Yanna

“What did that guy want?” Vlad asks as he pokes his head into my changing room once Hawk is gone.

“We agreed there would be no fans in my dressing room after the fights,” I snap at him.

“He wouldn’t take no for an answer and the security guys insisted I let him speak to you, so I couldn’t prevent it,” Vlad says with no apology in his voice. “What did he want?”

I shake my head and start pulling on my sweats over my fighting outfit. I’ll shower at home. I just want to get out of here. Maybe once I’m alone and I replay the video of our conversation it’ll make more sense.

“He was just some fan who talked his way in here with a tall tale, hoping I’ll sleep with him,” I tell Vlad, since right now, all the proof I have still points firmly in that direction.

Or maybe I just think that because I want the same thing. But no. That’s the easiest thing to believe, since the last thing I want is for the Russian mafia to take an interest in me again. The last time they did that was tragic and disastrous enough. So, I truly and dearly hope what I just told Vlad is the truth because the alternative isn’t something I want to contemplate.

Out East I managed to stay far, far away from the mob. It meant turning down fights and not fighting in some of the tournaments that could make me big faster. But I always wanted to win on my own terms, on my own merit and the legit way. I left my home country so I could do that. I didn’t even stay for the funeral of the man who made my dream possible, just so I wouldn’t risk my shot at that. If Hawk was telling the truth about the Russian mob looking to fix this tournament…No, I won’t think about that. It was just a lie.

“Sorry, I thought he was safe,” Vlad finally says. “Get your things, I’ll take you home.”

“I rode my bike here, remember?” I say while putting away my camera.

“We’ll come get it tomorrow,” he urges.

“No, I need to clear my head.” A ride will help that. The crisp nighttime air, the lights, the energy this town gives off, the freedom promised by the open, empty road, all that will help erase this panic choking me just like it always does. I know it will. And I’ve said all I have to say to Vlad right now. He knows Dima was my coach back in Russia, they were friends once upon a time, but even he doesn’t know I witnessed Dima’s death. If Hawk’s warning had any truth to it, I’ll have to tell him now I guess, but for right now, it’s easier to just keep believing he only wanted to fuck me. Which is another problem, because I kinda want the same thing.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” I tell Vlad as I put on my backpack and leave the changing room.

“Bright and early, please,” he calls after me, and I just grunt in response.

For all my dedication, I will always hate early morning practices. I’m a night bird, I don’t even fully wake up until after 2 PM. But this tournament is too important and I don’t expect to be comfortable again until after it’s over and I’m the champion.

“Good fight,” the burly security guard in a leather biker jacket says to me as he opens the door to let me out of the building by the back exit.

He sounds like he’s surprised that he thinks so and that he said it too, but I nod anyway and look him in the eyes as I thank him. Most manly men don’t understand women who fight like men, and they don’t like us much either. That’s probably another reason why I haven’t found a man for myself yet, not that I searched, but things happen if they’re meant to, and since I’m most attracted to big, burly, manly men, I haven’t had much luck. I like men just like Hawk. And he’s not intimidated by me being a fighter. Damn it. I have to stop thinking this way! I don’t even know him. I can’t possibly know what intimidates him!

I can hear the crowds who came to watch the fight exiting the arena through some door to the left of this secluded parking lot where I left my bike. The lot is nearly deserted, there’s only my bike, another bike and a black SUV parked here, but I feel watched as I walk to my Indian. The night air is very cold, a jarring contrast to the heat of the days here in the desert, and I’m getting that same uneasy, panicked feeling I had that night I watched a group of strange men cross the courtyard of Dima’s gym.

That’s all in my head though. It has to be. That guy just freaked me out with his stupid tales of Russian mobsters searching for me. What a way to approach a woman, threatening her with her worst fear. Seriously. I might have wanted to get to know him better, if he just asked me out on a date or something. But that? That was just ridiculous. He’s a freak.

“Congratulations on winning the fight, sister,” a man says in Russian from somewhere to my left.

It’s not the man who stared at me from the crowd, but he’s dressed the same as that guy was, and he’s standing by the black SUV I hoped was empty when I first spotted it as I exited the arena. I never saw anyone step out of it, because I was too focused on the lies Hawk told me. But right now, it looks like they weren’t lies at all.

“Spasiba,” I thank him in my native tongue, my tone curt and measured even though everything inside me is vibrating. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“More than you know, more than you know.” The guy looks familiar but that’s just my fear talking, since it’s too dark to see his features clearly.

“Good,” I say and swing my leg over the bike.

“Stay awhile, let’s talk,” the man insists and a lot of the friendliness his voice was full of before is gone now. That is the last thing I want to do. One of the back doors of the SUV is open and now the other one is opening too.

“Why don’t you let the woman go home?” a much more recently familiar voice says behind me in English. “She’s had quite a night.”

“Mikhail, is it?” Hawk adds as he stops right between the Russian man and me. “Nice to see you again.”

The look the Russian gives him is such an opposite of friendly it sends a chill down my spine. They stare at each other for a couple of seconds and the aggressive tension mounting between them soon grows so thick you could cut it with a knife. The other back door of the SUV is firmly closed again, and I’m very relieved to notice that, more than I should be, given all else that’s happening.

The Russian looks away first. He grins at me, but his eyes are like two black rocks at the bottom of a river.

“Very well, we’ll talk later,” he tells me in Russian and goes back to the car.

My heart is pounding as I watch him enter it and the blood whooshing though my veins is so loud I don’t even hear the car start before it drives off.

I remember where I heard that man’s voice before.

He was with Yuri Kazarov the night he killed Dima. He was joking about Dima’s shabby office while they trashed it to make it look like a robbery.

Hawk is saying something to me, but I can’t hear him. I just see his lips moving.

“You can keep me safe from these men?” I ask, my accent the worst it’s been, since the first year I moved to this country. I’m not even sure I’m speaking English.

He gives me another one of those smirking grins he kept giving me back in the dressing room. “I’d love to try.”

“But can you? I’m serious,” I snap at him.

His eyes narrow and the smile almost disappears from his lips, but not quite.

“That guy really spooked you,” he observes. “You’ve met him before?”

“Can you keep them away from me?” I ask again, praying the answer’s yes. But it has to be. He chased the guy away without even saying much, just by appearing. “I can pay you for your services.”

He’s looking at me and not saying anything, and I have no idea what he’s thinking. His eyes look like the moonlit sky in this light, calm, peaceful and inviting. My head is still spinning. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked for his help so fast. Being alone and on my own for most of my life has made me tough and self-reliant. But it’s also honed my instincts. I think I can trust this guy. I feel like I can. I also know I don’t have much of a choice. Vlad has some connections with the Russian mafia back east, and he’s been able to keep them away from me, but that was there, he doesn’t know anyone powerful here. This guy is it.

“Like I said, I’d love to try,” he finally says. “But there’ll be no talk of paying me.”

“I have the money,” I protest. “And I want to keep it business-like.”

He looks down at the ground and laughs, then his eyes pierce me again as he offers me his hand. “Alright, Cat Fight, business-like.”

I shake his hand, the warmth of his palm and his firm grip chewing away at the cold panic still flowing through my blood. He doesn’t let go of my hand right away, and I keep gripping his too.

“I’ll follow you home, then we can discuss the details,” he says and I choke on the breath I was taking.

Letting a stranger know where I live can’t be a good idea. But the moonlight in his eyes and his firm, warm hand have already melted away most of my apprehension.

The Russians might know where I live too. They could already be on their way to talk to me there.

“Fine,” I say and pull my hand from his grasp.

This could be me going from bad to worse. But it doesn’t feel that way.

Letting this guy watch over me feels like the one and only way of achieving what I want to achieve on my terms and in my way. And my intuition has yet to steer me wrong.

* * *

So much for the ride back to my house clearing my head. My heart isn’t thumping anymore and my face is cool, so there’s that, but I’m far from calm as I dismount in the driveway and wait for him to do the same. I rented this house three days ago, so it’s not really my home yet. The street is quiet, the houses dark and there’s no sign of the BMW out of which the Russian came before. Maybe I overreacted about the whole thing. Maybe I even only imagined it was the guy who was there the night Dima died. My mind was fried from all the weirdness and adrenaline by that point. As the fact that I brought a total stranger home proves. But I didn’t lie to him, I can take care of myself. I could take him, even though he’s big and looks like he can throw a punch, so I’d have my work cut out with him. I hope he’s not some crazy psycho because he looks better than any man I’ve met in recent years, and I’m pretty much constantly surrounded by fit guys. It’s not just that he’s very good looking, he also makes me feel things I don’t remember feeling in a guy’s presence in quite some time. It’s those eyes of his. They’re so all-seeing and vast, yet pointed and piercing like a bird of prey’s. Like a Hawk’s. Maybe they earned him his nickname. Although I’m pretty sure biker guys like him don’t spend a lot of time gazing into each other’s eyes, so what the hell am I thinking?

Either way, that gaze is sharp enough to pierce my skin as he approaches and stops less than a foot away from me. He’s so close I can feel the heat his skin is giving off and smell him. His scent is this heady mix of leather and the open air, up high in the sky where it’s cool and fresh all the time.

“No threat that I can see here,” he says and grins at me. “But I guess I better check the inside of your house too.”

My heart starts thumping again, so fast I’m getting lightheaded.

“Purely in my capacity as your bodyguard, of course,” he adds and grins, like he can hear my thumping heart and knows it means I just imagined the two of us naked in my bed when he mentioned coming inside. Not much shows on my face usually, but I think that did, it flashed through my mind so fast I couldn’t even try to hide it.

I’ve never had such a crazy and conflicting reaction to anyone. I can keep my cool anytime and any place. His presence unnerves me, the idea of him coming into my house in the dead of night frightens me, yet it’s also exactly what I want. For some reason I still feel perfectly safe with him. And like I’ve known him for a very long time already and can trust him. Maybe he’s one of my fans that I only know by their nickname, or in his case, their first name…

“If we’re entering into a professional relationship, I would like to know your full name first.” Oh, smart, Yanna. Like he can’t just give you a fake name. Like knowing his name is gonna make him less of a stranger. He’d tell me if we’d chatted online before. I mean, why wouldn’t he?

His grin turns sly and he’s kinda checking me out sideways, his eyes reflecting the moonlight perfectly and glowing silver.

“I haven’t done real names in a while,” he muses. “But I guess since I know yours, you should know mine. I’m Alexander Darlington.”

I chuckle, can’t help it. “Darlington? Are you shitting me?”

“No, Yanna, I’m not into that kinda thing,” he says with all seriousness, but then grins right after, probably at the outrage that must be on my face. “That’s my name. It’s part of the reason why I don’t like sharing it with people.”

“There’s a very famous rich family from New York with that name,” I say.

He nods. “Yes, there is.”

I don’t say anything since it feels like he’s gonna say something more, like lie and tell me that’s his family, but he doesn’t and the silence is just dragging now.

“Why did the Russian scare you so much? You never had any problems with them before, right?” he asks suddenly, sending my heart, which his easy way of talking calmed to a steady beat racing again, because he just reminded me of that whole thing. He also revealed he knows a lot about me, which is understandable, since I live my life online, but it still isn’t right because I don’t know anything about him, we’re strangers and I’m standing alone in a quiet, dark street with him. We’re still in the driveway, my front door firmly locked and I don’t know if I should let him inside my house.

“He shocked me, that’s all,” I say evasively. “And if you’re right, and he is looking to fix the tournament, I don’t want any of that. I want to win fairly.”

He nods. “Yeah, you talk a lot about fair fights, I noticed that about you.”

“How long have you been my fan?” I ask, and he blinks like I startled him with my question. Maybe he also heard my inflection on the word fan, since I kinda wanted to say stalker and I definitely meant for him to hear that.

“You ask some pointed questions, Yanna. I’m the same way so I like that,” he says. “And to answer you, a couple of years now, on and off. I don’t get to meet a lot of fierce women like you in my line of work and the ones I do meet get boring fast. Your videos are fun and I’ll admit that I have a little crush on you.”

His eyes darken as though thick clouds just obscured the moon, and now his eyes are so full of lust, I know whatever he feels for me is more than a little crush. I’m around enough alpha males everyday to know what lust looks like, but the trouble right now is that I like that look in his eyes and we share the lust.

“You see why I’m worried?” I ask, since he just keeps avoiding giving me a straight answer and because I’m starting to realize I’m not gonna be happy with any answer he does give me. I have to make this decision. Let him in or send him away? My body’s saying one thing and my head another and I don’t know which one to listen to.

“I get it, this is awkward for you,” he says. “You don’t know me but I know you. I did only look you up tonight because of what I suspected about the Russians’ plans with you. I might’ve looked you up anyway, now that you moved to my side of the country, but that’s not why I did it tonight. Now how about we go inside? It’s cold out here and you have a whole tournament to win. It would be a bad time to catch a cold.”

Who talks like that? Am I just supposed to believe everything he says, because it sure sounds like that’s what he wants. But how the hell can I? I don’t know him at all.

“I’d rather…I don’t know…” I have no idea what to say. I could catch something a lot worse than a cold if he turns out to be some kind of psycho once we’re alone in the house. He doesn’t feel like a psycho, he feels like a friend, someone I want to get to know better. But I’ve heard that psychos are really good at fooling their victims into thinking they’re nice guys.

“Come on, Yanna, you’re a trained fighter, you could take me if it came to it. That’s one of the main things I know like about you,” he says with that insufferable grin, which is so arrogant yet so warm at the same time that it leaves very little room for fear in my chest whenever he fixes it on me. “Besides, a whole bunch of people know who I am and that I came to see you tonight. The guys working security for the tournament, your trainer and the Russians. Plus, I’m one of your biggest fans. I want you to win.”

I gotta make this decision fast. Like right now. Body or mind. Intuition or logic. Fear or terror.

“But I’ll take off and go back to admiring you from afar, if that’s what you want,” he adds. “The last thing I want is to mess with your head at the start of such an important competition for you.”

Make the decision, Yanna. Make it now.

“Stay,” I say once he already starts looking at his bike like he doesn’t know what he’s still doing here.

Yes, he’s a stranger, but he’s proven the truth of his words twice already. Whereas the guy who spoke to me earlier has proven a much more horrible thing to me almost ten years ago. Even if he’s not one of the guys who killed Dima, he sure reminded me of them, and my intuition is always on point.

Letting Hawk stay is a risk. But sending him away could be the bigger risk.

“But you’re sleeping on the couch,” I add as I stride across the lawn. My statement just kinda hangs in the air after his sharp intake of breath. He didn’t ask to sleep over, but I just betrayed that’s what I was thinking about, so that knowing smirk on his face I see as I sneak a peek over my shoulder, is completely earned.

“The couch is great,” he says as he follows me inside. “It’s better than great, since I hadn’t actually made any sleeping arrangements for tonight.”

“You don’t live in Vegas?” I ask as I unlock the door. Despite how tense I still am about this whole situation it’s easy making small talk with him. And I don’t find it easy making small talk with anyone. Ever.

“No, I live in a town a couple of hours away,” he says as he follows me inside. “But I’d be no use to you there.”

“If you want me to trust you, you’re gonna have to stop saying things like that,” I say, because he also makes it easy for me to say what’s on my mind for some reason.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he says, his eyes all wide like I shocked him, but that arrogant half smile is still on his lips, and I don’t think anything really shocks this guy.

“Is this me?” he adds, pointing at the sofa in the living room. It’s flanked with all the boxes filled with my things that I haven’t unpacked yet and might not until the tournament is over.

“Yes, that’s the couch,” I say rather dumbly. “I’ll get you a blanket,“ I add then rush up the stairs before I say anything else dumb.

I just grab the comforter and pillow off my own bed, and rush back downstairs. He’s walking around, checking the windows and doors.

“It all looks perfectly secure,” he tells me, as he takes the covers and pillow from me.

“Alright then, good night,” I say and rush back upstairs. He says it too, but I’m almost on the first floor landing by that time.

I need space to think about this. And I can’t do it under that far seeing gaze of his, or in the line of fire of his smile either. I need to do it locked in my own bedroom where I can still pretend I’m safe and out of harm’s way.

* * *

Hawk

Well, I didn’t expect to be spending the night at her place tonight. But in my wildest dreams where I did hope for it, I thought I’d be spending it in her bed, not down here on this sofa that’s so past it’s prime it needs to go first thing in the morning.

But the pillow smells like her so that’s something. Kinda like apples, pine trees and grass, but like the sun too. Or vodka. Good things, all of them.

I’ve done some weird ass shit in my life. Things you couldn’t make up if you tried real hard. But getting hired as a bodyguard by the gorgeous Russian MMA fighter I’ve been lusting over for more than a year tops it all. Giving her my real name was right up there with doing the unbelievable too. But what’s she gonna do with it? No one’s called me by that name in a long time. So long that all the bridges back to where it belongs are dust. I haven’t even looked in on what my family was up to in years. I never belonged in that world, and I doubt they miss me very much. I certainly don’t miss it.

But the thing is, I don’t know how good a bodyguard I’ll make for Yanna against the Russians. Cross is gonna want to let them do what they want as long as it doesn’t bother us. And I doubt he’s gonna see me wanting to protect my online crush as “bothering us”. Even though it’s totally improper, I kinda wish the guys I have following the Russians around will find them doing something we can’t look past soon, but so far they’ve got nothing to report.

Getting protected from the Russians seems like something she really wants. Bad enough to let a strange guy crash on her sofa. I never could find much about her from before she left her homeland, mostly because of the language barrier, but also because the Internet security the Russians use is hard to crack without leaving a trace and I don’t like leaving a trace.

She never revealed anything about her past in her interviews or on social media. If I remember right, she once said she was born in Russia but came to the US when she was eleven or twelve. Her accent is pretty noticeable though, so I’m thinking that might be a lie. Especially after her reaction to the Russians tonight. That, and hiring me so fast tells me she has some history with them and that it ain’t good. She wouldn’t let a stranger sleep in her house if she didn’t know exactly what guys like that are capable of, so I’m betting she does know.

Not that I’m gonna do much sleeping on this lumpy old sofa. The fact that I can hear the shower running and know she’s naked right now somewhere above my head isn’t helping either. I’ve never had a bigger hard-on for a woman than the one she gave me. My dick hasn’t gone soft since the moment I saw her and it’s getting painful. But I’m gonna save this hard-on for her to take care of. A part of my brain is directing me upstairs to get that done right now. But that’s just gonna get me kicked out and ruin this lucky break that landed me near enough to her so I can at least listen to her shower.

No, I’m gonna take this one real slow and nice. I’ve never been one to rush into anything and it’d be stupid to start now.