I turn in Duncan’s arms, but before I can speak he crushes his lips against mine.
He’s on me all in an instant, hands roaming, devouring. He lifts me up, carries me deeper into the room, and when I wrap my legs around his waist I can feel his bulge pushing into me.
“God, you smell so good,” he growls into my ear before capturing my lips again and making them his, sending my heart racing, my breath panting.
I melt in his arms, want to push off him because I’ve got such big news to tell him, but find myself unable to.
When he breaks our kiss, I finally manage to say, “Wait.”
He sets me down, concern on his face. “What’s wrong? Did anybody give you trouble outside?”
“No,” I say, seeing the flare of protectiveness in his eyes. “No, it’s nothing like that.”
Every fight night he’s like this. Ultra-possessive, protective, as if the whole world is out to get me and he’ll take them all on… and win.
It’s silly, but I know it’s a product of the mindset he has to get himself into. He spends the whole day preparing his mentality, so that when he’s in the cage, the prospect of having bones broken doesn’t scare him one bit.
It scares me, though. It always scares me.
“I think I need to tell you something,” I say to him quickly, but when I see the look in his eyes I know he’s not in the talking mood.
His tight body glistens in the dim light, and in between us his manhood is an iron bar pressed up against my abdomen through his towel.
I touch his face, feel his heat. He takes my finger into his mouth, bites it, and I touch his soft, full lips, trace my finger along the sharp line of his jaw, over his cheek bones.
God, he always looks so good before fights. I don’t know why I like it so much, I just do. The sweat, the dim lights, the way he’s so locked-in, the desire I see in his eyes…
I can smell him, too, from his pre-fight warm-ups. I love the way he smells, especially when I can detect a hint of his musk.
His eyes narrow, and there’s a break in his expression.
“Nothing,” I say, quickly. I realize that now is not the time to tell him. I realize that doing so will shatter whatever stony state he’s in, whatever mindset he needs to be in to take a beating and win this fight.
I can’t do that to him. I won’t. The news will have to wait. He’ll still be here after his fight, and so will I.
The fight won’t last that long.
It can wait.
I lean back, look at his bulge, the outline of his need for me, and then back into his eyes.
“You look hot,” I tell him.
A small grin parts his lips, and I see the tops and bottoms of his straight teeth. He pulls me close to him, wraps an arm around my waist.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispers. “I want you.”
I coil my arms around his neck, smile back at him. My heart is racing, there’s so much going on in my mind at once.
But what floats to the top is the knowledge that I want him, too. That I’ve also been thinking about him all day. That after the first tears of panic, and last tears of joy, that I wanted nothing more than to be with him.
To be close to him.
God, why today, of all days? Why fight night?
“How much do you want me?” I ask him.
The lust for me that I see in his eyes catches fire.
Duncan pulls me in tighter, and I fold my arms around him, run my palms along his hard, broad back.
But he turns me around in his arms so he’s behind me again. He likes to be behind me. He begins kissing the side of my neck. The touch of his warm, soft lips makes me hum, makes me crane my neck to the side so he can kiss more of me.
“More than anything,” he growls. “I can’t stop thinking about the way you smell, the way you taste, the way you feel.”
The sensation of his warm breath rushing against my neck is intoxicating, and his body heat radiates into me.
His hands run up my sides, and I feel a welling of anticipation inside me, a pressure. His touch, even through my clothing, is so electric, so possessive. It’s like my body belongs to him.
“You’re only mine,” he says, his voice quiet. “I’m never letting you go.”
He’s like this normally, but on fight nights, it’s dialed up to eleven.
I press back into him, feel his hardness against me, and reach behind me and cup him through the fluffy towel he’s got wrapped around his waist.
“You’re always so hard,” I tell him, the thought turning to words effortlessly.
“You make me hard,” he says, taking a fistful of my hair. He tugs it back, makes me look up at the ceiling, and from behind me he leaves a trail of hot kisses along my jaw, my chin.
“I spent the whole day imagining you moaning onto me,” he tells me. “With your arms above your head, your breasts against my chest.”
“Is that all you think about?” I ask, letting a small smile creep across my lips.
I want to turn toward him, want to kiss him, let him claim my lips as his like he is my body, but he doesn’t let me.
“Every fucking minute. It’s been hell without you.”
“Even while you were training?”
“Especially while I was training.”
“Even while you were giving your interview?”
“I think he noticed.”
I laugh at the thought, Duncan sitting there with an erection while getting asked inane questions.
“You must be frustrated, then,” I say, gripping onto his manhood harder through the towel. I find the edge of the cloth, slip my hand inside, and there wrap my fingers around him.
“You have no fucking idea,” he breathes.
I start to slowly caress him, stroke his cock. I can feel his pulse in my fingers… or maybe it is my own racing heart? I can’t tell.
I bring my hand up and over his tip, feel a dab of wetness on my fingers. Slowly I rub my thumb against the back of it, and I hear him exhale slowly, know that what I’m doing makes him feel good. There’s one rule on fight nights: He can’t come. He says it helps his testosterone levels immediately before the fight.
“Do you enjoy doing this?” I ask him. “Even if you don’t get to—”
“Every fucking second.”
His hands move inward from my sides, cup my breasts, and I sigh as he massages them, kneads them hungrily. I feel the press of his teeth against the skin of my neck, the dab of his wet tongue.
“Some girls wanted to get in,” I say slowly. “They said they wanted to give you kisses for good luck.”
“Fuck those skanks,” he says, his voice deep. “I only want you.”
“Just me?”
“Just you.”
“But for how long?” I tease. “What about when I get older?”
“Then I’ll get old with you.”
I smile, push my head against his. “What if I don’t want you anymore when you’re older?”
“Well, tough shit because I’m not leaving you.”
He’s more emotional today, I can pick up on it. Maybe he senses the news, somehow. Maybe, on some intuitive level, he knows.
“You still don’t know what you do to me, Dee.”
“I can feel what I do to you.”
I take his hand, push it down over my belly, then lower, and he dips it below my skirt, brings it up, cups me.
I gasp at the heat in his palm. I feel it so acutely, and through my underwear he starts to rub me slowly, pull sighs and soft moans from my lips.
His body language, even just the aura of lustful energy he has speaks only of his desire for me, and it makes me feel so attractive, so wanted, makes me want him more in turn. He wants me bad… it’s not just fight nights. It’s every single night. Every waking moment.
I hear him inhale beside me. He always likes to smell me, right by my ear. I don’t wear perfume on fight nights because he doesn’t like me to. He says he loves the way I smell.
I know what he means. I love the way he smells, unmasked, unaltered, uncovered. I love to wear his gym hoodies… he thinks its gross because he sweats into them, but I like it. Maybe it is gross, but I don’t care.
He starts to rub me faster, settles into a rhythm, and he pulls back my hair again, turns me so we’re facing the full-body mirrors that line the wall.
With him behind me, his lips against my neck, his hand beneath my skirt, and all in clear view in the mirror… I never expected watching myself and him to be hot, but it is. It’s really hot.
“Do you want me to make you feel good?” he asks.
I nod.
“Say it.”
“I want you to make me feel good,” I say breathlessly.
Already I can feel my knees growing weak. Already I’m starting to sag in his arms as he plays me expertly, his chosen instrument.
My breathing quickens, my temperature rises, and in his arms I feel so safe, and in his arms I feel so wanted.
“Yes,” I hiss at him, letting my eyes fall shut. He rubs me slowly, drags his tongue up the skin of my neck, squeezes my breasts, plays me so deftly, sends a mild and budding pleasure thrumming through my body.
I squirm in his arms, push my ass back against him so I can feel his hardness. I’m his willing captive, letting him touch me, and he pulls soft moans from my lips, makes me feel those hints of bliss, behind which is the promise of so much more.
“Mmm,” I moan, and he bites the back of my shoulder, sends goose bumps erupting all over my body, and sends shivers shooting down to my toes.
I grin, lick my lips, grip onto him tighter behind me and start to jerk him off. He moves his body to the side, and I pull his cock out from inside his towel, and I can see him now in the mirror, see his hardness, feel him.
“Damn, you are sexy, Dee,” he says, meeting my eyes in the mirror. We look at each other, him touching me, me touching him, giving each other pleasure.
And then when he can’t take it anymore, he picks me up, pulling a yelp and a laugh from my lips, and he sets me down on the sofa, and pulls off my flats slowly.
He strokes my feet, makes me giggle and squirm, and then in between my legs he kisses each of my toes in turn, then the tops of my feet, and then makes his way up my inner thigh, leaves a trail of tingling skin.
I’m so wound-up already I almost want to hurry him on, but I know that on fight nights, we go at his pace. He made that clear the first time we ever did this before a fight.
His crystal blue eyes gaze up at me, and he lifts my skirt up, over my hips, and then with his teeth he hooks the elastic of my underwear and pulls down.
I grin at him, see him smirk back as he pulls it off with his mouth, baring me to him. He brings my panties to his nose, smells me, and for a moment I feel a flash of modesty, but the look in his eyes quashes that instantly. It’s all hunger and lust, all desire.
He guides my legs up, so my feet are on the sofa, and presses his face closer to my sex, kisses me around my outer lips, teases me.
I feel his tongue dart out, touch my clit for an instant, and I’m jolted by sensation, a sharp hint of pleasure.
“You smell so good,” he says, voice baritone, lust-laced. And then he pulls his tongue up my sex, and I moan and quake and tense my thighs as he starts licking me just the way I like it.
He settles on my clit, flicks it rhythmically with his tongue and I’m just lost in sensation, in heaven, leaning back against the sofa, wanting to stretch out like a cat and let him pleasure me.
I grip onto his hair, pull him harder against me, mash myself against him as he laps at me like he needs it to live.
“Oh shit,” I hiss, feeling the temperature in my core rising, feeling that pressure in my belly. He works me so expertly, knows exactly how to bring me surging forward toward the edge.
“Yes!” I groan, gripping onto his hair harder, pulling him tighter onto me. I feel my body grow tight, lift myself off the sofa, right up against the edge.
And then he backs me off.
I grin at him, tut, shake my head. “You big tease. You always do that.”
He smirks, keeps licking me, and I fall back into bliss as he rings a finger around my entrance, groan and squeeze as he pushes it inside me.
I moan as he slides in a second finger, feel myself stretch around him, and then he starts to finger me, pressing upward with each thrust, making me feel so good.
He groans onto me, and his laps grow feverish like he’s starving for me, and his fingers fuck me harder, and again I feel that pressure inside me, feeling myself coiling tighter and tighter, ready to explode.
“Come on,” I pant, practically begging him to make me come, to give me the release I want. “Fuck, yes yes, yes…”
I throw my head into the sofa, arch my back, grind myself against his face.
He brings me right there again, so close, and at the precipice, right when ecstasy is about to come crashing down all over me, there’s a loud knock at the door.
I freeze. A voice that comes booming through the door: “Fifteen minutes.”
But Duncan doesn’t stop. He keeps going, and remembering that the door is locked, my body thrills with pleasure again. I’m lost in it all again, climbing higher and higher. The pressure is building… I’m going to—
“Ooohhh,” I moan as he drives me off the edge, as I crest. I’m soaring, in orbit, and I moan at him, “Don’t stop!”
He doesn’t, and as ecstasy grips me I squeeze around his fingers, and he makes my orgasm last for so, so long, I don’t even know how he does it.
I’m shaking, trembling, mouth clamped tight so that I don’t moan too loudly. I curl my toes, grip at his hair, tug him hard, so hard I’m sure it hurts.
He just makes me feel so, so good.
And then I’m coming down, the waves of pleasure no longer so intense. I’m bathing in a pool of bliss, humming, grinning.
I let out the long breath I was holding, and shiver as I grow too sensitive. Duncan pulls his fingers from me, plunges my pleasure into his mouth, sucks me off his fingers.
He tells me how good I taste, and his towel has come apart, and looking down at him in between my legs, I can see his hard cock jutting out from his crotch.
He leans forward, drags his tongue up my sex, and I shudder, pushing him off me.
“Wait a minute, okay?” I mewl at him, grinning. “I’m sensitive.”
He kisses me furiously, crushing his lips against mine, and he takes my hand and guides it to his cock, and I grip onto him and jerk him fast and hard.
He climbs up over me, straddling me almost, his back curved. I push him backward, and once again I feel overwhelmed by desire.
I kiss him down his chiseled stomach, smell his musk, bury my nose in his trimmed pubic hair and smell my man.
I kiss my way up his shaft, lick up the droplets of pre-cum beading at his tip, and then I take it into my mouth, bob up and down on him fast, press my tongue against the back of his cockhead and jerk him to the same rhythm.
He leans back, his body tightening, and he runs his fingers through my hair, tells me how fucking sexy I am.
I love the way he tastes, love the groans that leave his lips, love the way he looks at me while I suck him off, while I bring him closer and closer to the edge.
His breaths grow ragged, his thighs tense up, and when I get him almost there I pop him out of my mouth, and look up at him, grinning.
The look on his face is that of pure torture.
“God damn it,” he growls, leaning down, kissing me. I push my tongue into his mouth, make him taste himself, and he just kisses me harder for it.
He lifts me up with an easy strength, one that makes me feel small in his arms, and I wrap my legs around his waist. His eyes bore into mine, and then flick down to my lips, and he kisses me again, like he can’t get enough of me.
His cock is pressing against my entrance, and he lets me sidle down his body, and I gasp as he enters me, stretching me.
Slowly, his manhood inches into me, and I grip onto him as if for dear life as he fills me up, makes me feel so unbelievably, fantastically full.
I moan into his ears, only for him to hear because I know he loves it. He bites my shoulder, licks a stretch of skin up my neck, and then he pulls his hips back and thrusts all the way into me.
I dig my nails into his skin, moan louder into his ear, and he starts to fuck me standing. Our bodies slaps wetly together, and he guides my forehead to his so he can look into my eyes.
It’s a struggle to be quiet – we have to be discreet – and he’s making it so damn difficult.
“Duncan,” I breathe, wrapping my arms tighter around his neck, pushing his face down against my breasts. I feel his tongue in between, and then he bites me.
“Your fight’s starting soon,” I say.
“I don’t want to leave you.” He thrusts more forcefully into me. I tighten up in pleasure, grip onto his waist harder with my legs.
“Lean back,” he says, and he supports my weight with his arms, and I hold onto his neck with just one arm, lean back in his grip so that there’s space between us.
“Come for me,” he says. I know an order when I hear one.
I send my free hand down in between us, start rubbing my clit while he fucks me.
“Moan for me.”
I moan for him, rub myself, bring myself racing to the edge, love how he makes me feel.
“You are so fucking sexy,” he growls at me as I moan, let my eyes fall shut in bliss. “I love how tight your little pussy is around my cock. You make me feel so good.”
He senses my nearness, thrusts harder and faster into me, and my thighs tense and that spring coils tighter and tighter, and then I’m right on the edge again, so, so, so close…
“Duncan,” I breathe, bunching up my face.
He leans forward, takes my lips in his just as I climax, and I moan into his mouth, crest hard and tight and intense, so intense it almost hurts.
I shake and tremble. White hot bliss sears my senses, and I’m in heaven, and I never want this feeling to end.
He drives me through it, makes it last, and I’m limp in his arms, wracked by pleasure, barely able to hold on anymore.
I feel so damn good, so close to him, so intimate with him. Just me and him, alone.
And then I’m passed the peak, panting, sweating, clinging onto him.
His thrusts slow, and we stop moving, and he holds me tight against him, his cock still hard inside me.
He holds me for ages, refuses to let me go. His breathing slows, and he smells me, kisses me beneath my ear.
His lips find mine again, but this time the kiss is gentler. Our tongues dance, and I wish this didn’t have to end.
I shudder as he slides himself out of me, and sets me down onto my feet. My knees are wobbly, weak, and I have to stand against him, lean my bodyweight onto him. He holds my face in his hands, looks into my eyes.
“Are you okay?” I ask, panting, stroking his face, feeling his stubble against my hand. “You seem different tonight.”
Duncan shrugs. “Something feels different tonight.”
Our intimacy seems to crack. We step apart from each other. I smooth my skirt, my top, fix my hair. Duncan pulls on his compression shorts.
He’s still hard as an iron bar, and it’s going to take quite a few minutes for that to slowly go way.
There’s a silence between us. This happens before every fight, but this time… it feels more pronounced.
“Don’t get too beat up,” I tell him, taking my phone out of my bag quickly and checking it. “I can’t stand watching you get hurt.”
“I promise,” he tells me. I go to him, let him wrap me up in his arms, and I hear him say to me, “I really want to know what you were going to tell me.”
I feel a pang of guilt, but know I can’t distract him during his fight with his toughest opponent yet.
“It’s nothing,” I say. I know it’s a lie but it’s the best thing to do. “I’ll tell you afterward. I promise.”
He nods, accepts what I say, doesn’t push it any further. I love that about him… he knows when to push, and when not to.
He presses his forehead to mine, runs a thumb over my lip. “You are amazing,” he tells me. There is only sincerity in his voice. “The best thing that ever happened to me.”
Then, as if unable to stand that moment of gushiness, he separates from me, and walks around the changing room stretching. He begins his breathing exercises, thumps his shoulders and chest with closed fists, starts to psych himself up for the fight.
I find my underwear on the sofa, pull it on quickly, and then share one last look with him. He nods at me.
Already I can see the fire in his eyes, and that stony expression on his face. He’s getting into his acute zone, that mental realm where he can beat a man to within inches of his life and not have it affect him.
To this day, I don’t know how he does it. Duncan’s never not returned from that realm, even if he sometimes gets a little punch-drunk.
“I’ll be watching,” I tell him.
“Then that means I’ll win.”
“Why’s that?”
“Can’t lose in front of the most beautiful girl in the room.” He smirks playfully.
“Groan,” I say, rolling my eyes. “But you better win. Don’t get hurt, okay?”
“I won’t.”
I leave him then, pick up my bag, and go back out into the fray.
The same three girls who were trying to get in to see Duncan mill about, shoot death-stares my way.
I ignore them, don’t have time for that bullshit.
Duncan’s all mine, anyway, and that’s never going to change.
He’ll now do his final warm-ups, and take his electrolyte-cocktail drinks that he mixes up himself. Fast-acting supplements to prevent cramping, boost overall oxygen uptake, get his balance of minerals right so water isn’t pulled out of his blood and muscles and into his bladder.
He’ll do his stretches, put heating strips on his major muscle groups to dilate the blood vessels there. He’ll do breathing exercises, controlled hyperventilation to saturate his muscles with as much oxygen as possible prior to the fight, to prevent the initial burst of lactic acid build-up that comes with the start to every fight; they go zero-to-one-hundred in under a second in the cage.
I know it all by heart. I’ve researched the biochemistry, helped Duncan to formulate his cocktails. We’ve consulted with nutritionists, doctors, trying to find the perfect balance for Duncan’s body.
His metabolism blazes, and he burns through energy reserves quickly. At just five-percent body-fat, he doesn’t have enough free energy on his body to truly last him through a fight without him feeling fatigued, and we can’t let his blood-sugar levels drop.
There’s no stoppage in underground fighting unless there’s excessive blood. There are no rounds, no breaks. It’s fight until one falls, plain and simple. That means no rehydration. That means no fuel-uptake.
It’s more complicated than the pros, in that respect. You have to get your body more prepared. In the event of stoppage because of too much blood, usually by then it doesn’t matter anymore. If there’s that much blood, somebody needs to go to the hospital.
Duncan will take some slow-release glucose pills to keep his sugar levels up. He’ll take beta-alanine to keep his muscles working efficiently and combat natural fatigue.
But really, in the end, these are all just the small bits that, from the outside, we can control. Most of the work toward winning a fight will be the physical work, something that can’t be band-aided by supplements.
Duncan’s simply going to have to fight better than Manic. I’ve seen the videos of Manic with him, scouted Manic’s fighting style with him.
It’s going to be Duncan’s toughest fight yet. I hate to think it, but there is some flicker of doubt in me that he’ll win this fight.
It’s highly possible that this will be his first loss.
Losing is part of it, he knows it and I know it. This Cinderella run he’s been on has been fantastic and entirely to his credit, but he’s going to have to lose someday.
I’m worried about how he’ll take it.
It will be a shock for him if he does. I know, psychologically, he can weather that storm. But to say he won’t be bruised would be to say that he wasn’t human.
And he’s very, very human.
I make my way through the stands, go to the table where Dad and Frank sit with the other mob bosses. He beckons me to him, whispers into my ear, tells me he needs to speak to me privately.
“The fight’s about to start,” I say to him. Duncan’s already walking out of the back, and the gaggle of girls are now around him, screaming and screeching, cellphone flashes blinding.
But Dad’s expression is hard. He looks pissed about something. He gets up, excuses himself from the table, and pulls me by my elbow out of the bleacher-stands.
I cast a look over my shoulder, see Duncan walking around the cage. Any moment now he’s going to look for me, but he’s not going to find me.
God damn it, fighting is about routine! Dad is going to fuck this all up. Every fight has to be the same, same ritual. That means Duncan has to find me in the crowd. We have to meet eyes. He has to see that I’m there supporting him.
Duncan needs me.
“Dad!” I cry, trying to shake my elbow free of his grip, but he just holds me harder, and pulls me roughly toward an empty portion of the hangar, behind the bookie’s table, and into a back room where all the betting money is collected and kept under-guard.
“Hey!” I cry, but his eyes shoots daggers at me. He whistles at the two guards, and they leave, shut the door behind them.
Now that we have some privacy, I let loose. “What the hell is wrong with you, Dad? Why are you being such a fucking prick tonight?” I rub my elbow. His grip was hard. “You hurt me, you know!”
He ignores what I say. “Is there something you want to tell me?” he asks, hands on his hips. He’s huffing. His face is red, and I know the look of anger in his eyes when I see it. His gold teeth seem to glint a darker shade.
Inside my head, bomb sirens start to wail. I look around the room, see briefcases tagged, ordered, stacked on shelves. Duffel bags, paper envelopes. I spy one brown envelope with Frank’s messy scrawl on the outside. His fifty-grand bet on Duncan.
“No,” I tell Dad.
Dad pinches his brow, then rubs a hand over his gleaming, sweating bald dome. He’s really worked up.
“Deidre,” he says, his voice barely in control. “Don’t lie to me.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t lie to me, Deidre!” he snaps, smacking his fist against the wall. I wince, step backward reflexively.
“Dad,” I say, shaking my head. “What the hell is wrong with you? You’re scaring me.”
He takes a deep breath of air before asking in a low voice, “Are you pregnant?”
I swallow. I haven’t told anybody, not even Duncan.
How the hell does he know?