by Leddy Harper
Rather than continue to attack him while he was down, I remained on my knees next to him and studied his body language. Cal may have been a proficient fighter and knowledgeable coach, but he didn’t know how to read people like I did. Take away a person’s ability to communicate, and they’ll learn ways around the verbal language.
When I looked at Cain, I saw a man on the verge of giving up. The fight drained from his eyes and his body went slack. He didn’t lose consciousness, but he did lose his will to keep going. With blood seeping from his nostrils and mouth—more than likely a broken nose and, at the very least, a loose tooth—he patted the springboard beneath him, indicating his concession.
The officiant called the fight, but I didn’t move. I took Cain’s hand in mine and assisted him in sitting up, then looked him in the eye to make sure he was all right. Graciousness stared back at me. It was enough to get up and help him stand. We shook hands as he muttered, “You got this, man. You got this.”
Commotion filled the room as the referee lifted my arm into the air, but none of it really registered with me. On my quest to find Rylee through the crowd, Cal caught my attention. He handed me a bottle of water in lieu of a towel, considering I hadn’t perspired enough or bled at all to need the rag.
“What was that?” he asked with his mouth close to my ear, shouting above the ruckus.
I furrowed my brow, not having a clue as to what he meant.
He pointed to the ring, where I’d stepped away from seconds ago, and said, “You just stood there. You could’ve taken him out in half that time. You let him get a hit on you. What the hell was that?” His eyes grew large. “And then you showed him mercy. This isn’t the playground, kid. This is the ring. This is fighting. Winner take all. I don’t wanna see that shit from you again.”
I shrugged and quirked a brow at him, which translated into, “I don’t give a fuck what you say, because I’ll do what I want.” Of course, he probably didn’t quite get all that, but at least it was the message I’d given him.
“Go to the locker room and clean up. When you’re done, come back out here and watch the rest of the matches…see how it’s done in this part of town. It doesn’t matter where you’ve fought before or what your reason is for being here. Showing compassion on the other side of those ropes is weakness, and they’ll eat you alive at the first sign of it.”
Without acknowledging him, I turned on my heel and headed toward the hallway. There were three doors on each side, each team taking one. Our room was the last one on the left, so I had to pass the others on my way there. Halfway down the hall, I heard, “They call him Happy because the fucker never smiles. Seriously, he looks like his parents just died. Pissed off at the world.”
If only they knew.
The room was empty when I walked in. Towels hung on hooks lining the wall, a medical table sat in the middle, and beyond that was a small alcove with one shower stall. I didn’t need to wash up, but I went back there anyway to change my clothes. I’d just taken my shorts off, leaving me in nothing but my birthday suit, when the door creaked open.
Peeking around the tiled wall, I spotted the intruder.
And those round, brown eyes brought my dick to life.
Twenty
Rylee
“This is fucking pathetic,” Josh roared over the noise around us. “Motherfucker can’t even throw a punch when the other guy’s practically begging for it. I can’t watch this shit anymore. Seeing him advance pisses me off.”
He kissed me, hard, staking his claim around the other fighters, and then stormed off. I wasn’t sure where he was going, so I stood in the same place, waiting for him to come back. Killian won and then exited the ring while I watched from the sidelines. There was something about watching him fight that called to me, and when he began his trudge to the back room, I found myself following him, all while glancing over my shoulder for Josh.
After waiting for Josh for several minutes, I made the decision to corner Killian, praying he was alone. I knew he wouldn’t talk to me around other people, but considering he didn’t need medical attention and he’d left his coach behind, I figured it was safe to assume he wouldn’t have company. I only wanted to talk to him, to find out why he was doing this. It wasn’t him. Not the same Killian Foster I’d known. The same boy I’d cried myself to sleep thinking about almost every night for years on end.
I rushed through the door and quickly closed it behind me. After I realized no one else was in the room, I engaged the lock. A man peered out with sandy blond hair drawn back to reveal the shaved parts underneath. My heart skipped a beat against my wishes. No matter how angry I was with him, how many times I told myself I wanted nothing to do with him, he still managed to ignite my body in flames of heated passion and desire. Still held the ability to affect the natural rhythm of my heart.
He may have stepped out of that ring as Happy, but standing here now, he was the boy who wanted to steal the moon for me. The boy who drew colorful flowers on my hands and signed his name on various hidden parts of my body.
The one who’d held my heart since I was ten years old.
“Who are you?” I asked quietly, not because I was afraid of being heard, but because my voice refused to work. He literally stole my breath away.
Killian stepped away from the wall, baring his perfectly ripped body. It was a masterpiece. He couldn’t have sketched it better had he tried. Each line was precisely cut to accentuate every carved muscle, including the lick-worthy V that brought my attention to his hardening cock between his legs. It’d been ten days since I’d felt him inside me. Eight since I last saw his face.
Rather than greeting me with words, he took his shaft in his hand and began to stroke himself. Slowly. Oh so slowly until my panties were drenched and my nipples painfully erect. As he stalked toward me, his hooded gaze trapped me in place. Cemented my feet to the floor. Ceased my ability to move, breathe, blink.
Somehow, he’d crossed the small room and stood before me. Inches away. His body heat wafting over me in shallow waves of blistering warmth. His heavy breathing scratched the silence cocooned around us. I closed my eyes against the assault his presence had over me and inhaled deeply.
Killian had always had this unique scent. It’d been weaved into the fibers of my life for seven years, and then lingered for a while after he was gone. It was irreplaceable. No matter how much time I spent trying to rediscover it, I never could. It was him…just him. Not from a bottle or bar of soap. It wasn’t shampoo or laundry detergent. It was Killian Foster. But now, standing in front of him, breathing him in…it was gone. No hint of the smell I’d been addicted to. No remaining trace of my first love. The aroma that had been tied up in my dreams for so long had disappeared. And in its place was something vaguely familiar—like a relative you knew when you were a small child, your best friend in kindergarten you run into after high school, or an old photo you come across, remembering the faces but can’t recall when it’d been taken.
I covered my face with my hands and fought back the need to cry. The emotion came out of nowhere. It attacked me, took me by surprise. Unclear and vicious. Ready to take me down at any moment. But the need to sob fled as soon as he wrapped his fingers around my wrists. Fear took hold of me when I remembered the last time someone had done this. Josh. When he wanted me to touch him. I squeezed my eyes tighter, as if I could close them more than they already were, and lowered my head once he successfully pulled away my mask.
“Rylee…” He whispered my name so softly, so full of air, it almost didn’t seem real. It reminded me of the times I’d hear him on the edge of consciousness, seconds before I’d drift off to sleep, only to hear his voice as if he stood before me and sat straight up. But not this time. Hearing him now, I knew he was here. So I kept my eyes shut, my chin tucked toward my chest, and tried with every ounce of fleeting fight I had to pull my arms away.
My resolve came when he didn’t move my hands to his groin. Instead, he pulled one to his chest, laying it jus
t over his pectoral muscle. My palm absorbed the heat of his skin when I splayed my fingers, his collarbone just beneath the tips. He took my other hand and pulled it to his face, keeping his hold on me, forcing me to touch him. His facial hair felt soft, nothing like the coarse hair it appeared to be, and I couldn’t find it in me to pull away.
I dropped my forehead to the center of his chest and melted into him, allowing him to hold me up. Humidity plumed against my face when I asked again, “Who are you?” This time, the words shook as I embedded them into his skin, making him feel every emotion and bewilderment within them.
“You know who I am, Rylee.” Without leaning over, he dropped his head so his mouth was next to my ear, forcing me to hear every word. “You’ve always been the only person who knew me. That hasn’t changed.”
“No.” I shook my head, kept my hands exactly where they were, and pulled back enough to look into his eyes. The pistachio color calmed the storm raging inside. It reminded me of the first time I ever saw them, the first time I met Killian. The day my life changed forever. “I don’t know you, because the person I remember you being wouldn’t be in that ring. He wouldn’t have beat up some guy he’d never met before—for the hell of it.”
“I’m fighting a demon inside. I’ve been trying to slay it since I left you…since before I left. But I’m doing it. I’m ridding myself of the anger, the hatred, the burning hole in my chest. And this is how I have to do it, Rylee. Please, trust me. Trust that I’m the same person. If anything, I’m a healthier version.”
I scoffed, unable to hold in the wave of humorless laughter. “Healthier? You call punching people until they bleed healthy?”
His eyes darkened, but they never left mine. “You don’t seem to have a problem when your boyfriend does it. He takes no mercy on his opponents, and you don’t seem to care. What’s the difference? Why is what I do any different than what he does?”
I dropped my gaze to my fingers, laced through his wiry beard. I scratched his jaw and found a strange comfort in the sound of the hairs beneath my nails. “You’re not him, Killian. You’re better than that. Always have been.”
“Yet you’re with him…”
My gaze snapped to his, the desolation in his tone capturing me and refusing to let go. “Because he’s nothing like you. Anyone who reminded me of you only brought back the pain of your absence. Reminded me of the heartbreak you left in your wake. I couldn’t do that. I need someone completely opposite of you; otherwise, I’d do nothing but exist. I was tired of existing. I wanted to live, to breathe, to laugh and smile. I wanted to feel whole again.”
“Do you? Does he make you feel whole?”
I tried to push him away, but he gripped my wrists again and held me still. “I’m not doing this with you. I refuse to let you control my life again.”
“Why did you come here?”
With an exasperated sigh, I fell into the door behind me, pressing my back into the thin, cheap wood. “I needed answers. I don’t know why I needed them—or even wanted them. The last time I saw you, we were in my back yard in Smithsville. In Tennessee. Five years later, I find you in a gym in Baltimore. Making money beating the shit out of people you don’t know. Nothing makes sense to me anymore.”
He dropped his forehead to mine and closed his eyes. In this moment, he was everything I remembered him being. He was the epitome of my dreams, my hopes, my prayers. He was here. I was here. We were together again. Nothing else mattered.
But it did.
Everything else mattered.
And it took conscious effort on my part to keep that in mind.
“You’re different, Killian. And I don’t know how to take it. It’s like when you go back to your childhood home, and it’s nothing like you remembered. It’s the same, but not. At all. The same walls, the same big oak tree in the front yard. The same front door. But the grass is higher and the tire swing is missing. The front porch is a different color and new drapes hang in the window. Different. That’s what you are to me now. An old house, full of memories, but none of it belongs to me anymore.”
“Nothing has changed. I’m still me,” he argued with a voice so deep it could’ve been a growl. “I still love you as much as I did the day I walked away to chase my demons. More. I love you so much more. Because now I’m closer to being free. And I want nothing more than to love you freely. Openly.”
His confession slammed into me and knocked the wind from my chest. My lungs burned, my head grew light, and I feared my knees would buckle. I knew he’d said it to me before, in bed. But that didn’t mean anything to me. He was trying to get what he wanted, and using that term was what every guy knew worked.
But he wasn’t every guy.
He was Killian.
“Don’t act like that’s the first time I’ve ever told you that.”
“It kind of is. Saying it while buried balls deep in me doesn’t count. Not to mention, you can’t come back after being gone for years upon years and expect me to believe it. It doesn’t work that way.”
The space between his brows narrowed and the lines creased heavily while he stared into my eyes. The seafoam green had darkened, and I could practically smell the storm brewing inside him. “That wasn’t the first time I ever told you.”
“What? Of course it was.”
“I told you in your back yard, when I had you pinned against the wall. And yes, it still counts even though I had your pussy wrapped around my cock, milking me. It counts. I meant it. And I meant it when I said it again after you pushed me away and told me to go.”
My mind drifted back to that night, recalling him saying something. But I never knew what. His mouth had moved, his grunts had filled my ears, but at the time, it never made any sense to me.
Until now.
He’d told me then he loved me.
And I didn’t know what to do with that information.
“And don’t, for a fucking second, think I didn’t mean it the other day. You’ve been mine since the day you followed me into the woods. And no matter what you say or do, you’ll always be mine. I’ve loved you since the moment I laid eyes on you and I’ll never stop. So believe what you want, be shocked, be surprised, but whatever you do…don’t ever fucking doubt it.”
A knock on the door to my back caused us both to freeze. We stood silent, waiting for whoever stood on the other side to say something, or knock again. “Happy, it’s Cal. I need you to open up, man.”
Killian grabbed a towel hanging from a hook next to us and wrapped it around his waist. He held his finger to his lips, signaling me to be quiet. After I stepped to the side, he opened it a crack to speak to Cal. Only seeing half of this one-sided conversation made it difficult to gather the full scope of it all.
“Hurry up, man. The lineup is almost over and you need to be out here. You’ll be up against some of these people, and you need to study them so you’ll be prepared.” There was a pause and Killian nodded. Before he could close the door, Cal spoke again. “Tell your girl she needs to come with me. Jag is out there and if he catches her in here…”
Killian turned his attention to me, and I could see in his eyes how much he hated the thought of me leaving. But we both knew we didn’t have much of a choice. His coach was right. If Josh knew I’d been in here, shit would hit the fan.
I slid between the door and Killian, offering him a sliver of a smile as I exited the room. Once the door was closed, the latch clicking into place, I moved around Cal and started toward the mouth of the hallway.
“Not so fast.” Cal gently held my elbow and stopped me. “What you’re doing is dumb and dangerous. These men go in there”—he pointed to the stage just beyond the end of the hall—“and fight with barely any safety net. No gloves, no padding. Only one man who stands there and calls the shots. Giving one a reason to beat the other, aside from a win and money, is stupid. And quite possibly, deadly.”
“That’s not what I’m doing. You don’t know—”
“I know enough,” h
e said, interrupting me. “I know you’re the girl Happy is after, the name on his arm. I know he came here for a reason, and it’s my understanding that reason is you. He has it out for Jag, and he won’t stop until he gets you back. But what neither of you understand is Jag won’t go down easily. I’ve seen him fight. He goes for the jugular. He’s skilled and has many more fights under his belt than Happy. This won’t end well if you switch sides before the tournament is over.”
“No one ever said anything about switching sides. I only went to talk to him. To clear the air and get some answers. Maybe a little closure to the way he left things. It’s not what you think. I’m with Josh, not Kill–Happy.” That name burned my tongue, knowing just how false it was. “It wasn’t a sweet reunion or fun times.”
I turned and began to walk away, but stopped dead in my tracks when he said, “You might want to tell him these walls are thin. Anyone standing on the other side of the door can hear everything that’s being said.”
Instead of acknowledging him, I resumed my stride and made it to the large room. Josh stood in the center of a small crowd. Once his gaze landed on me, he parted through the bodies and stormed the ten feet between us.
“Where were you?”
I felt his anger before I heard it. “I had to use the restroom. I waited for you, but you never came back. I couldn’t hold it any longer.”
He nodded, accepting my lie, and grabbed my hand. “You about ready to go? It’s pretty much over and I need to get some sleep.” Josh had always had a ritual the night before a fight, and I prayed he wouldn’t want to keep it tonight. But I knew that was a wasted wish when he said, “I’ll drop you off at your car so you can follow me back to my place.”
“Josh…I’m tired. Can’t you just drop me off at home?”
His eyes lit up like the sea at noon and a wicked grin tugged at his lips. He leaned down and licked the outer edge of my ear before lowering his voice and whispering, “No, babe. You’re coming with me. You know I need your pretty lips wrapped around my dick before a fight. The last time, you were gone, and I lost. Being buried in your throat is my good luck charm.”