Blaze came out pressing.
He closed on Rouet fast and put him on the concrete inside the first minute. The crowd reacted with a sound Stella felt in her stomach. In a flash, Blaze was on top of Rouet, hitting him in the face relentlessly. Stella heard Rouet’s nose break. Blood went everywhere.
The floor manager stepped in and put a hand on Blaze’s shoulder. The instant the hand touched him, he stopped. He sat back and let the floor manager pull him off. The bruise on his right side was darker than it had been a round ago, rising in away that looked really bad even through the dim lights. Blaze wiped blood from his face with the back of his arm.
A smooth voice called the bout for Russo.
Chapter
Twenty
Back at the hotel,Blaze locked the door and latched the chain. Leaving the venue had been uneventful, and no one had followed them back. Stella sat at the table by the window. Blaze sat on the edge of the bed and pulled his shirt off. He winced when he raised his arm, and his shoulder moved stiffly where Rouet’s knee had landed. A bruise was rising dark across his ribs from the bottom of his chest to the line of his side, and the color of it had deepened in the hour since the bout.
“I spotted Nell tonight,” Stella finally said. She’d been holding it in this entire time.
Blaze went still on the edge of the bed.
“She’s lost weight.” She explained how the trafficked women had come out of a back room and walked the floor in rotation. “Her eyes were dead, Blaze. She wasn’t even in her body.”
He stood and crossed the room, resting his hand on her shoulder. “She’s still her, Stella. We’re going to get her out.” His voice was low. “You and me. We’re going to walk her out of that building.”
“Promise me,” she said.
“I promise.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “We both need a shower,” she sniffled.
“Yeah.”
She stood and pulled some comfortable nightclothes from her suitcase, and they walked into the bathroom. She turned on the water and steam started to rise while the two of them undressed. She stepped in first, and he followed.
The shower was a standard hotel stall with white tile. Their bodies were close as she washed her face with the bar of cheap hotel soap. Blaze handed her the shampoo bottle from the rack behind him. She took it and washed her hair, working the suds through with both hands. He washed too.
After she rinsed, the grime of the night was off of her. She turned to him and put her hand flat on his chest, careful of the bruise. She leaned in and kissed his chest, and he ran his fingers through her wet hair at the back of her head. He held her close as he hardened against her stomach.
“Stella.” His voice was gravel.
She lifted her face to him and kissed his hot, wet mouth. His tongue stroked against hers, and the hard length of him twitched between them. She slid her hand down his chest, over the ridges of his stomach, and wrapped her fingers around the base of his throbbing hard cock. He was hot in her hand.
She lowered herself onto her knees and the water ran down her shoulders and over her chest. He looked down at her as shelicked the head of his cock. He groaned, low and ragged, and gripped her wet hair.
She took him into her mouth slowly, the water making him slick. He was thick, and the stretch made her jaw work. She watched his expression when she pulled back. The cords in his forearm were hard, and he took gasping breaths through his open mouth.
She held the base of his cock and sucked him with long deliberate strokes. She used her tongue along the underside of his cock and watched his stomach hollow. She hummed around him and he groaned, the sound vibrating down her chest.
“Stella.”
The hand in her hair tightened. His hips pumped toward her and stopped like he was holding back. She took him deeper, and it hit the back of her throat.
“Stella, stop.” His voice was wrecked. She pulled off of him slowly and looked up at him through the water running down her face. “Stand up.”
She stood, and he turned her toward the shower wall. His arm came around her waist from behind and pulled her against him, his chest hot against her back, his mouth at the side of her throat.
She put her hands flat against the wall in front of her. He cupped her breast from behind, and his thumb dragged across her nipple. Her bear was moaning, pressed against the backs of her eyes, barely contained within her.
His mouth moved along the side of her throat, and his teeth scraped against her pulse. His other hand slid down her stomachand between her legs. He dragged his fingers up the length of her pussy. She was soaking wet.
“Christ,” he said into her throat.
