I had no clue where Bull was taking me, but I had a feeling it was going to be memorable. Bull didn’t seem like a man to go in for half measures, not if our last two days were any indication.

I slipped into a tight green dress, looking at myself in the mirror. He wanted me to dress sexy, and I didn’t want to disappoint. I had strange butterflies in my stomach that I kept trying to send away, but that only made them worse.

I was supposed to be a professional, damn it. Maybe this whole undercover thing was unprofessional and sketchy, but I was doing it and I had to do it right. I couldn’t let myself get so wrapped up in all of this.

And yet I couldn’t help myself. It was already happening whether I wanted it to or not.

After I got the dildo, I debated whether I’d call him. I had some good stuff for the article already, and I knew that if I wrote what I had, I would definitely catch my boss’s attention. He was a grumpy bastard, but he knew a good story when he saw it.

I had a good story already. I had the mob, I had dead hookers, and I had a gambler father. I didn’t know how the fact checkers would feel about me being the primary source, but it was going to have to do.

But I just kept getting the feeling that I was missing something. Bull had a charity and people seemed to speak so highly of him. I didn’t know why he was involved with the mob, or really much about his past aside from all the public information about his playing history.

There just had to be more to Bull than dildos and partying. He was complicated, and I was only scratching at the surface.

I found myself pulling the box out from under the bed. I dug out the thick dildo and placed it on top of my bed, staring at it.

I realized that I was wet already just from thinking about Bull. I was going to have to change my darn panties before I left again.

But I couldn’t help but imagine him pressing me down, his bulky, muscular body pressing me into my bed. He’d kiss my neck and grin softly at me as he slowly pressed his thick cock between my legs.

I bit my lip. Could I really sleep with him?

I didn’t even think he could fit inside me. I reached out and touched the dildo, shaking my head. It was freaking huge.

I picked it up, giggling to myself. What a stupid thing. I couldn’t believe Bull would let someone take a mold of his penis and sell it at stores. More than that, I couldn’t believe women actually bought this thing.

I shook it, giggling at the way it moved.

Maybe I should try it. I mean, I wasn’t going to actually get off or something, but I was wet already. I was going to have to change my panties anyway, and Bull was going to take it away from me at the end of the night.

This was my last chance.

I quickly pulled my panties off. I was all ready for him, and he was coming any minute, but that was fine. I just wanted to feel it a little bit, see what it would be like to have Bull between my legs.

I got down on the bed, spreading my legs, and held the dildo between my legs. I felt stupidly nervous, like I was actually about to sleep with him or something.

I pressed the tip against me. Pleasure chilled up my spine and I bit my lip. I slowly rubbed it down my length.

I pressed it against myself. Slowly the tip went inside. I let out a gasp.

And then stopped. What the fuck was I doing? This was so stupid. I was about to press Bull’s dildo deep inside me just because I couldn’t control myself. I pulled it back and tossed it aside, sighing and feeling frustrated.

I was such an idiot. I couldn’t let him get in my head like this. I was supposed to be in control here, not practically dripping wet just because he sent me some stupid sex toy.

Just then, I heard the buzzer ring. Fear jolted through my spine, which was silly.

I got out of bed, slipped new panties on, and then answered the buzz. “Hello?”

“I’m here.”

“Be down in a second.”

I glanced back over my apartment, shaking my head. I quickly grabbed my clutch, made sure I had my keys and my wallet, and then left the apartment in a hurry. I couldn’t let Bull think I was doing something I definitely, absolutely was not doing.

“I know you tried it.”

I stared at him, shocked. We were sitting in the back of his car as we headed through the city.

“I did not,” I said, but inwardly part of me was screaming, how did he know!

“You did. How could you not? You’re too fucking curious.” He smirked at me, and I wanted to slap his handsome face. “You keep thinking about what I can do with my mouth. You want to know what else I’m capable of.”

“Using that toy won’t tell me anything,” I said.

“But you’re not denying it.”

“I didn’t use it. And I don’t want to know.”

“Sure.” He laughed and looked out the window. “I just can’t help but notice how you’ve been looking at me.”

I bit my lip and quickly stared down at my feet.

He was right. I had been looking at him and thinking about the dildo, and about lying on my bed and pressing it against myself. Not ten minutes ago I’d had my legs spread, my pussy soaking, and I had been using a toy the exact size and shape of his hard cock to tease my own pussy. I had been about to press it deep inside myself, but I’d chickened out.

And now I couldn’t look him in the eyes without thinking about what was between his legs. The man’s nickname was definitely deserved, and that drove me absolutely wild.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked, trying to change the subject. “Or let me guess. It’s another surprise?”

“It’s another surprise,” he said, looking back at me.

“Are you ever going to just tell me where we’re going?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You like messing with me.”

“Yeah, damn right I do. You’re so fucking easy.”

“I am not easy.”

“Sure you are. All I had to do was send you a dildo, and now you can’t stop thinking about my cock.”

“That’s not true,” I lied.

“Sure it is. You keep glancing down at me like it’s going to burst from my fucking jeans.”

I laughed despite myself. “I don’t think so.”

“Sure. You’re a little afraid. It’s okay. You wouldn’t be the first woman to see what I’m packing and decide she can’t handle it.”

I smiled at him. “I can handle it.”

He laughed, smirking hugely. “That’s what I like to hear.”

A few minutes later, we pulled up out front of what looked like an abandoned warehouse. It was a strange part of town. At one point, Chicago was home to a ton of slaughterhouses and manufacturing plants, but all of that closed down a long time ago. There were still parts of the city that had the old buildings, though, and there wasn’t much going on there. We were in one of those sections, a desolate, industrial section.

“Come on,” he said, climbing out.

“You’re not taking me to some secluded, weird spot to kill me, are you?” I asked him, following.

“Maybe,” he said. “But if I wanted to do that, wouldn’t I have done it last time?”

“Maybe,” I answered.

He smirked. “Or maybe I got what I wanted and now I’m done with you.”

“I doubt a serial killer could effectively play football and get away with his murders.”

“I don’t know. Seems like a great cover story to me.”

I laughed as we walked over to the warehouse. There was a single door in the center of the huge wall. There was one of those glass panels that looked like it would open if someone slide it sideways, like in the movies, right in the middle of the door.

Bull stopped and knocked. We waited a minute before the little peep slot slid open, just like I was hoping.

“Password?”

“Bareknuckle,” Bull said.

The slot slammed shut. Bull gave me a little grin.

The door pushed open, and a loud pulsing sound blasted into our faces. I was momentarily overwhelmed by the noise until I realized that the pulsing was music mixed with a cheering crowd.

Instinctively, I took Bull’s arm. He looked down at me, smirking. “What’s wrong?”

“Where the heck are we?”

He laughed. “We’re at a fight.”

I looked around at the people and shook my head. “No, we’re not. Boxing matches don’t happen in places like this.”

He laughed again, smirking at me. “We’re not at a boxing match, princess. We’re at an underground street fight.”

I blinked at him. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Come on.”

I followed him into the crowd and couldn’t help but look around me. Everyone was so well dressed and rich looking. The men were all in suits and the women were wearing pounds and pounds of diamonds and gold. It didn’t look anything like what I imagined an illegal street fight would look like, but then again, nothing about Bull was straightforward.

We moved down a hallway and into a wide, cavernous space. The noise was much louder in the central room, and I could see the fighting ring lit up under heavy spotlights. Chairs were set up all around it, and most of the seats were taken.

Bull led me down a few rows and stopped at two empty seats near the very front. “Here we are,” he said.

“Nice seats.”

“Only the best for you.” He sat down.

I sat down next to him, crossing my legs. I glanced at the guy next to me, and he gave me this weird look and then showed me his gold teeth. I quickly looked away.

In the center of the ring were two big men fighting each other. It looked just like an MMA fight, and there was even a referee and what I thought was a scoring table. The men were going at each other like an MMA match, punching and kicking and wrestling on the ground.

It was violent, and MMA wasn’t really my thing, but it didn’t seem all that crazy. When Bull said it was an underground street fight, I imagined it was something illegal. Instead, this seemed to be some glorified MMA match between two amateur guys in front of a ton of very rich people.

The fight went on like that for a little while before the bigger guy finally landed a really tough blow on the smaller guy, knocking him down. The bigger guy instantly got on top of him and began to pummel him before the ref finally broke it up and declared him the winner.

I looked at Bull, frowning. “I don’t get it. Why not just go to a normal MMA fight?”

He smirked at me. “That was just the warm-up fight.”

“Seemed pretty intense to me.”

“You haven’t seen a damn thing yet, princess. Keep watching.”

I looked back to the ring. The fighters had been cleared out and the next fight was being set up. People were walking around with clipboards, and I noticed money exchanging hands. I realized that people were taking bets, and I guessed that was probably why this was an underground fight. Most fights didn’t do betting so openly.

More people began to file into the room, and soon every single seat was filled. There was a palpable buzz in the air as two more fighters slowly climbed into the ring. They looked like normal guys, pretty muscular and scary but nothing special. They disrobed and were wearing normal boxing shorts, though they had nothing on their hands.

I watched as they both reached off to the side and were handed baseball bats.

I looked at Bull, horrified.

He nodded at me. “This is why it’s underground.”

The bell rang, and the two men went at each other.

They swung, the bats smacking against each other. I was terrified and sickeningly fascinated all at once as the men fought each other with baseball bats, blocking hits and leaping out of the way. Nobody was getting hit, but I could tell that the first guy to take a blow was going to be the loser. They were swinging so damn hard that I was afraid one of them was going to get killed.

“How can they do this?” I asked Bull over the roar of the crowd. People seemed to love it.

“This is just the first fight,” he said. “It gets much, much worse.”

I gaped, shaking my head. “Why would you bring me to this?”

He shrugged. “You wanted to see my world, didn’t you?”

“I never said that.”

“Maybe not. But this is how Bull Dixon lives, right? Street fights and gangsters.”

“These are gangsters?”

“Of course. Who else would put this sort of show on?”

I stood up suddenly, my eyes wide. People yelled at me, but I didn’t care. I turned and quickly walked away, heading toward the aisle.

I was terrified as I headed back, but I couldn’t sit in that seat and watch men beat each other into a pulp with baseball bats. When I got halfway down the aisle, I felt Bull come up behind me and take my arm.

“Get off,” I said.

“Relax,” he answered. “I’m protecting you.”

“I don’t need your protection.”

“Here, you do. This isn’t the kind of place a pretty girl like you can just wander around.”

“Take me home,” I said.

“Okay.” He tightened his grip on my arm and we headed back down the main hallway and out the front door. The night was cooler than I remembered, and I felt like I was shivering.

Bull sighed and texted his driver.

“I couldn’t stay in there,” I said. “I couldn’t watch that.”

“It’s not so bad. Plus, they get paid very well.”

“The survivors do at least.”

“Not a lot of guys get killed doing that.”

“Oh great. That makes me feel better.”

We stood there and waited for the car. The sound of the roaring crowd was completely gone outside. I could hardly believe it, but that building must have been really well soundproofed or something like that.

A couple minutes later the car pulled up. I got inside and Bull followed. He ordered the driver to take us back to my apartment.

I sighed, looking at my feet. This was a disaster. I shouldn’t have freaked out like that and run away. If I wasn’t okay with what we were seeing, I could have just said something. Instead, I ran off like a petulant child throwing a tantrum.

It wasn’t like I had been the only woman in that crowd. There’d been plenty of women all around me, including some even helping out the fighters. I just couldn’t handle that kind of violence, and the whole vibe had been making me uncomfortable.

“I wasn’t trying to scare you,” Bull said finally.

“What were you trying to do?”

“Take it up a notch, give you a deeper taste.”

“Do you go to those fights often?”

“No,” he admitted, “I don’t.”

“So what then?”

“I know the men who organize it, and I can promise you that there were a ton of pro ball players in that crowd tonight.”

I frowned, shaking my head. “I didn’t see any.”

“Were you really looking? There were hundreds of people in there. I spotted at least two.”

“Still, that was crazy.”

“Maybe, but that’s the world we live in. How’s that any different than football?”

“You wear pads. There are rules.”

“Sure, but the pads don’t do shit. We still give ourselves concussions and break bones all the time trying to destroy each other. Shit, girl, there’s no real difference between a man fighting another man with a baseball bat and two men tackling the shit out of each other on the football field. It’s all violence, but one is legal and has a ton of money behind it while the other is illegal and underground.”

“You can’t convince me that fighting with baseball bats is the same as playing football.”

“I didn’t say the same. I just don’t think they’re as different as you do.”

“Football has rules and tradition and honor. Maybe not to you, but to other people football means something.”

He laughed, smirking at me and shaking his head. I hated that condescending look, and I was inches away from smacking him.

Which was when I realized that I was inches away from him. Somehow during our argument we had moved closer to each other. I hated this man, despised him, thought everything he had to say about everything was wrong and twisted. His whole outlook on the world was so pessimistic and awful.

I still believed in the game. I believed that football was something special, that it could bring people together. I believed that it was the pinnacle of human physical fitness, that it was important. Bull couldn’t take that from me.

But he clearly thought that was all a joke. Sure, he went out there and played his hardest, but in the end he was just beating another guy with a baseball bat.

“Football doesn’t mean shit, princess,” he said. “Football is just money. That’s all anything is really. Money makes the fucking world go round.”

“There’s dignity. There’s honor.”

“It’s just money, Charley. You’ll see one day.”

I shook my head. “I won’t ever see it from your perspective. I’ll always believe.”

“That’s what I used to say.”

And then he kissed me. That arrogant piece of shit kissed me, right in the middle of our argument.

Intense shivers ran down my spine.

I smacked his chest and pushed him back. He grinned at me. I couldn’t believe he was doing that. The partition on the car was up, so the driver couldn’t see anything, but still.

“You asshole,” I said.

He grabbed me and pulled me against him.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked.

“The driver. I don’t know. You’re such an asshole.” I kissed him hard, my hands in his hair, pulling. He grunted and bit my lip, which only made me gasp and want to kiss him more. I straddled him and he grabbed my hips, pulling me down against him. He slapped my ass, hard, and I moaned as I bit his lip in return.

“You fucking dirty girl.” He pulled my hair back and kissed my neck. “This is what you really wanted, isn’t it?”

“No, you bastard,” I gasped. He felt my breasts and pulled the straps of my dress roughly down my shoulders before revealing my nipples. I gasped and moaned as he took my wrists and then sucked my nipples, holding my hands down against the seat.

I gasped and moaned, rolling my hips. I could feel his hard cock beneath me, and I realized it really was as big as that dildo, but harder. His tongue teased my nipples before finding my lips again, pulling my hands behind my back. He held them there with one massive hand and then grabbed my hair again.

He continued to kiss me as the hand that pulled my hair slowly moved down my body, pausing only to feel my breasts. He slowly moved down over my hips and found the hem of my dress, pushing it up.

I groaned as he began to rub my clit over my panties. I was soaking wet, losing my mind as he kept my hands firmly pinned behind my back. I kissed him hard, moaning and breathing deeply, losing myself as he worked my pussy. Bull was just so big, and he controlled me so easily. I felt so small as he easily held me in place and worked my clit. I moaned into his mouth, desperate for more. I felt so dirty and so damn angry at him. How dare he pin my arms back and pull my dress partway off?

But I loved it and couldn’t deny it. I wanted so much more as his fingers worked my clit. I rolled my hips, grinding down against him.

And then the car stopped. He pulled back from me, grinning, and I panicked.

“Are we there?”

“I think so,” he said, glancing out the window.

“Bull! Let me go!”

“Say please.”

I bit my lip. “Bull, don’t play around.”

“Say it.” His eyes were intense and on mine.

“Please.”

He released me. I quickly pulled my dress back up.

“Now invite me into your apartment.”

“Don’t be a dick,” I said. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re dripping wet and you want me to finish what I started. Invite me up.”

I bit my lip and stared into his deep green eyes. I wanted to slap him in the face and I wanted to kiss him again, and I genuinely couldn’t tell which one I wanted more.

“Come on,” I said. I opened the door and climbed out.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, getting out behind me. He slapped my ass and I turned to smack him. He caught my wrist.

“Asshole,” I said, and then kissed him again.

We kissed like that for a minute before he slowly broke away. He shut the door and nodded at the driver. The driver pulled off.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll give you what you want. You just keep being a little bad girl. I like when you pretend to fight.”

I gaped at him as he walked inside. I followed him, so frustrated and angry, but I couldn’t say no to him right now. I realized that I was more excited than I’d ever been before. My heart was hammering in my chest, and any thoughts about my job or my article were completely gone.

All I could think about was how badly I hated this man, and how badly I needed to feel his thick cock between my legs.