CHAPTER 10
(JAMIE)
It seemed like weeks instead of days before Kage sent for me. I got on a plane and flew to Chicago, where the fight would take place. A cab dropped me off at the fighter’s hotel on the morning of the weigh-in.
Kage met me in the lobby. I didn’t let on how excited I was to see him. Or at least I hoped I didn’t.
“All business,” he said close to my ear as we made our way through the hotel. “No fucking around or flirting, okay? You’re my publicist and my friend.”
“I’m not an idiot,” I told him. But the truth was, it kind of hurt to hear him say that, even though I knew it was the only way I could get to be with him. I would die if I inadvertently outed Kage just when his career was starting to take off. Because his career was way bigger than me. I knew that.
The hotel had done a surprising amount of reorganization in order to host the fighters that weekend. One conference room served as a signing room, where each fighter sat down in front of the stack of over a hundred event posters and added his or her autograph. With all of the fighters’ signatures on them, the posters would eventually be sold for upwards of two-hundred dollars apiece during the live event.
Kage looked ready to rip his own hair out by the time he had signed the last one, his cramped hand barely able to scrawl a convincing approximation of his name, but he never complained out loud. Not even to me.
Other conference rooms were designated for the media, so that fighters could be interviewed. Marco was always nearby, watching over Kage and waiting. He was ready to get the weight cutting underway. We walked through the open workouts, where the main card fighters were putting on a show for the fans, and Kage paused to watch. “We don’t have time for this,” he growled as he hustled Kage by the crowd on our way out the door. “If you want to make weight, you have to sweat.”
Kage stopped a couple of times to take selfies with fans, while Marco crossed his arms over his chest and glared. Then Kage and I found ourselves sitting in a deserted hallway while Marco disappeared to somewhere to confirm that we could just go into the gym and use the sauna. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, but everything I’d heard about weight cutting didn’t sound good. I was really worried about Kage. The guy looked exhausted. Hell, I was exhausted, and I wasn’t even fighting or cutting weight. In fact, I wasn’t doing much of anything besides tagging along. I felt very disposable.
“Tell me again why you’ve had to put yourself through eleven days of torture to lose weight,” I said as we sat on the carpeted floor outside the gym, which was currently closed to the public. “I don’t like it. Can’t you just fight at your everyday weight next time? Why don’t you just be a Middleweight? Then you’d never have to lose anything, except maybe a couple of pounds if you ate a greasy bacon burger and a gallon of vanilla root beer.”
Kage chuckled quietly, no doubt remembering the fattening dinner we’d shared on my birthday. Those were simpler times for us, when we were first discovering our feelings for each other. I hadn’t realized it so much while it was going on, but the two of us had existed in a bubble for a while— a bubble that excluded everyone and everything else in the whole damn world. When we’d gone to visit my family, that bubble had popped, ultimately letting real life pour in and taint what we’d had.
I was desperate to get that back, but it felt like an impossible feat. Was I doomed to forever comparing the rest of my life to the time I’d lived with Kage in the Alcazar? Was that the most alive I would ever feel? It made me a little sick to think that, at the tender age of twenty-one, I’d already left the best days of my life behind me.
“Jamie, you really don’t understand how all this works” Kage said, thankfully snapping me back into the conversation and out of my morbid thoughts. “Remember what I told your mom? I don’t want to be the small guy in the octagon. If I fight at my everyday weight, I’ll be fighting against a guy who cut twenty pounds to make weight, then put it all back on through rehydration. So basically it would be my little skinny hundred-eighty-five pound ass going up against a monster who weighs over two-hundred pounds. I’m good, and I’m confident, but I don’t want to step into the ring at a disadvantage.”
I sighed and picked idly at the edge of my new blue and white gym shorts where the piping met the fabric. “Okay. I get it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And I definitely don’t like that you have to drop even more weight. You’ve already lost so much. Seems like they could just make a rule that would level the playing field, you know? Just reset the bar in a different spot.”
“Well, the problem is that somebody figured out an underhanded way to get an advantage over the competition, and ever since then we’ve all been chasing our tails to keep up. It’s kinda like the airbrushing thing on the magazine covers that people are always fussing about. If all of the models agreed to have no airbrushing done, that would reset the bar. But you know there would be that one bitch who just couldn’t help herself… They’d airbrush the shit out of her, people would bow at her feet, and then it would start all over again. There’s really no easy solution, not when humans are involved.”
“I know that.” I looked around to make sure there was no one else nearby who could see us, and I reached over and ran my index finger down his forearm, following the impressive contour of muscle and thinking he must have popped a lot of cans of spinach over the years. “It’s just that you’ve lost so much already, you know? You look… different.”
“What’s the matter? You don’t like the way I look?” He echoed my words from the elevator a couple of nights before, but his smirk left no doubt that he knew exactly how his looks affected me. Even now, when camp had left him wiry and gaunt, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him.
I licked my lips and looked nervously around again, relieved that we were still alone in the hallway, cursing myself for being so paranoid. The thing was, I was becoming more painfully aware by the minute that I could not hide my reactions to Kage in public. Any time he threw a little attention my way, what little blood didn’t spread as a blush across my cheeks went straight into my shorts, instantly revealing what we were both trying to hide.
“Don’t worry, Jamie.” Kage leaned over and grazed the sensitive shell of my ear with his lips. “I may be losing a bunch of weight, but I’m still just as strong as ever. After the fight, I’ll prove it to you. I’ll fuck your tight little ass good and hard, just the way you like it.”
Oh God, he was right; that was just the way I liked it. Even now I was craving the burn and the stretch, the secure warmth of a body against my back, the feeling of being completely owned by another person.
No, not just another person, Jamie. Him. You want to be owned by him.
Kage’s warm breath on my ear was not helping matters, and I found myself stammering to find words. “Um… Aren’t we supposed to be keeping it all business while we’re here? No affection, right? I’m your publicist, and you’re my client. That’s what you said, right?”
“Look at me,” he said, and I turned my face toward his. He gave me a sweet little smile that was totally opposite to the unchaste gleam in his eyes and shocked me with his next request. “Put your hand between my legs.”
I hesitated, pulled back slightly, my eyes darting around the hallway yet again. Miraculously, no one had shown up during the five or so minutes we’d been sitting there, but what if they did? What if it was one of the other fighters, or someone who had the ear of UFC upper management? Would there be repercussions? I did not want to be the reason Kage’s fighting career went belly up before it even got started, but at the same time I hated being so paranoid.
“What happened to all business?”
“Stop thinking and just do it,” he said. “Turn off that busy brain of yours and reach over here and touch me.”
Meeting his eyes, I dropped my hand to the front of his shorts and skimmed the flat of my palm over his very obvious erection, running along the thickening shaft, pausing at the prominent ridge of the head. Just that simple touch fried my brain, driving all thoughts of UFC and fights and witnesses out of my mind. I had the urge to slip my hands inside his shorts, wrap my fingers around his dick and run my thumb over the slit, where I knew a slippery drop of precum would be waiting.
Kage sucked in a breath, his lips parted, and the tip of his tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip. “Does that feel like business to you?” His voice was low and teasing, but there was an edge to it that said he would have taken me in that hallway if he thought he could get away with it. “How do you expect me to stand by that decision when you’re so close to me all the time? I’m only human.” He smiled. “And just for the record, I’m not your client. I’m your boss. Got it?”
I let out a shaky breath, not trusting myself to speak, and we continued to stare into each other’s eyes. My hand had not strayed from his dick, and I could feel the subtle changes taking place just on the other side of the fabric of his shorts. The same thing was happening to me. I didn’t know what to do with the information right at that moment, though, or the feelings that were rippling through me. If we had been alone, it would have been easy; we would have been all over each other. But sitting in the middle of a hallway, and with so much important shit weighing on Kage, all we could seem to do was stare at each other and try to communicate without words how goddamn tough the wanting was. How hard it was, and how good it felt, and how confusing it all was.
I snatched my hand guiltily from Kage’s lap when Marco suddenly came crashing through the swinging door at the end of the hall, bringing with him the negatively-charged energy that seemed to be part of his molecular structure. At the moment he was the stereotypical obnoxious coach, clapping his hands as he approached us at a break-neck pace. “Alright, to the sauna. Time to go. Move it, boys! Jamie, so help me… if you distract him, you’re out of here.”
And just like that, our private moment was over.
Marco herded us into the gym, where a few male fighters and one female fighter were running the treadmills. There was a door in the corner leading to a sauna, and while we were watching, a sweaty fighter in a silver suit stumbled out. His trainer helped him over to one of the vacant treadmills. Unlike the casual feel of every gym I’d ever visited, the atmosphere in this room was one of foreboding. This was serious business, and no one was here to play. They were all racing the clock.
Marco reached into the duffel bag he’d been carrying all day and handed Kage a silver plastic suit like the one the other fighter was wearing. Kage went into the sauna and changed. When he stepped back out, Marco handed him a pair of sweats. He pulled them on over his sauna suit, then slid his feet back into his sneakers.
Marco went to put the duffel into a locker on the other side of the room, and I watched him go, wiping sweat from my brow. There must not have been any air conditioning on in the gym, because I was getting uncomfortably hot. I couldn’t imagine what Kage felt like all bundled up like that, wearing two outfits of clothing designed specifically to make him sweat.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked.
“Oh, am I?” I chuckled, surprised to find that I had indeed been smiling. “I was just remembering the day of the photo shoot in your apartment, when I told you to get some damn clothes on. Remember? You asked if I wanted you to wear an Eskimo suit.”
“Mmmm… I’m thinking about what happened after that. That ought to really get my heart rate up.”
Marco came in on the tail end of the comment. “Nothing gets your heart rate up, Kage. That’s why you’ll be able to outlast this guy easily. His cardio is nowhere near the level of yours, my friend.”
“We’ll see.” Kage said. “I’m counting on the fight being over so fast that stamina doesn’t even enter into the equation.”
I leaned in to Marco and asked under my breath, “Have you got an extra silver suit for me?”
Marco looked at me like I’d just asked him for a beer at an AA meeting. “You really have no clue, do you? It’s not safe for you to do any of this, and especially not in a sauna suit. All I need is to get sued for killing a college intern.”
“It’s not safe? Kage is doing it. He shouldn’t have to go through it alone, Marco. I feel like I should be doing it with him.”
“How sweet,” Marco said, and it was not a compliment.
Kage shook his head. “No way. This is no walk in the park, Jamie. Marco’s right on this. It can be very dangerous.”
“That’s why I want to do it with you,” I insisted. “Why should you have to be the only one?” For some reason, I was absolutely dying to get into that sauna with him. Experiencing it with him and being there for him if anything went wrong was all I cared about.
“Jesus Christ.” Marco slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Kage, could you please get control of your little pet? We’ve got no time for this.”
I took a deep breath and looked Marco right in the eye. “You can call me names all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m here to support Kage and make his preparation for the fight as pleasant as possible. He wants me here, and that’s all there is to it. Why don’t you try to work with me rather than against me?”
“Because you have no business meddling in this part of his affairs. You are his publicist— temporarily— and I am his trainer. Stay out of my way and let me do my job.”
I threw my hands up in exasperation. “I’m not stopping you. All I asked was for a plastic suit. How is that hindering you from doing your job?”
Marco stepped toward me, his nose coming within inches of mine. “You are a distraction.”
“That may very well be true,” I said, refusing to back down even though Marco could probably break me in half. “Kage is going to be sitting in a hot box for fifteen minutes. Maybe he needs a fucking distraction.”
Kage watched us from a safe distance, a vague half-smile on his face. He was clearly already feeling under the weather from not eating or drinking, because he hadn’t jumped to my rescue. I was glad for that. He needed to conserve his energy for the fight. My goal was to spare him any stress at all, but Marco was pushing me hard. He seemed to be more worried about getting rid of me than keeping Kage calm. It felt personal.
“Look,” I told Marco, trying to dial the animosity back a notch. “I’m not going to distract him in any way other than keeping his spirits up for this weight cut. If you don’t want me to put on a suit, fine. Come to think of it, you’re right about that. I don’t need to wear a suit to go in with him. But I can’t get my clothes wet with sweat, because the airline lost my luggage, and I have nothing to change into. So I’ll just sit in there in my underwear.”
“Oh. My. God,” Marco sneered. “If you think I’m letting you go anywhere with my fighter in nothing but your underwear, you’re dumber than I thought.” He stomped over to the duffel bag, retrieved a pair of swimming trunks. Then he threw them at me, not even bothering to act contrite when they smacked me in the face.
“I was going to wear these if I went in with him. Wash them before you give them back to me.”
I wanted to say, Wow, Marco, you sure are being a dick. Instead, I thanked him. Then I stepped into the sauna to change, leaving the door cracked.
“Thank you, Marco,” I heard Kage say quietly. “You know I need someone in there, and you need to be out here and at your best in case anything goes wrong. It only makes sense, you know? And besides, I want him in there with me.”
“I don’t know how you think a journalism student is going to help you—”
“He’s my friend,” Kage interrupted. “He’s going in there as my friend, not as my publicist. You’re not the one who has to go through this, okay? Just give me a break.”
It sounded like Marco gave a derisive snort, but I couldn’t be sure. I pushed out of the sauna and tried to act like I hadn’t heard their exchange. “Ready?” I asked, setting my folded clothes on the floor.
“Yeah, let’s do this.” Kage pushed me back into the sauna. Marco closed the door behind us and peered in through the small window, and right then I decided I didn’t like that window.
“Here comes the fun,” Kage said. “You ready for this, Jamie? They say it’s grueling sitting in a sauna during a weight cut. I’ve sat in them before, and it didn’t seem bad at all, but I guess it all has to do with the fact that you’re purposely dehydrating during a cut. I was already feeling kind of weak today.”
“I wish you didn’t have to do this,” I admitted quietly.
Kage shrugged. “You just tell me if it gets too much for you, okay? You should have gotten enough water over the past two days, but you still look undernourished. I don’t need to miss my fight because I had to take you to the hospital.”
I followed Kage to the bench that ran along the wall. I tried to stay positive, but providing Kage moral support while he sweated out the final eleven pounds of water didn’t sound like fun at all. He was already looking a little weakened, and the thought of him going through such a harrowing experience made me a little sick to my stomach.
“Are you sure this is the best way to do it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Marco has never steered me wrong before. Besides, he got tips from Ray Roberts, the man who ran my camp. My uncle hired Ray, and you know he only hires the best.”
“Only the best? I think that’s wishful thinking on your part. He hired me, remember? I’m about as far from the best as it gets.”
“You are the best, Jamie.” He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. Then his mouth stretched into one of those devious little cat grins. “The best at sucking my dick.”
I didn’t think it could get much hotter in the sauna, but after that comment it felt twice as hot. If Kage wanted to keep things professional, he was going to have to stop making dirty jokes and randomly ordering me to feel his hard-ons. Talk about mixed signals.
“Um… yeah. I don’t think that’s what Mr. Santori has in mind when he scribbles out my stipend checks. What do you think he’d do if he knew?”
“Knew what, that I’m sticking it to my intern?” Kage asked, still leaning back, eyes still closed. “What makes you think he doesn’t know?”
My heart skipped a beat. I’d been going on the assumption that Kage and I had been as sly as a couple of international double agents, or at the very least that no one was paying us any attention. But some part of me knew that was naive. First of all, Kage was an attention magnet. Whether people hated him or loved him, he always commanded attention. Secondly, this was Peter Santori we were talking about— the shrewd businessman who supported Kage, arranged fights for him, and had goons watching his every move. How could he not know who his nephew was fucking? The thought made me shudder.
“Do you think everybody knows?” I asked. “Marco? Aldo and Aaron? The people in the office?”
Kage shrugged. “Would it bother you if they did?” His tone was noncommittal, but I knew better. His question was as loaded as they came. We’d already been down a similar road at my parents’ house, so I knew just how ugly things could get if I gave the wrong answer.
But there was still a lot of anger festering inside me, and it was hard to keep it in.
“Well, I guess it really won’t matter after I go back to school, will it? Then I won’t be Michael Kage’s whore anymore. I’ll just be Jamie Atwood, mediocre Journalism major.”
He didn’t answer. Just kept that maddeningly neutral posture, resting back with his eyes closed, face slack. His lips were parted, helping him drag in shallow breaths of the hot air. He could have been napping.
We sat in silence for a few minutes, sweat beginning to drip from our faces, then Kage finally sat up and looked at me. “How much do you think semen weighs?” he asked. “Like just a regular load of semen.”
“Kage, I’m not blowing you in the sauna with your coach and a bunch of other fighters right outside the door.”
“Hey, I’m just trying to be practical. As long as I’m shedding water weight, I might as well get that out, too. Ought to be worth at least a few ounces.”
“Shut up.” I punched him lightly in the arm, but even in his weakened state, his reflexes were far better than mine. He grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back. Then he proceeded to kiss my brains out. With the added heat, it was hard to breathe. His lips tasted like salty sweat, but I didn’t mind one bit. When he got done licking and sucking and tasting, I didn’t have a single thought left in my head, much less about how we were supposed to be avoiding personal contact until after the fight.
Kage reached down and grabbed my dick through the borrowed swim trunks, started to massage it roughly. Yep, this was definitely getting personal.
“When are you leaving?” he asked, still groping me, making it hard to think.
I blinked a couple of times. When my brain was finally able to process what he’d asked, I was surprised. I suppose I’d expected something a little more sexually-oriented.
“Oh. Eight weeks. Summer break is half over. Why?”
He worked my obscenely erect dick out of my trunks and began to stroke. “Because you and I have got a lot to do between now and then. I don’t know if eight weeks is long enough to fuck you as many times and in as many ways as I want to.” He stroked the shaft at a slow and easy pace, not like he was trying to make me come, but rather just get me as hard as possible. “It’s just my ego, you know? I’ve got this insane idea that if you can go a day without aching to be fucked by me, then I haven’t done my job.”
“Ahhh…” I groaned, then sucked in a sharp breath, bucking up into his hand. “Kage, if I walk out of here this hard, Marco will castrate me. You know that, right? He will actually cut my dick off.”
“As long as he doesn’t crazy glue your ass shut, we’ll still be good to go.”
“Shut up.” I laughed against my will. “I’m serious.”
“Hmmm, you’re probably right. Your rock hard dick poking out of Marco’s swim trunks would not go over well. Lucky for you, I know a way to get it to go down.” He reached onto the seat beside him and checked the timer on his cell phone. “Oh, yeah. We’ve still got ten minutes in here. That’s plenty of time.”
“Kage—”
But he’d already bent his head and wrapped his lips around my cock. The wet heat of his mouth had never felt as good as it did that day in the sweltering sauna. Sweat dripped from his hair onto my thighs and belly as he worked expertly up and down my straining shaft. Marco and the others outside were completely forgotten as Kage stripped away my inhibitions, sucking me like it was his only care in the world. I tried not to make a sound, I really did. But within a minute, he had me grunting and begging for more.
“God, Kage. Oh, yeah. Fuck, yeah. Just. Like That.” I don’t know if it was the heat or what, but I got aggressive. Usually it was Kage who was dominant, and I only existed to please him, but this time it was different.
I tried to run my fingers through his hair, but the topknot hindered me, so I ripped the band out and worked his hair loose, my breath catching in my throat at the way it framed his gorgeous face so perfectly. He was truly the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. My eyes devoured his features, caught on that full, wanton mouth I was dying to fuck.
Winding the damp strands of his hair tightly around my hand, I stood up in front of him, pulled his mouth back down onto my dick, and thrust up hard. He choked a little with the effort, but that didn’t slow either one of us down. My entire body was vibrating. I snapped my hips repeatedly, slamming in hard and fast, my muscles jerking with the need to bury the head of my cock over and over in his spasming throat. He took everything I gave, and the sight of him looking up at me all watery-eyed and hungry as he swallowed my cock was worth the last ten days of torture.
“Harder,” I groaned, slowing my movements and giving his throat a rest. “Suck me harder.” I moved his head up and down my cock using only my hand in his hair, watching as his stubbled cheeks hollowed out and the suction increased. God he was good at that. The feel of his lips around me, his velvety slick mouth massaging me, was driving me so crazy I forgot to be quiet or to worry about anything at all.
Kage had started making greedy sucking sounds, and my dick and his hand were both dripping with his saliva. I don’t even know how he worked up the moisture as dehydrated as he was, or the energy for that matter, but he was clearly invested in his task. Maybe it was his salvation in that tough fifteen minutes of sweating— the distraction Marco and I had been arguing about. Because at that moment there was no fight, no weight cut, no chance for failure. We were just two horny guys in a wooden oven, taking what pleasure we could from each other.
When it was all over, and Kage had slurped up every ounce of cum I could produce, we leaned back side-by-side and continued to sweat.
“Thanks,” I said. The word was inadequate, but I was afraid to say what I really meant. Then a thought occurred to me. “I do hope semen doesn’t weigh much, because instead of unloading yours, you just drank mine.”
He tried to laugh, but all that came out was a loud breath.
Eventually, Marco opened the door, and we stumbled along behind him, the cooler air in the gym chilling the surface of our skin into goose flesh. Marco set an empty treadmill to a moderate walking pace, and he and I stood on either side like guardian statues while Kage plodded along.
Marco kept praising Kage’s superior cardio, and I secretly hoped that he was in as great a shape as Marco seemed to believe. At least better than the other guy.
“We won’t have to do it this way again,” Marco promised Kage. “Just hang on. No more last-minute fights. This was just your way in, that’s all. ”
Sweat poured off of Kage, all down his body and onto the treadmills. “I’m gonna have to throw these shoes away,” Kage said breathlessly after they started to squish with every step.
“I’ll go get you some while you’re resting,” Marco told him, then resumed chanting. “Almost there, almost there.”
I didn’t say much. All I could do was watch Kage run, thinking he was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen I’d ever seen in my life. Not just physically, but emotionally. The way he was pressing forward and doing what had to be done was a pure aphrodisiac to me, and even though he’d just finished me off in the sauna, I was getting turned on watching him sweat and strain on the treadmill. Of course, I couldn’t say anything like that out loud. Not in front of Marco.
After five minutes on the treadmill, Marco ushered Kage to a quiet corner and let him stretch out for five more minutes on a yoga mat on the floor, his head propped up with a waterproof pillow. Even through the cutting suit, his sweats were now soaked. Despite his prone position, he looked tense and uncomfortable, and his eyes had taken on a hollowed-out look.
Five minutes later, Marco and I pulled Kage to his feet. We dragged him to the scale, his shoes squishing all the way. He hung his head and sighed when the number staring back at him was still a pound and a half too much. We went back to the yoga mat and waited for another fighter to finish up in the sauna, and then we went back in for another fifteen-minute sweat fest.
“Hopefully, this will be it,” Marco called in as he shut the door behind us. As an afterthought, he pulled in back open and leaned his head in. “By the way, if you need anything, just call out. This door might seem thick, but when you’re standing right outside, you can pretty much hear everything that goes on in there.” He looked pointedly at me, then slammed the door harder than before, like an exclamation point.
If he’d bothered to stick around, he would have seen a look of pure guilty embarrassment pass between Kage and me. But he didn’t, thank goodness.
“Guess we weren’t as discreet as we thought,” Kage mumbled as we took our seats on the bench. He rested his sweaty head on my bare shoulder, and I put my arm around his waist. His sweatshirt was sopping wet.
“Just fifteen more minutes, Kage,” I said, slipping my arm around his waist, alarmed at how soaked his sweatshirt was. “You’re doing great.” I said, wishing I could do more than be a lame cheerleader.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to do a fight on such short notice,” he groaned, sounding unsure of himself for the first time. “Maybe I should have waited. This was so stupid. Wearing myself down before the biggest fight of my entire life is not fucking smart.”
“Well, stop beating yourself up on top of it.” I squeezed closer to him, feeling his heart pounding through his chest. “Yeah, it’s short notice. Yeah, it’s not ideal. And yeah, you’re not at the very top of your game right now. But it’s just for a few minutes more. Then you can lie down and relax until the weigh-in. Marco said after that we’ll take you back to the room, get an IV in you, feed you, and fluff you back up. I guarantee you’ll be perfect tomorrow. Better than perfect, because you’ll know that you just made it through the toughest part. Then you can do your thing. Do what you do best. You’re gonna kick that guy’s ass into next week, and then you’re legit. You’ll get that contract you’ve been training for. Don’t let this stupid weight cut cheat you out of what’s rightfully yours, Kage. You were born to be a star, and I don’t doubt for one second that you will be.”
He nuzzled into my sweaty throat, and I could feel his smile when he pressed his lips against my skin. Then his tongue darted out and he licked me. “Mmmm, salty,” he said.
“Yeah, I think we’re pretty much made of sweat at this point.”
“I don’t know if my deodorant is working anymore,” he admitted.
I barked out a laugh. “Oh, I can assure you it’s not. You smell like a construction worker in the middle of July.”
“And does that turn you on?” He tried to stick his underarm in my face, but I pulled away.
“No.”
He started tickling me halfheartedly.
“Maybe,” I said through laughter. “Okay, yeah, it kinda does.”
He stopped tickling. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Does that mean you have a thing for construction workers?”
“Never have before.” I leaned in close and looked up at him from beneath my lashes. “But picturing you in nothing but a hard hat and steel-toe boots makes me wanna fuck.” I reached out and cupped him through his drenched sweats.
“Don’t!” His voice hoarse from alarm and dehydration. He pushed my hand gently away. “Sorry, it’s just that it wouldn’t take much to set me off right now, and I can’t nut this close to a fight. It’s bad luck, you know? Built-up testosterone give athletes a competitive edge. You blow it all the day before a fight, chances are you’ll lose.”
“You believe in that old superstition? I’m an athlete, and I never did it.”
He gave me a pointed look. “And you never really excelled at sports, either.”
“Ouch.”
“I mean that in the nicest possible way,” he said. “You’re perfect just the way you are. You’re my smart college boy who can hang with me during workouts.”
“Your smart college boy?”
“Yes, mine. With your sexy glasses, and your sexy ass, and your IQ of four million.”
“Now I know you’re delirious from the heat. You’re actually being nice to me. And I’m not that smart. In fact, I’m clueless. You said so yourself.”
He chuckled. “You are completely fucking clueless. But that has nothing to do with your IQ and everything to do with common sense You’re just sheltered, that’s all.”
I huffed. “This coming from the guy who lives in an ivory tower and has never wanted for anything.”
Kage leaned back again, looking weary, emotion tugging his face into a deep frown. “Yeah, well you don’t know everything.”
I didn’t argue. Kage had some secret wound that he was either reluctant or unwilling to share with me, and somehow I kept inadvertently sticking my finger in it. I wanted to know what he was keeping from me, wanted to try to help him deal with it, but now was not the time to press for information. Maybe after the fight, when we got back to Vegas, I could ask him. For now, I just needed to be whatever he needed to get him through Saturday night in one piece.
So I sat back shoulder to shoulder with him, silently swapping sweat for the longest, hottest ten minutes of my life. Then we trudged out, and Kage stepped onto the scales. I could tell by the relief on his face and the way his shoulders relaxed that he’d made weight. I wondered if I looked as relieved as he did, because I damn sure couldn’t stand watching him torture himself anymore.
“Go grab a shower in the room, get dressed, and lie down on the bed,” Marco told Kage. “Conserve your energy. You’re going to need it.”
At Kage’s insistence, he and I took a quick shower together, carefully avoiding looking down. Kage needed to stay focused. We lay beside each other on the hotel bed, unmoving, until finally the call came in.
The weigh-in happened inside a daze for me. I watched Kage muster every bit of energy he could as he took the stage, looking like a hardcore animal to anyone who hadn’t seen him dragging ass out of that sauna, or cuddling quietly with me on the hotel bed.
At one point as he spooned me, breathing slowly against my back, he reached around and took my hand and wound our fingers together. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For some of the shit I’ve done, I’m really sorry.”
I knew it was just the weakness talking. He was delirious with hunger and dehydration, and he couldn’t be held responsible for what he was saying. But it still made me feel good.
When Marco fetched us for the weigh-in, we moved like ghosts to the backstage area and waited for Kage’s turn. When they called his name, he ran up the steps and onto the stage. I followed close behind, and he pulled his t-shirt off and handed it to me. Then he stepped out of his shorts, and I picked them up.
He was wearing a sleek pair of biker shorts with yellow trim. Under the harsh lights, I noticed the all-too-visible curve of his cock against his thigh. I cringed, hoping no one would notice, knowing they couldn’t help but notice.
Fuck. Is this gonna be a viral video moment? Then I thought maybe it should be a viral video moment. I could probably make it happen. I was a publicist, after all. And after two months in Vegas, I’d apparently begun to think like one.
Kage took the scales, looking unbelievably cut. Every ridge and dip, shadow and bulge was visible in high definition. When I was able to peel my eyes away from his body, I noticed it had generated a lot of interest among the spectators. “… this guy’s a fucking beast,” one of the men onstage was saying. I had no idea who anybody was, except of course for the Octagon Girls. Every red-blooded male knew who they were, and they were staring at my fighter just as hard as everyone else was.
The announcer called his weight at 169. He’d made it with a pound to spare and hadn’t even had to strip naked to do it.
He broke into a genuine smile, showing off his dimples, and clasped his hands behind his neck to flex for the audience. Damn, he looked good. As usual, his actions were guileless. He might as well been charming the ladies in a pickup truck at the Dairy Queen on a Friday night. I stood off to the side holding his clothes, trying to decide which one I felt more of— pride or jealousy.
His opponent, Grady Larson, was already waiting at the other side of the stage, having qualified at 170. When they stood toe-to-toe, the hometown hero image Kage had projected from the scales was gone, magically replaced by something else entirely. The Machine was in the house, and he was intimidating as hell. I couldn’t say the same for Larson, whose scowl seemed more forced than natural as he pulled his fists up to the sides of his face and popped an orthodox boxing stance.
Cameras flashed, no doubt getting great shots of the stare down, and I glanced down at my arms, which were full of clothes instead of the camera I should have been holding. That’s when I realized I was trying to wear too damn many hats in Kage’s entourage. Publicist, web manager, photographer, training partner, lackey, and lover— or whore as Kage so loved to call it when he was angry at me.
After the flashes stopped, Kage held his stare just long enough to make me scared for Larson. It wasn’t like the guy was a top fighter in the division. This was an early undercard fight, and even as little as I knew, I was pretty sure Kage didn’t belong in the prelims.
I hoped I wouldn’t be proven wrong.