Page 4 of Ignite
“Hey, Mountain.” A loud voice from behind the man drew his attention, and he let me go as a hand slapped on his shoulder. “I see you found mygirl.”
“She’s yours?” the man asked, his eyes narrowing inannoyance.
I raised my head and hesitated when I saw the man who’d approached us. It was Blade. The guy from the cage with the right hook fromhell.
His eyebrow was split from the fight, and a few drops of blood were smeared across his forehead. Up close, he was better looking than from my vantage point on the bleachers. He’d put on a T-shirt and jeans since, and his hair wasdamp.
“Thanks for keeping her warm for me, but I reckon you should fuck off,” he said to Mountain. “You’re going to scare her off,mate.”
“Pussy,” he growled. “Proveit.”
Blade sighed and then glanced at me. Before I knew what was happening, he reached out and wrapped his hand around my braid, pulling me against his chest. His mouth covered mine, his lips hard and commanding. When his tongue swept into my mouth, I melted, letting him kiss me like I was nothing more than athing. And fuck me if it wasn’t hot as hell…and completely bloodystupid.
When he pulled away, he stared at me almostapologetically.
“Blade, mate, c’mon. Share your pussy around for once in your sorrylife.”
“Fuck off, Mountain,” he said with a snarl, not breaking eye contact with me. “I’m not into group situations, and I definitely don’t want to see yourcock.”
Wrapping his arm around my shoulders, Blade guided me away from the danger zone and back out into the warehouse. It felt safer out here, but now I knew it was anillusion.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I gotlost…”
Turning, he looked me over and raised an eyebrow. “You herealone?”
I nodded, starting to feel exceptionallystupid.
He grinned like he already knew my answer. “What’s your name?” I opened my mouth to reply, but he placed a finger over my lips, and I shivered at the contact. “You can be whoever you wanthere.”
I was plain Alison Anders, the butt of all the office jokes, demure, straitlaced, alone, a shell of her former self. There wasn’t a wild bone in my body, but suddenly, I felt like I could beanyone.
“Ali,” I said through a heavy breath. The name rolled from my lips without hesitation, and I knew it was fate. Life had just been blown into my dead body, and it’d been delivered by the kiss of a stranger. A hot, dangerous, bloodstainedstranger.
“Ali,” he murmured. “I think you’d better go home. This isn’t a nice place for a woman on herown.”
I froze, my mind pulverized into mush. Gohome?
He smirked, his gaze lowering. Just when I thought he was staring at my boobs, he plucked the ticket stub out of my breast pocket and peered at the bet I’d placed. His lips curved into a grin, and he pressed the bit of paper into myhand.
“You’d better collect your winnings on the way out, darlin’.” He winked before turning away, and my gaze fell to his ass. “You’rewelcome.”
2
Liam
The story was alwaysthesame.
Women came to The Underground to chase some kind of fucked up adrenaline rush, and when they got in too deep, they cried foul. A one nighter with a cashed-up fighter probably sounded like a hot porno to them, but the reality was fardifferent.
The Underground was not a nice place. It was the cesspool of the cesspool. The warehouse where dreams came to die.Literally.
I glanced over my shoulder, but the woman who’d called herself Ali had disappeared. Good. She tasted sweet, so it was best she hightailed it before Mountain came sniffing around again. She was too delicate for a man like him…if you could call the guy a man. He was more like an animal than anything resembling a humanbeing.
“You savin’ damsels in distressagain?”
Lifting my head, I spotted Goblin leaning against the wall watching me. He was the toughest son of a bitch I ever saw. With five Championships under his belt, a woman to keep him warm at night, and the adoration of this shithole, he was the richest man in the world in my eyes. Sometimes I didn’t know why I came back to this joint, but him? His Irish ass wascrazy.
“You know me,” I shot back. “Always asucker.”
