“Over a dozen,” she said with a tear trickling down her face. “All it takes is one fight, though. One fight to change everything. One wrong blow to incapacitate you. I’ve seen it happen.”
I felt a flare of annoyance. “You grew up around this kind of shit. Of course you’ve seen that happen, but you knew what you were getting in to when you started dating me.”
“I know,” she said, the tears starting to flow. I immediately felt guilty for my harsh tone. “I’ve even dated other fighters, but you’re different. You’re the first one I’ve been in love with.”
I stopped, and my hands dropped to my sides. Had I heard her correctly? Did she just say that she loved me? There was a buzzing in my ears that I couldn’t get to go away. Behind the initial panic that her proclamation caused, I felt something else, a warmth blossoming in my chest. A huge smile crept across my face as I pulled her into my arms.
“I love you too,” I said. “I can’t stop being who I am, you have to know that, Em. But I would never do anything that would jeopardize us. The risks I take are for our future.”
“I know,” she said softly with a little hiccup in her voice. “I’d never ask you to stop fighting, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch.”
“You don’t have to watch,” I offered. Though my pride was wounded as I made the suggestion—I always liked to show my girlfriend how awesome I was, how developed my athletic prowess—I knew that it was the right thing to do. Emily deserved the right thing. She made me want to live doing only right things.
Emily shook her head firmly. “I have to watch you fight. There are no questions in my mind that you’ll win. I just…can’t help but worry. I don’t think that will ever change.”
“It doesn’t have to,” I said, grinning at her again before I leaned down and kissed her. She tasted different, sweeter somehow, and I felt a flare of panic. I’d never been this close to a woman before. What if…what if that made me a wuss? What if I lost my mojo? I broke the kiss, and looked down at her. As I stared into her eyes, I realized that there was no doubt in my mind what was important in my life. Emily first, fighting second.
“So…you’ll be careful?” she asked. I could tell she knew that there was something going on in my head. She seemed to have the uncanny ability to read my mind.
“No,” I said with a grin. “When have I ever been careful?”
“True,” Emily said shakily, biting her lip. It drove me crazy when she did that. I just wanted to take her up against a wall, hard and fast and now.
“I won’t be careful,” I said, “but I’ll sure as hell win.”
Emily grinned up at me, and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I know you will. You always do. And I’ll still be here at the end worrying and loving you.”
I leaned in to kiss her again. “That will just make me fight stronger, harder, and smarter,” I promised. Looking at her at that moment made the desire to win bigger, and more overwhelming than ever.
My heart clenched as I watched Kirk take the first swing. Just after he told me that he loved me he was in the ring fighting a beast of a man named Red. Kirk had assured me that he could take the man down, and even though I wanted to believe him, there had been the tiniest part of me that had worried that he was wrong.
It had taken all of ten seconds for Kirk to show me that I had to have faith in him. He’d taken Red Malone down in three punches. The next man, though, the one he was fighting now, a man named Emmet was giving him a run for his money. My heart ached to see Kirk sagging. There was a bleeding cut by his jaw that I desperately wanted to clean and bandage.
Kirk landed another punch, and Emmet staggered backward. He hit the ropes and slumped there for a moment. My heart surged with hope as I watched the spark light up Kirk’s face. I knew the moment when he seemed to sense that he was going to win.
I looked around the gym, my new and improved gym, and my eyes landed on my father. In the midst of my happiness, he had to show up. The moment Kirk landed his winning punch, I felt a surge of power. There was no way I was going to let my dad ruin everything that I had accomplished. I stood up, and stalked across the edge of the bleacher seating area. The crowd was roaring at Kirk’s win, and he was taking his victory lap.
When my father saw me coming, he stood up, and seemed to be coming to talk to me. My anger almost overwhelmed me, but I managed to hold it together. This was my first big match, and I didn’t need my reputation getting out that I was a hothead owner. That might work for a man, but it would only get me labeled as a bitch.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
My dad actually looked sad as he stared back at me. “I just wanted to see what you’ve done with the place,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave.”
He turned and began to walk away. The slump of his shoulders nearly killed me. Despite all the things that he had done, all the stress he had caused me, he was still my dad. “Wait,” I said, stepping forward, and raising my voice as I hurried toward him.
My dad turned toward me, and there was an unmistakable look of hope on his face. “Nothing can be the same as it was before,” I said before he could say anything. “You made my life hell, and you never even apologized. But you’re my dad and I miss you.”
“Oh my dear, I never meant for…” he began.
“Stop,” I said. “I don’t want to hear any of your lies. I don’t think my heart can handle it.” He just looked at me, and I knew I had been right in catching him in his lie. That made me want to turn right around and leave. Still, I wanted to hear his approval. “What do you think of this place now?”
My dad looked around with a wistful smile on his face. “It’s great,” he said. “It’s really great. Honestly it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”
“Really, Dad? Really? With all the money you stole, you could have had this ten times over,” I snapped. “I was wrong to come over here. Please leave.”
“Emily,” my dad said, pleadingly.
“Maybe we can try this again in a few months or a year, but right now this is my big moment. This is my place now, and you aren’t welcome here.” My voice was firm, but I could hear the incredible sadness in my tone. Clearly my dad could hear it too because he stepped forward.
“No, go. Please.”
I turned around as a single tear trickled down my cheek. It was all I could do not to turn around and look back at him. My dad was going to have to be part of my life that was left unsettled, but at least I could keep my heart safe from him.
As I walked back through the crowd toward the ring, I could see the excitement and enthusiasm on people’s faces. I knew we had a good thing here, and I couldn’t wait to see where it would go. I couldn’t wait to see where my relationship with Kirk would go too.
He was still in the ring, taking another victory lap, waving at fans, posing for cameras. I paused by the side of the ring to admire my boyfriend while he was in his element. He was an amazing man, and he had made amazing things happen in my life. I didn’t want to go so far as to say he had saved me, but in a lot of ways I thought that maybe he had.
When things began to quiet down, Kirk slipped out of the ring and made his way over to me. “I told you so,” he said, with the cocky smile that I loved. “What do you say to that?”
“You are amazing,” I said, grinning up at him as he took me into his arms. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks, babe,” he said as he gave me a quick kiss.
“My dad was here,” I said.
Kirk frowned. “You should have come to get me.”
“You were in the middle of a fight, and I can handle some things by myself.”
“You’re right,” Kirk said. “I just hate what he did to you.”
“I know,” I said, wrapping my arms around him. “I told him to leave. Someday, I don’t know, maybe someday we can try to be a family again. For now, that’s just not how it’s going to go.”
“For now, I’m all you need,” Kirk said.
I looked up at him with a wicked grin. “I need you in more ways than one.”
I wrapped my arms around her, and pulled her into the office. Emily melted into my body like she belonged there. The fact that we had found a way to save the gym made us that much better. Even though, I wasn’t going to tell her yet, Emily was softening me, while making me want to act more like a man. Telling her that I loved her had been something that I had never thought I would do with a woman. And yet, there it was.
Her lips were soft and yielding as I bent to kiss her. She wrapped her arms around my neck. I lifted her, and settled her on the desk behind us. When we were in the empty gym it seemed that the two of us owned the world, and in a sense we did. She owned this place, and I had just won a huge match for the gym.
Emily took my shirt in her hands, and looked up at me with her big eyes. She asked, “So what are we going to do in here? As if I didn’t know.”
I loved the coy look in her eye. In fact, I loved everything about her, and even though I couldn’t find the words to tell her that at the moment, I had a feeling that she could tell, as I leaned in to kiss her.
She pushed me back into the office chair. Then she climbed up on to my lap, and pulled her shirt over her head. “You definitely have earned a reward tonight, haven’t you?”
“You said it, not me, but I won’t argue,” I said, leaning back. I reached out to fondle her breasts, but she grabbed my wrists.
“No,” she said. “Tonight I’m going to give this to you.”
I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender as she let go of me. “Don’t let me to get in your way,” I said.
Just smiling at me, she put her hands on either side of my face, and kissed me with an aggressiveness that made me hard instantly. She slid her tongue past my teeth, exploring every inch of my mouth. When I tried to pull her closer, she grabbed my wrists again and pushed them up over my head.
“I like this side of you,” I said.
Emily just smiled. “There are all sorts of sides of me that you haven’t seen yet, but we have all the time in the world to get to know everything about each other.”
I smiled back at her, pleased that she had said it, because I felt the same way. Saying certain things out loud made me uncomfortable, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t feel them too. My thoughts were interrupted when Emily began to grind against my lap. My cock was rock hard by the time she’d unhooked her bra to let her breasts swing free.
Continuing her lap dance, Emily unbuckled my belt, and slid herself onto my dick. It all happened so fast, I barely had time to register that I was inside of her when she began to move against me. She was so engaged with sliding up and down my shaft that she let go of my wrists, and I was able to cup her breasts in each hand, rubbing her nipples with the pad of my thumb.
“Oh, that feels good,” she said with a moan.
Sensing that she was nearing her climax, I lifted her off my dick and said, “Let’s go out to the ring. I want to make love to you where I had my victory.”
Emily nodded her agreement but had a lust-filled haze on her face that made her look adorable, beautiful, and sexy all at the same time. Once we left the office, I scooped her up in my arms, and carried her to the ring. The whole place had a different feeling to it now that the cheering crowd was gone. It was the kind of difference that felt both stark and intimate.
I boosted Emily up onto the ring, and I climbed up after her. She reclined, half naked, on the mat that had been put there when the gym was cleaned up after the match. I pulled her skirt off in one movement, and said, “Babe, you are beautiful.”
She smiled up at me. “So are you. Now strip.”
“Happy to oblige,” I said, pulling my shirt and jeans off.
I nudged her knees apart, and entered her in one swift motion. Thrusting in to her, I relished the feeling of filling her completely. She wrapped her legs around my back, and pulled me farther in, which I didn’t think was possible.
“I’m coming!” she yelled. Her voice echoed off the walls of the gym. It reverberated into my ears, and a wave of lust rolled over me. I came fast and hard, without enough time to pull out. Spent, I rolled off of her, and said, “I didn’t mean to do that.”
Emily laughed. “I’m pretty sure you did, and it was spectacular. I’m on birth control. We don’t have anything to worry about.”
“You are amazing, do you know that?” I asked as I propped myself up on my elbow. Gazing down at her, I was struck again at how lucky I was to be in this relationship. What had happened to my swagger? Did I even care?
“So are you,” she said. “I meant what I said earlier, Kirk. I love you. I haven’t said that to many men.”
“I love you too, and I haven’t said that to any other woman. All these things that I want to say, they’re hard for me, but the feelings, they’re all there.” My confession was all I could do at the moment, but from the glow on Emily’s face, I knew that it was enough for the time being.
We stayed quiet for a bit, looking around the new gym space, and just relaxing. Finally Emily said, “So, do you really think we can bring this place to the top of the game?”
“Did you see the crowd tonight?” I replied. “That’s your answer right there. Our profile is just going to keep growing. The more matches we host the bigger we get.”
Emily nodded. “You know,” she said, “I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”