by Jenna Rose
“You do?” she whispers back as her ass claps back against my thighs. Her body is perfection—a perfection I need in my life.
“More than anything,” I growl as my dick blazes. “Come on. Do it for me. Come for me, baby.”
“I—I’m close!” she cries out under her breath. I fuck her faster. My balls are taut with cum. My thighs tighten. My whole body tenses up like I’ve just done a thousand practice jabs, and when I feel her soaking wet cunt tighten up on me, I go over the edge.
“I’m coming!” Merrell moans.
“So am I!”
Grunting, my hips buck forward and I bury my throbbing cock deep inside her as I empty my balls into her untouched pussy, forever claiming it as mine. With each pulse, I pump more cum into her, in rhythm with her climax, her cunt clamping down on me like she never wants to let me out. And I never want to be anywhere else.
I slump forward on her back as we both come down, leaving my cock inside her until I’m able to pull out. Even then we both groan and slump down onto the floor together. She curls up under my arm and I hold her tight. I feel her warmth, her heartbeat against my chest, her soft skin…
…her perfection.
She had me from the moment that I saw her. I was helpless. First round knockout—there was never even a chance for a fight. But that’s a fight I’m happy to lose. I have her now, and she’s not going anywhere.
6
Jackson
With Merrell in my truck, I feel like a whole man again. I never thought it would be possible—not after what Tiffy did to me. I glance over at her, sitting gorgeous in my passenger seat; she’s got a body built for fucking. Built for breeding. I just emptied my balls in her and neither of us even flinched. She hasn’t even mentioned it since it happened.
It doesn’t scare me; it excites me. What if she gets pregnant? Fuck. My heart is racing at the thought. Without hesitation, I reach out and take her hand in mine. So soft. So feminine. The opposite of my hands. I could wake up every morning with those hands on my back and be a happy man. I’m wearing my wet shorts and she’s wrapped up in a towel, and as we pull into my driveway, I tug it down so I can get a look at her tits again.
“You bad boy,” she gasps, feigning embarrassment.
“Oh, you don’t even know the half of it.”
I give her left breast a squeeze, kiss her perfect plump lips, then get out of the car and go around to her side. Like some kind of bad-boy butler, I open her door and lift her into my arms.
“Careful, Jackson!” she protests as I carry her toward the door.
“Why? You worried I’ll drop you?”
“I—I’m not light,” she replies.
“To me you are.”
Using my foot, I open the door and pull her inside. Then we’re down on the couch and I’m all over her again. We kiss like a couple of teenagers, and it’s then that I realize I don’t even know how old she is. Breaking our embrace, I sit up and look down at her.
“What?” she asks.
“You…you’re legal, right?”
Merrell bursts out laughing and nods her head.
“I’m eighteen, big guy. Were you worried?”
“No, not really,” I reply. “I just didn’t know.”
“Come on, do I look fifteen?”
“Not with tits like that,” I reply, giving them both a squeeze.
“How old are you?” she asks. “You’re not like…retirement age, are you?”
“Fuck you.” I grin.
“Did that.”
God, she’s fucking awesome. “Twenty-eight,” I tell her. She doesn’t even flinch. In fact, she seems to like it.
“I should call my parents,” she says, reaching for her purse which she’s set on the coffee table. “Tell them I’m spending the night at Ryan’s.”
“Oooh, you bad girl,” I chuckle. She picks up her phone and presses her mom’s contact. “Don’t wanna tell her you’re spending the night with a MMA fighter who just took your virginity!?”
“Shhh!” she hisses, slapping me on the arm. Smiling, I get up and head to my room to find some dry clothes. I can hear her talking to her mom while I dry off and slide into a pair of shorts and a tank top, and when I come back into the living room, she’s hanging up.
“Okay?”
“She bought it,” she replies. “We’ll have to figure out some other way of explaining this to her from now on.”
“From now on?” I ask, perking up as I slide onto the couch beside her. “So this is gonna be a regular thing, huh?”
Damn right it is. But I want to hear it from her. She lowers her head slightly and a vulnerable look comes over her face.
“I mean…if you want it to.”
“Of course I want it to,” I tell her. “I just came inside you, Merrell. You think I want this to be a short-term thing? No, you’re mine now.”
I pull her close and kiss her, closing my eyes as I bask in the warmth and softness of her body. She belongs in my bed every single night and every single morning when I wake up. When I pull back and look at her, I don’t just see a sexy girl, though. I see something else; I see my future, and it’s a whole lot different than I thought it was.
“So no clothes for me?” she asks.
“Nope,” I reply simply. “I like you like this.”
She gives me a little smile with a little frown thrown in; she likes it.
“Fine. Tell me something about yourself,” she says.
“Like what?”
“Anything.”
“You want my zodiac sign?” I joke.
“No, jerk,” she laughs. “You’re a fighter, right? MMA? Is that like the UFC?”
“The UFC is an MMA league,” I tell her. “But yeah, MMA fighting is what I do.”
“Are you any good?” she asks. She sure doesn’t hold back. I like it.
“I am. But I won’t be doing it much longer.”
“Really? Why’s that?”
It’s strange to talk to someone outside the industry about stuff like this. She clearly has no idea about the sport or who I am or any of it; how am I supposed to tell her about what I’m about to do?
“Let’s just say…I’m retiring.”
“Wow! Did you like win a bajillion fights and make tons of money?” she asks. Well, this night was going well. Now we’re on this topic…
I take a deep breath and lay it all on her—from Tiffy screwing me out of all my money, to my deal with Micky and how I’m going to throw the fight in four days at the Garden. When I’m done, she just looks at me for a while, and something in her eyes seems to burrow right into my chest. I can tell right away what she’s thinking; she doesn’t approve.
“Jackson,” she says slowly, choosing her words carefully. “I—I don’t think you should do that.”
I don’t think so either. But I don’t say that. “I don’t have a choice. I’m broke. My fighting spirit is broken too.”
“Because of your ex?” she asks.
“Mostly.” I nod. It hurts to admit it, but a man should never shy away from the truth, no matter how painful it may be. Merrell sits up and puts her hand on my shoulder and looks at me with kind, loving, maternal eyes. She has me. That’s all there is to it, and as I stare back at her, I want to be a better man for her. I just don’t know if I can. The damage has been done; there’s no repairing it.
“I don’t think you should do it,” she tells me. “I think you should fight and you should win.”
“It’s not that simple, Merrell—”
“Can you beat this guy?” she asks. I’m astonished. Where did this faith in me come from so quickly?
“I can.”
“Then do it,” she says. This time, she takes my hand and holds it tight. “Do it and I’ll stand by you from now on.”
Merrell
Four days later…
I’ve never been more nervous in my life as Jackson and I pull into the TD Garden. The place is packed. There are people everywhere, police and cameras. I ha
d no idea this was such a big deal, but if Jackson wins this fight, he gets to go on to Vegas for an even bigger match. But according to him, he’s not going to win this fight.
“I can’t do it, baby,” he told me this morning when I came over to his house. I still haven’t quite managed to tell my parents that I’m ready to move in with a man ten years older than me, but they at least know that I’m starting to see him, even if I haven’t given them all the details on him.
“You can,” I told him. “And when you win, I won’t even ask for access to your bank account.”
It was just a little joke, but Jackson didn’t smile. His mind was on the fight—on what he had to do.
I don’t know how to explain it but being with him has awoken a side of me that I wasn’t prepared for. I care for him and want to protect him—not in the way that he protected me from those two men outside the theater, but by being there for him, supporting him, and helping him handle those pesky things that men don’t always handle well: emotions.
“I wish it was that simple, baby girl,” he told me before he left me alone so he could get ready. “But it’s not.”
My eyes are on him as he parks and takes a deep breath. I’ve never been to a fight with him before, but I know there was no way he was ever this nervous. He has to do something today that he knows he shouldn’t do, and it’s killing him. It’s also killing me.
For some reason, Jackson isn’t able to see the man he is capable of being. That wretched bitch of an ex he had was like a bucket of ice water on his flame, and he still hasn’t recovered. It’s killing me that I haven’t been able to reignite it.
He’s been telling me all week that he can use the money to get out of fighting and into something else. Of course he doesn’t know what that will be yet. I tried to tell him that quitting what he’s good at without a plan is a bad idea, but he didn’t listen. In fact, he hasn’t wanted to hear anything I’ve said all day.
“Jackson—”
“Don’t,” he snaps, holding up his hand. “I can’t. Not now.”
“You don’t have to do this,” I tell him, but he ignores me and gets out of the car. I follow after him, pushing past cameras and media as he makes his way to the locker room where he’ll wait for the fight to begin. He slams the door behind us and slumps down in a chair with his hood over his head.
I’m so mad—not at him, but at what he’s thinking. Seeing his spirit crushed like this makes me want to find that girl and drag her face across the concrete. Jackson is a champion; I know it. Only he doesn’t. Not anymore.
“Okay,” I say, approaching him slowly with caution. “What if I told you I’d leave you if you throw the fight?”
It’s a desperate move, and I don’t even know if I mean it; I don’t even know if I could do it, but all I know is I have to try something. Jackson can’t throw this fight. He can’t flush his whole career down the toilet because of some heartless bitch. That gets his attention. He looks up at me with eyes bordering on anger.
“What?”
I want to take it back, but I don’t. I can’t.
“What if I leave you because you throw this fight?”
In a flash, Jackson is on his feet. “What are you talking about? Did you really just say that?”
Don’t back down.
“I did,” I reply firmly. His eyes scour my face, searching for signs of weakness. I don’t give him any. This is something I have to do. I just can’t let him go through with this. No matter what he thinks, it will break him permanently.
It’s a stare down—almost a match between us as we look at each other. This time, I’m praying he breaks.
“Fine, Merrell,” he says, using my name and not a pet-name like he usually does. “You do what you need to do.”
And with that, he walks right past me and out of the room. I stand there stunned as the sounds of the stadium coming alive reverberate through the walls. I don’t know what reaction I was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t that, and now I don’t know what’s going to happen.
8
Jackson
As I walk into the arena, I’m fighting off panic. I may have just fucked up the greatest thing in my life, and I don’t know what to do about it. What does she expect? For me to just fuck over Micky, one of Southie’s nastiest gangsters, win the fight, and just keep going? She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
But despite all that, I can’t deny that I want to do what she said. This week has been the greatest week of my life and that’s all because of Merrell, but there’s been this thing inside me, eating away at me like steady rot, poisoning me like a virus, and it all comes from a single thought: I want to be a better man for her.
A better man wouldn’t throw the fight. A better man wouldn’t cave to a punk like Micky. A better man would forget about what was done to him in the past, man up and move on with his life. A better man would listen to a good woman like her.
But I’m not a better man. Even if I want to pretend I am.
I’m almost to the doors when I feel a tap on my shoulder. It’s one of Micky’s men lurking in a nook by the water fountain. He’s wearing a Red Sox hat low over his eyes and flashes me a smile filled with yellow teeth.
“Hey, boyo,” he says, keeping his voice low. “Good luck with the fight. Best wishes from your friend downtown.”
My anger flares. I see red and think about reaching out and giving him a good one in the stomach, but before I can, he’s gone and pushing his way through the crowd.
“Son of a bitch,” I mutter as I keep moving.
Disgraced fighter. No manager. No future. That’s what I am. I’m just a stooge here to throw a fight so some gangster can get rich off me.
I hear the announcer calling our names, his voice booming over the loudspeakers. The crowd is in a frenzy, changing my name.
“Blur! Blur! Blur! Blur!”
My opponent tonight is from New Jersey, but to the crowd that might as well be New York. Just another reason why they all want me to win tonight, and why Micky betting against me is going to net him a fucking fortune.
I go through my normal warmup routine as I wait for them to start the match, feeling more nervous than I’ve ever felt before. Normally I’d be ice cold right now. I’d have my mind right and my fists ready. But that would be for a fight, and this isn’t that.
Merrell’s back there in the locker room. I can’t even imagine what she’s thinking right now. I don’t even know if she’ll be there when all this is over. I’d like to think she will—that she was just bluffing, but she’s a girl with some spunk and if she says she’s going to do something, she does it. At the end of the night, I might find myself half-a-million richer, but without the girl of my dreams.
“And now, the hometown favorite, the heavy-hitter, the Boston Blur!” the announcer calls. “Jackson Santino!”
The curtain in front of me parts and I jog through the door to the sound of thunderous applause. The whole arena’s going nuts as I make my way into the octagon where my opponent is already waiting for me.
George “Quick Hands” Silver. He’s a heavyweight like me, but slower. He’s a striker. If I get him on the ground, it’s over. He’s eyeing me like a wolf, staring me down, doing his best to intimidate me. I almost want to laugh.
He’s gonna win tonight and he’s gonna think it’s because he was the better fighter. He’s going to think I choked, didn’t research his style, didn’t bring my A-game, and he’ll spend the rest of his life thinking that, because there’s no way I’ll ever be able to tell him the truth.
I toss my robe aside and throw some practice punches, feeling empty inside.
He’ll think he’s the better fighter…I think as the ref calls us to the center of the ring. My eyes aren’t even on him. It’s like I can’t even see him right now.
He’ll think he’s the better man…
I glance up when it’s time to touch gloves and reach out, but the son of a bitch pulls a cheap move and just starts swinging. H
is fist connects with my cheek and I stagger back as he begins his onslaught, drawing jeers and boos from the crowd. Something inside me gives way, and I cover up as he comes at me, ready to do what I know I have to do.
Epilogue
Jackson
One year later…
The truck whines as I pull up the dirt driveway, the lush trees of Thailand surrounding me on all sides. The springs squeal as I go over the set of three bumps I’ve gotten used to. I keep meaning to come out with a shovel and flatten them, but I always end up getting distracted and putting it off until tomorrow.
I park in front of the cottage and get out. The weather’s gorgeous—just the right amount of humidity, and I gaze out at the view of the clear blue ocean. I did it, just like Micky said. I took the money from the fight and bought a place in Thailand. I didn’t go blowing it all of course; I had to save some. Money goes a long way over here but not if you spend it like it’s water.
I wonder what the weather is like back in Boston. Probably freezing. All those poor souls trudging through the slush-covered roads, slipping on ice, scraping their car windshields every morning before work.
“And here I am,” I say to nobody in particular. “Living like a king.”
And boy is that not the truest statement I’ve ever made. I did what I did and now I’m here. No regrets. You can’t live with regrets in this life; that’s what I’ve learned. They eat you up from inside and before you know it, you’re no longer the man you once were. A wise woman once taught me that.
Twirling my keys on my fingers, I take the stairs to the house and tug open the screen door. It used to squeal, but I oiled it yesterday and it’s sounding brand new. I did a bunch of work to the cottage when I first arrived. It’s mine now, and I’d rather do my own work than hire it out to someone else.