Her Russian Brute: 50 Loving States, Idaho (57 page)

“
H
ey
! Hey! Hey, Beast, look at me! Look at me!”

His vision cleared, and the world came swimming back to him on a drunken wave of adrenaline and anger. He emerged from the Darkness to find himself in a hot concrete basement. The place reeked of blood and sweat, and a circle of yelling men surrounded him.

But in front of him stood a girl. A vision of loveliness with dark tumbling curls, golden brown skin, and eyes the color of champagne.

“Hey, Beast, welcome back,” she said with a teasing smile.

Behind her, the crowd booed, same as they most often did every place he fought. He wasn’t the pretty guy in the underground fighting movie who fought Goliath and won. He
was
Goliath, the villain everybody wants to see brought down. He was used to hearing his fight name get cursed in every language, but this crowd’s booing seemed especially loud.

Now that the Darkness had receded, he could see four bodies on the floor. One a bloody pulp. The other three knocked out cold. That explained the booing. The three must have tried to pull him off the bloody pulp and gotten K.O.ed for their efforts. Which meant the men who’d bet against him hadn’t just lost money on
this
fight, but on the next three fights, too.

He knew this not because he was particularly adept at reading underground fight scenes, but because it had happened before. Enough times that he now knew exactly how things had transpired, even though he’d gone Dark.

But there were still other fighters left. He could sense them even if he couldn’t see them in the messy circle of disappointed cowards who’d hoped to win big tonight with their pretty underdogs. Yes, he was back, and he was ready to fight again.

He raised a gloved fist and started to call out for another fighter to approach him.

“Wait, wait! Hold up!”

The girl got in front of him again, and to his shock, she laid her small hands on his arms. As if it was just the two of them in this dark basement and she was pulling him in for an intimate conversation.

“Stay with me here for a little bit, okay?” Her voice compelled him. Made him want to do as she asked. For a second or two.

But then he remembered… she wasn’t a fight. And he needed another fight.

Nose flaring, he swung his gaze away from her, scanning the crowd for someone else to hit. And he spotted him. Tall and wide with a Greek nose and jawline, his next challenger was dressed in fight shorts and sparring gloves, which meant he probably knew a few different fight styles. A worthy opponent, even if he was currently shaking his head at Cyrus, the Greek who ran this basement fight gig, in a way that insinuated he had no wish to be The Russian Beast’s next victim.

As he watched the fighter try to talk his way out of the match, the Darkness compelled him forward, blanking his mind of everything but the need to put his gloves on something. To hear the music of cracking bones beneath his fists. He pulled away from the girl and started toward Cyrus and the reluctant fighter…

Only to find the girl in front of him again.

“Hey, hold up! Hold up!” she said, putting her hands on his chest this time. “What you trying to do? Get me fired?”

Her words confused him, brought his eyes back down to her. She was small, but not small he saw now. Dressed in tiny shorts and a tank top so skimpy, he could see the outline of her push-up bra. She was short and her breasts were most likely small without the extra padding, but everything else on her was big and lush. Lush dark curls tumbling all the way down to her shoulders. Lush curves, barely constrained by her ring girl ensemble. Lush lips, smiling up at him as if they knew each other. And more than that, were already old friends.

Not many women smiled at him like that. Especially the ones who didn’t know his last name, the only real acknowledgment his father had ever given him. Even the women his half brother had sent to “help” with his recovery after Turkey had only barely managed to cover up their terror with simpering smiles. Which was why he’d used them then tossed them out of his hotel room immediately after.

Without his last name, he was too frightening. Mountainous body, hawk nose, knived cheek bones that put girls in mind of long ago Mongolians who would not only burn your poor European village to the ground, but also claim every woman in it as his own. Even the gentle tilt of his mother’s Buryat eyes didn’t help, because his pupils burning black as coal let them too easily see the Siberian beast buried just beneath his surface.

But this woman smiled up at him, her champagne eyes crinkling as she nodded at his forehead. “That cut above your eyebrow. I need to patch it up before you can fight again. I’m not just the ring girl, I’m the nurse, too—and the cleanup crew, but that’s a whole ‘nother job,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

He stared at her. This woman sounded American. But not like the rich ones his brother kept company with. More like the ones on television. But not exactly. Her voice had a husky quality to it that made him think of the girls who sang in the basement bar where his grandmother used to work.

“It is scratch,” he heard himself saying to her, his eyes going back to the next man he would fight, even if that man didn’t want to.

“Cool, then I’ll have you back out here in no time. Just come with me.”

“It is
scratch
,” he said again. And this time he didn’t wait for her answer, just started toward the Greek fighter again. The Darkness guiding his every step.

But against all odds, she got in front of him a third time.

“I said no!” she yelled, shoving him backwards. “You don’t fight until I look at that cut.”

The boos cut off with an abrupt gasp, and both he and the rest of the men in the room looked at her like she was crazy. Which she would have to be to shove a six-foot-six fighter known in underground fighting circles throughout Europe and Asia as The Russian Beast.

There were grown men who wouldn’t dare do what she’d just done. But her beautiful champagne eyes held his in a defiant stare down as she declared, “Listen, I ain’t afraid of you! I ain’t afraid of nothing. So you can either come with me now or fight
me
next. It’s up to you.”

His eyes slitted. She could not be serious.

With an annoyed glare, he simply picked her up and set her aside in one easy motion, then started forward again.

“Oh, for
fuck’s
sake…!”

The next thing he knew, her body collided into his. Two arms wrapped around the back of his neck and pulled him down with what could must have been all of her strength. At first he thought she was trying to bite him—the classic defense of the weak—but then…

Then she kissed him.

The entire world stopped when her lush mouth found his, lips giving him determined claim as her soft curves pressed into his hard body. She kissed him. Long and tough. She kissed him like she already knew him and was merely waiting for him to know her back.

The beast inside him faltered…

And the formerly pissed off crowd erupted into cheers, egging them on in a confusion of surprise and visceral lust. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the heavily accented voice of Cyrus the Greek saying, “Take him somewhere else, Sirena.”

And then the kiss was over. She slid down his body, the back of her feet landing on the floor.

“C’mon,” she said softly, beckoning him forward with eyes that almost seemed to glow in the barely lit space. “Come with me.”

Sirena. That is good name for her
, he thought. Because like a sailor enchanted, he let her take him by the hand and lead him out of the fight circle.

“
J
ust take
a seat right over there,” she said once they got to her room. She let go of his hand and indicated the little wooden chair she used as an informal nursing station.

He gave her a long, dark look before apparently deciding to indulge her and sit down. She couldn’t keep herself from staring as he did. He had a huge tattoo that took up nearly his entire back. What looked like a Siberian tiger, rendered so realistically, it seemed to animate with the bunching of his muscles as he lowered himself into the chair.

“So, I’m guessing you ain’t exactly a fan of ‘your mama’ jokes,” she said, coming to stand a few feet in front of where he was sitting.

The fighter’s black eyes cut up to hers in a glare of confusion.

“The dude you was fighting tried to talk some trash about your mama before the fight.” She decided against repeating, word for word, what the large Albanian fighter had actually said. The promise he’d made in English, the agreed upon common language of the fights. That he would beat the Russian
dog
and then go find his mother to give her the fucking she deserved for bringing such an ugly beast into the world. The crowd of betting men had eaten it up with a loud cheer.

But a switch had clicked off behind the eyes of the dude everybody was calling The Russian Beast. A deadening like nothing she’d ever seen before.

Now the Albanian was laid out on the concrete floor outside her tiny room, battered and broken, with no guarantee he would survive the night. And it was on her to keep the Beast distracted until Cyrus’s two goons could remove the body.

“Extra hour pay for tonight if you get him to stop,” Cyrus had said, right before he shoved her into the fight circle with the huge muscle-bound fighter. You know, the one who’d just knocked out the last three guys who tried to stop him.

Luckily, she really hadn’t been kidding about not being afraid of anything. But she still couldn’t believe he was here. In her room. Threating to splinter her little wooden chair with the sheer heft of his body. She couldn’t stop herself from stealing several glances at him. He was huge and nothing like the other fighters she’d seen come through this place.

He looked big and Slavic, but the tilt of his eyes told her he might also have some farther East Asian in his background. He had ink black hair tied into a tight knot at the base of his neck—a strong ‘fuck you’ to would-be competitors, because most fighters wouldn’t dare go into a no-holds-barred fight with long hair. Talk about an instant vulnerability! But this dude definitely didn’t have to worry about being taken down in a fight because of his hair. Instead of swagger, he oozed absolute certainty, and she didn’t have a doubt in the world that he could beat down any man who came at him.

She could feel his cold gaze on her as she rooted through her waist pack with deliberate slowness, searching for the mini flashlight she used to see cuts better.

But she could only pretend for so long. Eventually she had to find the flashlight and come stand in front of him to perform her bullshit exam. The dude was beyond huge. Nearly as tall as her, despite the fact that he was seated and she was standing. She moved between his legs in order to get a good look at his cut. Those glittering black diamonds he called eyes tracked her every movement as she came in closer. It felt like being observed by a straight-up predator.

The weight of his stare did something to her insides. Made that pretty song she’d heard the other day chew on her chest even louder, just begging to get out.

Trying to ignore the song, she took him by the chin and lifted his face further into the light.

“You’re right, this cut ain’t that deep,” she said after a quick inspection. She clicked off the flashlight and returned it to the waist pack before pulling out a small band-aid.

Outside, the sound of the men cheering on a new set of fighters erupted. Which meant they must have successfully removed the body. The Albanian was probably on his way to get unceremoniously dumped somewhere. If the dude was lucky, outside a hospital. If not…

As if reading her thoughts, The Russian Beast asked, “Why are you here with me? Other fighter is much worse.”

“True,” she agreed, smoothing the band-aid over his itty bit cut—the only indicator he’d even been in a fight. “But he’s beyond my nursing skills. Cyrus wanted me to see to you.”

He stared at her for a dead-eyed second before saying. “He doesn’t want me to fight his Greek. Not good for bets. So he sends you to distract me.”

“Wow,” she said, stepping out from between his legs. “Has anyone ever told you you’re real perceptive, Mr. Beast?”

“I do not usually talk enough for people to say this about me,” he answered.

“Really? Why not?” she asked, genuinely curious about the answer, which was way more curious than she’d felt about anything in a real long time.

“Because I scare them. People do not wish to talk to that which scares them.”

“Oh, I get it,” she said with a shrug. “Well, like I said, you don’t scare me, so talk away.”

Another slitted look, like he was trying to figure her out. And then. “No more talk. I need to fight now.”

“But you just said yourself Cyrus doesn’t want you to.”

He came to his feet, already rolling his neck. “What Cyrus wants does not matter.”

She believed him. This hulking beast didn’t look like he gave two fucks about Cyrus or anything else but his next fight.

“How did you get that?” she asked, nodding toward the ugly scar running a diagonal line across his heavily muscled gut.

He glanced down as if just now realizing the scar was there.

“Fight,” he answered with a sneer. “It is just scratch.”

“Looks like more than a scratch to me.”

A dark second ticked between them. And then he said, “I need to fight now.”

“Want to or need to?”

He stared at her, his black diamond eyes blank. And she clarified. “Most guys come in here
wanting
to fight. But you got something inside you, don’t you? Something that makes you
have
to do this?”

She must have hit it on the head, because he looked away. Dropping his black stare from her to the dingy linoleum floor.

Was he ashamed? Upset she’d seen through all his hulking insistence to his real motivation? Not his mother’s honor. But that he had a dark rage burning inside him. Her heart went out to him then, like it used to go out to the road dogs her and Trevor made a habit of rescuing.