Submission Moves: An MMA Romance (12 page)

He gave her an apologetic smile. He was too busy to dance or to flirt. He was too busy waiting for someone he wasn’t even sure was going to show up. It was getting kind of late, but in case she did show up, Nick didn’t want to be seen dancing with another woman. Rose had enough reservations about him. He didn’t want to give her any more.
 

“You don’t wanna dance with me, beautiful. I’m just gonna step on your feet. But my friend here is an excellent dancer.” He nodded to Rafael, who was seated beside him.

Whatever sting that rejection must’ve brought her disappeared when she got a good look at the handsome Brazilian. Rafael gamely stood up and said something to her in that smooth accent which made her giggle. Then he took her hand and led her back to the dance floor.

“She wasn’t really my type,” Nick explained with a shrug to his brothers, who were gaping at him.

“Not your type? But everything with a pussy’s your type.”

“Drop it, P,” Angelo said, sparing Nick the trouble of replying. “He’s really into Rose.” He paused, waiting for Nick to confirm or to refute. “I mean, you’re always looking at her,” he added when Nick still didn’t say anything. “And I don’t mean just her womanly parts.”

“All her parts are womanly parts,” Paolo said with a suggestive grin. “That ass—”

“Watch it,” Nick warned, turning serious.

His brothers laughed.

“We’re just messing with you, Nicky. Rose is cool. I like her. She’s such a ball buster though,” Paolo said with a regretful shake of his head.

“That she is,” Nick agreed, although more fondly.
Now where the heck was she?

****

“Hey, you wanna dance?”

Rose paid a split-second glance at the tall guy with dreadlocks who spoke to her then went back to scanning the dance floor. “No, thanks. I’m just looking for someone.”

“So was I. I think I just found her.”

Rose turned to give him an incredulous look. Did that cheesy line actually work on some girls?  “Sorry, I’m not interested,” she said.

“C’mon. A drink then, if you don’t wanna dance.”

“She’s with me,” said a cold voice just as Rose was about to reply. She turned and saw Nick standing close. His body language was unmistakably meant to stake his claim on her and to warn the other man away.

“Sorry, dude,” dreadlocks said, stepping back politely with hands raised, a gesture of deference to the unmistakable alpha. “I didn’t know she was taken.”

“No, actually,” Rose said, looking pointedly at Nick. “I’m not taken. But I’m still not interested,” she added to dreadlocks. “You need to check your entitlement and learn to respect when a woman tells you no.”

He backed away, but not before shooting Nick a sympathetic look.

“Wow, you really know how to win people over to your feminist cause,” Nick said with a low, teasing laugh. He stepped back to scan her from head to foot. “You look real pretty tonight. I mean you always do, but…” His smile was pure male appreciation as he took her all in.
 

As angry as she was with him, Rose was glad she made the extra effort with her appearance. She’d chosen a fitted grey dress, black fishnet stockings, and tall brown boots. She wore a little more make-up than usual, giving her eyes a thick cat-eye flick. “I don’t need your validation,” she snapped. She could lie to him all she wanted, but she couldn’t lie to herself. She knew exactly who she got all gussied up for, and it mortified her to no end. “And I don’t appreciate it when people speak for me when I can very well speak for myself.”
 

Nick regarded her with an innocent, quelling look that angered her even more.
 

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but it didn’t look like you wanted him hitting on you. I was giving you an out.”

“By asserting your ownership over me in front of another man to get him to leave me alone? Was your masculinity challenged when you saw him poaching?” she scoffed at him. “Please don’t use me as a pawn in your male rituals of dominance.”

Nick swore softly and inhaled, slow and deep, as if trying to conjure up the patience to deal with her. “I was just trying to help.”

“What you were doing was perpetuating this construct that a man’s word is more valid than a woman’s. That a man should respect another man’s claim to a woman, as if she’s his property, instead of respecting what she has to say for herself.”

Nick wisely chose not to say anything more, and for a long while they just looked at each other, two pairs of dark eyes flashing and two tempers simmering.

He spoke first. “I’m gonna go sit over there,” he said, pointing to an unoccupied couch in a relatively quiet area of the club, the farthest away from the crowded dance floor. “I hope you join me. I
want
you to join me. I wanna have a drink with you and have a normal conversation with you where you don’t dress me down or spout random shit from your feminist manifesto. But maybe I better wait for you to come to me so you’ll quit acting like I’m forcing myself on you and I’ll quit feeling like an ass for it.” He took a step back. “I won’t wait the whole night.”

Rose watched him go, taking her anger with him and leaving her with a hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach. Maybe she overreacted a little. Alright, she overreacted, period. God, what was wrong with her? Couldn’t she shut off her feminist brain on an odd Friday night long enough to flirt with a man who was clearly interested in her?

She frowned and gave her head a sad shake. The truth was she couldn’t. She wasn’t good at compartmentalizing. No one who saw what she did day in and day out would be. Running a women’s crisis center was not exactly a fun job. It was gratifying in its own way, and she couldn’t imagine doing anything else. She loved knowing they made a difference, made life a little easier for women who had been through so much. But not every case file that came across her desk had a happy ending. Not every woman who walked into their small office got the help she deserved, no matter how hard they all tried.  It wasn’t the kind of job that she could just clock in and out off. It was part of who she was, the part that saw threats when there weren’t any and took offense when none was meant. If there was one thing her job had taught her, it was that every man, even the nicest, most harmless looking ones, had the potential to hurt a woman. All of them. The moment you let a man close, you were vulnerable.
 

Nick was sitting on the couch, waiting, just as he said he would. He had his back to Rose and she watched with irrational jealousy as a group of women approached him, all carefree and full of laughing, flirty mischief. A tiny part of her wished she could be that kind of girl for him, because honestly, he was probably one of the good ones. But Rose was practical and a realist, and she and Nick were quite simply a bad fit for each other. So be it. She never allowed herself to believe otherwise anyway.
 

One of the women bent over while Nick whispered something in her ear. She waited to see what he would do next. Would he rebuff her, or would he decide Rose was more trouble than she was worth and move on? Just then a guy stepped in front of Rose, blocking her view.
 

“Hey,” he said, smiling at her, “you here with someone? Can I buy you a drink?”

Ugh.

CHAPTER 13

“Nick?”

He twisted in his seat to look at her, a ready smile on his face. For a minute there he was worried she was going to call his bluff. This woman’s head game was way too cunning. She’d run circles around him if he wasn’t careful.

“Rosie,” he acknowledged, patting the space next to him and bidding her to take a seat. “Are we having that drink now?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Let me get it.”

Before Nick could protest, she’d already turned and was making her way to the bar. He kept his eyes trained on her anxiously, not trusting that she wouldn’t change her mind, walk out the door, and leave him hanging. But she did return moments later with a bottle of water for him and a beer for herself, which she placed on the low table in front of them. The soft leather cushions of the couch barely shifted when she sat down, but Nick let himself get pitched closer to her.

He smiled as he reached for his water. She remembered his no-alcohol rule. “I was supposed to buy
you
a drink, but thanks anyway.”

“Oh, I didn’t buy us these. Open bar for Angelo’s guests, remember?” she said before taking a small sip of her beer. She didn’t seem bothered by his nearness, and Nick felt an inexplicable sense of victory. Maybe he was finally going to catch a break with this bafflingly infuriating woman.

“I’m footing the bill for this so technically, I still bought you a drink.”

She just gave a tight laugh and shrugged in response. “Big Ugly’s gonna want to take the fight to the mat for sure,” she said, turning serious. “How’s your takedown defense?”

He grinned, happy to be talking about something that couldn’t possibly get him on her bad side. “I’m at 96.2 percent, the best in the league. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

She smiled, not bothering to deny it, and they talked about MMA some more. Nick found himself surprised and rather impressed at how immersed she was in the sport. No wonder she got along so easily with the other guys. “You’re really into this, aren’t you?” he said. “So it’s not just because of me?”

“No, it’s not just because of you,” she said, laughing.
 

Not just because of you.
He didn’t miss her very telling choice of words.

“It must feel weird being the underdog for a change. Do you think Big Ugly might hand you your first loss? I mean, he’s so big and he’s so much faster now that he’s moved down to light heavyweight.”

Nick pretended to look insulted. “Don’t count me out just yet. I’m undefeated for a reason and no one’s even come close to submitting me. Big Ugly’s a big pussy who’s better at trash talking than he is at fighting.”

Rose frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t use that word disparagingly.”

“Oh, sorry. What I meant to say was, Big Ugly punches like a girl.”

She opened her mouth, no doubt poised to give him another lecture.

“I’m just teasing you,” Nick said, smiling. “I’ll quit it.”

She laughed, finally, seeming to accept that he meant no harm. “I’m sorry I got mad at you earlier for what you said to that other guy,” Rose said when her laughter trailed off. It looked to Nick like she’d been waiting for the opportune time to say it then decided to just blurt it out. He would’ve been perfectly happy to let it slide and pretend it never happened, but he appreciated her apology nonetheless.

“I’m sorry too,” he replied. He still wasn’t quite sure what he had to apologize for, but he would’ve said anything, apologized for every transgression his sex had ever committed that Rose wanted to foist on him, just to preserve this rare companionable mood she was in. More than that, he wanted to understand her and to know what set her off so he could maybe stop doing it long enough to win her over. Damn, he’d never had to try this hard for a girl before.
 

Moira took that moment to intrude, squeezing herself in the small gap between them. She was a bit sweaty from exertion and looked more than a little drunk.
 

“Hey, why aren’t you guys dancing?” she asked, helping herself to Rose’s beer and taking a huge gulp.

“Slow down, would you?” Rose said with a worried frown.

The other girl waved her concern away and nodded at a slick-looking guy by the club’s entrance. “I’m done for the night, I’m going home with him. His name is Dave and he’s a lawyer.”

Dave waved back at them and Rose responded with a scowl. She did not approve at all. “Are you sure that’s wise, Moira? You seem too drunk to be picking up strangers in a bar.”

Moira laughed. “I’m just the right amount of drunk for it, actually.”

Rose frowned, unconvinced. “If you keep pulling stunts like this, one day you’re gonna wake up in a strange guy’s bed with no clothes—”

“No memory, and a nasty venereal disease,” Moira finished for her. “How come you and Anna are always going on and on about that?”

“Because it’s true! It happened to—”

“To a friend of a girl in your Queer Theory class. Yes, I know.”

A friend
of a friend
of a girl in her Queer Theory class. Rose huffed in irritation as Moira continued.

“I don’t get you, Rose. Aren’t we supposed to be sex positive feminists? Don’t you believe that as women, we have full control of our bodies? What have you got against entirely consensual, casual sex?”