Yanna

“Focus, Yanna!” Vlad yells, as I just barely duck a left hook from my sparring partner—an employee of this gym, who’s also a fan—and which would’ve knocked me out if it connected. The fact that it came so close to that pisses me off, and Vlad’s angry voice on top of it pisses me off even more. I kept telling him all day that I’m too weak for a full-on practice, but he kept forcing me into it.

“I’m done for today,” I tell him and climb out of the rink. It’s past five, he’s kept me longer than usual on purpose and I don’t appreciate that either.

“We still have one more sequence to nail,” he says but I just shake my head.

“I’m too tired,” I tell him. “If I push it now, I’ll just end up getting injured. We’ll nail it tomorrow.”

“That guy is outside, asking where you are,” Vlad says in a voice that sounds like he’s chewing lemons as he follows me to the changing room. “I hope you’re at least keeping it professional, if you won’t send him packing. Or are you too tired because of him?”

I give him a sharp, angry look, which makes his eyes go wide, and don’t say anything. But he knows perfectly well that he just stepped over the line with that question. He’s been at me all day to send Hawk away, telling me he found absolutely no evidence that the Russian mob was even in Vegas, let alone that they were trying to fix the tournament. He’s also been telling me he can protect me just fine.

But I’ve met the Russian mob in Vegas and they came to see me in a dark, empty parking lot right after my first fight. Who knows what would’ve happened if Hawk wasn’t in that parking lot also.

“I appreciate all you’ve done for me, Vlad,” I say in a quiet voice, since a couple of other people, including my sparring partner came into the changing room now, and I don’t want it getting out that I’m arguing with my coach. “But this is my call, and I’ve made my decision. I’m not taking any risks. This tournament is too important.”

“You don’t know anything about him,” Vlad protests.

“I trust him,” I say. “And I have you to watch over me.”

“That you do, kid,” he says in a more complacent voice. “I just want what’s best for you.”

He pats me on the back, tells me to be here bright and early tomorrow morning, then lets me get showered and changed in peace.

I might have been very unlucky early in life, losing my family and home the way I did and as early as I did, but I’ve been very lucky with the people I met after that. Dima was the first, Vlad the second and I really hope Hawk is one of those too. It feels that way, but Vlad is right. I know next to nothing about him. Except that he’s a fan and that he’s fun to talk to. And nice to look at. And that it’s nice to be looked at by him. Like right now.

He’s standing by the door to the gym, his piercing eyes fixed on me and making those secret waters of joy and pleasure ripple inside me, those hidden pools I never visit, that I forgot were there at all. With him it’s more than just muscles and tallness and a handsome face. He has this energy inside, this life that I’ve never felt in a guy before. And I want a taste.

Vlad was packing up our stuff over by the rink, and he straightened up when I walked in. He’s now following my gaze, his lips twisted into a disapproving frown when our eyes meet again.

“He’s a distraction, Yanna,” he says as I walk by. “Just wait until the tournament is over then you can do whatever you want with him.”

There he goes being too forward again, but maybe that’s just because in nine years we’ve never had to have a discussion about whether a guy in my life was a distraction to me. None of them were, because none of them lasted. I’ve never even come close to being half as attracted to anyone else as I am to Hawk. So Vlad’s not wrong. Hawk is a distraction. But sending him away would be a distraction too.

“I’ll make it work, I promise,” I say.

“You better,” Vlad says. “It’s your career.”

“I know it is,” I say and start walking to Hawk.

I don’t appreciate Vlad’s threatening tone and I don’t like it one bit.

But even that annoyance seems faded like an old memory when I finally join Hawk by the door.

“Your coach gave you a talking to,” he observes. “Did practice not go well?”

He’s smiling as he says it, and I like how his smile feels in my chest. It’s a pleasant and soft feeling, making me think of good things in a way I don’t usually. Not with people anyway. Maybe when I’m watching funny cat videos, or when I was young and five or six cats lived with my grandma on the farm at any given time. Fluffy, huge cats that were gentler than a butterfly. Damn, I loved those cats, but I haven’t thought of them in ages. Being with him feels like I did while I played with them.

“He thinks I should fire you because you’re a distraction,” I say, my voice all soft and pleasant too. “But I said no.”

He clears his throat like I surprised him with my honesty, but then he goes right back to smiling at me. “Well, you’re a distraction for me too, but I’m not going anywhere.”

This conversation and the way he’s looking at me could lead straight to bed, and I’m very aware that a large part of me wants exactly that to happen. But I’m also very aware that this boiling desire he’s waking in me is eating away at my hunger to win this tournament, making it soft and inconsequential, faded, just like my annoyance at Vlad faded as soon as Hawk was close enough to touch. I can’t have that. I’m an underdog in this tournament, I lack the resources and the team the other women have. All I have, all I ever had, was my hunger to win.

“No distractions,” I say firmly and open the gym door, the heat outside suffocating and the sun blinding me for a second. “Ours is a professional relationship, and I have a tournament to prepare for.”

“Pity,” he says as he follows me outside, and I know he means it. “So what now? Another session of gorging on healthy food and then bed?”

“Precisely,” I say and mount my bike.

“Good thing I had a burger for lunch,” he says and gets on his bike too. A part of me would rather be getting on the back of his right now. But another part is very, very happy that he’s OK with a separate arrangement, that he’s not expecting me to be a girly-girl, and that he’s willing to wait and not pushing past what I want to give him.

Do I want to give myself to him?

That question stays at the front of my mind all through dinner, and long after we’ve already said good night. I make a whole video about it, telling my fans about Hawk, how he’s my bodyguard now, and that I like him. Or lust him, more precisely. I’ll never post it, especially not now, since he might watch it, being my fan and follower like he is. I made the video hoping that watching it in playback would put things back in perspective for me: tournament first, lust second.

It didn’t work, so I just ended up watching funny cat videos for half the night, while remembering my own cats. And yes, I was right, that’s exactly how being close to Hawk feels, so it wasn’t hard remembering, even though I don’t like doing that, since it just makes me sad. But being close to him also feels like it’ll suck me right into somewhere I don’t understand and can’t fight my way out of. Drown me in one of those pools of pleasure and bliss he keeps making ripple inside me.

I can’t let that happen. I’ve avoided emotional attachments like the plague since I came to this country, and before then even, ever since my grandma died and they took her farm, chased away the cats, and locked me up in an orphanage in Moscow. Emotional attachments only bring pain and sadness and those two things destroy my hunger and my drive like it never was.

* * *

Hawk’s sitting at the kitchen table when I come down the next morning, bent over a laptop with his hair all messed up like he’s been running his fingers through it all night.

“Did you go to sleep at all?” I ask and he looks up at me sharply, something very dangerous and pointed in his eyes, before they soften as he recognizes me and smiles.

“I had some work to catch up on,” he says. “Like I told you yesterday, you’re a distraction.”

He means it as a joke, says it like he’d gladly make me even more of a distraction right now, right there on the kitchen table. At least his eyes are telling me that by the way they travel up and down my body. I slept in just a t-shirt and short shorts, which is how I came downstairs, and I think he likes that fact very much.

“Did you find out anything about the Russians that came to speak to me the other night?” I ask, nipping all thoughts of how I’d like that same thing he wants right now in the bud.

“I found something, I think,” he says, and types something on the keyboard. “But your language isn’t very translator friendly. Come take a look.”

My heart is pounding and it only gets worse once I see the screen. It’s an article about Dima’s death and the only one I’ve ever seen that connects it to Yuri and the dojo he owned. The rest of the articles all said a junkie had broken in and Dima surprised him. That was the official version, and I think they even arrested someone for it. I’m sure Yuri’s father, Papa Kazarov, made that happen to clear his son. Moscow is ran by that man and there isn’t anyone they can’t lean on and influence. This article Hawk is showing me even mentions Yuri by name and once I get to that part, I can’t read anymore.

“This Yuri Kazarov, he’s the one who is here in Vegas?” I ask shakily, hoping the answer is no, even though I already know it’s yes.

“Yes,” Hawk says, peering at me very closely. “Do you know him?”

I shake my head automatically and so vigorously the room is spinning when I stop.

“Well, this article makes it seem like they make it their business to meddle in female fights, right?” he asks, and I just nod weakly.

“I also found another one,” he says and brings up something else on the screen. “This one is about a UK tournament they tried to fix. It ended up getting canceled on account of a Russian fighter going missing.”

Missing? My heart starts pounding even worse. Missing usually means dead when it comes to the mob, and I’m holding my breath as I read the article, hoping my fear won’t be confirmed by the end of it. This article is in English and mentions Yuri more prominently. It’s from a more respectable newspaper too.

“This Yuri, he’s the son of a very powerful man in Moscow and everything there is fixed, pretty much,” I say once I get to about the halfway point in the article. I’m afraid to read on. I don’t want to know about a Russian fighter that died because she couldn’t be bought. I’m a Russian fighter that can’t be bought. My forced smile is so tight it hurts my cheeks.

He narrows his eyes at me like he knows that I know more about Yuri than just this, and means to make me tell him everything any moment now. But this isn’t the time to tell him all I know about Yuri. Knowing something like that could get me killed, and I knew that the second I watched them stab Dima.

“Well, Yuri is here, Yanna,” Hawk says like he already knows all I’m trying to keep a secret from him. “He’s running the little band of Russians I suspect are trying to fix your tournament.”

The room legit tilts sideways before my eyes as I hear that, and I have to grip the back of his chair to keep from falling over.

“Can you keep them away from me?” I hear myself ask in a pleading voice I’ve never heard myself use before.

I don’t like the way his eyes say maybe, say that he’s not sure, even as he nods. It scares me, makes my heart race even faster and turns my vision even more blurry.

Is Yuri here because of me?

“I’d appreciate it if you told me all you know about them, Yanna,” he says. “It’d make it easier for me to give you an answer.”

He knows I’m not telling him everything.

“I don’t know anything more about them,” I snap and walk over to the sink to pour myself a glass of water, because my throat’s so dry it’s burning. “The way I understand it, all I have to do is remain untouchable for my victory to be pure. But if I suspect other fighters in the tournament are bought, I can also tell the organizer and the whole thing will be called off. Either way, I need proof. Can you get me proof?”

The thought of the tournament getting called off makes my hands freeze up so bad I bang the glass against my tooth painfully as I try to take another sip. I spent the last year of my life training for this. That’s all I did. For a year. Hell, I spent my entire life training for this. But I’ll win it fair, or I won’t compete at all.

A Russian fighter went missing. That’s why they canceled that UK tournament.

“Did they kill that Russian fighter?” I ask in a cracked voice. “The one in the article.”

His eyes are very serious, and so is his face. “It looks that way, Yanna. At least she never fought anywhere again. Was it you?”

My breath gets caught in my throat, doesn’t reach my lungs. That’s what he suspects? Maybe he doesn’t know anything about Dima and me. Good.

I shake my head and set my glass of water down on the counter.

“No,” I say. “But I don’t want to end up like her if she was killed because they couldn’t buy her.”

Hawk’s face softens, the serious hardness he wore seconds before just falling away in huge chunks. He gets up and looks like he’s about to come over and hug me, but instead he just slams the lid of his laptop shut.

“Don’t worry about that, beautiful,” he says. “That’s the one thing I know I can prevent.”

It’s a relief hearing that, so big a relief my legs go soft and jelly-like. Or maybe it’s because a tall, handsome and strong man just promised he’d keep me safe against the worst criminals I know, and that’s straight out of some movie. A romantic suspense one with lots of sex and love and action. My favorite kind.

“But you don’t know if you can prevent them from compromising the tournament?” I ask, since I heard that part very clearly too, even though he didn’t say it.

He shrugs. “It’s too early to speculate on that. This tournament is robustly legal, from what I’ve been able to tell. It’ll be hard for them to crack it, which is why they’re going after you. So yeah, if you stay pure, then your victory will be pure too. Pure in the not getting bought sense, I mean. The rest is up for grabs, right?”

I know exactly what “the rest” means in this case. And I’m glad for the change in the subject of our conversation, just not so glad for the direction it took. Yes, I wouldn’t mind him coming over here and kissing me. And I wouldn’t mind running my fingers through his hair like he’s been doing all night. And I wouldn’t mind him knowing that I’m not wearing anything under this t-shirt and shorts. Though I think maybe he already knows that. I wouldn’t mind knowing what other cool tattoos his clothes are hiding either. Or if his body actually feels and tastes as good as I think it does.

But those are all distractions. I’d get no practice in for the next two days if I let myself have those things right now. I know that for a fact.

So I turn around, look away from his eyes, which are the main source of me thinking all these distracting things, and empty my glass of water into the sink to give myself something to do.

“I’m going for a run and then we’ll have breakfast,” I inform him. “And then I’m going to train, because my next fight is in two days.”

“Right, no distractions,” he says. “Pity.”

And yeah, it is a pity. But losing this tournament and throwing away years of hard work for a pair of pretty eyes and a nice set of abs would be an even bigger one.

“We’ll have plenty of time soon enough,” I tell him as I exit the kitchen. I never really decided to say that, it just came out, and the sound of his laugh is another thing about him that I like very much. Even when it’s all shocked and surprised like right now.