Strong Hold

by Sarah Castille

  He smacks me again, harder this time. Pain sheets across my skin, distracting me from my mission of resistance as the burn turns to pleasure.

  “Bastard.”

  “When did my girl get such a dirty mouth?” He smacks my other cheek, the crack of skin on skin echoing in the quiet of my room.

  My breaths come in short pants, and I give myself up to sensation, the throb of my pulse between my thighs, the brush of cotton against my nipples, the unbearable ache in my core. I moan softly, and Zack shoves my legs roughly apart with his knee, as far as my jeans will allow.

  “Tell me you want me.”

  “I want you.”

  “Say my name and tell me you want me.” He teases my entrance with the head of his cock, and I let out a moan.

  “I want you, Zachary Grayson.”

  “I want you, too. You can’t even imagine how much.”

  He pushes inside me with one hard thrust, filling me so completely, I almost come right then. With one hand twisted through my hair, he yanks my head back and pistons his hips so hard, the bed squeaks and the headboard bangs against the wall.

  Oh God. I’ve become one of those neighbors.

  My arousal climbs fast, and when I’m just about to peak, Zack slides one hand over my hip and drags a rough finger over my clit. Once. Twice. And then he presses just where I need to be pressed.

  I come so hard, I lose my breath. Pleasure tears through me, arcing from my clit along every nerve of my body. Zack holds me tight, drawing out my orgasm with hammering thrusts, his breaths quickening, the bed pounding against the wall. Finally, his muscles tighten, and he comes with a guttural groan.

  Definitely one of those neighbors. I’ll never be able to show my face in the hallway again.

  Zack collapses on top of me and threads his fingers through mine on the softness of the bed, a gentle, tender gesture after the roughest sex I’ve ever had.

  “You okay?” He presses his lips to my nape, and I shudder, feeling curiously empty inside.

  “Yes,” I lie.

  After a few minutes, Zack leaves to dispose of the condom. I feel awkward, uncomfortable, unable to decide what to do. Should I take off my clothes and jump into bed? Or straighten my clothes and wait for him to return? Is he planning to stay, or is he going to leave? What do I want him to do?

  Taking the safe road, I fix my clothes, pull on a new T-shirt, and head to the kitchen, where I grab a bottle of water to quench a nonexistent thirst.

  Zack joins me a few moments later, dressed as if we didn’t just have wild sex only a few moments ago, his brow creased in a frown.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah.” I hug myself with one arm and take another sip while Zack prowls around my living room, making me feel curiously embarrassed about my minimalist decor. My apartment is simply furnished but comfy. A gray leather sectional accented with teal cushions surrounds a white block coffee table, and beside it, flush against the dark gray wall, is a tall white lacquer cabinet. A matching white kitchen table sits in the dining area, surrounded by three teal chairs. I’ve added some softness with a fluffy gray carpet to match the walls, sheer white curtains, and a few potted plants. The kitchen, all white cabinets and black appliances, is tucked behind a counter and open to the rest of the room.

  “You don’t look okay,” he says from the other side of the breakfast bar.

  “How do I look?”

  “Far away.”

  I force a laugh, although he’s right. I’m wary of getting too close, and I was more than happy to encourage the kind of sex that doesn’t involve a lot of cuddling or hugging, soft words or gentle caresses. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to allow that kind of intimacy back in my life. I still hurt inside, but being with Zack reminds me of how it felt to feel cared for, to be loved. Although I don’t want it, that need is still there. I needed it tonight. I’m so confused.

  “People can’t look like feelings.”

  “You can.” He rounds the bar into the kitchen and pulls open a drawer. “I could always read you. That hasn’t changed. And seeing you dressed and out here with your arms around yourself instead of naked in there, lying beside me, tells me you’re not settled. Did I hurt you?”

  “No. It was good. It was sex. That’s what I wanted.”

  “Rough sex?” He slams the drawer, and the cutlery inside clatters. “Too rough.”

  “There were two of us in the bedroom.” I offer him the water bottle, but he shakes his head. “If I didn’t want it to go where it did, I would have shut you down.”

  He leans against the counter and crosses his arms. “I don’t know what the hell happened. That’s not how I wanted things to go, but I can’t think when I’m with you. I can’t control myself.”

  “You did control yourself.” I squeeze my bottle, making it crackle. I don’t want to have this conversation. It’s done, and for some reason, I just want to curl up in bed and cry. “Maybe too much. All the questions…asking if I was okay… To be honest, it was sweet but kind of annoying. If I don’t like something, I let my partners know.”

  Zack bristles. “Your partners?”

  “I’m not a nun.” I shrug. “I’ve been with other people since my marriage ended. I know you have, too.”

  “They didn’t mean anything,” Zack says quickly, taking a step toward me. “Not like you.”

  My water bottle becomes a shield. I take a drink I don’t want to quench a thirst I don’t have. The cool water slides over my tongue and chills me inside as it goes down. “Zack…I’m not looking to start anything up again. It was just…Joe and the chase and the arrest…adrenaline. You know it makes you do crazy things.”

  He freezes midstep, and I stumble on. “It was good. We got it out of our systems, and now we can move on. Keep it professional like we originally agreed.”

  He is just standing there, his face an expressionless mask, and for once, I can’t tell what he is thinking. Is he relieved? Shocked? Angry? Disappointed?

  “You’re afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid.” I cross my arms over my chest.

  “You are,” he says. “You’re afraid of risk, whether it’s in or out of the ring. It’s the one thing about you that has changed. It’s what is holding you back from achieving your goals.”

  “If I were afraid of risk, I wouldn’t have become a fighter,” I snap, irritated that he would presume to lecture me when he knows nothing about my life for the last seven years. “I take a risk every time I step in the ring. You know that better than I do…” I regret the words as soon as they drop from my lips and even more when Zack flinches.

  “I’m sorry. That came out wrong. I just meant because you’re…were…a fighter…”

  “I should go.”

  He takes a step toward the door, and in that heartbeat of time, I want him to stay. I want things to be the way they used to be, when everything was easy between us. I want to fall asleep in the circle of his arms, listening to the steady beat of his heart. But I don’t take the chance. Instead, I let him go. “Thanks for tonight.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turns back and brushes his lips over my cheek.

  Hope flickers, and then he’s gone.

  15

  Zack

  “Do it again.” Arms folded across his chest, Zack gestured Shayla to her feet. “Try to keep the drill flowing as smoothly as possible until your reactions are natural and instinctual.”

  She shot him the glare of death as her third training partner of the hour, a scrawny dude Zack had carefully selected for his cowering manner and lack of anything even resembling muscle, scuttled away, only to be replaced by a dude even scrawnier.

  “You can’t be serious,” Shayla bit out. “I’m pretty sure after our training weekend of hell, I’ll be able to clear collar ties in my sleep.”

  “And you’ll
probably be doing them wrong there, too,” Zack snapped. “It’s a warm-up and a wrestling drill that even newbies can master. You need to focus. Haven’t you been paying attention for the last three days? I set up an underground fight for you on Thursday so you could try out the new techniques, but you aren’t even trying to master them.”

  Finding an underground fight club in a new city wasn’t an easy thing to do, especially for a man who had fought for one of the biggest MMA promotions in the world, making him a “sellout” to the underground community. Underground fighting was illegal in most states, including California, and the promoters went to great lengths to keep their fights off the California State Athletic Commission’s radar. The fight organizers screened and limited attendee lists, texted event announcements only two hours before the fights started, and required everyone to say a code word to get in. Still, underground fights were where many fighters honed their skills, free of rules and regulations, and after a lot of digging, he had discovered that the Predator was Redemption’s key contact for the underground circuit.

  After only a few grumbled protests, the Predator had made the arrangements for Shayla to fight at Zack’s request. They didn’t speak about the membership card, but Zack knew the Predator had been watching him train, just as Zack had been watching him. After years on the professional circuit, he had lost touch with the gritty, raw, no-holds-barred fighting of the underground where the Predator had made his name. Although Zack was certain he wouldn’t be meeting the Predator in the ring, it made sense to be prepared.

  “Are you watching Shayla or the Predator?” Sadist came up beside him, gesturing between Shayla on the mat with her new opponent and the lean, dark-haired Predator bouncing a heavyweight around the cage, his scarred face a mask of boredom.

  “Both.”

  “If you’re looking for weaknesses in the Predator’s game, don’t waste your time,” Sadist said. “He doesn’t have any. He also doesn’t fight fair. We tried to get him onto the amateur circuit, but he dropped out after a few months because he didn’t like the rules. He’s all about no-holds-barred street fighting. No limits. No mercy. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “Yeah. I do.” Matt and his group of thugs had dragged him into more than one alley over the years. Zack had learned street fighting out of necessity, but it was only when he joined the MMA gym that he learned how skill could overcome size or strength in numbers. Every time he stepped into the cage, he remembered those days and how every beating had been a stepping stone to where he was now. Nothing tempted him more than a chance to fight with someone who didn’t give a damn about the rules. But he would have to step into the ring to do it. He would have to take the risk that another man would die. “I’m not fighting him.”

  “He and Shayla are tight,” Sadist continued as if Zack hadn’t spoken. “I thought there was something going on between them, but then Sia showed up one day, and boom. That was it. One day, he’s cracking bones and smashing skulls. The next, he’s married and has a kid. You find the right girl, and it hits you like that. Maybe you fight it tooth and nail. Maybe it’s a long and bumpy road. Maybe you run the other way at first. But when you look back, you realize it was a foregone conclusion the very first time you met.”

  “You trying to tell me something?”

  Sadist shrugged, his gaze on Shayla twisting her opponent into her tenth collar tie of the morning. “Sometimes we’re hardest on the people we care about the most.”

  Was he being too hard on Shayla? Hell, even his coach hadn’t asked as much of him when they were just starting out, but he had to be harsh to keep some distance between them or risk hurting her again. He had shocked even himself the other night. His desire—no, need—for her had been so intense and all-consuming, he hadn’t given a second thought to how rough he’d been in bed. If Zack from then had met Zack from now, he would have punched himself in the damn face.

  “Heads up,” Sadist warned.

  His head jerked up, and he neatly caught the fight gloves Torment tossed down from the practice ring beside them.

  “Blade Saw is on his way here, and he needs a partner,” Torment said. “I was supposed to be coaching him and Homicide Hank, but Hank’s wife just went into labor. It’s their sixth kid. Or maybe seventh. No one can keep track. I don’t know how he does it. I can’t even handle one. Our little girl, Brianna, is more than a handful.”

  Zack curved his hands around the soft leather gloves. This was exactly what he needed to burn off some steam. Nothing relieved his tension more than a good session in the ring. But after losing it with Shayla in bed, he wasn’t prepared to take that risk.

  “No, thanks. I’m going for a run after Shayla’s done.” He tossed the gloves back up.

  “Suit yourself.” Torment caught them in one hand. “I like to help my fighters succeed. And if you’re fighting the Predator, you’ll need all the help you can get just to make it out of the ring alive.”

  Zack bristled. “I don’t think it’s me you need to worry about.”

  “So you are going to fight him?” Sadist asked.

  Zack gave himself a mental kick for the slip. Staying out of the ring was easy when he was recruiting fighters, but being in the thick of things, part of a world of alpha egos and testosterone, made it damn hard to keep the promise he’d made to himself the night Okami died.

  “I didn’t say that. Might be that I’m done with Shayla in the three months before the membership expires, and I won’t need to stick around.”

  Torment leaned over the ropes. “You won’t solve her problem in three months. It took Fuzz and I four years to help her get where she is today. She came to us broken. She’s far from fixed.”

  Curious, he asked, “How was she broken?”

  Torment and Sadist shared a look. “The first year she joined, it was all about rehab,” Torment said. “I had her bring in her X-rays so we could come up with a training program to help her get strong again. I never imagined bones could be broken like that from a fall down the stairs. It wasn’t just her leg. Her ribs, shoulder, and arm had been broken. And her hand”—he held up his hands in a warding gesture—“was crushed.”

  Zack felt a prickle of warning sheet over his skin. “Crushed?”

  “She let me take the X-rays to a doctor friend of mine, an orthopedic surgeon, because at first, I didn’t know how to help her. He said the force necessary to cause many of the breaks couldn’t have come from a fall.”

  The warning prickle turned into a five-alarm fire. What had happened to her in the years after he’d walked away?

  “Did you ask her about it?”

  Torment worked his hand into his glove. “She told me she was clumsy, and it was a bad fall.”

  “She’s not clumsy.”

  Torment nodded. “She recovered quickly, probably because she was in such good shape, and she was determined to get better. She’s one of the most dedicated fighters in the gym. She’s here when I open the door in the morning, and unless she’s working, she’s usually one of the last people out at night. She went from barely being able to walk to becoming our top female fighter through an incredible force of will”—Torment shook the top rope—“right here in this ring.”

  Zack ran a finger along the lower rope, feeling the coarse fibers grate over his skin. Once upon a time, he’d been like that. From the day he walked into the Glenwood MMA gym, he wanted to be the best. He wanted to know he would never be powerless before another man, that there would never be another Matt who could beat him to a pulp in the alley. But more than that, he wanted to be worthy. He wanted to show the damn town—no, the world—that he could rise above his upbringing. He wanted to give Shayla something more than a trailer park kid who hadn’t even finished high school.

  How many times had he climbed into a practice ring without paying attention to the rough feel of the ropes, the tension that allowed them to flex when a fighter fell aga
inst them? He curled one hand around the rough fiber, testing the thickness and the strength, while at the back of his mind, he was pulling the ropes apart, climbing into the ring. The mat would be cool and firm under his feet, his opponent wary of facing Slayer in a fight.

  “That’s why her last four fights are such a mystery,” Torment said, climbing through the ropes to join them on the mat. “She moved up to the next level and then slid down. If she loses one more fight, the title belt qualifier will be totally out of reach.”

  “She’s afraid,” Zack said, half to himself.

  Sadist cocked his head to the side. “Afraid of what?”

  “She’s afraid to take a risk.” He turned to Sadist. “You know what it’s like climbing up the amateurs. You’re on a roll, winning fight after fight, and then suddenly, you hit a wall. It takes a while to realize that when you get near the top, it’s a whole new ball game. Your opponents are a different class of fighter. Suddenly, it’s not enough to just know the technique. You need to be something more. You need to anticipate what your opponent is going to do and where he is going to be. You need to have the confidence to take a risk—to go beyond what you’ve learned and improvise. You need to have the strength to leave yourself vulnerable if you want to win.”

  “I’d say that’s pretty spot-on,” Sadist said. “Sounds like your head is still in the game.”

  Longing ripped through his body. One step and he would be back in the ring, gloves in his hand, a worthy adversary across from him. His fingers tightened around the rope. He could almost hear the buzz of the crowd, the blare of the speakers. He could almost feel the hard mat under his feet, smell the popcorn and hot dogs, the yeasty tang of beer, the sweat of the men who had fought before him. He could see the glare of the lights, the eager faces of the crowd. And then he imagined a scream, like the scream of Okami’s wife when she realized her husband was dead.

  “Not anymore.”

  Torment tossed the spare gloves in a box beside the ring. “You need more than your head in the game. You need your heart in it, too.”