Bruiser: A Lonely Housewife Embarks on a Passionate Affair with an Alpha Male MMA Fighter (16 page)

Chapter Forty Nine

Brandon

“So we’ve got to work fast,” Rob warned Brandon, as they strapped on gloves for training the following day.

“Your fight’s next week, and if you want a realistic chance of winning, we’re going to have to focus on one thing, and one thing only.”

Rob punched his fist into his palm.

“Wrestling.”

Fortunately, most MMA fans agreed that Rob ‘Thor’ Staavig remained one of the best wrestlers in the octagon. Brandon couldn’t have had a better mentor.

As they stepped onto the vinyl mats in the studio, Rob narrowed his eyes and barked instructions at Brandon.

“Your stance is all wrong,” he warned. “MacDonald’s going to try and lure you into boxing, so don’t let him. Bend your knees. Keep your feet apart. Make him come to you.”

Brandon knew all this – he was a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, after all. But Rob’s advice was more about strategy than technique; and it made sense.

“Good,” satisfied with Brandon’s ape-like stance – which kept his center of gravity low, and his powerful legs coiled like springs. “Now let’s focus on tactics.”

Rob readied himself to wrestle.

“So keep things simple,” the blond fighter advised. “MacDonald’s precise, and strategic. You’re strong and experienced. Make him react to
you
– don’t let him draw you out.”

“First step,” Rob barked, “is to take that British bastard
down
.”

Brandon grinned. That he could do.

“Stick to the basics,” Rob warned. “Remember what Bruce Lee said, I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks
once
, but I fear the man who has practiced
one
kick ten thousand times.”

Before those words had even sunk in, Brandon pounced on Rob, and tried to bring him to the mats with a single leg takedown.

It was a basic move, Brandon knew, but one of the keystones of wrestling. Snagging the opponent’s lead leg, and then swinging around at an angle, allowed the wrestler to use their weight to bring their opponent off balance.

And Brandon had a lot of weight to him.

Rob was quick, and managed to wriggle out of Brandon’s first attempt at taking him down – but instead of giving up, Brandon followed the single leg takedown with a much more brutal maneuver: He grabbed both legs, and pulled.

Rob went down, instantly.

“Good,” the Norwegian grunted, as he and Brandon wrestled on the mats. “Now pin me.”

The fact that Rob was able to keep talking through Brandon’s moves didn’t bode well – and within seconds, Rob had crawled out from Brandon’s grip and was scrabbling back onto his feet on the mats.

“You can’t afford to miss an opportunity like that, bud,” Rob warned. “I wriggled free. The Bulldog’s going to ground and pound you.”

Brandon snorted.

“That sounds like a gay porn.”

“Don’t joke,” Rob warned. “That’s how you’re going to be paying your rent if you don’t win this fight.”

“Well then,” Brandon clambered to his feet, and dusted himself off. “Let’s try that again.”

Chapter Fifty

Ava

Ava watched them wrestle through the window.

Brandon was getting better. Rob was out of practice, and had never fought at the level of James MacDonald, but he was still pretty brutal in a bout, and up until this point had never let Brandon get the better of him.

But these last couple of days? Brandon had come close.

Maybe he was in with a chance next week.

With a sigh, she turned and headed back to the reception desk, ready to make more calls. So far this week, she’d filled up a second night of Krav Maga classes with guys eager to learn from this surprise addition to the MMA roster – and there was a whole bus load of kids coming in that weekend to try the Saturday morning white belt classes.

Before she’d come on board, Brandon had been struggling to pay the rent. Now, he was going to have to think about hiring more instructors.

Shuffling up a pile of notes, Ava stepped into Brandon’s office and filed them quietly. Then, as she left, she looked out over what had once been the wreckage of Brandon’s desk.

No more pizza boxes, or half-finished cups of coffee. No more piles of unopened mail.

Just like Brandon had been eating cleaner, and focused on fitness and training, he’d narrowed his eyes and begun running his business with a focus any martial artist would be proud of.

Hell,
Ava
was proud of him.

The only thing that annoyed her was the letter sitting on his desk – the one Mr. Beninetti had left, when he’d come over to demand the security deposit and last month’s rent.

Ava stepped over and picked it up – rereading for the sixth time the brusque message, and the name and address of Mia’s husband’s accountancy practice.

And then an idea hit her.

A reckless, dangerous, mean-spirited idea. But a brilliant one.

Grabbing an envelope, Ava selected a BB Martial Arts Center business card from Brandon’s desk.

Then, kicking shut the office door, she carefully peeled off her yoga pants. And then her panties.

Ava didn’t intend to sleep with Brandon again – but that hadn’t stopped her wearing a nice pair of Victoria’s Secret panties. With a wicked smile, she peeled them down over her thighs, and stepped out of them.

A moment later, they were stuffed into the envelope, with Brandon’s business card.

She sealed the envelope, and pulled her yoga pants back on. Then, with a flourish, Ava wrote the address of Mike Werber’s accountancy business, and threw the envelope into the ‘out’ tray.

Of course, her panties were probably twice the size of the ones Mia wore – the skinny little bitch – but if Mike was anything like Clark, he wouldn’t even know that.

He’d just wonder why he was getting a pair of panties in the mail – and the business card would give him a pretty pointed clue.

If Mia was going to fuck with Brandon’s life; the least Ava could do was return the favor.

Chapter Fifty One

Brandon

Two days before the fight.

Brandon wasn’t going to lie. He was getting extremely nervous.

To help distract him from that, the Fox affiliate that Rob was working for came down to film a segment about this scrappy new MMA upstart – and that meant wrangling classes around a filming schedule, and getting parents to sign permission slips for their kids to be featured in the segment.

Rob and Brandon both got interviewed; and the pretty blond newsreader asked some direct and pointed questions.

“So, do you think you deserve to be up in that octagon?”

Brandon had blinked when she’d asked him that.

“There are fighters who’d worked the circuit for years to get a break like this. Why should
you
get a stab a championship fight, when none of them did?”

“I…” Brandon blinked. He hated being on camera. “It’s just…”

“It’s for the
kids
,” Rob had answered for him. “Brandon here’s not like James MacDonald. He wasn’t born on the set of Downton Abbey. He’s just a good kid, trying to give kids a good start through martial arts.” He shrugged. “Winning this fight can save this school.”

Brandon nodded dumbly.

When the cameras were off, his cheeks burned red and his stomach churned. He’d blown it.

But the crew didn’t seem to care. In fact, as they shot b-roll of the kids practicing, the newsreader cheerfully told him: “This is
gold
.”

Vinnie was skulking around in the background, and when he heard them talking, he stepped in to help angle the story.

“MMA’s got a bad rap,” he injected. “What with guys like the War Machine beating their girlfriends, and Jason Miller getting arrested for fighting with cops.”

He slapped Brandon on one of his meaty shoulders. “He’s one of the good guys.”

“We love that angle,” the newsreader grinned. “In fact, can we get you on camera talking about that?”

And that’s when Brandon got his second chance; and he aced it.

Taking a deep breath, he stood in front of the camera and explained his passion and his drive.

“When I was a kid,” he explained, “I never had
any
idea how much martial arts was going to change my life.” He ran a hand through his shaggy black hair. “It gave me focus, and drive, and a determination to always be my best – and now the most satisfying thing in my life is being able to share that with a new generation of kids here, at this school.”

He told them about the classes he ran for special needs kids, and how at-risk children from Trenton were bussed in to learn the basics of Taekwondo. He shared the story about the parent who’d hugged him; and how rewarding it was to see kids heading in the wrong direction turn their life around thanks to what he did.

“I’m not always the greatest guy,” he admitted, thinking of his behavior with Mia and Ava recently, “but doing this makes me feeling like I’m
doing
something great.”

He slammed his fist into his palm.

“And
that’s
why I’m going to win this fight. Because I’ve got something
really
important to fight for.”

The newsreader grinned, and slapped Brandon on the back. As the video team packed up, they were already planning on syndicating the interview – turning it from an MMA-specific story, to one that would broadcast all across the east coast.

Vinnie came up and slapped Brandon on the back.

“Four weeks ago, nobody had heard of this shithole,” he admitted bluntly. “By tomorrow morning, you’re going to be
famous
.”

But as exciting as that sounded, Brandon had trouble focusing on it. Because while the karate center was in the best spot it had ever been in its twenty year history – all that rested on his performance in two nights time.

Brandon was about to get everything he’d ever wanted, or have it all taken away.

Chapter Fifty Two

Brandon

“This is our last sparring session, B,” Rob told him, as he and Brandon pulled on their gloves the following afternoon. “Tomorrow, you rest. So if you’re planning to
finally
beat me, this is your only chance.”

Brandon grinned. That was exactly what he intended to do.

As the two fighters stepped out onto the vinyl mats, Brandon’s brain worked like a computer; figuring out the best angle of attack to get Rob exactly where he wanted him.

“Remember,” Rob told him. “Keep it
simple
. MacDonald’s disadvantage is that he’s never seen you fight; so he doesn’t know what to watch for. You’ve just got to pick
one
angle of attack – but you’ve got to execute it
flawlessly
.”

They started with some punches and kicks. Brandon’s strength wasn’t Muay Thai, but he knew that Rob preferred punching, and some hard kicks were pretty effective at scoring some early strikes and keeping the Norwegian out of striking distance.

But Rob was nothing if not adaptable.

On the third kick, Rob struck like a cobra – grabbing Brandon’s ankle and yanking sharply. Brandon immediately went down.

Stunned and winded, he barely had time to react as Rob pounced on him. The blond fighter worked like a surgeon, reaching for an arm bar at the same time he tried to pull his perennial trick of digging his knee into Brandon’s inner thigh.

With a snarl, Brandon shrugged the smaller fighter off him, and scrabbled free. A moment later, he was up on his feet – fists raised and body hunched.

“That was
dumb
, Brandon,” Rob warned, as he jumped back up. “You came in with something new and untested – that Muay Thai shit. It’s not your strength, so don’t play to it.”

Brandon snarled, and went in for a take down.

Rob landed two hard punches on the side of Brandon’s head, but the big fighter brushed them off. He kept on going, like a charging bull, and grabbed both of Rob’s legs.

One yank, and the Norwegian was felled like a pine tree.

As soon as Rob landed on the mats, Brandon was on top of him. He pulled the same tricks Rob had – a knee right in the inner thigh, and an arm bar that he executed flawlessly.

Staring down into Rob’s face, Brandon saw something he’d never seen over all those weeks of training:

Fear.

Grinning, Brandon tightened his grip, and went in for the kill.

Rob groaned. He struggled. He twisted, and flailed, and tried to wriggle free – but he couldn’t. And then, when Brandon pulled on his arm, the Norwegian realized he was done for.

Brandon shifted his weight, until his face was inches from Rob’s. He looked deeply into Rob’s eyes, and grinned triumphantly.

“You ready to tap out?”

Sweat beaded on Rob’s brow. He groaned, as Brandon’s arm bar threatened to pop his shoulder straight out of its socket.

“Remember what you told me?” Brandon growled. “Don’t be stubborn. Tap out.”

And that’s when Rob grinned.

And, going limp, Rob lifted his head off the mats, and pressed his lips hotly against Brandon’s mouth.

“What the
fuck
!”

Stunned by Rob’s open-mouthed kiss, Brandon reared back – and immediately lost his dominant position.

Rob shoved him hard in the chest, and pushed Brandon backwards. Then he wrapped his legs around the bigger man’s waist, and locked him into a brutal kimura lock. Two seconds later, he had him in a brutal double joint arm lock.

Brandon grunted, and twisted, and flailed – and realized he was trapped.

For a second, he considered holding out – trying desperately to break free of Rob’s hold on him.

But then he realized the only thing he’d achieve by doing that would be injuring himself – and he couldn’t afford to do that just two days before the fight.

So reluctantly, with a snarl, Brandon tapped out.

Rob released him.

Laughing, Rob rolled free and struggled to his feet.

Brandon groaned as he hauled himself upright too.

“What the fuck was
that
?” Brandon snarled, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

“
That
,” Rob chuckled, “was ‘gay chicken.’ And you blinked.”

“Is that even legal?”

“Probably not.” Rob patted Brandon on the back. “But if I makes you feel any better, you had me dead to rights before I tried it.”

Rob looked Brandon in the eye, and offered him his hand.

“As long as you can learn to take a kiss like you take a punch, you’re as ready as you’ll ever be, brother. Now go out there and make us proud.”