Kellan (5 page)

Herman was kicking
me so hard I lifted off the mat. I could feel myself shattering piece by piece.
I knew that if he got on top of me, I was done. Finished.

I was going to
lose a fight for the first time in my life. And all because of Parker
fucking
Jones.

~
SIX ~

Parker

Holy shit!

Kellan saw me.
He’d looked my way, and he actually
saw
me, here in this mass of sweaty,
drunken people. And now he was getting his ass kicked, where a moment before,
he’d been poised to take the win. I couldn’t help but feel like somehow, this
was all my fault.

I winced as the
Hispanic guy in the blue shorts kicked Kellan so hard in the ribs that his body
left the mat for an instant. Beside me, Thom cringed and sucked his teeth.
“This is bad,” he said over the chaos of the crowd. “Your guy’s done for.”

Great,
I thought, clinging tighter to Thom’s side as the audience pushed in around me.
And I was hoping to catch him in a good mood…

Looking around, it
was little wonder Kellan had recognized me. Just as I’d feared, I did
not
belong here. The women surrounding me were all wearing very revealing clothes
with jeans so tight they left nothing to the imagination, or otherwise, skirts
that showed the bottoms of their asses if they bent over just a little too
much. The best I’d been able to do on such short notice was a black tank top, a
push-up bra, and some Daisy Dukes that made me look more like a bumpkin than an
underground fighting fan. Thom hadn’t fared much better—even in a t-shirt and
jeans, he still looked like a hipster. Maybe it was the beard and curled-up
moustache.

There was a girl
near the ring, standing next to a bald guy Thom had pointed out to me earlier
as one of the managers. She was just as wide-eyed as I was, screaming for
Kellan to get up, to “murder the fucker.” The glitter on her skin sparkled in
the dim light and made the pout of her lips all the more prominent. Was that
his girlfriend? She looked worried enough that she might be.

My heart fell.
That woman was curvy with a tiny waist and
huge
tits, and she wasn’t
afraid to flaunt any of it, either. How the hell was I supposed to compete with
that?

Would
you get over yourself?
I thought as Kellan
rolled onto his belly and spat blood onto the mat in front of him.
He’s
dying out there! You have to do something!

But what the hell
was I supposed to do? This was a fight—an illegal fight. I couldn’t very well
rush the ring and jump on his opponent’s back. That would, at the very least,
be cheating. Also, humiliating. Probably for everyone involved.

“Come on, Kellan,”
I whispered instead, feeling helpless as I watched the fight unfold. “Come on…”

As though he’d
heard me, Kellan lifted his head and looked my way again. Something flashed in
his hazel eyes just as the Hispanic guy went in for the kill.

Kellan grabbed his
opponent’s ankle and twisted hard, knocking him off balance. The guy fell and
Kellan forced himself to his feet, gritting his teeth as he took a second to
recover. He was hurting bad—I could tell from the way he was holding his side,
and he wasn’t bouncing on the balls of his feet anymore. He was out of energy,
and maybe out of time, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.

I was in awe. How
could someone come back from that? How could they endure so much trauma, so
much pain, and still put their fists up?

It was like Kellan
had caught his second wind. Maybe he wasn’t the Energizer Bunny anymore, but he
was making headway all the same. When the Hispanic guy came at him again,
Kellan was ready, and he wasn’t taking any shit, either. He blocked when he
needed to, dodged when he could, and waited for his opening, his jaw set, eyes
ablaze.

“Look at that,”
Thom said beside me. “Maybe I shouldn’t count him out yet, after all.”

“I’ve never seen
anything like it,” I breathed. “Have you?”

Thom shook his
head. “No. Your guy’s way out of his league here, and he’s taken a serious
beating. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got a cracked rib or two under all
those bruises. But look at him go. What a beast.”

Yeah,
I thought, unable to keep my eyes off his sweaty, bulging muscles.
A real
animal…

And just like
that, it was over. Kellan took a mighty blow to the face, but used his
opponent’s momentum against him and managed to hit him hard upside his head in
return. The guy fell, knocked out cold, his eyes rolling into his skull and his
body limp. He bounced like a rubber ball and Kellan let out a breath, stumbling
back a step as the ref dropped down to count the guy out.

“Killer Kellan
wins!”

Killer
Kellan.
I hadn’t totally understood it before,
but now, after seeing him in action, it made perfect sense. The guy was
incredible. Like he was made for this.

But even in the
midst of rejoicing, he looked somehow… sad. I saw that same flash of pain I’d
seen in him the day we met at the bar. There was something more to the story,
here. I just had to find out what.

I started to move
toward the ring, but the girl I’d seen before was already slipping between the
ropes and rushing to Kellan’s side, jumping up and down so that her massive,
bountiful breasts jiggled like Jell-O shots. She slid her hand into Kellan’s
and entwined their fingers, and I felt my stomach knot.
I guess she
is
his girlfriend, after all.

Then he pulled
away from her, called his manager over, and pointed. Right at me. That pain was
gone, replaced by fury. Heat rose in my face.
Shit.
Kellan did not look
happy to see me.

“Thom,” I said,
regarding the big, burly men working their way through the crowd toward me,
“what do I do?”

“What do you do?”
he laughed. “Go with it! Now’s your chance to get the inside scoop. And while
you’re gone, I’ll work my angle.”

I nodded, trying
to look braver than I felt. In reality, butterflies had taken flight in my
stomach and I was getting a little dizzy. When one of the hulking men closed
their fingers around my wrist, I almost yelped.

“Killer wants to
see you in the winner’s room,” he said, his whiskey breath thick in my ear. “You
wanna go, or are you gonna disappoint the man?”

I made a face.
Coercion? Sexy. “I’ll go,” I said anyway, letting the meathead lead me through
the crowd, parting bodies with the expanse of his broad shoulders. I trailed
along behind in his wake, my pulse racing with each new step we took.

What was Kellan
expecting of me? Did he think I was here to fuck him? Or was he onto me, pissed
that I’d show up? He certainly hadn’t looked happy. That scowl could’ve killed
a man. But maybe he was still coming down from the adrenaline rush of nearly
beating his opponent to death. Maybe being alone in this “winner’s room” with
him wouldn’t be so bad.

Down a long
hallway so far from the crowd that I could barely hear them now, I stumbled
into the winner’s room. The guy and his friend closed the door behind me with a
little nod, as if the bed with its freshly washed sheets should have told me
all I needed to know about what went on in here.

I took a few deep
breaths, and with each one, my stomach knotted even more. The waiting, the
anticipation, was
murder.
My thoughts kept drifting between the anger in
Kellan’s eyes and the expectation of what I was supposed to do in here with
him. My face flushed, and suddenly the room felt very small.

Jesus. After a
fight like that, a girl couldn’t help but wonder about what Kellan would be
like in bed. Would that aggression translate into a rough fuck between the
sheets? Would he manhandle me like a rag doll, pounding into me so hard I
wouldn’t be able to walk? Would he leave bruises on my thighs, on my hips, even
on my shoulders in a way that would have me dreaming about him for years to
come? Would he pull my hair and spank me, turn me out, leave me a puddle of
satisfaction and desire smoldering on the floor?

Stop,
I told myself.
Focus on the story.
But my mind didn’t want to linger
there. It wanted to delve back into that illicit fantasy, the one where
Kellan’s hard body was pinning me to the mattress and making me scream. Was he
just as dogged and bloodthirsty in bed as he was in the ring? And could I even
handle it, if he was?

I jumped damn near
two feet in the air when he opened the door and slammed it behind him, his eyes
ablaze. Kellan must have come straight here from the ring. He was still bloody
and bruised, his muscular physique covered in a thin sheen of sweat. His scent was
powerful, overwhelming, all musk and fire. The tattoo on his chest, the Marine
Corps motto and symbol, looked bolder than ever with all that adrenaline
pumping through his veins.

The way he was
looking at me, no man had ever looked at me before. It was like he was
simultaneously trying to stare into my soul and undress me with his eyes.
Kellan’s stare was actually palpable, like a caress that ran the length of my
body, stealing into all my most intimate places and lingering there. My knees
went a little week and my panties clung to me as I parted my lips to speak, to
offer some excuse for tracking him down.

But Kellan spoke
first, snarling so low I could feel the rumble in my chest. “Parker—what the
fuck
are you doing here?”

What
was
I
doing here? Holy hell, this was a bad idea. I really hadn’t thought this
through. Kellan had been right when he’d told me before that I didn’t belong
here, that this wasn’t my world. But I’d been too stubborn to listen to him.
Just like my dad, I was pigheaded through and through.

Kellan stepped
closer to me, his hands balled into fists, his eyes narrowed. “Well?” he
prompted.

I couldn’t tell
him I was here because I was interested in him. That would have been both
unprofessional and humiliating. And he probably would have thought I was a
crazy person. I mean, who does this kind of thing just because they like a guy,
especially a guy who’s already said he just wants to be left alone?

But I couldn’t
tell him about the story, either. Not without making him angrier than he
already was.

I gave Kellan the
only answer I could, one that was as honest as it was shameful. “I… I really don’t
know.”

~
SEVEN ~

Kellan

I don’t know?
That was her excuse? That wasn’t fucking good enough!

“You don’t belong
here, Parker,” I hissed, closing the distance between us until I towered over
her. “This isn’t your world. For fuck’s sakes, look at you. You could have
gotten hurt.”

“Hurt?” she said,
cocking her head. It made her hair fall down in such a perfect way that it took
every iota of self-control inside me not to reach down and brush a lock of it
back behind her ear.

“Yeah,
hurt,
”
I repeated, pointing in the direction of the crowd we’d both just escaped from.
“Those guys out there, the ones who come to places like this? They’re mostly
assholes, Parker. They don’t play nice. And a woman like you, with those
innocent eyes and legs for days—you might as well have walked in here with a
goddamn bullseye painted on your tits.”

Parker snorted and
shook her head. “Relax. I came here with a friend.”

A new rush of rage
swelled inside me. Yeah, I’d seen her
friend—
the objectively
good-looking guy whose arm she’d been dangling off of during the fight. He
stuck out almost as much as she did.

“What the fuck
were you doing with that tool, anyway?” I snapped before I could stop myself. I
had no claim to her. In fact, I’d done nothing but push her away. But seeing
Parker with another man made my blood boil. Whether or not that was rational
was an entirely different story.

“Thom?” she asked.
“He’s the one who brought me here. I wouldn’t have known where to look, if it
wasn’t for him.”

“Seems like your
boyfriend
doesn’t have your best interests at heart, if he brought you here,” I sneered.

Parker blinked at
me a moment. Then she laughed. My cock twitched at the sound and I clenched my
fists at my sides. Goddamn, I wanted to kiss her and put my fist through that
fucker, Thom’s, face all at the same time.

“Thom’s not my
boyfriend,
”
she said, finally tucking that wayward blonde strand behind her ear. “Though he
does have one of his own.”

The inferno inside
me died down just a little. I felt my jaw relax. I hadn’t even realized how
tightly I’d been clenching it. “Oh. Shit. Really?”

“Really,” Parker
affirmed with a nod. “Just got engaged a few months ago, actually. Trust me,
Kellan, I wouldn’t have brought a boyfriend here to see you.”

I raised a brow.
“And why not?”

“Because…” She
trailed off, mouth slightly open as she hesitated. I could just imagine
capturing her lips like that, pressing her back against the wall and slipping
my tongue into the sweet ecstasy of her mouth. And then slipping something else
in there, too. “Because I wanted to talk to you alone, and I imagine boyfriends
get jealous over that sort of thing.”

I felt my dick
harden even more, despite my attempts to keep it down.
Traitor.
It knew
what to expect once in this room, and I’d been thinking of Parker for a long
damn time now. It was animal instinct. And I was just barely controlling it.

“You imagine, huh?
So you don’t have one?” I asked her. “A boyfriend, I mean.”

Parker shook her
head and averted her eyes. The flush on her cheeks told me she was a little
embarrassed about that fact. “No.”

All kinds of
thoughts immediately crossed my mind. Was this goody two-shoes a virgin? No, she
didn’t strike me as
that
naïve, although given the fact that she was
here in the winner’s room with me, I still questioned her judgment. She was
probably just inexperienced, then, probably the high-strung girl who put her
career before everything else, especially men. What’d she say she was back at
the bar—a writer? Shit, she probably wrote romance. That was what most women
writers who needed a good fuck did.

Fuck, I had to
stop thinking like this. Parker was inserting herself into a dark place she was
never meant for, one that would chew her up and spit her out if she wasn’t
careful. I cleared my throat and moved away from her, sitting on the edge of
the bed, trying to put some distance between us again.

“No wonder you’re
here,” I grumbled. “You don’t have anyone to talk some damn sense into you.”

“So are you mad
because I might have had a boyfriend, or because I don’t?” Parker asked,
folding her arms over her chest. The way it pushed her tits up finished the job
on my dick—I was rock hard now. “Because it seems like you can’t decide.”

“I’m mad because
you don’t fucking listen,” I told her, doing my best to hide my stubborn,
throbbing erection. “I’m mad that you’re here at all, after I told you to stay
the hell away.”

“I can’t do that,”
she replied with a shake of her head. “I know you’re trying to protect me,
but…”

“Why the hell not,
you don’t even know me!” I threw my hands up, frustrated, showing off the blood
and inky bruises all over me. “Why the hell can’t you stay away from this,
Parker? Don’t you know what’s good for you?”

“Because I want to
get to know you,” she answered, ignoring my injuries and looking straight into
my eyes. “I didn’t get a chance to at the bar. You didn’t
give
me a
chance. And I want one, bad enough that I’d show up here, at a place like
this.” She scuffed her foot a little against the floor. “You never called me.
So what choice did I have?”

I leaned back on
my hands. She’d been waiting for my call, huh? That was new. Usually women
walked in and out of my life on a whim—at least, these ring girls sure as hell
did. Having a chick pursue me was definitely not something I was used to.

I hated to admit
it, but I kind of liked it. I liked how stubborn Parker was. I liked that she
didn’t listen. I liked how it frustrated me and how stiff my dick got every
time that happened. I wanted to pound it into her, to break that stubborn
streak and have her mewling and begging for my touch.

Shit. She was in
my head. And if I didn’t stop thinking like this, she was gonna notice how she
was making me feel pretty damn quick.

One look at her
face told me it was already too late. Parker was staring at my dick, at the
tent it was making in my shorts. I didn’t know whether to adjust it or put a
pillow over the damn thing, but she didn’t look disgusted. If anything, she
looked
awed.

Just like how
she’d looked at me while I was in the ring: eyes wide, lips parted. Fuck, what
I would’ve given to have them wrapped around the head of my cock… to fill that
smart mouth of hers with my…

“You didn’t have
to go all stalker,” I said to turn off the thoughts racing through my head.  I
couldn’t help wincing as I sat back up. Goddamn, my ribs were killing me. At
least the pain didn’t make me think about fucking Parker so much. “Like I said,
this place, this world, could be bad for your health. Hell, so could I.”

“How will we know
unless you give it a chance?” she asked me.

I ran my fingers
through my hair and sighed. She really wasn’t going to give this up. As I
winced again, she sat down on the bed beside me, gingerly perching there on the
edge as she grazed her fingers across my arm.

“Let me see,” she
said, her nails leaving goosebumps in their wake.

With a grimace, I
lifted my arm up over my head, exposing my ribs. I could tell without even
looking that they were a mess. I could
feel
it. Parker brushed her
fingertips over the swollen parts, her touch so gentle I hardly even felt it,
save for another stirring between my legs. I was just starting to imagine her
nails raking down my back when she diverted her attention to my hands. My
knuckles were bleeding through the wrappings.

“Why do you care
so much?” I asked as she slowly began to unwind the tape. “Between what I do
for a living and the way I’ve treated you, most girls would’ve run screaming by
now.”

“I’m not most girls,”
Parker replied, finally exposing my fucked up hands.
Ain’t that the truth?

“Is there any
hydrogen peroxide here?” she said. “Any bandages?”

I jutted my chin
toward the bathroom door. “In there. Under the sink.” I knew because I’d
patched myself up plenty of times in this room after the girls left, but never
before had one offered to actually take care of me themselves.

Parker stood and
gathered her supplies, and when she returned to my side, the look of
concentration on her face was too goddamn adorable for words. She saturated a
few cotton balls with the hydrogen peroxide and gently applied them to my
knuckles, ignoring my grunts and growls as the liquid bubbled and fizzed on my
fresh cuts.

“Stings,” I
muttered.

Parker smirked. “I
think you can handle it,” she said.

I smiled. I
couldn’t help it. I liked the way she made me feel, even if it hurt a little.
As she rubbed Neosporin on my hands, I blew out a long breath and relaxed,
studying her face. Goddamn, she was beautiful. There wasn’t a single thing about
her that wasn’t angelic. The gentle bow of her lips. Her long, thick lashes and
the way they fluttered over her bright blue eyes. The arch of her brows. The
slim curves of her body. Parker was a diamond in the rough, and she’d come all
this way for me. To find
me.
I wasn’t sure what good deed I’d done
lately to deserve this, but I was starting to think maybe I shouldn’t look a
gift horse in the mouth.

“You really want
to get to know me?” I asked her as she met my gaze. “Like… for real?”

Parker nodded.
“Everything. Every last detail.”

I watched as she
wound some gauze around my knuckles. “We can’t do that here,” I told her. “Like
this. In this place, I have to be someone else. I have to be Killer Kellan, the
monster, the beast. Every other fighter’s worse nightmare. Not Kellan Jarvis,
complex human being.”

“I like the sound
of that last one,” Parker said as she finished patching me up—at least my
hands, anyway. “We could go back to The Sly Fox. Or out to dinner, somewhere.
You did just earn yourself some serious winnings, after all.”

I smiled again.
The thought of taking a girl like Parker Jones out made me feel all warm and
fuzzy inside. Important. Like I mattered. Like I could be a normal guy, with a
normal—and also extraordinary—girl.

But I was tired.
And sore. And as much as I wanted to, I wasn’t sure I could handle a night out.

“What about my
place?” I asked her. “It’s not much, but I’ve got a decent couch. And Netflix.
And beer.”

Parker blushed.
She glanced at my cock again, still jutting against the seam of my shorts. She
sucked her lower lip into her mouth. It was so damn sexy.

“Sure,” she said
at length. “Your place it is.”

My cock rejoiced,
but I didn’t want to get its hopes up. Parker and I were just getting to know
each other. That was all. And if I ever wanted to take it farther than that, I
was going to have to play it cool.

Although the way
she kept stealing glances at my shorts, I got the feeling that maybe, just
maybe, she was intrigued by a little more than my personality. Hey, a guy could
dream. And thinking about slipping my dick into Parker Jones was the sweetest
damn dream I’d ever had.