I start the car. I drive home. And I don't let myself think about his hands until I'm alone in my apartment with the door locked, curled up on the couch, and my body finally allowed to acknowledge how badly it's aching.
Even then, I don't touch myself.
I'm not ready to admit what that would mean.
Chapter 3 - Rampage
The basement smells like sweat and blood and money.
I can hear the crowd before I reach the bottom of the stairs, that particular sound of too many people packed into too small a space, voices bouncing off concrete walls, the energy already building even though the first fight hasn't started yet.
It's eleven-thirty at night. The gym closed at nine. I spent the last two and a half hours getting the space ready, moving equipment, checking that the cash box is secured, making sure the Savage Riders have their cut already set aside because you do not fuck around with the MC's money. Not ever.
Tank meets me at the bottom of the stairs. He's the Riders’ Vice President, handles security for the Pit, built like his name and about as conversational. He nods at me. I nod back. This is our entire relationship.
"Full house tonight," he says.
"Good," I say.
It is good. Full house means money, means the Pit is working, means I can keep paying the MC their protection fee and keep the cops from asking questions and keep this whole operation running smoothly. The fights started five months ago, about two weeks after I opened the gym. Some asshole was bothering one of my morning regulars, getting too close, not taking no for an answer, the kind of shit that makes my jaw tighten just thinking about it. I pulled him aside. Told him once to back off. He didn't. So, I beat the shit out of him in the parking lot.
Turned out half the people in the gym that morning followed us outside to watch.
Turned out they liked what they saw.
Turned out Blackwater Falls wanted somewhere to bet on violence, and I was very good at providing it.
The MC approached me three days later with a proposal. They'd protect the operation, keep it quiet, provide security, take a cut. I'd provide the space and the main event. Everyone makes money. Everyone stays safe.
I said yes because I needed something to fill the hours between midnight and dawn when sleep isn't an option and the walls start closing in, and beating someone unconscious in front of a crowd is better than beating my own knuckles raw against the heavy bag in my apartment where no one's watching.
I move through the crowd toward the makeshift ring, just tape on the floor marking boundaries, nothing fancy, nothing that can't be cleaned up and cleared out before dawn. People make space for me as I walk. They always do. I'm not wearing a shirt, just training shorts and tape on my hands, and the scars on my knuckles are visible even in the dim lighting down here. I'm Rampage. I'm undefeated. I'm the reason most of these people showed up tonight.
The opponent is already waiting.
I don't know him. That's unusual. Most of the fighters here are regulars, guys I've fought before or guys who've worked their way up through smaller matches. This one's new. Taller than average, built solid, maybe early thirties. He's got the look of someone who's done some training, some discipline in how he's standing, but there's also something hungry in his eyes. Something that says he thinks beating me is going to prove something.
Good luck with that.
"Name's Garrett," Tank says, appearing next to me. "Showed up two hours ago. Wanted to fight the champion specifically. Said he'd pay double entry."
I look at the guy. He's staring back at me, rolling his shoulders, loosening up.
"Fine," I say.
Tank nods and moves away.
I should be focused right now. I should be running through strategy, reading my opponent's stance, getting my head in the space it needs to be for this. But I'm not. My head is somewhere else entirely, and it's been somewhere else for the past nine hours, ever since a curvy woman with brown eyes and glasses left my gym and I spent the next forty minutes in my apartment trying to convince my cock that we were not doing this, we were absolutely not going there, and my cock completely ignoring every logical argument I presented.
Chloe Marsh.
I've taught dozens of people. Hundreds, if I count my time in the military. I have put my hands on more bodies than I can count, correcting form, demonstrating holds, teaching people how to survive. And my body has never once reacted the way it did today.
The moment my hands touched her hips, I was hard.
Fully, painfully, immediately hard.
And it didn't stop. Not when I stepped back. Not when I put distance between us. Not during the entire goddamn hour I spent teaching her, my voice staying level while my cock throbbed against my shorts and my brain tried to simultaneously teach proper self-defense technique andcalculate exactly how many different ways I could bend her over that mat.
