“Yeah, you get your money and then you fuck some girl and leave before she wakes up, right? Yeah, Pierce, playboy badass. You’re just a big fucking man, aren’t you?”

A stony silence settles between us. I sigh.

“Pierce,” I say, and I make sure my voice is gentle. “I really don’t think you should do this fight for the mob. You and I both know that if you win, they’ll want you back for another fight because you’ll become an investment. If you lose, they’ll want you to pay them back for their losses. It’s not like the movies, Pierce. These guys don’t honor agreements… not if they can make money from it.”

He grits his teeth together. I can hear the enamel grinding through his jaw.

“Fine,” I say. “I can tell you’re getting mad.”

“I have to fight this fight, Pen,” he says. “No matter what you say, I have to fight it. You’re only going to make things worse if you’re here to shake my confidence.”

“Shake your confidence?” I scoff. “Well, you’ve definitely got enough of that to go around for two or ten.”

“You think so?” he asks. His eyes are wolf-like, savage.

“Yeah. As if I could shake your confidence. Get real.”

But he doesn’t reply. He just gets up, picks up the bright blue medicine ball, and begins bouncing it against the wall near the front door. He catches and throws, catches and throws, rapidly, while dropped down into a half-squat. It’s some kind of total body exercise.

The muscles on his back bulge each time he catches the ball. Beads of sweat glisten on his skin. He continues the same exercise, but now balancing only on his right foot. He throws and catches ten times, then switches to his left.

I watch him repeat the whole process six times, and still he hasn’t turned around, hasn’t talked to me. I can hear him breathing hard from the exertion, and now those beads of sweat are dripping, leaving shiny tracks down his back.

“Screw it,” I say, getting my stuff and walking to the door.

But as I’m about to open it he rings my wrist with his fingers, yanks me around. The medicine ball drops to the floor with a thud, and then he’s on me, lips against mine, his hand guiding my fingers down to his crotch.

I feel his hot hardness through his compression shorts. His cock is like a curled bar of steel. Frantically, I pull him out, can smell his musk, and then he’s undoing my jeans. It’s all so quick, a heady rush. I step out of the puddled denim, and he lifts me up, turns me around and presses me against the wall. I curl my legs around him, at his waist.

I grip onto his cock hard, pump him in between us, but he holds me up with just one arm, and with his spare hand he wrenches my underwear to the side.

In one powerful movement he thrusts himself all the way inside me, and I wince and groan, overtaken by sensation and a fleeting hint of pain. I feel so full with him inside me.

He starts to fuck me hard. His thrusts are aggressive. He bangs me into the wall. I bite onto his shoulder to keep from screaming as he fucks me with abandon, wildly bucking into me.

I hold onto his neck, grab at the sweat-slick hair on the back of his head, relish the feel of his hot breath streaming down in between us.

His eyes are hard, full of determined lust, and he licks a swathe of skin from my ear to my collar bone, like he’s some kind of savage animal ready to eat me.

“Fuck you, Pierce,” I moan breathlessly. “I hate you.”

“You like this, don’t you?” he asks, and again he holds me with just one hand so he can pull my head away from his shoulder, so he can look into my eyes. “You wanted this, didn’t you? That’s why you came here, isn’t it, Pen?”

“No,” I hiss, my eyes falling shut as he fucks me somehow harder.

He pulls my head to him, mashes his lips against mine, and then he’s holding my ass with two hands again, lifting me outward in time so that each of his thrusts buries so deep inside me.

I’m totally overwhelmed. I can’t do anything but hold onto him and let him have his way with me.

He carries me to the sofa, throws me down onto it, grabs me by the hips and spins me around so that my back is to him.

“Wait,” I say, but he closes my thighs together and then pushes himself inside me. I’m blinded by pleasure, scrunch up my face and clench my teeth and make sounds I’ve never made before.

He fucks me harder, faster. His arm snakes around my hip and he starts to play with my clit. He drives himself into me over and over again, fingers my bud so well he’s got me right at the edge in an instant.

“Fuck,” I groan loudly, lifting my hips slightly to meet each of his thrusts.

“You want to come, don’t you?” he growls.

I hate to say it, but I do: “Yes!”

His thrusts rock my body. My face grinds into the cushion on the sofa. He twirls my hair in his other hand, pulls my head back, turns me to look at him.

And he looks at me while he fucks me, while he fingers me. It takes just seconds, but that pressure inside me explodes, and I crest hard, moan harder, clench tighter.

Pleasure cascades over me, wracks my body, and still he keeps going, keeps bottoming out inside me. Then I hear him grunt, feel his cock swell, and he comes inside me again and again, emptying himself right into me.

And then it’s over. We’re panting, sweating, heaving. He falls down on top of me, stays hard inside me, and kisses me on the back of my neck, on the back of my shoulder.

We don’t even say anything. We just lie together on the sofa for so long… I don’t even know how long.

“I hate you,” I eventually say.

“No you don’t,” he tells me.

I wriggle out from under him, rush to the bathroom to clean up.

And then I leave without saying goodbye, leave him naked on the sofa, somehow feeling even worse than before.

Chapter Thirty

She’s not here!

It’s midway through the fight, and I’m bleeding from a cut above my brow. There’s a doctor on site, and he dabs away at it.

“I can see your bone,” he says. “I need to close this cut.”

“Fine. No shots.” My voice is hoarse. I took an upper cut that missed my jaw, but got me in the throat. My vocal chords feel bruised.