CHAPTER 8
Dairk Nash was a great lover of games, especially when there were stakes involved. Some of his earliest and happiest memories were of throwing bone-dice down in the xenon-lit alleyways of Almalex-9. Those dice-rolling sessions had often devolved into other forms of diversion—games involving fists, games involving knives. Nash had loved those games even more, because the stakes were so much higher.
Then, somewhere along the line, when he was still more boy than man, he’d discovered the opposite sex, and he’d learned a whole new set of games, with a whole new set of stakes.
But he’d never played with a woman quite like Sonia Fairchild.
The woman circling in the octagon was something special. Her dark sports bra and tight shorts covered the most sensitive parts of her anatomy, but did nothing to conceal the shape of her body, tough yet curvy in all the right ways. Her skin was still wet with perspiration from the intense bag-work she’d been performing when Nash had arrived, and her sweat shone in the overhead lights, accentuating each sinuous contraction of her augmetically-enhanced muscles. Her bare stomach was drum-tight between her bra and the top of her shorts. Her thighs flexed deliciously with each prowling step.
In a life full of both sex and violence, Nash had never seen those two elements combined so perfectly in a single specimen. His cock was already half hard with arousal, and the only thing holding it down was the tight elastic of the compression shorts he was wearing beneath his looser outer pair.
He reminded himself to stay focused. This woman was not to be trifled with.
Still, Nash was a lot bigger than she was, with a longer reach and considerably more muscle. He wasn’t about to go one hundred percent with her. Reece would tear him a new sphincter if he went and injured their primary mission asset so soon after departure.
Plus, Reece obviously felt protective of the woman.
Understandable.
With a quick shuffle-step, Nash advanced on his opponent and threw a pair of quick, testing jabs. Fairchild darted out of the way, agile as a feline.
“Good reflexes,” Nash said.
“You kidding? A xenarth could have dodged that.”
Nash grinned and continued to circle.
He stepped in with two more exploratory jabs, then followed up with a medium-power right cross. Fairchild ducked and countered with a punch of her own, a left-hook aimed at his kidney. He blocked it, but the blow still shook him.
The woman wasn’t holding back.
Nice.
Nash shuffled back, creating some distance, and he studied his opponent again. Her pretty face was tense with focus, her brow knitted, her lips tight. The expression suited her. It sent an extra jolt of blood rushing into Nash’s gradually swelling cock.
He let his eyes drop to her body again. Her sports bra and shorts were damp with sweat and clinging to her skin. He could see just a hint of her nipples through the fabric, and a suggestion of other things between her legs. Of course, he’d already seen a whole lot more of her in the briefing room, but it had been dim in there. Nothing like the bright lights illuminating the combat cage now. His arousal throbbed harder.
Enough testing and teasing. It was time to start taking off her clothes.
Nash moved in again, letting his guard drop ever so slightly as he advanced. His opponent took the bait and swung a hard roundhouse at his head. She was fast as hell, but Nash was ready for her. He ducked under her kick and retaliated with a kick of his own—a spinning leg sweep.
What would she take off first, he wondered, her top or her shorts? Either way, he was going to enjoy the view.
But his kick didn’t connect.
At the last possible instant, the woman sprang off the ground, leaping over Nash’s sweeping foot before slamming her other heel into his temple. Had he been an ordinary man, the blow would have fractured his skull. Fireworks exploded inside his head.
When his vision cleared a second later, he was lying sprawled on the mat of the octagon. Fairchild stood over him, a sweating Amazon in elastic weave. She offered him a gloved right hand. He took it.
“That’s one for me,” she said. “Take something off.”
Nash grinned. He’d underestimated the woman, but that didn’t make him upset. On the contrary, it excited him. She was going to be a handful, but he liked handfuls, he liked trouble. Guns that kicked a little too hard, bikes with too much horsepower. He was going to have fun playing with Sonia Fairchild, and now he had the measure of her.
Still grinning, Nash curled his fingers under the hem of his shirt and peeled it off over his head. He took his time with it, letting his opponent get a nice long look at the stretching muscles of his torso. It was only at the end that he sped up, whipping the fabric away from his face so he could check Fairchild’s reaction.
Her eyes were as quick as the rest of her, but not quite quick enough. Nash caught her staring. He saw the slight dilation of her pupils, the subtle way her lips parted in a small gasp. She immediately darted her eyes up to his face, trying to play it off, but it was already too late. Nash had seen everything.
He chucked his shirt over the side of the cage and resumed his fighting stance.
