I feel him grow hard between us, and I wrap my arms around him even tighter, wanting him closer. With a groan, he pulls away and then laughs when he sees my angry scowl.
“Use that frustration when you are punching the bag,” he says with a wink.
Grabbing my hand, he leads me to the door and we walk down the stairs together. When we enter the club, it’s already packed with boxers. My eyes immediately land on the boxing ring that I’d been bent over just last night, and when I look over at Dmitri, he gives me a sexy wink, letting me know he’s remembering the exact same thing.
We walk further in, bypassing the free weights and bulky looking equipment that I’m pretty sure I’m not nearly strong enough to use. I feel like every eye is on us, and I lean in a bit closer to Dmitri. His arm immediately wraps around me, and I look up at him, giving him a grateful smile. It’s not that I’m worried anybody is going to do anything. It’s just a little disconcerting to have so many sweaty, hard bodies staring at you. Jamie would be eating this up, but I much prefer to stay below most people’s radar.
I notice that several of them look away as soon as Dmitri’s arm comes around me, but some keep looking, no doubt wondering who in the hell I am and what I’m doing in their club. I’m pretty sure it’s painfully obvious that I’m not a boxer. Looking around, I notice that there isn’t a single woman in here.
“Don’t any women come here to box?”
Dmitri leads me to a vacant punching bag in the corner and says, “We get some women here every now and then, but not too many.”
“Everyone is looking at me like they’ve never seen a woman before.”
Dmitri scans the crowd, his blue eyes looking hard and territorial. “They are making you uncomfortable? Who is staring at you like that?”
“It’s fine,” I say, grabbing onto his arm and giving it a reassuring squeeze. “They’re not looking at me like that. It’s more like they’re just curious.”
“Oh, well that is because this is first time I ever bring woman here. Also, I usually work out early in the morning, but somebody made me sleep in today.” He gives my ass a smack before walking over to grab some gloves.
“I don’t think that was my fault,” I tell him when he comes back.
“It definitely was.” His eyes soften when he says, “I could not bring myself to leave you this morning.”
I give him a big smile, feeling the blush heat up my cheeks. He notices and gives me a wink.
“Here. These will be big but will protect your hands.”
He holds up the boxing gloves, helping me into them. They swallow my hands, and I feel like an idiot wearing them around all these trained boxers, but I also really want to punch something and see how it feels.
“Okay,” Dmitri says, giving me a big grin and grabbing onto the bag, keeping it still and between us. “Take a punch, tough girl.”
“Everyone’s going to laugh,” I say, looking around at all the men who are now pretending to not be paying any attention to us.
“No, they will not. I can promise you that.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Because they know I will kick their ass if they do. Now, forget about them and punch the bag, Belova.”
There’s no way I’m getting out of this, so I position myself like how I think I should and take a punch that doesn’t even come close to moving the bag.
“Is good thing I was here to hold bag,” he says with a laugh.
“Hey, you said no laughing!” I say, pointing my glove at him.
“I said they would not laugh, and they didn’t. I never said I wouldn’t.”
He looks too damn sexy for me to be mad at him, especially when he walks around and puts his hands on me, helping me to get into a proper position, which turns out is nothing like what I had been doing. Pulling the gloves off, he has me make a fist and then moves my thumb so I won’t break it when I throw a punch.
“We will practice without gloves first. Keep your hands up always to protect your face,” he says, moving my hands so they’re doing just that. “Good. Now punch.”
He watches me and this time his lips only quirk up a bit, but he manages to not laugh.
“Not bad, but move with your punch. Put your weight into it like this.”
He punches the bag, making it jerk on the chain and flop around with enough force to swing back and knock me on my ass if he hadn’t caught it. I did see what he was talking about though. When he punches, there’s a shit ton of force behind it. It’s not just an arm flying out of nowhere. It’s precise and calculated and his body turns with it a bit. There’s a fluidity to boxing that I had no idea was there. He makes it look downright graceful.