Willing Victim (2 page)

Chapter Two

The nine bus rattled over the bridge as the sun disappeared beyond the buildings to the west. Laurel leaned against the window watching brick-lined blocks fly past between frequent stops. The robot voice announced Dorchester Street and she made her way to the front, thanked the driver and exited. Until the moment her feet hit the sidewalk, ushered her out of the dry, cold fridge of the bus and into the sticky July heat, she hadn’t been nervous. Now everything changed. She was a short walk from that man, the one whose face she could only roughly conjure three days after their introduction. Her throat tightened and she knew if her nerves had kicked in before she boarded the bus she’d have never gotten this far.

Too close to pussy out now.

The city smelled tired and beat, as though it’d spent a long day toiling in the summer sun. Laurel walked a couple blocks and found the address Flynn had given her, a bar with absolutely no pretense. It was one of those one-story brick buildings that could’ve easily been a real estate office or a laundromat or the sort of law firm that advertised with an 888 number. The sign over the door simply said “Bar”. The picture window showcased beer signs and the backsides of the drinkers who were leaning on the inside sill. Laurel took a deep breath and wrapped her fist around the door handle, not pulling yet.
Darts Night, Tuesdays, Nickel Wings from six to—

She didn’t get to finish reading the flier before the door swung open at her. She stepped back as two laughing men in Sox caps exited, oblivious or uncaring that they’d nearly knocked her down. They made a bee-line for the corner and dug packs of cigarettes from their back pockets. Laurel wasted a glare at them and yanked the door back open, greeted by near-deafening music.

The bar was steeped in a breed of nasty fragrance that’d gone unnoticed before the smoking ban drove its camouflage outdoors—restroom base with fry grease overtones. The dark space was filled close to capacity by bodies and loud, barking conversations. Laurel made her way around the venue, squeezing past a dozen sweatshirt-clad men, a few of whom gave her a cursory study. She didn’t spot Flynn and bit her lip, feeling as if she’d made a mistake coming here. She threaded her way to the taps, dodging the gesticulations of beer-impassioned baseball enthusiasts.

The bar wasn’t even made of real wood. Laurel leaned on the laminate and caught the eye of the bartender. He shouted over the music with all the charm of a carnie.

“Help you, Red?”

“I’m looking for Flynn,” she shouted back.

He leaned over the counter and pointed into the chaos. “Unmarked door past the men’s room. Make sure you close it behind you.”

“Thanks.”
Unmarked door?

She stopped in the fluorescent-lit peace of the women’s room to check her makeup and hair in the smoke-clouded mirror. None of the stall doors had working locks or toilet paper that wasn’t trailing on the tile so she decided to skip a pit-stop until later, when she’d likely be drunk enough to lower her standards.

Beyond the restrooms was a short stretch of hallway with the promised plain door at the end. Laurel pushed it open, greeted by a new set of smells. She stepped onto a landing and pulled it shut, started down a flight of metal steps toward an open doorway. She left the piss and grease behind, slipping into a headier cocktail of perspiration and something else, something medicinal. The temperature rose even as she descended. The music faded, replaced by barking voices, weird sounds. Her mouth fell open as she turned a corner and entered an alternate reality.

What had been a basement at one point was a boxing arena now, its perimeter lit by dim red bulbs, bright white ones hanging above the ring. Far less crowded than the bar but still bustling with a few dozen people, mostly men. The fighters in the elevated square ring were carrying on a tired, shuffling dance, both looking exhausted, both dripping sweat. Laurel’s fist tightened around her purse strap.

She jumped as a bell clanged. A pale, skinny teenager climbed up and over the ropes, grabbed one of the men’s wrists and thrust it into the air. The victory was met by jeers, not claps, the crowd clearly thinking the performance had been subpar.

Laurel felt displaced beyond belief, the pheromones drifting through the heady atmosphere pricking up her senses and magnifying her nerves. She made a wide circle around the ring. Her heart thumped hard then froze.

The first thing she saw was Flynn’s throat as he stretched his neck from side to side, tendons flashing, sweat slipping from his jaw to settle in the cradle at one end of his collarbone. He was bare to the waist, powerful muscles lit stark by the white light, sultry by the red. He looked both lean and heavy, raw and bruised and tattooed and feral. Muscles ticced and jumped in his arms as he stripped cotton bandaging off his wrists and tossed it in the trash basket behind him.

Laurel had no clue how to approach him but another girl beat her to it. Flynn looked up from rewrapping his hands as the woman stepped close, holding out a red plastic cup. He accepted it with a couple words and drank, Adam’s apple bobbing with his swallows. He set it on the ground beside a towel and crossed his arms over his chest. The woman set her fingertips on his forearms, stroking his skin as she said something and smiled. He nodded and reached a hand out, cupping the back of the woman’s head, leaning in and planting a gruff, possessive kiss on her mouth. She smiled and licked her lips as they separated, gave him a little wave and walked off.

Laurel’s heart beat somewhere between hummingbird and jackhammer. She aimed a final look at Flynn, hating him and hating her body for wanting his so fiercely. She felt drunk from the atmosphere and her own chemical chaos as she strode to the corner where the woman was filling another red cup from a keg set on a folding table.

Laurel made a quick inventory of her clothes, carefully chosen that afternoon to appeal to the sort of man she’d guessed Flynn was.
Idiot.
But judging by this woman’s similar ensemble, Laurel had gotten the dress code mainly right—jeans and ballet flats and a tank top, her rumpled hair strategically styled to look as though she’d rolled out of bed at noon.
Idiot, idiot, idiot.

Laurel stepped forward, throat constricting anew. “Excuse me.”

The woman straightened and smiled. “Hi. Beer?”

She blinked. “Um, sure.”

The woman slid a cup off a tall stack beside the keg and filled it, handing it to Laurel.

“Thanks.”

“This your first time here?” the woman asked, friendly, as though they were meeting at a mutual friend’s baby shower. Her niceness made Laurel hate Flynn even more deeply.

“Do I look that out of place?”

The woman smiled again and nodded. “You do.”

“I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into when I agreed to come… What is this, exactly?” Laurel asked. “A fight club?”

“Yeah, I guess you’d say that. It’s a gym by day, but it’s definitely not in the phone book. Every weekend it’s like open mic night for amateur fighters. And some not so amateur.” The woman’s eyes inventoried the room, hitting Flynn and a few other burly specimens.

“Do the people drinking upstairs know about it?” Laurel asked.

She shook her head. “Only the staff. I think that’s why they keep the music so fucking loud, to cover up the sounds of ass-kicking. And I bet somebody gets wasted once in a while and wanders down here, looking for the can and getting a heck of a surprise.”

Laurel nodded, swallowed the lump still lodged in her throat. She couldn’t keep up the pretense of chit-chat any longer, not with this friendly woman. “Look, I’m sorry, this sort of isn’t my business at all, but I thought you deserved to know…”

The woman’s brows rose over the lip of the cup as she took a sip. “Know what?”

“I met him the other day.” Laurel nodded to where Flynn leaned against the cinderblock wall, watching the match. “Flynn? He’s the one who invited me… We sort of flirted a little and I asked him out. I’m sorry. I didn’t know he had someone. He made it sound like he was single. I thought you should know.”

The woman laughed, the skin beside her dark eyes crinkling and placing her age around thirty-five. “You’re cute. Don’t worry though, Flynn’s not my boyfriend.”

Laurel blinked, unsure what to do. So he wasn’t a shady asshole…that was something. Not enough to salvage Laurel’s hopes for the evening, but something.

“Flynn and I just sort of…scratch each other’s kinky itches.” She made a silly face. “Sorry if that’s too much information. Anyhow, it’s just casual.”

Laurel smiled to hide her deepening discomfort. She drank her beer and both women turned to watch the fight.

At length, Laurel found the balls to ask, “What kind of itch?” The warm buzz of the alcohol and the intoxicating, masculine smell of the place made their conversation seem strangely appropriate. Or nearly. “Oh sorry. I’m Laurel, by the way.”

The woman accepted the hand Laurel put out. “Pam. And Flynn’s just willing to go places with me that other guys won’t. Sort of rough places. Well, really rough places.”

“I see.”

“He’s not afraid to be a bad person,” Pam said. “In bed.”

“I’ll bet.” Laurel watched him warming up, throwing punches at the air as his eyes followed the fight center stage. His abs and chest tightened with each invisible strike, making Laurel imagine him above her in bed, thrusting. She didn’t hate him anymore, nor her body’s craving for his, but knowing he had a lover and a set of sexual proclivities she didn’t share weighed the attraction down. He’d warned her, so no harm no foul. Laurel decided if she wasn’t destined to score a date tonight, she’d at least make the most of the trip and indulge in a little tourism, explore this strange, violent microcosm she’d stumbled into.

“Flynn looks like one of the bigger guys,” Laurel said. “Is he good?”

“Yeah, he is. So good he’s probably bored.”

She and Pam wandered closer to the ring to make room for the queue forming by the keg.

“Why do you think he does it then?” Laurel asked. “Money?”

Pam shrugged. “No money, except maybe a few shady bets in the corners. You’d have to know Flynn to get it. He likes hitting. He likes getting hit too, I think. He’s a bit of a thug,” she added with a fond smile.

“In and out of bed, it sounds like,” Laurel said. Not that it was necessarily a criticism.

Pam shrugged again. “What I told you, about him sexually…don’t jump to condemn him or anything. He’s actually really kind.”

Laurel frowned, not sure she was looking to get pushed around under the sheets, supposed kindness aside. She let herself process a hunk of disappointment, sad that her ridiculous impulse to have a fling with the man wasn’t going to pan out. So much for her brief foray into adventurousness.

“It doesn’t make him a bad person,” Pam said, seeming to study Laurel’s expression. “He gets off on being rough and domineering and cruel, but it’s not who he
is.”
Her eyes moved to the ring. “Just like me wanting to pretend a man is forcing me once in a while doesn’t mean I secretly think I deserve to get raped or that I’d ever in a million years
want
to be. It’s all about control—having it or giving it up. It’s really freeing, when it’s your thing.” Pam’s therapist-office tone made it clear she’d had to explain this to a few skeptics in her time.

“I’m afraid it’s not
my
thing.” Laurel took a couple sips, studying the man who made her body so antsy with curiosity, sad she couldn’t get on board with his kinks. Though thank goodness she hadn’t found out the hard way.

Pam licked her lips, mischievous. “You sure? Anybody can see how you look at him. There might be some tiny sliver of your animal self that’s just a little bit attracted to that. Our bodies can hone in on those things. You can’t always choose who turns your crank.”

“I don’t think I’d ever want to pretend I was being…forced. No offense to you, I mean. It just sounds really creepy.”

“It’s not always that intense,” Pam said. “Sometimes just being bossed around is enough.”

A flare of collective noise filled the air as one of the boxers took a hard hook to the head.

“Think about it,” Pam said.

Laurel jolted as the bell rang and fighters fell back, looking limp and exhausted. The ref called a winner and the crowd cheered and booed its agreement or dissent.

“Flynn’s next,” Pam said. “Watch him and try to let yourself relax and think about what it is you find so attractive about him.”

Laurel’s eyes took him in again. She swallowed. “I’m going to grab another beer. Do you want one?”

“Yeah, I’d love that.”

Laurel returned with two fresh cups just as Flynn and another man climbed into the ring, donning their gloves and game faces, looking impossibly tall from where Laurel stood. Flynn wore low-slung track pants that showcased the sinful V of his hip muscles and tight expanse of his abdomen. Laurel wanted to tug them down an inch, enough to expose the dark hair she imagined must be hiding just behind the waistband. His eyes were at once calculating and wild, an image of his face in the throes of excitement flashed like a dirty movie across her mind—a meanness in that stare, a cruel sneer on his lips, a flare of his nostrils, a heaviness in his lids as he gave himself over to the dark things he craved. Her throat went dry as chalk.

Flynn’s opponent was a black guy, nearly as tall as him and maybe a dozen pounds bulkier.

“Corners,” the young ref said and the men tapped gloves before Flynn stepped to one side, facing away from Laurel. He had a fierce back, two strong muscles pinched together between his shoulder blades, his shoulders rounded swells above cut arms.

The bell sounded. Not men anymore. Animals. Circling, anticipating, sizing one another up and sniffing for weaknesses. Laurel’s focus glazed over as she imagined those strong arms braced on either side of her ribs, tight, that powerful chest and stomach clenching with rough, selfish thrusts.

Pam nudged her softly with an elbow. “Still not curious?”

She kept her eyes on the fight, in awe of the cold look on Flynn’s face. “There’s something about it, I know. But it still scares me, the stuff you said he’s into.”