eyes heated. “Yeah, I want to go a few rounds.”

He’d used his husky sex voice and she let out a low laugh. “I meant in the ring. As long as you’re not afraid?”

She knew she was poking the bear, and his mouth curved in a smile that had every single part of her body doing a happy little quiver.

Down, girl .

“Are you challenging me?” he asked.

Hell yes. “I should probably warn you, I sometimes kickbox for exercise.” She shrugged. “It gets my aggressions out.”

“There are other ways to do that.”

That voice again. Her knees wobbled. “I prefer the mats. But if that makes you nervous . . .”

“Get changed.”

She didn’t often hop-to when given a demand. Okay, so she never hopped-to when given a command, and yet tonight she did. But only because she wanted in the ring with him so badly she was nearly humming with anticipation. When she’d been here before, she’d seen him in the ring with her friend Molly, and another time with his friend Lucas, and they’d kicked the shit out of each other. For fun.

Men were so weird, but she could admit that it’d turned her on to watch how well he handled himself. Lucas was a badass security expert and investigator who worked out of the same building she did. Caleb might be a hugely successful venture capitalist, but she’d have never imagined him to be able to hold his own against someone whose job required him to be able to kick ass.

And yet he could.

A few minutes later she was in an exercise tank and shorts, both snug to her body so she’d have freedom of movement without worrying about revealing things she didn’t want revealed. Tying her hair up, she stepped into the gym area.

Caleb was already in the ring, waiting for her in what she’d seen him in the last time she’d been here. Long-sleeved performance tee and loose-fitting basketball shorts.

His warm gaze drifted over her. “You look great.”

“I wasn’t going for great,” she said. “I was going for I-wanna-kick-your-ass.”

With a heart-stopping smile, he held the ropes for her to climb in. “Show me what you’ve got, Tough Girl.”

With a shake of her head at his easy cockiness—he was so going down—she walked around the ring for a minute, her veins pumping with an excitement she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Caleb was still looking far too sure of himself as he waited for her to make the first move. “Pretty damn sure of yourself, aren’t you?” she murmured.

He just grinned.

Oh yeah, waaaaay too confident. And gorgeous, dammit. “You should brace yourself,” she warned.

“Bring it.”

“You think I can’t?”

“So far, I think that you’re all talk. Hold up a sec.” Then he straightened and casually pulled off his shirt.

Sadie froze. Because yes, he was leanly muscled and sinewy and perfect, just as she knew him to be. But he was also . . .

Tatted.

How had she missed it that night they’d spent together? He had tattoos across the back of his shoulders and around one bicep. Another low on a hipbone that vanished into his low-slung shorts and was sexy as hell. And then there were the words Carpe Diem scripted vertically down one leanly muscled side.

Her mouth had fallen open. She’d had no idea. The only thing she could think was that it’d been so cold in her apartment, he’d never taken off his shirt all the way. She was still standing there dazed by the sight of him when he took her down, flattening her to the mat.

Lying on top of her, he smiled. “You were saying?”

“Hey,” she said, more breathless than she wanted to admit. “I wasn’t ready. You distracted me. On purpose .”

He pushed himself upright, giving her a hand to pull her up as well. “With what?” he asked innocently, knowing damn well it was his tattoos, and more than the Ninja Turtle digression. The one on his hip . . . she wanted to lick it. She wanted to lick him . Except he was looking quite pleased with himself.

“I didn’t see them the other night and you know it,” she said.

He just smiled. So he wanted to play it like that. Okay then. And knowing she could give as good as she got, she let her expression go a little sultry as she smiled and turned away, walking slowly to the edge of the ring, wrapping her fingers around the ropes, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she smiled back at him. “You really do have a nice setup here.”

Coming up behind her, he set his hands over hers on the ropes and lowered his head so that he could brush his mouth along the side of her throat. She let out a pleased hum and shifted her body against his.

His breathing changed and that’s when she struck, wrapping a foot around the back of his knee, causing it to buckle. Using her weight as momentum, she took him down to the mat, rolling over so that they were chest-to-chest.

“I wasn’t ready,” he said, mirroring her words back at her. His hands slid down her back to her butt, which he squeezed. “You have a great ass.”

“So do you,” she said. “Which you already know.”

He rolled them so that she was once again pinned. Cupping her face, he dipped his head and she arched up, thinking he was going to kiss her. Instead, he pulled back slightly and met her gaze. “Do you have something you want to say to me?”

“Hmm.” She wriggled. “Whatever’s in your pocket is poking me.”

His eyes darkened with both heat and a challenge that had her brain going from amused to aroused beyond belief in a single heartbeat.

They both knew there was nothing in his pocket. Nothing but Caleb. Her hands came up to his biceps, her fingers digging in as desire and a hunger for him flooded her. Wrapping herself around him, she sighed in pleasure because he was big and heated and felt amazing, and she wanted—

An alarm beeped near the front of the gym and then the door opened.

Sadie froze.

Not Caleb. He kissed the tip of her nose and then rose smoothly to his feet, pulling her up beside him. “The cleaning crew,” he said.

The guy who walked in was small, wiry, and pushing a cart filled with cleaning supplies. “Hey, bossman!” he called out and then stopped at the sight of Sadie. “Whoops. Need a moment?”

Caleb’s lips curved and Sadie met his knowing gaze. They were going to need more than a minute.

“You’re fine, Ken,” Caleb said.

Ken nodded and stayed in the entryway, bent over his cart, going through the supplies, looking like he planned to start at the reception desk.

Sadie was distracted by the Japanese character on the back of Caleb’s right shoulder, just beneath a stunning living tree, and she ran a finger over the ink. “Wow. That’s so sweet.”

“What?”

“You’ve got mom tattooed here.”

He craned his neck to eyeball his skin. “That’s not mom .”

“Yes, it is,” she said. “I know because Mini Moe recently did this same character on a client.”

Caleb turned to Ken, who was pulling on a utility belt loaded with spray bottles and other assorted cleaning equipment. He had jet-black hair spiked straight up and was wearing little round John Lennon glasses. “What does this say?” Caleb asked him, pointing to the tat.

“What, you think just because I’m Asian, I’ll know?” Ken asked.

Caleb blew out a breath. “Shit. No. Sorry—”

Ken laughed. “Just kidding ya, bossman. I know what it is because you’re putting me through that fancy-ass master degree in Japanese history and culture. It says mom .”

“Sonofabitch.” Caleb shook his head. “He told me it meant life.”

“Who?” Sadie asked.

Caleb took her hand, looking both touched and amused, and also like maybe he couldn’t decide on which one to feel. “Time for stop two of our date.”