Page 39 of Steel Rain

“Well, I can’t have you fighting your fiancé.” Eoghan’s use of that word made me shudder. I wanted to step in and correct them. “He’ll take it easy on you.”

How wrong Eoghan was on that. I had no doubt that Keith would kill me in an instant if he could.

It stabbed at something deep inside me. I had thought I was one of them. I thought Ibelongedbeside them. But it had all been one-sided. In the end, we women were born alone, died alone, and fought alone. Unless we do something about it.

“You,” Eoghan pointed at one of the burliest men in the group. “O’Rourke.”

Fuck.Was he purposely picking the men who hated my guts?

“And you, Grimes,” Eoghan continued with a smirk, raising a brow at me, wondering if I’d say anything. Now, I was certain. He had chosen him because heknewwe had almost had a fight in the chow hall. We had bad blood.

Then his next move made me want to punch him in the mouth. Eoghan pointed at O’Malley, who almost jumped out of his skin. “You, Lieutenant O’Malley.”

Eoghan started to step back away from all of us as we stood in a square, staring each other down. At least, O’Rourke and Grimes and I were staring each other down. Kieran looked like he was ready to bolt.

“Beat her,” Eoghan ordered.

The two assholes surrounded me, fists up, and I moved into my fighter’s stance, trying to keep them both in my line of sight, and backing up, hoping I never ran into a wall. O’Malley stayed back. He did assume a fighter’s stance but seemed unsure of what to do.

O’Rourke tried to sweep my legs, and I stopped him with a well-placed knee to his chest that pushed him back. He tried to grab my foot, but I jumped and rolled from it. Grimes lunged, and we locked in a clinch. I swept out his foot, and we both went down with a hard thud. I landed on the bottom and grunted as his heavy weight pushed the air from my lungs.

He smelled like chewing tobacco and spit. Disgusting.

He tried to do some small punches on my side, but it wasn’t as effective as it could have been. I shrimped my leg up his thigh, hitching until I was near the top of his ribs, my thigh under his armpit. Triangle choke. I could get to a triangle choke from here.

I tried to move. I tried to get in there, but there was a battle of will that happened between the two of us. I was unwilling to stay in his hold. He was unwilling to let me out of it. And we both screamed, from somewhere down in the bowels of our bodies, pushing and pulling to see who could out muscle the other. When I got my leg free, it all happened fast. My leg went around his neck; the other from under his arm. One foot branched under the other knee, and I held his arm so that only his head, shoulder and the one arm I held in a vice grip was over my torso. The rest of him flailed somewhere else. Somewhere away from me. Somewhere he couldn’t land an effective knee or kick from.

He tried to muscle through, but the more he fought me, the tighter my legs got, the less blood and air got to his head as I pinched off every important life-sustaining vessel. He tried to dump his body weight on me. He even tried to lift and slam me down. He was within seconds of tapping out. I could feel it. His body losing its resistance and giving in, when O’Rourke got back into the game with a kick to my head.

An illegal as fuck move.

“What the fuck!” I heard Ajax say, as he lunged forward. Eoghan held him back.

“We’re not playing by octagon rules, boyo. She wants to be in the guard, then she has to fight dirty.” Eoghan’s snarl filled the room over the sounds of our grunting. “The Italian’s don’t play fair. Neither do the fucking Russians. So, we don’t train clean.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw the two of them toe to toe, grabbing one another by the lapels, standing still, but ready to wrestle if need be.

O’Rourke tried to kick my head again, but I was braced, my head down as far as it could be, using Grimes’ head as a fucking shield. He couldn’t kick me without kicking his buddy too. Not that it mattered, because soon, Grimes started to grow heavy and limp as the chokehold caused him to pass out.

I hope he dies that way, mother fucker.

I barrel rolled to the side as another of O’Rourke’s kicks came. He narrowly missed, grazing me with his toe. I grabbed his leg and took his ass down.

He went down so hard that I didn’t even stop to think. I mounted and started punching his face with everything I had in me.

I heard what Eoghan said.

We weren’t playing by octagon rules, so I wasn’t going to stop until he looked like minced meat. Then I’d go after Eoghan himself, the rat bastard!

With one strike, his head went left, his blood spraying across the blue mat. With another strike, his head turned the other way, his nose cracking under my knuckles. Then another hit with the opposite arm, and his jaw hollowed, like he had lost a tooth.

“Enough, Flanagan!” I paused at LeBlanc’s command.

I paused, and finally saw my work. His face was a bloody mess. His nose frothed with blood and bubbles as he tried to breathe through the damaged passageway.

It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even fucking close. Not until he was dead.

I looked up and saw Kieran, and he had his fists up but looked like he wanted nothing to do with what was happening here. But we had no choice. We never had a fucking choice.

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