On the outside it was a red brick building that looked like it could have been built during Prohibition. The brick was old and weathered, and the building’s windows were aged and yellowed from time with old and rusty iron bars over them. The front doors were guarded by three very large and burly looking men that had tattoos covering every last inch of their bare skin… the kind of people she would have expected to see guarding the gates of Hell.
“I’ve seen this in a movie before,” Callie said looking up at the place, “this is where the drug lords come for a relaxing night out… and they feed people to crocodiles or something?”
Cece laughed at her. “You watch too many movies.”
Once they got in line she saw how accurate Cece was in her assertion. The place was not what she expected… at least on the outside. She was surprised to see a blend of people standing in line, waiting for their chance to enter. They were sorted mostly into two groups.
There were people who were clad in black leather, bandannas, sunglasses, and riding chaps that looked fit to be in motorcycle gangs. The collection of motorcycles parked on the street or in the nearby parking lot certainly supported that theory. There were also a collection of younger people, clad in leather jackets and loose fitting jeans wearing logos that she recognized as belonging to speed bikes or adrenaline games. In short, they were the kind of people she expected to see riding crotch rocket motorcycles. Both were collections of people that she would have been afraid to be alone in the same room with under any other circumstances.
What balanced that was the other half of the crowd that was gathering. Mixed among the biker crowds were people that she was more familiar with: the rich. There were men and women in elegant and expensive suits or dresses, expensive wrist watches, and sports cars that would have fetched a very nice price in the right chop shop. Enough baubles hung from the necks of the women that she felt certain that any moment one of the bikers would reach out and try to steal those gems from around their necks. But the gems went untouched and Callie was amazed at it. It was like watching sharks ignoring bloody meats hanging freely in the water.
What she couldn’t really understand is why people like this – polar opposites of the money world – would choose to gather in a place like this. She could understand one half of the crowd gathering here, but not so the other. She had seen similar things during her mother’s fashion shows – where everyone was equally rich, famous, or at least from similar circles – where fights tended to break out.
Amazingly, there was no sense of animosity from the crowd that she could detect. There was no sense of class struggle. She would have thought that a gathering of people like this was like trying to keep fire and oil from igniting. But the atmosphere seemed neutral… relaxed even. She saw some of the rich men offering cigarettes to the bikers and they laughed with each other at some joke or another as if they were old friends reunited after a long time apart.
It was like she had stepped into another world.
But from its looks and the people that seemed to be pouring into the place, this was not the kind of place that she and Cece would have ventured to, that was for sure.
“Cece,” she whispered to her friend, “what is this place?”
Her friend turned to her and smiled. Cece was small and slender where Callie was large and buxom. Cece’s red hair flashed in the glowing neon signs of the club and her pale skin shone brightly under the artificial lights. Her dress was simple, the kind of thing that a normal person would wear. “What does it look like, genius?”
Callie looked around and looked back to her friend incredulously. “It looks like a dive bar where bad things happen.”
Cece only smirked. “Oh… it’s more than that, friend. It’s so much more.”
They waited in line for only a few more minutes before they were able to pay their way inside, but every fiber of Callie’s body was torn down the middle between staying and going. Half of her was curious, the other half was cautious. In the end, curiosity won out. She knew Cece well enough to know that she wouldn’t take her someplace dangerous… not unless the danger was worth it.
Once they passed through the doors she surveyed the inside and found that Cece had not been wrong in saying that this place was so much more than a dive bar. And at first glance it was clear that the place had been rearranged for some special event.
She had expected to find the smell of cigarette and cigar smoke and maybe the lingering odor of spilled beer in the air. But what she found instead was a relatively passive atmosphere that smelled of nothing but the smell of cleaning agents and something that was even fragrant, though she couldn’t identify it. She had thought to find peanut shells on the floor, or broken glass, but the floor looked pristine, like the inside of an office building but covered in a layer of thick and overlapping plastic. It had seemed obvious that she would find tables, maybe made out of salvaged steel grates and chairs bolted to the floor to keep occupants from hammering each other with them if they got too drunk. But what she found in their place was bleachers arranged around some kind of a cage in the center of the room.
Callie had seen enough TV to know a fighting cage when she saw one. And the force with which the realization hit her was like being struck in the chest by a truck. “Cece…?” she said, turning to her friend as the people slowly trickled their way into the stands, where numerous people were already sitting and talking excitedly with one another.
“I found this place last week,” Cece said excitedly. “It’s an MMA arena.”
“MMA?” Callie asked, having heard the term before but she had no idea what it meant.
“Mixed Martial Arts,” Cece explained excitedly. “This is a fight club… or at least it is tonight. It’s not exactly on the circuit for the pros, but some of the champs that are on TV and all that started out in places just like this.”
Callie disregarded the excited explanation and shook her head. “You know… when you asked if I wanted a wild night I didn’t imagine that it would involve watching two guys try and beat the shit out of each other.”
Cece smirked mischievously. “That’s why I didn’t say anything… and believe me you’ll thank me when it’s over.”
Callie wanted to argue the point but didn’t. College was only months away and she had never really been one to walk on the wild side in her life. She had always imagined that college would be full of such things and that there would be a time for it. But still… this place was so out of her usual comfort zone that she thought that maybe Cece was right. Maybe she should do something wild… something savage. Blood sports had never really been her thing and maybe that was why Cece had decided to bring her here. Because it was time to try something new… something fresh.
She shrugged to herself. What could it hurt?
They found seats in the stands on the north side of the cage and people found their seats around them. There was a competitive feeling in the air as the first pair of fighters stepped into the ring and she saw what Cece had meant by thanking her. Only she didn’t wait until things were over, she thanked Cece now because the first two contestants were nothing short of gods in tight shorts.
She had only ever seen muscle like that on men that posed for underwear commercials or in cheesy lifeguard movies. But these were better because they were real. So real that she could almost literally reach out and touch them. And she wanted to touch them… very much. Their abs were sculpted to the point where she thought she could grade cheese on them… their shoulders were broad… powerful… their legs as thick as tree trunks… their arms were wonderfully built. One of them looked like he was about forty or so, the other about thirty. Despite their age each of them looked handsome in their own way.
“Told you,” Cece said over the shouts and applause of the other spectators in the stands. Callie didn’t need being told twice. She saw the appeal in this place now, brutish as it was. If she couldn’t delight in the violence of it all she could delight in the eye-candy.
She watch
ed with a detached interest as the fights began, her eyes focused only on the fighters and the shapes of their bodies. But somewhere along the way she developed an interest the actual sporting event. It all began to happen so fast that she barely had time to register it all. It was like watching a boxing match, but inside a chain-link fenced cage where fighters were allowed to kick as well as punch.
The crowd was electric, their cheers and their applause filling the air with such energy that she couldn’t believe that such a power source could not be tapped and profited from. There were cries of anguish… of agony… of glee… of blood… Some of the spectators screamed encouragement for one fighter or another while others screamed derogatory remarks for the other.
One pair after another two men moved about inside the cage like two fish swimming in the same small bowl at first. Occasionally kicking… punching… grappling… striking… or even body-slamming one another when they could. Stains of blood appeared on the matted floor of the arena… sometimes from one fighter or another pressing his face against the mat. Sometimes they spat the blood out, along with a tooth or two, sometimes the blood dripped from fresh cuts, or scrapes on their faces.
She wasn’t sure what she was looking at as the fights went on, but by the end of the fifth or sixth pair of fighters she thought she understood the basics of the rules. The fights weren’t so much about technique as they were about strategy. She knew nothing about the various fighting styles of the world and she imagined that seeing movies was no substitute for real-world knowledge but she could tell right off that no two fighters used the same techniques as the others.
Some of the moves that the fighters used reminded her of wrestling. Some of them reminded her of Kung Fu movies that she had seen as a child. Some of their attacks were powerful kicks… others relied on heavy punches… some preferred to slam their opponents to the ground and twisting arms and legs to force them to submit. She couldn’t determine if there really was any one particular set of skills involved or not. But there at least was a point system involved and points were given or taken away depending on how well a particular attack was delivered or deflected. The matches were won by knock out, tap out, or fought to a draw from what she could tell. It was a lot to take in and make sense of.
But the rules of the fights were hardly what had captivated her attention, she decided. All that struck her were the fighters… almost with as much force as how they struck each other. There was something that was simply captivating in looking at them. Muscle… mass… ferocity… the very danger of it even held some appeal.
And it wasn’t the violence that caught her attention. It was everything else. It was how messy their hair got… the way the sweat glistened on their hardened bodies… the rippling of their muscles as they struck at each other… the grunts they made as they delivered punches… the groans as they absorbed kicks… the way they tackled each other on the mat. Yes, there was something beastly about it, but there was also something else. Something… enticing… something that was worthy of closer inspection.
Much closer.
Callie had never been attracted to men like this and until now she had never really thought about why. Growing up as she did she had always associated such things with an environment such as this: dark, violent, bloody, something that was altogether not appropriate for someone of her standing in society.
A standing that I’ve tried my whole life to ignore, she thought as she watched the fighters circle and beat each other in the ring.
Sure, most of the men that she watched in the cage had tattoos up and down their legs, their arms, their chests and bellies, their necks, their backs, and even on their faces. But somehow, their conduct in the ring allowed her to see past what she had been taught to think. They weren’t trying to bludgeon each other to death. There was sportsmanship involved. When a referee blew the whistle, they stopped. When one of them tapped out, all sense of violence and aggression ceased, and when one of them was knocked out and revived then the victor helped the loser to his feet. There was something admirable in all of that.
“And now…” said the announcer in the center of the ring as the last two fighters cleared out and cleaning crews stepped in to clean up what they could of the blood from off the mat. “The final event of the evening that you’ve all been waiting for!”
The crowd cheered and Callie brought her eyes upon the announcer. The man was skinny and his hair was slicked back as though he had dipped his head in a bucket of oil and his suit looked only half as expensive as the rich men that had come here to witness the matches. He stood in the center of the ring, clutching a microphone in his hand and speaking in circles to the crowd at large.
“Our challenger for the evening, weighing in at two hundred forty five pounds, coming to us all the way from the Las Vegas Fighting Circuit… please put your hands together for Luis “Tonto” Rosales!” the skinny announcer said aloud.
From the hallway where all of the fighters had been sequestered came another fighter. This one was of Latin stock and his hair was short and spiked on top, and despite what the announcer had said he looked like he wore just enough muscle to be light and fast. He was dressed in the usual MMA uniform… shirtless and barefoot, but with a pair of black fighting shorts. Callie found her eyes drawn to him, he was handsome, but she had seen others tonight that were more to her liking.
The fighter, Tonto, ascended the metal steps and slipped inside the cage, bouncing lightly on his feet like a boxer might and raising his hands to move the crowd to more cheers. There were more than a few wolf-whistles from the ladies in the audience, Callie noticed. She couldn’t blame them.
“Oh! Oh! Oh! This is it!” Cece said enthusiastically, bouncing in her seat. “This is it! This is the one that I wanted you to really see!”
“And now, our reigning champion for two solid years, weighing in at two hundred fifty one pounds… he hails from parts unknown… give a round of applause for Odin!” There was a roar of deafening cries of approval from the crowd and even Callie felt herself swept up in it as her eyes searched for the fighter the announcer had just described. The name alone sounded mysterious… the rest sounded yummy.
She turned and watched as the second fighter emerged from the private corridor. What she saw stole her breath away as if a vacuum had been hooked up to her lungs. Emerging from the darkened corridor was a hulking figure of a man, shrouded partly in shadow. But every step he took brought him further and further into the light.
His muscles were so finely sculpted it was as if he were a marble sculpture brought to life. His shoulders were wide, his body forming an almost “V” shape, though his waist was perfectly shaped as well. While she had admired the other fighters that had come into the arena she found that this one had abs she could have climbed like a jungle gym.
His arms were thick, full of sinew that looked like it could have crushed boulders. His legs looked powerful, tense, like they could have stomped mountains flat. His chest was bare and his pectoral muscles were so finely developed she thought she could have ironed a shirt on his chest and he wouldn’t have felt the heat. She was able to discern a few tattoos that she couldn’t make out the shape of on his belly, chest, and neck. His head was shaved and when he smiled, she saw the flash of golden teeth behind his lips.
Jay?!
The thought was confirmed when he stepped fully into the light and the crowd – save for herself – rose to its feet and cheered wildly at his approach. Callie only sat where she was in stunned silence.
Chapter 4
It felt as if someone had just cracked a lead pipe over her head. Though the crowd was alive and on its feet with excitement she couldn’t move. It felt like liquid nitrogen had just been pumped into her heart and a shard of ice had been plunged through her eye. Her mind was befuddled and her heart seemed to freeze…
She knew in an instant that the thoughts she had just been having… the kind that admired Jay’s body… his looks… his mannerisms… were wrong. But at the same insta
nt, she relished the feeling that they gave her. There was something warm about them… there was a certain kind of a rush of adrenaline to them. There was something dark… something forbidden… but somehow, irresistible to those feelings.
Though the roar of the crowd was massive she didn’t hear a single thing as the fight started. It was like she had been dipped into some kind of syrup that distorted time itself. Everything seemed to move slower… become duller… muted… heavy… it was hard to describe.
She watched Jay… Odin… whatever his name was as he moved through the cage. She forgot all about the other fighter, Tonto, and her eyes rested solely on Jay. She watched almost memorizing the shape of his body. How he moved… the way veins in his arm seemed to throb as his muscles tensed… the way his abs seemed to become harder when he took a punch to the belly, the way his chest expanded and retracted as he breathed. It was like watching some kind of an organic machine at work. It was… beautiful.
It was like watching light dance. It was like watching a landslide that somehow didn’t turn out to be destructive. It was like watching a tornado shrink into human form. It was just… unnatural… and hard to take her eyes away from.
The fight was over before she realized it.
Tonto laid face-down on the mat as medics rushed into the cage to check him. After only a few seconds one of them gave the wave off to the referee to show that he was unconscious. The ref blew his whistle and the match came to an end and the crowd cheered. Jay – Odin – thrust both his fists into the air as if summoning more enthusiasm from the crowd and channeling their energy into himself.
Callie stood fixed to the spot. A jumble of thoughts went through her mind in no particular order. And all the while she was still unable to tear her eyes away from Jay’s body.
Cece doesn’t know who he is, I never introduced them! This explains his teeth! Does his father know? This is why I haven’t seen him all week! Fuck, he looks so good! What would Cece say if I told her that he was my stepbrother? How did I not know this about him? What would he say if he saw me? How can he get away with doing something like this? What’s wrong with me?
HIGHLANDER: The Highlander’s Surrender Bride (Scottish Alpha Male Pregnancy Romance) Page 24