Bare Knuckle: Vegas Top Guns, Book 5 (2 page)

“You got anything worth drinking, sugar?”

With boyish features on a big stud’s body, he looked goofy. She put him in the slavering-fan category and leveled a megawatt smile.

“Sorry. Coach’s rules.”

She masked her disappointment with a tiny shrug. “Thanks, anyway.”

He hurried to one of the warren-like rooms.
Damn.
She was all jagged edges and puzzle pieces. A drink would’ve been nice to smooth that sharp tension.

“What’s your poison, girl?”

She turned to find a lone fighter leaning against the white block concrete wall. He wore a satin walk-out robe like the others, but his was plain charcoal gray. She nearly changed her mind. No way was he a boxer, dressed so modestly and standing by himself. Without some heavy-duty flair, that bruiser would never catch the eye of a boxing promoter. It would be the industry equivalent of Trish showing up to an audition in sweatpants.

And no entourage? No way.

Only the man’s well-worn boxing gloves hinted otherwise, that he really was a fighter.

With the robe’s hood drawn up, a shadow covered the upper half of his face. If she never saw the rest of his features, Trish would’ve been satisfied with his mouth. Pouting lower lip. Beautifully curving upper lip. Almost too sensual for a man. Yet he held it with such a sardonic sneer. His expression offered no softness, no matter that lovely mouth.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Your poison. What’re you drinking?”

“Jack Daniels, if you have it.”

“After the fight.”

Trish swallowed to keep from taking her temper out on the stranger. She was pissed at life and, surprisingly, pissed at herself. Her head was so screwy that she couldn’t tell whether he was coming on to her or being strangely polite. “Anything to tide a lady over?”

“It’s in my training room.” He hooked a thumb toward the door to his left. “Inside the locker. Top shelf. In a Dasani bottle. It’s vodka, though.”

“I’m not in the mood to be picky.”

“Jack Daniels after the fight, though.”

He
had
been coming on to her. Well, what had she been expecting?

“Wait a minute. I never said—”

The man pushed away from the wall. The movement offered no additional glimpse of his face, just those beautiful, half-smiling lips. He was big. Like…
big
. Not as tall as some fighters, but he had a couple inches over Trish’s model-standard-issue five foot eleven. It was the width of his shoulders and the depth of his barrel chest. His loose robe couldn’t disguise thick muscles—biceps, pecs and sloping trapezoids that ramped up to his solid neck. That kind of body required a hell of a lot of work. She could relate. Only his routine probably involved eating six thousand calories a day rather than avoiding carbs as much as humanly possible.

“I don’t have time now,” he said. “Gotta go. I’ll find you later.”

“You have somewhere better to be?”

“My fight.”

The MC had the crowd in a frenzy. Over the raucous noise, Trish heard the name Jim Jennings. “Is that you?”

He shrugged those massive shoulders. “Gotta make a living. Don’t we?”

A shiver of awareness climbed her naked spine. He wasn’t just talking about himself. Was that embarrassment she felt, or kinship?

“You’d better go then,” she said. “I’ll see you if you make it to the third.”

“Don’t plan on it, Number Three. You’ll get the next bout.”

He turned away with no ceremony and no further flirtation, though he’d practically arranged for them to meet up later. He was arrogant, but he didn’t fit into her tidy categories. Far too guarded. She hadn’t known too many boxers, but none of them had ever struck her as reserved.

After glancing around, hesitant to stroll into his training room, she found the locker he’d mentioned. She grabbed the Dasani bottle then thought better of it. The last thing she needed was to douse the night in vodka and set it alight. She hadn’t lost everything. She just needed to work harder. Hold on a little longer.

Trish took a deep breath and shut the locker. By the time she entered the arena, the mystery boxer was climbing into the ring. Only now did he move with the bouncing, adrenaline-fueled energy of his sport—like a race car going zero to one hundred on a flat strip of desert highway.

Trish found her place next to Meg amid the vocal male appreciation she’d expected. That kind of attention got her high on anticipation. She liked performing for people, and more intimately, she liked being watched. But the shouts were a dull background throb as she watched the fighters take to their corners. Her curiosity had been piqued, which was a welcome distraction after a headless-chicken evening and that acid-awful phone call.

The fighter called Jim Jennings shrugged out of his robe. Trish had been ready to enjoy a bit of enigmatic eye candy, but what she saw was far more visceral. He was a man built to fight. No doubt there. Muscle atop muscle. Strong bones and a buzzing pulse of violence that lurked under his tanned skin. A modern-day gladiator.

Including a gladiator’s scars.

Deep white scar tissue climbed around his ribs and up his back like a strange vine. From a burn? Surgery? He turned to find her at the side of the ring. The face he’d hidden beneath the robe’s shadowy hood was scarred as well. A gash extended from temple to throat on the left side of his face. Another began at the center of his forehead and parted his sandy-brown hair.

He caught her eye and offered a curt nod. Then he smacked his gloves together, gave his neck a quick toss left and right, and backed into his corner.

Maybe she should have been repulsed. Maybe other women would’ve been. Trish was only intrigued—more intrigued than she’d been in a long time. Suddenly she couldn’t wait for that promised shot of Jack Daniels.

Chapter Two

Fly. Fuck. Fight.

Once, those had been all Eric Donaghue needed. Everything else had only registered as background noise.

Not anymore. With his savings running dry, he was in a boxing ring again for the sixth time in as many weeks. Carey was depending on him. Keeping his face intact and his brain solid enough to keep flying mattered a helluva lot more than the hot blonde in the front row. He’d been cleared in June to resume his place with the 64
^th
Aggressor squadron. Only the need to pay for his younger brother’s rehab was worth risking the career Eric had worked toward all his life—none more so than in the thirteen months since his crash.

That fucking crash.

His opponent, Gonzales, was practically a mirror of Eric in body type. Same height. The same weight within five pounds, all of it muscle. He had messy dark hair, sloppy footwork and a weak right cross. The opening bell rang. Eric sprang from his corner. He landed a flurry of smacking blows up the other man’s torso and sharp jabs under the ribs. Gonzales flinched back.

They wove across the ring. Eric had him on the ropes in no time, after a hard slam to the man’s jaw. Gonzales shook it off. His lips pulled back around the teeth guard.

No more fucking around. Eric wasn’t there to play. He needed the purse. He needed to keep Major Haverty from finding out about these extracurricular bouts. Pilots with scrambled eggs for brains were not what the Air Force needed.

He wasn’t scrambled yet.

This fight would end
now
.

He cut beneath Gonzales’s guard and cracked a hard uppercut to his chin. Eric followed with a left roundhouse to the temple that anyone should have been able to block—but maybe not in that condition. Gonzales blinked a few times. He staggered and sagged to one knee.

Eric stood back. The zinging force of the bout kept him popping up on his toes. He held his fists at the ready, having seen smaller men come back from harder blows, but it seemed like Gonzales didn’t want it enough.

He didn’t need the cash like Eric did.

Tonight’s winnings would pay for one more week of Carey’s care. Eric made a decent salary as an F-16 pilot, but the expenses kept coming. At least the rehab Eric had been financing for two months was more encouraging than bail for aggravated assault. Each check sent to the clinic lit him with a dim flame of hope.
Maybe this time…

He’d left Carey behind once. Never again.

He hardly noticed when the referee declared the bout in Eric’s favor. His lack of enthusiasm—an unwillingness to play up to the crowd like some gorilla in clown makeup—was why promoters were halfhearted in their attempt to sign him. They didn’t like how fast he fought, either. Betting thrived on bloodlust and drawing out the suspense. Eric had learned that much from the years when he
had
played that performance game, fighting his way out of Detroit.

He’d thought those days were behind him.

The US Air Force didn’t look kindly on its pilots sporting concussions when they took to the sky.

He scanned the perimeter of the ring and found the leggy blonde. She’d stood for the match, applauding while wearing an expression of cool appreciation. The angle of her chin was more defiant than he’d seen on most girls in her position. Simpering would’ve looked all wrong on a woman who pulsed with confidence.

Yet she hadn’t seemed confident when entering the arena. His bottle of vodka wasn’t in her hands or by her chair. She’d been desperate in a way that didn’t match her current, proudly feminine pose.

After a quick cool down, some paperwork and a quick change of clothes, Eric lurked around the ring during the second match. Normally he went home. He wanted to hit and he wanted to get paid. He didn’t crave the extra bullshit that came part and parcel with boxing, although once upon a time the guys at his gym and those who’d worked the same circuit had become a mixed-up, mashed-up family. Joining the Air Force had replaced bruisers with bandits, but he still got the same feeling of belonging.

Nine months in hospitals, physical therapy and flight retraining had pissed him off because it sucked and hurt—plus he’d been left completely helpless while Carey made a screaming dive for rock bottom. For Carey to hit a wall just as Eric was getting his life back in order had been a blow more staggering than anything Gonzales had landed.

Eric sat back in a chair and absently watched the bout, wondering if it would go on long enough for the blonde to make an appearance.

Lucky for him, it did. The two welterweights went after each other like terriers until the bell rang. They retreated to their corners, and the ring girl sauntered up. She held the sign over her head, which lifted her tits in that brilliant red swimsuit. Eye candy, pure and simple.

He appreciated watching women. One might call it his thing.

He crossed his arms and shifted on a fast rush of energy. She was a visual banquet. The hair that settled above her shoulders was a pale blonde that would contrast against his dark sheets—if he got her home. The micro swimsuit revealed the slender body that would be perfect beneath his. Her tiny white-girl ass was a gift from a higher power.

She slung attitude by the bucketful. Playing up to the crowd, she handed out swish and sweetness like candy. Her smile lit up when the audience roared.

So, she liked being watched? Being appreciated? He couldn’t imagine a woman becoming a ring girl if she didn’t. A buzz of excitement made his muscles burn, especially when she finished her circuit and aimed her smile straight at him. Every man in the crowd got to see what she strutted on obvious display. Not every man got a personalized come-hither smile.

He fisted his hands at his sides and cleared his throat.

She returned the round placard before walking past him. She was such a playgirl—a bit of trouble combined with a whole lot of pretty. Slanting a honey-and-spice look over her shoulder as she drifted by, she found her seat.

Eric had resumed an active sex life since escaping physical therapy, scars and all, but discomfort always clawed up his spine. He didn’t relish explaining a damn thing about what had happened. When he’d stopped telling war stories that women speedily elevated to heroic proportions, he’d stopped getting as many returned phone calls. Apparently the truth was a turn-on—that the nasty scars crawling over his skin were from an F-16 training accident in Canada—but refusing to share sickening details meant he spent more nights alone than not.

Such a change from the previous year. To his surprise, he didn’t feel like he’d lost anything in giving up strip bars and midnight quickies. He did miss being able to say hello to a woman without curiosity, revulsion or wariness coloring her expression.

Maybe that’s why he’d been so immediately taken with the blonde ring girl. She’d been…distracted. That seemed the right word. And he’d been hooded. Now, when wariness or disgust should’ve been making unwanted appearances, she kept sneaking sidelong glances.

Christ, she’d look amazing on film. His video collection was getting overplayed, a little flat. He could go for capturing her shining beauty and subtle arrogance on film.

Go for it in a damn hard way.

After the bouts, he waited outside the ring girls’ room. Damn he was edgy. Nervous was too strong of a word, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actively pursued a woman and worried about the outcome. It galled him to think he might be as rusty at seduction as he’d been when stepping into a flight simulator for the first time in more than half a year.