Chapter 25
Devon half-heartedly punched the heavy bag, trying to work up the interest to either pound on it good or give up and move on to something else. The problem was he didn’t have any interest in doing anything else—hadn’t since they’d left Germany.
No one had commented on his attitude—yet—but they’d been giving him enough sideways looks he knew it was coming soon.
Dani strolled into the gym and dropped her bag in front of a mirror.
He dropped his arms. “Hey. I thought you were training for a fight.”
Danielle “The Dancer” Knight was Tinker’s younger sister, MMA Featherweight champion contender, and all-around badass.
“I am. Graham asked me to come in and knock you guys around a bit. It’s a rest day, so I figured why not?”
He hung his head. Shit. Dani was also their resident combatives instructor. Her rest day workouts were usually some of their toughest and more than one of them ended up puking.
“Yaaaayyy,” he said.
She smirked and bounced around on the mat a little. “Since you’re here and warmed up, you can go first.”
“Lucky me.” He pulled off the boxing gloves and threw them in the box along the wall. He kicked off his shoes and peeled off his socks, joining her on the mat. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he stretched his neck from side to side.
Fuck. He was about to get his ass handed to him. No one ever beat Dani. Except Tinker, and that was only because he picked her up like a sack of flour and hauled her around. Being her brother, he could do that. No way in hell the rest of them would try it.
Fuck it. He moved quickly, pulling her into a front headlock. Next thing he knew, his knee buckled, Dani contorted her body, he was on his back, and she had him in an arm bar.
“Holy shit, Dani. What’d I do to you? Ow!” He tapped one of her legs that pinned his chest. “Give. Give.”
She eased up the pressure but didn’t release him. “So, what’s your problem?”
“You mean other than you trying to dislocate my arm? Nothing.” She increased the pressure. “Ah, fuck! What the hell?”
“I’ll keep doing it until you tell me the truth. Graham called me specifically to find out what crawled up your ass.”
Fucking hell. She pulled on his arm again. “Okay! Okay! I fucked up!”
“How?” she asked, increasing the force on his arm.
The woman was merciless. “Son of a—I met the woman of my dreams, and she wants nothing to do with me! Happy?”
She let him go and rolled out of range. Not that he could do anything anyway. His whole damn arm was numb.
“I heard some of the story from Christian and a lot of the story from Paige. Way more than I wanted to hear, honestly, and I don’t think that’s true.”
Devon sat up, shaking his arm and flexing his fingers. “What? That she was the woman of my dreams or that she wants nothing to do with me?”
“That she wants nothing to do with you.” She drew her knees up and rested her arms on them. “You should call her and tell her how you feel.”
“It’s not that easy,” he said.
“Why? You don’t have her number? Angie can get that.”
He hooked his elbows over his knees. “I have her number. She was playing a role for the mission to get her brother back. It wasn’t real.”
“It was for you. I’d bet good money it was for her as well.”
“I heard her, Dani. She told her brother she was just pretending.”
“Dude. I don’t talk to my brother about my sex life.” She shuddered. “Did it ever occur to you that she told him it was pretend so she didn’t have to explain the situation to him? Especially that particular situation…you know…with the rope?”
