When no one comes out, I finish off my drink, toss it in the nearby trash, and begin my jog back to Legacy. Maybe I should cut back on the caffeine if this is how I am going to feel.
When I walk in, Jagger and his wife, Tatiana, are sparring. Well, that’s what they call it. I call it foreplay. It’s the same scene every Wednesday. He peacocks, tapping her on the top of the head and jumping away from her strikes, and she laughs at him. It’s cute.
When her little female self-defense class comes in at ten, they chat as they warm up while Jagger and I watch. Well, he watches her. I watch the women who all have a story as to why they are here; none of which I want to know.
A little after ten, I tape up a young Buck, which isn’t his real name, just like Kid isn’t mine. Sometimes, though, we get stuck with a nickname. And sometimes, like the proverbial shoe, it fits.
I get that feeling again, like someone’s watching me. Fucking coffee is affecting me in some way. I definitely need to cut back on that shit.
The more I keep thinking it, the more determined I am that the java is my issue. After all, no one has a reason to follow a man like me.
With no time to waste, I pay it no mind.
“Ready?” I ask Buck.
He nods, shoving a mouth guard into his mouth. “Always,” he says as he then climbs in.
Once in the cage, I peel off my shirt and stretch a bit as he bounces around in the corner.
Buck is a tough kid. He has little to no restraint and an edge that can be dangerous. He has the potential to go far, yet he is inconsistent. We are working on that.
Before the night I took a man’s life, fighting was nothing I had ever experienced. The minute I stepped into the prison, because of my size, every motherfucker in the joint thought I was someone to knock down to prove they were badass.
They weren’t as bad as they thought, and when word got out that I was a stone-cold killer with a rage burning inside, the little bitches scurried back to their cells and left me the fuck alone... until the next inmate entered the facility. Then I had to prove myself all over again.
Seven fucking years of hell. I have had only a year of freedom, yet I don’t feel the least bit free.
I take a deep breath, stretch my neck, nod to Buck, and then step in. He storms at me, ready to attack.
“Footing.”
He growls and swings, and I easily take his legs out from under him. Then he hops up and swings with a left.
“Right,” I tell him before blocking his strike and tapping him in the face.
He grunts and swings with his right.
“Block,” I tell him as I tap his exposed face again.
“Fuck you!” he screams then lunges at me.
I push him off. “Bags. Now.”
“Fuck that!” he snaps.
“Control,” I tell him as I pull off my gloves.
Buck is pissed, livid, but he needs control just as much as I do. Fucked up thing is, I can control my rage in the cage. Hell, I can help him control his. Outside of the cage, however, there is no way.
I know this about myself.
Chapter Four
I watch the man in the cage who looks like a Greek statue... with hair. He’s not a muse, nor a model used as the subject. He is the entire finished statue, one that should sit in the middle of a park, because he’s too big for a museum.
I watch as he toys with the kid, who is not a kid but definitely a younger man, in the ring. His opponent is not small by any stretch of the imagination; he’s over six feet.
The statute is now peeling off his shirt...
For the lust of all things unholy, he’s... glorious.
I shift my eyes away from the ocean of ripples. It makes me feel like the heroine Annie in the book I’m writing. Then I force my eyes back to his face.
His hair is thick and pulled up in a manbun. It’s thick and damp with sweat from his run. His cheekbones and jaw... Hell, his whole face is strong, chiseled, and perfect. His lips are red and swollen like he just spent ten minutes kissing the hell out of someone at a middle school party who chose dare over truth. He smirks at the kid, and I see a dimple underneath the scruff. I feel my breath catch in my chest.
He’s the cliché book boyfriend.
I allow my eyes to cast down his body and am mesmerized by how ridiculously perfect it is. His broad shoulders; his square deltoids; his hard, expansive chest; his—I count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven—eight pack abs. The V of his oblique’s accurately points like an arrow down into the waistband of his sweats. And through the sweats, I can actually see the rippling of his muscular legs.