by Josie Kerr
“Dammit, Mick. Man, you have a big mouth,” Colin griped as his ears flared bright red.
Three sets of eyes locked on Colin.
Colin hissed, then sighed, and then said very quickly, all in one breath, “She was giving me a blowjob and she licked my taint really close to my…you know…and it freaked me out because I really liked it and I jolted and smacked her.” He squeezed his eyes shut and braced for the response.
The whole table sat still, and then the other men roared with laughter.
“Dear God, I thought it was something totally out there,” Rory wheezed.
Mick was more sympathetic. “Oh, I don’t know. I reacted about the same way the first time.”
“How do they learn this stuff?” Colin’s ears were still red, but he had an embarrassed grin on his face now.
“Hello, gay porn!” Junior said. “Where do you think?”
Mick immediately sobered. “Women watch gay porn?”
“Sure. Why not? Have you seen the porn for women? It’s pretty awful.”
“Huh.”
“And I might have mentioned something that one night when I had way too much tequila.”
“You told my wife about the finer points of performing fellatio?” Mick asked.
“No, I gave your wife advice on sucking cock. And I bet she passed that info on to Bailey and Ashley.”
“Oh, sweet Janey Mac,” Rory said with a moan. “We’re all in trouble, boys.”
“Let me see your sweet face, babydoll,” Colin murmured. “I wanna look at you.”
Bailey scooted up on the pillow to where she was nose-to-nose with Colin. “Is this close enough?”
He grinned. “Let me check.” He pressed his lips against her mouth. “Yeah, that’s close enough, at least for now.”
Colin sighed as his eyes roamed over her face. The light of the moon brightened the bedroom enough where he could see the soft bruising around her eye. His fingers fluttered over the darkened skin and he felt Bailey’s sweet breath on his face. He pressed his lips against her cheek.
“I really am sorry about that,” he said.
“It’s no big thing, Colin. You didn’t mean to. It’s not like slugged me because I was blowing you wrong.”
Her delivery of her last statement made him frown more than the words she spoke. “Someone did that to you? Did that fucker do that?”
“If ‘that fucker’ is Tripp, no, he didn’t. Forget I said anything.”
Colin sat up in the bed and turned on the nightstand light. “Bailey, babydoll, look at me, please.” Bailey didn’t sit up; she remained with her head on his lap, but she did meet his eyes. “Oh, babydoll. How could anybody treat you like that?”
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” When Colin shook his head, Bailey rolled her eyes and blew out a huff of breath. “Not that it matters, but it was a buttmunch of a high school boyfriend. I haven’t seen him in years and years, and I don’t want to see him ever again. Okay?”
“Well, it’s not okay, but I guess I’ll ignore it.”
“Good.”
Bailey cupped her hands around Colin’s balls and cock, cradling his heavy sac in one hand and stroking his quickly hardening length with the other.
“Goddamn, Bailey, that feels so awesome,” Colin breathed. He felt her grin against his thigh before she added a quick bite as she continued stroking and caressing.
Colin pulled Bailey up to where she was face-to-face with him, straddling his big body with her hands splayed on his chest.
“Colin…”
“Shh. Just let me look at you.” His eyes roamed all over her face, taking in everything from the bruising on her cheek, to her big grey eyes with their surprisingly dark lashes, to that loose curl that drove him crazy.
The longer he looked at her, the more she smiled. She returned his careful examination. He had kept the crewcut hairstyle, but his beard, which hadn’t been cut since he moved to Atlanta, was now full and long and soft. Those silvery blue eyes looked back at her, and that mouth, that soft, sensuous mouth that belonged more on a pouty teen idol than a hardened heavyweight champion, twitched with a shy grin.
Colin shifted his hips and his now fully-hardened cock slipped between the cheeks of her bottom. “Ooh!”
Colin cringed and shifted again. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to…you know…”
“I know. It was just…unexpected,” Bailey said with a grin. “I guess we’re even.” Colin threw back his head and laughed at that.
“Okay, we’re even. But I gotta ask: are you…”
Bailey shook her head and wrinkled her nose. “Nope. Are you?”
Thank God. “No, not into that.”
Bailey raised to her knees and got close enough to him to where her breasts grazed his chest. “But I tell you what, Colin, I am into…” She slowly lowered herself onto his hard length.
“Holy fuck…” Colin exhaled. He ran his hands down Bailey’s back and bottom and then back up until he cradled her head in his hands. He gazed in her eyes as they rocked and pushed and pulled together, until he recognized the loss of focus and the glazing of her eyes that preceded her orgasm. He held her tight, grinding her on his cock and driving it into her core as deep as he could.
“Kiss me, Colin,” Bailey breathed into his mouth. “Kiss me.”
Their kiss contained all the desperation and want and desire and emotion that had erupted between them in these past six months. Colin growled through the kiss, wanting more, wanting it all, and Bailey felt the same way. She tightened her thighs around his hips, and adjusted her movements to where each rolling pulse hit her clit, and when Colin wrapped one arm tight around her back and put the other on her throbbing nub, she exploded.
She saw white, and then black with stars, and when she opened her eyes, she saw Colin looking at her and grinning the biggest, widest grin that she had ever seen grace his handsome face.
“That’s what I’m talking about, babydoll. That’s everything.”
Bailey laughed wrapped her arms around his huge back in a bear hug. “I think that’s the strongest orgasm I’ve ever had,” she said with a chuckle.
Colin tugged on her hair, pulling her head gently back so he could look at her again. “Not the orgasm, babydoll, but that was nice. I’m talking about that look on your face. You need to look like that all the time. I wanna make sure you look like that all the time.”
Bailey grinned, suddenly shy. “Look like what?”
“Happy. No, blissful. Relaxed.” He grinned and ducked his eyes down. “Satisfied.”
“I’m all those things, Colin, when I’m with you. And not just with you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Because I’m all those things when I’m with you.”
“Good.”
Chapter Seventeen
October
“Where am I now?” Colin asked, his back to the numbers on the scale.
Junior whistled. “Gordo, you’re down from your last fight weight. “
Thank goodness. Colin had neared three hundred pounds before his last fight, necessitating the biggest weight cut of his career to get to two sixty-five. He didn’t ever want to have to do that again.
“You keep this up and you’re not going to be a heavyweight anymore.”
“What’s the actual number, Junior?” he asked impatiently.
“Two fifty-five, man.”
Colin snorted. The day that he didn’t fight as a heavyweight was the day that he got a recording contract. “Dude, I still have fifty pounds before that happens, and trust me, it’s not happening. Can you see me at two-oh-five?”
Junior got ready to say something, but then snapped his mouth shut. Yeah, there was no way that was happening.
“That little mami been cooking for you? Filling you full of steak?” asked Junior.
Colin grinned. “Maybe.” He kept grinning.
Junior shook
his head. Gordo was definitely smitten. It looked good on him.
“I’m glad you’re with her, C. She’s good for you, and good for your head, and we need your head on straight for this rematch against Dig, even if it is just an expo fight.”
“My head’s on straight. Actually, I feel a lot better mentally now than I did for that last fight.” At Junior’s raised eyebrow, Colin waved his hands. “I know, Junior. It was a hell of a lot closer than it ever should have been.”
“Just remember that, okay, Gordo?”
“Straight up,” Colin said, holding up his fist to bump Junior’s.
“So how’s life with mami?”
“She sleeps a lot, but when she’s not sleeping, I just want to hold her and look at her.”
“Which mami you talkin’ about, C? Maude or Bailey?” Junior teased, but jogged a few steps to get out of Colin’s wide reach.
Colin grinned. “Both of them, I guess,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s really nice, though how such a little thing can produce so much poop, I’ll never know. So many fucking diapers.”
Junior cocked his head at his friend. He truly had never seen the big man so happy. More power to him.
Junior thought about when he first met Colin. He had thought that Colin was just some stuffed shirt who was slumming in Newark, some pretty boy in a fancy suit that wanted a little fight to make him feel more manly. But when Colin got on the mat and threw their biggest, meanest guy down on his back and made him submit in a little under a minute, well, he had had to re-evaluate that opinion. Who knew the guy in the custom suit and seven-hundred dollar shoes was a champion collegiate wrestler?
And such a miserable fuck he was. Drinking way too much, but not indulging in anything else, thank God, he had confessed one drunken night that he hated his job and he hated the people he worked with and felt alone and depressed. Junior was also shocked to learn that Colin’s family was independently wealthy and the guy didn’t ever actually have to work for a living – he just wanted to.
Junior remembered asking him what he would do if he could do anything and Colin’s answer filled Junior with hope: “Hell, I would fight.”
As a trainer at a second-rate gym on the terrible side of a bad town, Junior didn’t have much hope that he would ever make enough money to move out of his mamá’s basement. But with a fighter with as much potential as Colin? Oh, Colin was a trainer’s dream.
He still didn’t really know what happened to make Colin show up in the middle of the day, no suit and with a duffle bag, to ask Junior if he knew where he could get a cheap apartment, but it was the beginning of a brand new life for both of them.
They shared a room in a house full of fighters for six months, Colin not blinking an eye when Junior told him he was gay, and when Colin got the chance to train at a top-rated facility in Wisconsin, he demanded that Junior come along, and that cemented their partnership.
“Junior!”
“What?”
Colin snorted. “Do you want to ride with me or take your own car?” Colin mumbled something about ‘who’s distracted now?’
“I’ll take my own car. I...don’t know where I’m gonna be tomorrow morning.”
Colin hooted. “Hot date?”
“Something like that. Tell me again what idiot decided that we should have a seven a.m. meeting with these jokers? Oh, that’s right, that idiot was me.” He shook his head.
“Let’s get out of here, Junior. I wanna kiss on my girls and you can...do whatever it is that you’re gonna do tonight.”
Colin laughed as Junior merengued out the door.
“Wow.”
“Gordo, you said it.”
Colin and Junior stood in the lobby of Raptor Pryde and looked at the model of the new facility at Belle Avalon.
“Holy shit. I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about overlapping demographics.”
“No kidding. If this is what the outside is going to be built out like, what the hell is the inside going to look like?”
A meaty hand slapped Colin and Junior each on the back and the scent of expensive cologne wafted from behind them. Colin made a face and Junior kicked him as a reminder that they were on Raptor Pryde turf and it wouldn’t do anybody any good to piss either Raptor or Pryde off.
“You boys want to have a sneak peek of the facility?” Jett Raptor beamed a toothy smile at them before focusing it more intensely at Junior. Colin struggled to keep a straight face at Junior’s obvious discomfort. Raptor, dude, you are so not his type.
“The expo is going to be at the new facility, right?”
“Yessiree.”
“Jett, don’t...just don’t.” Bruce Pryde, the other half of the Raptor Pryde partnership, stuck out his hand for Colin. “We can take a hard hat tour of the facility, but I’ll warn you that it’s going to take a lot of imagination to visualize what it’s going to actually look like. It’s little more than studs and drywall now.”
Colin shrugged. “Yeah, I’d like to see it.”
“Okay, sure. Let’s go into the conference room and hammer out these details first and then we’ll head over there.”
Colin and Bruce Pryde looked over the wide open space that was to be the new Raptor Pryde dedicated MMA training facility.
Colin whistled through his teeth. “And you’re shooting for this to be ready by May? I’m assuming that you’re going to do a grand opening coincide with the expo fight, right?”
Pryde couldn’t hide his surprise. Son of a bitch.
Colin laughed. “I know the way Raptor’s lizard brain works.”
“Carmichael, you’re all right,” Pryde said with a chuckle. “You sure you want to stay in the ghetto? You can bring your sidekick up here to train you.”
Colin shook his head. “I’m retired, remember? I can’t say I’m not flattered, though. You have a great team and this facility is going to be righteous. I mean it, Bruce. I’m impressed as hell.”
Bruce Pryde knew he meant it. Ice Cold Carmichael wasn’t one to hand out hollow compliments. “Thanks, Carmichael.” He looked at Colin and seemed about to say something, but shook his head and turned back to the space.
“I heard that Ashley Richards is the one that sold you that little dump that you’re in,” Bruce said. “She sold us this space, too. Is she some sort of MMA savant in a tight skirt and four inch heels?”
Colin leaned back and guffawed. “Oh man, Ashley. She’s an MMA fangirl is what she is; not a fighter groupie, but a hard-core combat sports enthusiast. She’s something else.”
“How’d you get hooked up with her? These two properties seem to be extreme to say the least.”
Colin rolled his eyes. “Richard Tolbert was actually the listing agent on DS Fight Club. Of course, Ashley works with him but my meeting her was just a fortuitous occurrence: she’s actually dating my brother’s best friend.”
“So you’ve got a name now?” Bruce laughed. “All I’ve heard your place called is ‘Fight Club’.”
Colin chuckled. “Yeah – DS stands for Doyle’s South.”
“Wait – Rory Doyle is involved in your outfit?
Colin shook his head and huffed a laugh. Of course Pryde would know Rory. Rory Doyle seemed to have his fingers in all sorts of pies. “Not Rory Doyle, but his father, Paddy. Paddy and his wife are headed down here to escape the harsh Boston winters. He’s supposedly going to be retired, but we’ll see. Rory gives him a week at the most before he’s in the gym bossing people around.”
Bruce looked wistful. “You know, if I wasn’t settled in here, I’d seriously think about joining you. Paddy Doyle is a legend, and Rory wasn’t a half-bad boxer before he decided to abandon the ring for a stage. I should probably be worried.” He grinned at Colin.
Colin slapped Bruce on the back. “You’re all right yourself, Bruce.”
And they made their way back to the front of the building.
Chapter Eighteen
Bailey absent
mindedly handed the soft ball back to Maude. Tripp had called earlier in the day, telling her that he was getting out of jail the following week and demanding that she bring the baby to visit him.
Bailey felt sick to her stomach. She and Maude had a nice routine, a routine that included Colin. Maude had even starting calling Colin something that sounded like “cee-cee” which thrilled the big man to no end. Every time the little girl reached over to him and lifted her arms, his face broke into the most beautiful smile. He loved the little girl.
“Mama!” Maude shook the ball at Bailey and then ducked her head behind it, peeking around the toy with a grin.
“Sorry, baby,” Bailey said. “Mama’s a little bit distracted.” She kissed the baby on the head. “So what do you want to do today, Maude? I think we should go to the park; what do you think?”
Maude clapped her hands and grinned widely, showing all her little teeth. Bailey couldn’t help but laugh. Yes, a trip to the park was just what they needed.
“Emily, honey, don’t lick the slide,” Em called to her daughter, who was just getting ready to put her tongue on a pole that supported the playscape. “I swear that child puts everything in her mouth. I caught her chomping on Beauregard’s tail yesterday. Thank God that he puts up with her,” Em said with a laugh.
Emily stuck her lip out, looked at the pole again, and then took off. Maude just looked at the other girl and went back to patting a pile of woodchips.
“So, Tripp’s getting out next week.”
Em nodded. “I got the call this morning. I figured that this might be the reason that you needed a trip to the park.”
“How are you feeling about this?”
Em blew out her breath. “I will probably never have to see him again, which I’m thankful for. I don’t know if I could be civil.” She looked at Bailey and took her hand. “I do not envy you one bit. How are you feeling about things?”
Bailey exhaled forcefully. “I’m not looking forward to it. At all.” She thought back to that last visit to the jail. She had said she wasn’t going back, ever, but she gave him one last chance. She had brought Maude to visit him after he changed his mind about seeing her while he was still in jail. He had looked at his child with disinterest, and then they had argued about child support and visitation. Again. And at the end of the visit, Bailey vowed, once again, to not step foot inside the visitation room. She kept her promise this time.