by M Dauphin
I head inside the gym and to the locker rooms in the back. I haven’t been training here my entire fighting career, but it’s been long enough that I know everyone that works here, and they know me by name. It probably helps that by having me here has helped up their membership numbers in the last few months, but that’s okay with me. I don’t mind a full gym.
Stashing my things in a locker, I start to wrap my hands as Mac comes through the doors.
“You need to get your head on straight, girl. Your opponent tonight is three pounds lighter than you and it’s only her seventh fight in this level. Had you been here when you should have you would have been able to get properly warmed up.” He shakes his head at me as he help finish wrapping my hands. I can’t help my thoughts traveling back to my bedroom earlier that day with Eddie, though. There are multiple occasions before my fight that Mac actually has to bring me out of my daydream.
Sometimes inexperience in fighting is good, other times it’s bad. This girl seems gung-ho on making my life a living hell, though. Constantly moving, hopping all over the damn place, she won’t stop. I only let a few jabs get through, one to my side, the other got me in the shoulder. No biggie. I’ve had plenty worse. She’s bound to wear herself out by the end of the second round at this rate, then I can go all out on her.
The bell rang to signal the end of another round and we head back to our corners. Mac is yelling at me to attack, but he’s always wanting me to be on the offense. He hates it when I go on defense and start playing just to stay standing. He would rather me be pushing in for the kill every moment. It doesn’t work that way, though. Especially not tonight. I’m super distracted the entire fight so far, but now that she’s getting wore down I sharpen my focus on one thing; bringing the bitch down.
Once the short break is up we get back at it. She tries a few kicks, aiming high, but she’s so tired I can see them coming from a mile away. Once I see them coming, I wait for my time to strike. Lifting her leg, she goes in for another kick (which is stupid on her part) and I grab her leg and flip her to the ground. Mac is cheering on, she is grunting and cursing at me, and I’m panting. So many noises are going on all around me, but I zone them out until I keep her down long enough for the ref to call it.
I win to match after three excruciatingly long rounds. Mac is clapping and smiling, the onlookers are cheering. I should be happy about my win, but I’m not. Truth is, this really isn’t doing it for me anymore. The ref raises my arm and announces me the winner. I get slaps on the back and rear from people as I walked back to the locker rooms. All the while I’m wondering what Eddie is doing.
“What the hell, Gwynn. You’re supposed to be “GWYNNIE THE FUCKING GREAT!” Mac yells once the door is shut.
“I won Mac. Just be happy for that.” I shrug out of the robe he draped over me in the ring, and start unwrapping my hands. I’m fucking tired of all this, but I can’t tell Mac that.
“Whatever the hell is wrong with you, girl, snap out of it. You have at LEAST four more fights under my contract. If you want to fuck up your career after that, fine by me. But right now you are mine, and you aren’t going anywhere. If I have to throw you in the ring with someone twice your size just to make you fight back I will.” He sneers at me.
Great, now the threats were starting. I’ve heard of trainers and managers getting mean when a fighter loses, but not when one wins. I’ve never seen this side of Mac, but I heard he can get this way. He needs get off his high horse.
“Fuck off Mac,” I tell him, and walk out of the room. I won, that’s all he should care about. Who cares if it took me two rounds longer than usual, I still fucking won.
Walking out of the gym into the dark night, the streets are bouncing with college students. I’m about five blocks away from my apartment, which means I am also about five blocks away from Eddie’s apartment. I could go back, we could talk about what happened today, but I really don’t want to. I don’t want to talk. I want to fuck. Eddie brought out a side of me I never knew existed. One that likes it rough, one that enjoys being pinned to the bed. It makes me insane with lust just thinking about it. No boy I’d ever been with had been that...serious. That demanding. I loved what he brought out in me.
With nowhere else to go but home, I head upstairs and pause at the top of the steps. To go right and knock on his door for an encore of earlier, or to go left and head to bed? It’s a hard decision, but sleep has been non-existent these last few days so I reluctantly go left and walk inside my apartment.
I strip everything off and get in the shower to wash the fight off me. Grazing the soap over my stomach I realize a huge bruise is starting. That’s the thing with fighting, bikinis and skimpy clothes make it look like I‘ve been abused to onlookers that don’t know what I do for a living.
I shake my head at the memory of Eddie’s reaction when he saw me after the fight that I lost last week. God, he probably thought I was abused, or beaten. That wasn’t even a bad one! It makes me feel guilty for not including him in that day with why I looked so terrible, but I want to be done with all of that. Done with fighting, done with the life of a fighter. Done looking like shit after a fight.
Scary part of everything, though, is that I don’t know what I would do without it. Sure, tattoos help me when I start to get sucked into the darkness, but there’s only so many areas I want to tattoo before it starts to get too much. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t fight so it look like I’m stuck in a life that I don’t want. All thanks to me being selfish on graduation night and not going out with my parents like they wanted. Everything would be different right now had I not been a selfish brat.
There’s no changing the past, though. I can’t fix what happened back then so there’s no use dwelling on it. I have a shift at the bar that starts in about seven hours that I need to be well rested for. My days and nights are so mixed up, I don’t even bother shutting the blinds before falling into bed. I can sleep at any time of day.
My sheets still smell like him, masculine and thick. I breathe in heavy, drifting off to sleep with the memories of what was done in that bed just a few short hours earlier on my mind.
Chapter 16
Eddie
I don’t go back to my apartment. I can’t. She is going to come home from that fight eventually, and if I’m there I won’t be able to leave her alone. There’s so much I want to tell her, so much I want to scream at her, but I can’t do that. It’s not her fault I feel the way I do about fighting. Hell, she probably thinks I’m crazy for the way I stormed out, but maybe that’s for the best.
I still can’t believe it. She’s a fucking MMA fighter. Of course it’s mostly underground stuff, but she apparently makes good enough money doing it. Our apartment rent isn’t cheap, and I would bet my life she doesn’t make shit working at the bar. Damnit, she’s so small, though. How could she have it in her to fight? How does one just say ‘I think I’m going to fight for a living... I like getting the shit beat out of me’? That just doesn’t make sense to me. She could be doing anything else, anything, and I would have been just as happy to follow her to work. Hell, I would have even been okay with her stripping! How fucked up does it make me, that I can’t even enjoy the fact that the chick I fucked, and happen to be into, is one bad ass mother fucker? Pretty messed up, Eddie.
I grab a stool and wait on Dave to finish up with his client. He’s working on my back tonight, last minute notice. I need something to help get my mind off of Red. Gwynn. Maybe if I start using her real name it won’t be so magical to me, and I will forget about her faster. Not likely.
Finally Dave finishes and walks out front.
“Ready?” he asks as he shoves the massive tip from the kid ahead of me in his pocket.
“Hell yes,” I say. I love this. I love relaxing in the chair while he turns my marred skin into a piece of art.
I sit, bringing my arms up to rest my chin on, and lean forward to rest against the bench. He’s adding more texture to the wings, making them loo
k almost broken. The buzz of the gun starts and I take a breath waiting for that initial sting. Once it’s started I relax into the chair, listening to the music of the gun as it glided across my skin. Over the years I’ve gotten used to the pain of tattoos, and in a way it brought me peace. The first ones I had ever gotten were just tribal shapes, all big and bold and meant to cover the scars. I still remember how freaked I was when I realized that a few scars didn’t take the ink, and I had to go back to have it redone. I was so worried that I just made them more visible by surrounding them with black ink, but Dave was so good, he assured me it may take one or two cover-ups, but he would get the ink in there. There was nothing he could do about the raised portions of scars, some of the worse ones you can tell just by looking at, others you can’t tell are there unless you feel them.
Of course the thought of feeling the scars brings my mind to lying in bed with Red. Gwynn. I wonder if that’s her real name or if Gwynn in a nickname. We were lying in bed the morning after she stayed the night, I knew what she was doing but I was loving it too much to let her know that I was awake. Her fingers traced every line on my arm, every spot the ink took over my skin, she traced. I can still feel the heat from her fingertips on my skin. I knew the minute she came across the burn scar. It was one of the smaller ones I had received in my three years of being under his roof, but it still didn’t make it any better. I heard the small gasp when she realized what it was, felt her fingertips graze over it. God that girl, so innocent, so spunky, so spontaneous. And so much of everything I never wanted. Why, then, can’t I get her, and her bright red hair and tattooed body, out of my mind? Hell just sitting here, straddling this chair, is making me incredibly un-fucking-comfortable. I need to stop thinking of her before I get even harder.
“Any interesting jobs lately, Ed?” Dave’s voice breaks through my thoughts.
“Nah. Savages needed something small last week, no biggie though. Thank god, I needed a break.”
He laughs, shaking his head at me.
“Dude, you are only a year older than me, stop acting like a grandpa.”
“Very funny.”
He finishes up shortly after that and I’m finally able to head home and hit the sack. I’m fucking tired of my mind not letting me have a break from her.
Making it up to my apartment I notice a light coming from under her door. She’s home. Fuck, she’s so close to me, but I can’t bring myself to knock on her door. I want to actually sit and talk to her. I want to know about her. I want to know what made her want to fight, what made her put on this show of a tough girl when she is anything but. I want to know everything about her that I have never wanted to know of any other girl. Shit what is happening to me.
I need to get away from this place, from her, before she made me break every last one of my rules.
***
The next morning I get up as early as I can to head to the gym. I love early morning work outs when there’s barely anyone in the gym. No having to wait for machines, no having to listen to other people grunting from lifting things way too damn heavy for them. It’s just me and my music. I turn on my IPod to shuffle and start warming up. Rancid comes on first and it pisses me off because the very first damn thought was of her wearing my fucking shirt. Damnit she still has that shirt, too. I switch the song and The Dead Milkmen come on, calming me from an almost freak out moment. I need to get this fucking chick out of my head. It was bordering obsession the way my mind won’t stop thinking about her, wondering about what she’s doing or why she looked like she did that night in the hallway. Hell, I’d do anything to hear the stories behind her tattoos. Everyone has one, even if they say they don’t.
After a few 300 lb. deadlifts and some conditioning I head back to my apartment to shower. The gym has showers, but I hate taking one there. I live so close it doesn’t make much sense to me when I can just go home and get clean there.
I sneak up the steps quietly for fear of waking her up, since it is still early for a normal person. In all of my time hear I never cared about anyone being next door, I never cared about being too loud, but knowing she is in there makes me way more thoughtful of what I’m doing. Getting my door shut, I strip everything off on my way to the bathroom. As I wash myself, my fingers play over the same scar and tattoos that Red’s did just yesterday. God, was it only yesterday? It felt like a lifetime ago that I had her. I turn the shower off and hear a knock on the door. Shit, I have a meeting scheduled with a client about her cheating husband, but she’s an hour early. It’s a friend from grade school, so I’m not terribly worried about appearances, and I don’t want to reschedule if she left, so I wrap a towel around my waist and head to the door. I’m not smug, but I know opening the door like this probably isn’t the best option, however I’ve been friends with this girl forever. She has seen more of me than this, so I’m not worried.
Swinging it open, not bothering to check the peephole to make sure it’s her, I lay my eyes on the only thing I don’t want to see, but felt like I need. She’s standing there, hair messed up, white tank top not hiding much, tiny red shorts. Her hands are on her hips, her feet are bare, and she is pissed.
Chapter 17
Gwynn
Between the three dozen calls and texts from Jase, the pounding headache from the fight, and the current situation my body is in, where it doesn’t want to do anything but Eddie, I got zero to NO hours of sleep last night. To add to it, Mr. Light-Foot over there just pounded up the steps at seven in the fucking morning, breaking my incredibly peaceful silence.
Done.
I’m forcing myself to tell him off, to be done with him. This is borderline obsessive, the way I can’t stop thinking about him. It needs to end. I throw open my door, not giving any fucks about the current state of my appearance, and storm across the hall, slamming on his door until he answers. Finally, the door swings open.
Oh dear Lord I’ve died and gone to heaven.
Maybe telling him off isn’t a good idea. He’s looking at me like he could devour me, his eyes trail up and down my body making me warm in all the incredibly right places.
“You,” I growl, trying to put off the meanest vibe I can. Every moment that I look at him, though, I get less and less mad and more and more turned on.
By now he has an amused smirk on his face, holding the towel with one hand and resting the other on his door frame, leaning on it just enough to make every muscle on his beautiful, wet, tattooed arm to pop. I can’t keep my eyes from grazing even lower to the top of the towel. My eyes pull together as I realize he has a tattoo that’s peeking above the towel...hmm interesting.
“Yes?” His deep voice cuts through my thoughts of just how low that one went, bringing my eyes back up to his. He’s full blown smiling now and I totally forgot why I came here.
Oh, that’s right. To tell him off and completely forget about him.
Instead of following my mind, I follow other parts of me and before I know it, we’re tangled on the kitchen floor, tugging at all of the layers between us until there is nothing left.
“You,” he says between kisses and sucks “Still have my favorite shirt.”
“Mm...so? It’s comfortable.” I gasp as he pinches my nipple, hard.
“God, Red. I can’t seem to get you or your fucking body out of my mind.” He kisses his way across my neck to that spot right below my ear. I gasp and I feel him smile against my neck.
Lowering his kisses, his hands play with my tits, squeezing and pulling in just the right motion to practically send me over the edge before the real fun even begins. I arch against him, not able to move much more of my body but searching for the pressure and friction I need.
“Ah, God Eddie.” I gasp as his fingers make it lower and push inside me hard and fast. He pulls them out of me and sucks my juices off of them, moaning as he pulls his fingers out of his mouth. His eyes don’t leave mine the entire time. Good lord that was hot.
“So fucking delicious.”
His kisses kept tr
ailing down, but as soon as he gets to my mid-section they stop. Actually, everything stops. I open my eyes and he is about a foot away, looking at me like he’d just seen a ghost. White as a sheet, stone faced. Not the man that was just with me a moment ago.
What. The. Fuck.
“What is that?” His voice is barely a whisper as he glares at my stomach.
I look down and realize that for the first time ever, I had forgotten about the markings that fighting leaves on a body. Son of a bitch.
“Nothing, it’s nothing.” I say as I quickly get up and grab my clothes. I need to get out of there. That was the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me, and it just had to happen with the man I can’t seem to get enough of. Shit.
“That doesn’t look like nothing, Gwynn.” He won’t stop staring at my stomach, like he can see through the shirt I just pulled over my head.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine. Just...excuse me,” I say as he blocks the doorway. He doesn’t move, though. If someone were to walk in his apartment right now they would have a rather impressive view.
“Sit” he orders. My body obeys his command, while my mind is screaming at it ‘what the fuck! You don’t take orders from him!’
He starts pacing the area between the kitchen and living room like a caged animal. His muscles flex as he puts his arms up and rests his hands on his head. I swallow hard, watching this god of a man, one who seems to be a massive walking contradiction, pace in front of me with nothing on, showing no shame. Not that he should, hell even pissed I can see how aroused he is. It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen, but boy he’s pissed.
I’ve taken people twice my size without any difficulty before, but right now, in this room, I know I would lose if he got mean. Not only is he more than double my size, he is also insanely built. I need an escape plan in case he decides to turn into some psycho.