Burn (9 page)

I’m daydreaming and letting my thoughts wander when the muffled cheering and jeering of the crowd out by the ring jars me into the present. I blink and grimace at my surroundings. The back room of the nightclub out in Queens that’s serving as a locker room is dimly lit and grimy. The walls are streaked with rusty evidence of old pipe leaks and maybe something worse, and the whole place smells like ammonia and defeat.

What the
fuck
am I doing here.

I used to love this - the thrill and the rush before the fight; the feeling of burning excitement and the euphoric high of the adrenaline. I used to love the smell of sweat and gym locker-rooms; of chalk-dusted workout bags and sweat-stained gloves. The sound of the crowd used to get me higher than any drug and the sheer anticipation of the primal act of
fighting
used to have me bouncing off the walls with excitement.

This place is, and does, none of those things for me.

Some girl in a bikini, who I think is probably one of those sign girls or maybe just some other broken individual there trying to latch onto something is smiling at me as she saunters into the room. I frown as she straddles my lap and starts to run her hands up and down over my bare chest.

“You look all tense, baby.”

There’s absolutely
nothing
tense about the way I’m just slumped in the old rusty metal folding chair, deadened by the weight of even being here.

The girl
is
gorgeous - all sex and desire, pressing her tits against me and letting her hands trail over my biceps. And normally, yeah normally I’d be
very
down for this, even though you're
never
supposed to do this kind of thing right before  a fight; no sex before you swing, they say. You need that pent up testosterone and aggression as fuel.

Of course
now
I’ve got Quinn Archer buried deep under my skin like an itch I can’t reach, and the idea of having
this girl
scratch that is completely turning me off.

“Maybe later,” I mutter, pushing her off of my lap.

She pouts in a way I’m sure she thinks is cute and sexy, but that just looks slutty, and not in a good way; “Well, maybe after you kick that guy’s ass then?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

No.

“Hey there,
cabrón!” The man with the dark hair and dark black eyes like those of a shark - the man who’s the singular reason I’m here - steps through the doorway
grinning that fucking leering, toothy smile of his; “
Hey
there’s my buddy!”

I’m not his fucking buddy and he damn well knows it. I’m his captive.

“You ready for this?”

I set my jaw as I stand from the chair and take a step towards Javier Toro, my jaw tightening. I’ve got at least six inches on him, and easily forty pounds of muscle, and I would love nothing more than to just pound that fucking shithead’s face in right now. Hell, even just a shove would be nice.

But I don’t, of course. I’m hotheaded, but not dumb, even if Javier’s completely let himself go physically since we knew each other before, back in the jungles of Ghana.

“You hit like a bitch, you know.” Javier spits in the dirt, his arms up and his body flitting side to side like a dancer as he circles me; “You gotta keep em up, like this. You let that guard down, and you’re gonna get smacked upside the head again.” He jabs suddenly, and I swear as his glove connects with my ear.

“See? Just like that, Irish! I should start charging you for these fuckin lessons!”

He hoots as he signals fight over and yanks his gloves off before coming over and clapping me on the back; “You ain’t so bad, you know. You got a fire inside of you that most guys don’t, Irish. I just gotta figure out what gets it burning and then you’re gonna be one mean son of a bitch in a ring.”

We walk over to the old roadside motel that Blackriver has taken over and repurposed into a sort of barracks in the abandoned village we currently occupy. The fact that we’re the only building for fifty miles in any direction with electricity, let alone running water, satellite television, and the internet only makes this whole thing even more surreal. It’s like some sort of tech-savy version of Marlon Brando’s
 
jungle-fiefdom in “Apocalypse Now”.

If life can get any stranger than playing soldier for hire in a mercenary corporation stuck in the middle of Africa, I’d almost welcome the chance to see it.

Javier pulls two beers out the fridge and hands me one; “My name’s not actually Irish, you know.”

He grins at me; “I figured your mama wasn’t that mean.”

“You’ve clearly never met my mother.”

We both chuckle as we sip on the cold beers, looking out from the porch over the dirt boxing ring and the jungle past it.

“It’s just- you know, I feel like a lotta guys here who signed on with Blackriver come from some pretty hardcore backgrounds.”

“Like you and your two buddies? The drunk and the junkie?”

I grit my teeth at the mention of Hudson and Byrce and shake my head. Hudson’s trying - kind of. But Byrce; shit, Bryce’s addiction is getting worse every day, and the fact that you can literally buy smack for cheaper than a bottle of clean water in this place isn’t exactly helping things.

“Yeah, well, we’ve seen some shit.”

Shit like one too many drone strikes on innocent people; one too many bombs dropped on fucking schools or villages back in Afghanistan. After that last one, where we all almost died, we snapped. I guess we all broke in different ways.

Which is why we’re here, in some God-forsaken part of the world playing soldiers for hire, because there’s just no going back home after you go AWOL from the Marines during active duty.

Javier nods; “Seems like it. I’ve seen some shit too, amigo,” He shakes his head; “But Papi, you got that cold hard cowboy look on your face like I’ve never seen before.”

I force out a laugh and sip the beer; “Well, I guess we all get the shit we carry from wherever we come from.”

“Yeah? And where’s that, Irish?” Javier clinks his beer against mine and peers at me curiously; “Where’d you come from?”

*****

“Hey, wake up, Irish!” Javier snaps his fingers in my face, startling me from my daydream, and his grin widens as he sees the bottled up hate behind my face. He narrows his eyes as he leans in closer, as if
daring me
to hit him; “Don’t fucking forget, buddy, you get to
win
this one tonight; comprendes?

“Yeah, fuckin
comprendes
.”

His eyes narrow again and he looks quickly at the girl still standing there and jerks his head for her to leave.

“Listen,
Logan
,” He hisses at me after the door closes behind her; “Don’t get all soft on me.”

“I’m not, fuck off.”

Javier nods slowly; it’s the same calculating look I first saw in Ghana, back when he was teaching me to fight. Back when he knew who I was, which consequently means
he
still knows who I am. Not Logan Dempsey, billionaire finance manager at Archer Holdings. Not the man working to rebuild the future from the wrongs of his past, brick by fucking brick. No, he knows who I
really
am, which means he owns me.

And I fucking
hate
feeling owned.

“Don’t go forgetting our arrangement, Logan.”

“I’m aware of it.” I growl out.

He chuckles; “Aww, now don’t get all mad like this is
my
fault, Papi.” He spreads his hands wide; “I’m a
businessman
, and you were just too good a
business
opportunity to let go of!”

Years ago, back in the jungle, he’d mentioned wanting to figure out what made me “burn” inside; what made me snap and made me a demon in the ring.

…I guess neither of us could have predicted that that it’d be
him
.

“Now don’t get all sore about it Irish; get
mad
. Get
mad
, get out there, and you hit that motherfucker.”

*****

I can hardly stand afterwards, and all I’m barely aware of is pushing Javier away and stumbling back to my dirty changing room. The girl is there, of course, and she’s taking her top off, but I’m pushing her out the door too. It’s not just the pain - which is real - either. It’s the fact that through the whole fight, I’ve had one face in the back of my mind, keeping me standing, keeping me sane, and keeping me from fading out. One perfect, beautiful, untouchable face of the last girl on Earth I should be thinking about. I realize suddenly with a sobering thought that there’s only one place I want to go right now.

Long, hot baths are supposed to be relaxing. They’re supposed to
de-
stress you and wash away whatever burdens you’re carrying with you as soon as you step into that glorious sudsy water. And yet somehow, despite the tea-lights, the stupid lavender bath-oil that Chelsea got me for my last birthday, and even the glass of wine in my hands, I’m still tense.

And I’m still
tense
because I can’t stop thinking about Logan fucking Dempsey.

Yikes, ok, I certainly don’t need to use the word
fuck
and his name together in the same thought; nope, not at all.

Whatever that little encounter on the plane was, whether he set that up or if it was just plain happenstance, it doesn’t matter. Either way, I can’t get the lingering thought of it out of my head. Because just that brush of a touch, the heat of his body close to mine in the tightness of that plane, and the way his eyes burned into mine had me thinking about
that
night; that first night full of heat and anonymity. Ok, he’s a rich, entitled, pompous ass, but
God
would I be lying if I tried to tell myself it hadn’t been amazing; like, mind-blowingly amazing.
 

And then before I know it, I’m letting myself sink down a little further in the heat of the tub and letting my thoughts wander to that illicit, forbidden place where the memory of that night is stored. I’m thinking of the way his hands ran over the curve of my hip and up to my back, teasing the skin there with his fingertips. The way he was so
primal
with his need for me, and yet so teasing in the way he brought me to a damn boiling point before he touched me there.

There,
where I realize my hand has crept beneath the bubbles of the bathwater.

I’m remembering the way his fingers finally delved down between my legs and slipped inside, making me gasp. The way he moved me around like I weighed nothing, and the way he brought me to his mouth, my legs straddling his face as he curled his tongue and his lips around my clit and sent shivering shuddering pleasure through my body.