Page 27 of Inflict

Five minutes into the bare-knuckle brawl, and Connor hadn’t found a reason to regret challenging Ivan’s volunteer to fight. The Russian wasn’t a lazy fighter, by any means. He was quick on his feet, had power behind his hits, and he seemed to know what he was doing. Connor appreciated that, if only because it made his wins that much more satisfying in the end. He liked the challenge a good fighter provided, because instead of just kicking arse and knocking heads, Connor was able to actually put his skills to use.

Too many guys were easy money in these fights.

Ivan Petrov was not one of them.

But, Ivan was not a perfect fighter; no one was, not even Connor. It just so happened to be that Connor excelled in finding flaws in a man’s moves, and waiting for the opening to come again so he could use the weakness to his advantage. Then he would take the guy out before he even knew what had occurred.

Ivan didn’t protect his body nearly enough, because he was too focused on keeping his pretty face covered when the jabs were coming. He also had a tendency of turning away from an oncoming hit, which would be just grand, if he didn’t turn slightly to the right every single time he did so. If a man was going to turn to the right every time a punch or kick was thrown out at him, whether that attack came from the right or left, then he wasn’t going to see the round-up attack coming from his left when he was too busy protecting something on his right.

Connor figured Ivan had an old injury of some sort on his right side that made the man’s instincts want to protect it from further harm—internal bruising from something recent, or maybe an old rib fracture that still caused him some kind of issue. Whatever the problem was for Ivan, it left his left side exposed to the pummeling his opponent was now leveling on him, and the guy seemed almost too shocked to react that Connor had picked up on the flaw.

Nothing was too unimportant to use in a cage.

Not to Connor.

Connor landed a brutal punch to Ivan’s left kidney, one he knew was going to leave the man in pain for days. With some hits, a fighter just felt the force; the way a muscle gave way, the tremor of a bone shifting beneath the flesh. He’d felt it in that punch, and Ivan reacted differently than he had all the times before.

Instead of moving to the right, determined to protect that side, his reaction to the pain drove him to the left with a wide mouth and a hard wince.

Connor took that opening, too. With Ivan’s right side opened up, Connor rounded back on his left foot, turned fast, and let his bare heel land with a solid smack into the injury the guy had been working to protect the entire fight.

He wanted to end this fast, get his payday, and roll the hell out of the warehouse before anyone could say something about it. What he didn’t intend to do, was beat the Russian into a bloody pulp, if he could help it. After all, he might end up meeting the guy again someday.

The memory of mercy was better to leave him with.

Connor wasn’t always so kind.

The roundhouse had its intended effect, and Ivan fell backwards before grabbing at his lower ribcage, protecting it before he hit the hard cement floor with a quiet thud. That silence didn’t last for long, not when Ivan groaned, curling in on his body as he scooted closer to the edge of the chain-link cage.

Connor kept his ground, not turning his back or giving the suddenly shouting people barricading the cage and slamming their hands into the fence any attention. He wasn’t foolish—he’d done this before, turned away thinking he’d won, and suffered for it, too.

Some of these fighters were too feckin’ stubborn and stupid for their own good. Some of them wouldn’t give up, even when they knew they had lost, because that meant defeat; a failure. Some of them would fight until they were practically lifeless or dead because that was far more honorable than tapping out.

It was brutal.

Goddamn savage.

Connor respected it, because he was one of those men, too.

His knuckles were bloodied and bruised—something he was overly accustomed to. His hands might only get the chance to finally heal before he’d open those wounds up again. He barely even felt the pain in his hands from fighting without any sort of protection, as he’d been brawling bare-knuckled since he was thirteen years old, and honestly, he didn’t know any different.

It was the only reason why he never tattooed his knuckles. His fingers, sure. His hands, too. Never his knuckles.

They had their own marks.

A whole story told in raised, red and faded white scars crisscrossing over each knuckle several times over.

He waited for Ivan to do something, ignoring the ache in his jaw and the stinging above his brow. For all Connor’s efforts, Ivan had still gotten him good a few times. A punch he was sure had cracked his jaw, if not almost dislocating it, and another that cut his eyebrow. The hot trickle of blood dribbling down his cheek was irritating, but he had more important things to focus on.

Like whatever that object had been that a guy passed through the fencing to Ivan. Whatever it was, Ivan had been quick to hide it under his body as he pushed himself onto all fours. The cheers from the spectators became impossibly louder, ringing in Connor’s ears and distracting him for a second in time, just long enough for him to take inventory.

In a heartbeat, his attention was back on Ivan.

The guy was taking his sweet time, if getting back up was what he planned to do.

Hands beat at the cage all around him, but Connor only saw faceless people. They wanted a show; they wanted blood and pain. It was what they paid for, so it was no shock to him that when his bloodied, already-beaten opponent tried to get back up for another round, they were more than willing to cheer the Russian on.

Whatever fed their bloodlust.