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A left and a right and an uppercut ended this one, and a roar passed through the crowd as money exchanged hands all around me. This one was an upset, but the next one was the main attraction. Roman was fighting and it didn’t matter who. Some college kid looking to make a few bucks or a name for himself. I just hoped he didn’t think he had a chance.
Roman walked out first, focused, homed in on the fight as he stood facing me.
And then the fucking mountain came to Mohammed. Or maybe a man built like a mountain, but it was hard to tell the difference.
Roman walked to the side of the ring, winked once, then bounce-stepped back to his corner. But for all his confidence, my stomach churned. Oh, shit. Roman could fight, but this guy had size on his side, hands the size of a cantaloupe.
My heart pounded like a jackhammer against my sternum. The bell rang and they met at the center of the ring. Roman struck first and immediately drew blood. A cut opened over the guy’s left eye, and he stumbled back like no one had ever cut him before. He even swiped at the blood, then looked at his own hand.
Then fire burned in the darkness of his eyes, and he came out swinging. Took a few small swings and a couple of jabs that caught Roman and busted his lip open. The fight went on and on with an exchange of punches in flurries of fists and slower hits, combined with kicks and leg sweeps, holds, and bone against bone.
A fight like this one wasn’t for the faint of heart or a weak stomach. But there was something… Roman was toying with this guy. Letting this prick think he was winning. It was convincing, but the guy punched Roman and spun him around, so he grabbed the ropes with both hands, and he smiled at me. My body purred.
He stepped around the guy coming at him, twisted to face me, and waited for the guy to attack him. Without turning away, he swung, and the mountain of a man spun, raised a hand, and fell face-first onto the canvas. Out cold.
Fuck. Watching Roman fight was as erotic of an experience as if I were the one in the ring. I pushed through the crowd toward the locker room where Roman got ready for his fights. It was down a long, mostly dark hallway but the light from inside made a triangle on the concrete floor.
I walked in and there he was, lip split, a trickle of blood on his chest, sweat rolling from his temple to his jaw. His skin glistened, and I wanted him more than I wanted my next breath. And I wanted my next breath full of him, his scent.
He watched me, eyes half-lidded, lips parted. And he was glorious. I used all the momentum of stalking toward him to push him against the wall and pressed my body against his, waited for him to open his eyes, then slid my hand down to urge a quicker decision. I pushed my hand inside his shorts and jerked his already-hard cock.
He smashed his mouth against mine, then spun me and yanked my jeans down, shoved his dick inside me, thrusting until there was no space between us. I slammed my hips back into his, over and over. He curled his fingers into my hips and pulled, pushed, matching the rhythm of his thrusts, adding power where power already existed.
A current of electricity and another of passion flowed between us as my cries and my moves reached a fevered crescendo. I cried out a final time, clawing his ass behind me, as he slammed into me a final time and his arms wrapped around me, holding me in place until we were both finished.
The encounter was short and fast, and it became clear, Roman Hawthorne was my weakness, my kryptonite. And one of these days, I would learn how to overcome him. But today was not that day.
Roman
The fight took it out of me. But the fuck afterward revitalized me. There was something to be said for the way Riley used her body. It pleased me.
Not that it mattered. Right now, I had cop issues and work issues, and the fucking TV in my mother’s study was on the blink so I couldn’t even watch ESPN. Pop and Asher were going to be here any minute, and if I couldn’t put the fights on, there wasn’t going to be much happiness.
I fiddled with a cord and half a picture wavered on the screen, then warbled back to white noise and a fuzzy screen. “Fuck!” I smacked the cable box and the picture cleared up as did the voice of the announcers making their predictions.
This wasn’t a whiskey and Scotch kind of fight. This was beer and tequila, and I was thirsty. Asher walked in with Pop behind him.
“I’m glad you’re here, Roman.” My father clapped my shoulder as he walked to the bar and pulled out a Pabst Blue Ribbon and popped the top. “You better get a glass, Pop.”
Our mother could stuff herself with Big Macs and Happy Meal chicken nuggets, but if she noticed Pop drinking beer from the can, she’d go ballistic. Threatened divorce. Twice, she opened every beer in the house—Pop liked his aluminum cans, so there were a plenty—and dumped them down the sink, out windows, in the toilet.
He pulled a glass off the shelf and poured his beer in it, added a couple ice cubes, then sat beside me on the sofa. “Rome, there is a new fighter I want you to check out.”
I nodded. He left most of the day-to-day business, which was booming, to me, but he’d started scouting other fights. Finding names for me to bring in. “All right. Who is he?”
“Bjorn Ivarrson.” He whipped out a small notebook and flipped open the cover, started rattling off stats like he was the guy’s manager. “He’s six-four, two-seventy, has twenty-one wins in the last twenty-one outings. And he’s fighting a lot. Fucking kid is amazing. He’s young and strong, spirited. Burning up the ropes in clubs all over the East Coast.”
“Who’s his manager?” It sounded like this kid was going to demand main event money. Not that we didn’t have main event money, but I liked to spend it on proven draws, fighters with established names whoeveryonewanted to watch.
“He doesn’t have one.” If I didn’t watch it, this kid was going to replace me at Sunday dinner. Pop was enchanted.
“Interesting.”
Pop nodded and looked down into his glass of beer. “I’m thinking about offering to rep him.”
Asher laughed. “Careful, Pop. Roman’s about to go fullExorcist.”
For his information, there wouldn’t be any head spinning. But I was going to need some clarification. I cocked a brow, and Pop sipped his beer, then rolled his eyes. “You won’t fight outside your own club. I want to see if this kid’s got the chops. It can benefit us.”
