I don't think like this.
I stopped thinking like this years ago, stopped letting my body want things I couldn't control, stopped letting anyone close enough to trigger the response in the first place. Sex is a complication I don't need. Attachment is a liability I can't afford. I learned this in the desert. I learned this when everyone I cared about died in the space of four minutes and I came home alone to a country that didn't know what to do with me.
And now I'm standing in my own fucking basement about to fight a stranger, and all I can think about is how badly I wanted to grab her.
Not guide her. Not adjust her stance.
Grab her.
Pin her to that mat and find out if she'd tell me to fuck off or if she'd open for me, spread those legs and let me bury myself inside her while she made whatever sounds a woman like that makes when she's being fucked by someone who knows exactly what he's doing.
The bell rings.
I move forward.
Garrett comes at me fast, which is smart. Get inside my reach, don't let me use my size advantage. He's faster than I expected. His first combination is clean, disciplined, and I block it but I'm a half-second slower than I should be. My head isn't here. My head is still upstairs in the training room watching Chloe's hips shift when I touched her, watching her face in the mirror, watching the way she bit her bottom lip when she was concentrating.
Garrett lands a jab to my ribs.
It's not a hard hit, but it shouldn't have landed at all, and the crowd notices. There's a ripple of noise, surprise, excitement. Rampage doesn't get hit in the first thirty seconds. Rampage doesn't get hit period, not unless he's setting something up.
I'm not setting anything up.
I'm distracted.
And a distracted man is a dead man.
I shake it off. I step in and throw a combination that backs Garrett up three feet, that reminds him and everyone watching exactly who they're dealing with. He blocks most of it but not all of it. My right cross catches him on the jaw and his head snaps back and I see the moment he recalculates, realizes he might have made a mistake asking for this fight.
We circle each other.
I should end this now. I should put him down fast and clean and get out of this ring before my head does something stupid. But I don't. I let it draw out. I'm looking for something slower tonight, something I can control, something that doesn't require my full focus because my full focus is apparently not available.
Garrett comes at me again.
I block. Counter. He's good enough to make it interesting, not good enough to be dangerous. We trade hits for two minutes, three, the crowd getting louder as the fight goes on. I can feel the rhythm of it, the way the violence builds, the way my body starts to settle into the familiar pattern of reading an opponent and responding.
And then I see her.
Top of the stairs. Back by the wall where the lighting is worst. But I see her anyway, because apparently my brain has decided to catalog every detail of Chloe Marsh's existence and can now pick her out of a crowd in the dark.
She's with someone: another woman, blonde, taller than her. They're standing close together, the blonde's hand on Chloe's arm like she's either providing support or preventing escape. And Chloe is staring at the ring with her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open and her whole body radiating tension that I can read from thirty feet away.
What the fuck is she doing here?
I've been running these fights for five months, and she has never once been in this basement. I would have noticed. I notice everyone who comes down here because situational awareness keeps you alive, but I would have especially noticed her.
And now she's here.
Watching me fight.
Garrett's fist connects with my face.
My head snaps to the side. Pain explodes across my cheekbone, sharp and immediate and entirely my own fault. The crowd erupts.
I taste blood.
I turn back to Garrett and the look on his face is pure shock. He didn't think that would land either. He threw it hoping, and I was too busy staring at a woman in the corner to see it coming.
