Fear.
The fear of needing someone. Of relying on someone.
Of someone being everything to her.
The fear of losing herself by being with that someone. Of her disappearing behind someone so much stronger than her. Of her becoming invisible.
“You ready?” Berger asked, interrupting her thoughts. “Get your head in the fight, Kat, or you’re going to lose again. You start to lose on a regular basis, you’re going to lose your sponsors and your career will collapse. You want that?”
Was that her manager’s idea of a pep talk? You lose, you’re done?
Though, it was strangely motivating...
She met Berger’s eyes and inhaled a deep breath to clear her thoughts. “No. I’m not going to lose.”
“Good girl,” Berger said, knowing she hated that. That it pissed her off.
Steel had used the same tactic, whispering the same into her ear to get her torqued for her underground fight all those weeks ago.
It worked then, it worked now.
She pounded her gloves together and Berger shoved the mouthguard between her lips. She settled it in place and turned to face the center of the ring.
She needed to fight her fear of losing herself just because she loved a man.
She needed to stop fighting her feelings for that man.
She was strong enough to remain her own woman even with him by her side.
That’s where he’d have to be. By her side. Because she would never stand in his shadow.
As she moved toward the center of the ring to meet her opponent, she realized she was strong enough to remain Kat Callahan no matter what life threw at her.
Even if she loved a man named Anson Sterling.
Especially if she loved a man called Steel.
Epilogue
Steel’s heart thudded heavily as the door to the locker room opened and he heard a surprised, “You’re not coming in?” then Berger muttering a “sorry” before the door slammed shut.
“What the fuck, Berg?” Kat yelled. “Why’d you lock the door?”
At least Berger had been smart enough to know why Kat lost her last fight and had agreed to Steel’s plan.
Which he hoped didn’t backfire.
Everyone back home was tired of the Steel Shit Show. And so was he.
Which meant he was going to do what he never thought he’d ever do and beg if he had to.
Fact: life sucked without Kat.
From what Berger had told him, it seemed like Kat’s life sucked without him, too.
He only hoped that was true and Berger wasn’t being a total dick and setting him up, then standing outside the locker room door laughing at Steel as he made a fucking fool out of himself.
Because if Berger was, then...
“Berg! I need you to help me with my gloves!” Kat shouted and pounded on the door.
Shit.
He didn’t want her already pissed when he approached her.
He sucked in a breath, did a quick check to make sure his balls were still there and stepped out of the shower area.
Kat’s back was to him, her fists pressed to the door with her head hanging between her outstretched arms. “Berger, why are you doing this?” she whispered.
“I asked him to.”
Kat’s body snapped like a stretched rubber band and she whipped around to face him, her eyes wide, her mouth that he wanted to kiss hanging open.
“Kitty Kat,” he whispered, taking her in. Her short dark brown hair was still plastered to her head from the fight. A sweat stain circled the top of her sports bra and her skin was still slick in spots.
She was beautiful as fuck.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to watch your fight.” A fight she won this time. Her head had been in it tonight, unlike the last one he watched her lose. And lose badly. But then he could see she had no will to win that one, just like the last few underground fights Steel had lost. They had both punished themselves enough.
“You didn’t have to fly to San Diego to watch it. Pay-per-view would’ve been cheaper.”
“Strength is what we gain from the madness we survive,” Steel quoted her tattoo softly.
Kat sucked in a sharp breath, then carefully schooled her face. With a tilt of her head, she studied him.
Well, fuck that, he wasn’t going to do the same. He wasn’t going to hide how he felt about her. That’s not why he flew all this fucking way.
Drawing in a deep breath of his own, he stepped up to her and held out his hands, palms up.
She stared at them for a few seconds, then tentatively placed hers in his. He removed her gloves one at a time, then began to unwrap her hands as he talked. As he ripped himself open and laid himself out before her.
“I’m weak without you,” he admitted. “I need to be surrounded by strength, Kat. To keep me strong. My team, my boss, my woman. Soft is great. For a night. Maybe two. But forever?” He shook his head. “No. I need a woman who can love me as hard as I love her. Fight with me as dirty as I fight with her. Fuck me as hard as I fuck her. A woman who won’t break when I don’t even realize I’m trying to break her. I need a woman who’s not going to cower when I lose my fucking shit. Because I can guarantee there will be days I’ll lose my fucking shit. It’s one of the reasons why I fight and why I’ll continue to fight. I won’t ever ask you to stop because I know you won’t ask me to stop, either. Your career is yours and I’ll never interfere with it. Just like I know you’ll never interfere with mine. That’s why we fit. We understand each other’s needs. I’ve never had that before and I know neither have you. We can have that, Kat. With each other.”
“I... That was a lot for me to process, Steel. Was there a question somewhere in all that for me?”
What he was going to say next would make or break this whole thing. Whether he would go out and punch Berger for lying to him, or shake the motherfucker’s hand and thank him.
He thought long and hard about how he would word what he was about to say. And he decided on a way that if she couldn’t live with it now, he knew she’d couldn’t live with it later. Because if she wanted to be with him, she’d have to get used to being labeled as such. He didn’t want to fool himself or her, that people back at home wouldn’t use those words to identify her.
It was now or never.
“Kat, I want you to be my woman.” When she shook her head, he lifted a hand to stop what she might say next. To shoot him down before he finished. Because he needed to finish and then he would accept whatever her decision was. “But I also want to be your man. I want it to be a claim that works both ways. I swear to fuck that I will never try to bend you to my will or try to break you until you fit the norms. I love you the way you are. I love you because of who you are.”
“You love me,” she whispered.
“Yeah, and I don’t expect—”
Kat shook her head and said, “Shut up.”
His head jerked back and his mouth snapped shut.
“If you keep talking and saying those things, I’m going to start crying and then I’m going to have to punch you for making me cry.”
He grinned. Then he opened his mouth.
She lifted a hand and shook her head to stop him. “Just fucking kiss me instead. That’s all you had to do. Just kiss me and tell me how much you love me. You could’ve kept it simple.”
He frowned. “Are you fucking with me?”
Kat grinned. “Yes. Because the truth is I loved everything you said. Especially because I never expected a man like you to say any of it. I love the fact that you love me as I am. That you aren’t threatened by my career. But there’s a problem...”
Steel’s stomach flipped. “What?”
“You still haven’t kissed me.”
He dropped the wraps he’d been squeezing so hard his fingers had cramped to their feet. “Meet me halfway,” he whispered.
Both of them took a single step closer until they were toe to toe. Him, over six feet in his boots.
Her, barely five-foot-two in bare feet.
Even so, she was a powerhouse.
One that had knocked the fuck out of him.
He dropped his head and she lifted up on her toes until their lips were just a breath apart.
“I love you, Kitty Kat. Will you be my woman?”
“Just by you asking that and me not punching you in the balls as an answer means I already am. I love you, asshole.”
He smothered his chuckle by crushing his mouth to hers and, fuck, did she taste good. The last month and a half had been torture without her. He never wanted them to be apart for that long again.
He should be scared as fuck that he felt so strongly about another person.
But it didn’t scare him. It felt right.
They were right.
So fucking right.
A half hour later, after the water had turned cold, Steel led them from the shower and wrapped Kat up in a towel. But before he let her get dressed so they could get the hell out of there to somewhere he could spend more quality time with his woman, he leaned in once more, whispering against her lips, “For luck, Kitty Kat.”
When he lifted his head a few moments later, she teased, “You need luck?”
He grinned. “Fuck no, not when I have you.”
Turn the page to read the first chapter of
Guts & Glory: Brick
Guts & Glory: Brick
Turn the page for a sneak peek of
Guts & Glory: Brick
(In the Shadows Security, Book 6)
Sneak peak of Guts & Glory: Brick (Unedited)
Chapter One
The glass-shaking slam of the front door had all the Shadows shooting straight up in their chairs. Brick wasn’t the only one sitting around the table whose hand automatically went to the handgun strapped on his ankle.
What sounded like a woman’s heels came down the hallway in their direction.
“Shit,” Ryder muttered, “You said she was out with the sisterhood tonight.”
Mercy’s silver eyes slid to him. “Yeah, she’s fucking supposed to be out most of the night with the rest of them.”
“I knew we should’ve had poker night at the fucking warehouse,” Steel grumbled.
“The motherfucking heat is out,” Hunter said. “We would’ve had to cancel because of blue balls. And all the women are occupied with Bella’s baby shower, so it’s the perfect time to play.”
“We could’ve worn layers,” Walker muttered.
All eyes slid to him. “And your momma could’ve dressed you up in your fucking snowsuit and mittens, too.”
Walker gave Steel the finger.
A stutter of those clicking heels was heard, a stumble, then a bang. Like Rissa had fallen against the wall.
Brick glanced at Mercy. “Jesus, is she drunk? What’d you do wrong to make her get smashed?”
Mercy frowned and surged to his feet. “Nothing. I never do anything wrong, asshole.”
Chuckles and snorts circled the dining room table where their chips, cards, ashtrays, cigars and booze were strewn.
Before Mercy could go check on Rissa’s condition, a woman burst into the room, her hair, the same color and almost the same length as Rissa’s, a wreck. Her eyes, the same color as Rissa’s, wide as she took them all in.
“Fuck,” Mercy muttered and sank back into his seat, scraping a hand down his scarred face.
“You didn’t set the alarm?” Ryder asked, grinning.
“You know I fucking did,” Mercy grumbled, then turned to face the intruder. “How do you have the fucking code?”
“From the last time I was here. Parris gave it to me.” The woman made a face at Mercy. “What? I’m her sister, not a terrorist.”
Brick pursed his lips as he took in a younger version of Rissa, but one just as curvy and whose attitude and other similarities could make them twins.
Gorgeous, but a pain in the ass.
Or at least, that’s what Mercy said. Not the gorgeous part, the pain in the ass part.
Though, Brick never had a chance to meet her in person. And he only half paid attention when Mercy bitched about her during their poker games.
Normally, Mercy wasn’t one to bitch. He normally kept shit to himself and let it eat at him like acid. But apparently Rissa’s sister liked to do stupid things. Or, at least, make stupid decisions.
The biggest one being, moving across the country to shack up with a man she met on the internet after only talking with him for a month.
Mercy said she was “impulsive.”
“She lets you smoke cigars in here?” Londyn’s S’s were slightly slurred as she wrinkled her nose and waved a hand around to break up the smoke. “Yuck.”
“Rissa know you’re here?” Mercy growled.
Brick read the look on Mercy’s face and hoped to hell that Rissa hadn’t forgotten to tell Mercy something so important.
“No, I sent her a text when I landed at the airport... For some reason she hasn’t responded yet.”
Brick swore Mercy actually rolled his eyes.
Rolled his fucking eyes.
Brick dropped his head and hid his chuckle.
His chuckle died when Londyn stepped up to the table, grabbed the bottle of whiskey sitting next to the pile of poker chips in the center, removed the cap and guzzled right from it.
While Brick had noticed many similarities between Mercy’s woman and her sister, he’d also noted that her chest was just about as big as Rissa’s. And Rissa had a great rack.
Brick’s eyes swung back to Mercy to make sure he wasn’t going to die for thinking those thoughts. He swore the man could read minds.
Luckily, Mercy was too busy scowling at Londyn, so Brick turned back to her. She had dropped the bottle for a second, took a breath and then took another guzzle.
Then Brick noticed that he wasn’t the only one whose eyes were glued to her exposed cleavage in the deep V-necked pant-suit thingy she was wearing, or the way her throat moved as she swallowed.
“Bet it would look like that if she was swallowing something else,” Brick said under his breath, unable to contain it.
Next to him, Steel stifled a snort and dropped his head.
Mercy surged to his feet and snatched the bottle from Londyn. “Why the fuck are you here?” He slammed the bottle down next to him and out of her reach.
“I had nowhere else to go since you made Parris sell her house in Vegas.”
“I didn’t—” Mercy’s mouth snapped shut and he just shook his head.
“I can’t understand why she’d want to leave Vegas when Michael spoiled her. You’re just a big ol’ grump.”
Steel jerked beside Brick, and Brick turned his face away before his laughter got him a .45 bullet smack between the eyes.
Her red-rimmed blue eyes landed on the bottle next to Mercy. “I need a drink.”
“How much have you had to drink already?” Ryder asked, looking more concerned than amused.
Londyn lifted a shoulder. “A couple on the plane... And... maybe...”
“Right. We can figure it out on our own,” Mercy stated. “No more booze.”
Londyn’s lips parted as she stared at Mercy for a long, uncomfortable moment, then as if she shook something loose, she clapped her hands together loudly and yelled, “Then I need ice cream! Your wife have any ice cream?” and beelined right out of the room toward the kitchen.
“Wife?” Brick’s head rotated from watching Londyn’s thick, but luscious, ass disappear around the corner to Mercy. “You get married and forget to tell us about it?”
Before he could answer, Londyn backed that caboose right up so they could only see her head tilted back, her long hair spilling down her back and the sweet, sweet ass that, if he was a dumb fuck, he’d try to tap.
But, one, he wasn’t dumb, and, two, he preferred his balls not end up on a skewer and served for dinner.
“Oh... That’s right. I meant your girlfriend, Ryan. Over two years now and my sister still doesn’t have
a ring on it.”
Then she set that train in a forward motion and disappeared.
“Damn,” Brick whispered. He picked up his beer and took a sip to hide his smirk.
“No wonder her fucking man left her,” Mercy grumbled.
“I heard that!” came from the kitchen.
“That was the fucking point!” Mercy bellowed back.
“Can we get back to the game?” Steel asked.
“Why? This is so much better,” Brick said under his breath, though Mercy heard him and shot him a look.
“Should we just call it a night?” Hunter asked.
“I’m not leaving yet,” Brick announced. “This is too good.”
“And anyway...” Londyn announced as she came back into the dining room in record time, carrying a heaping bowl of ice cream, dragging a chair behind her from the kitchen. She worked it around the table to shove it in between Brick and Steel.
Giving each other a look, they shifted their seats enough to make room.
“He didn’t leave me. I kicked him out.” She circled her spoon around the table with narrowed eyes. “Doesn’t look like any of you eat ice cream.”
Before anyone of them could answer her, Mercy barked out, “Notice something?”
“Yeah, a whole bunch of panty-wetting men sitting at a table not eating ice cream. But, helloooo, I've given them up. All of you. I don't care how hot you are. How skilled your tongue is. I'm done!” She shoved a full spoon into her mouth and closed her eyes like she was having an orgasm. “Damn, that’s good.”
Yes, it was. Brick watched as she jammed the spoon into the frozen mountain again and lifted it to her mouth.
His eyes were glued to her lips as they parted and her tongue darting out. Then the spoon disappeared again into her mouth, her eyes closed again, and she made a mmm sound.
Mmm. Yeah. Fuck.
His hand dropped to his lap. He wondered if she liked to eat cock as much as she liked ice cream. Though by her figure, he guessed she liked ice cream a whole lot.
Mercy’s shout of, “No women,” pulled Brick out of his ice cream fantasy.
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