Knockout (3 page)

            “I want to watch you come,” he said.

            Slowly, I slid off of him, and turned around. Kneeling over him on the sofa, he eased me back down. He braced his hands on my hips again, and began to move me up and down on his shaft with hard, purposeful movements. I pressed my hands into his shoulders as I moved with him, meeting him stroke for stroke, push for push. I could feel my climax building, and I rocked my hips forward, trying to get my release.

            “Oh, fuck yeah,” Kirk grunted as he slammed up into me. “You are so tight. You feel so good.”

            Something about the expression on his face made me come. I pitched forward, gasping as my orgasm rolled over me. He held me tightly as he thrust a few more times before he came too. We collapsed onto the sofa, breathing hard, but fully sated.

            “Well,” Kirk said. “I certainly wasn’t expecting that.”

Chapter 6

Kirk

            As I watched Emily get dressed, I wanted to fuck her all over again. Not only did she have a seriously smoking hot body, but I had actually felt connected to her at the same time I was screwing her brains out. Lotus had always preached connection, but I’d never felt it before. But with Emily, I did.

            “That was pretty good,” she said, smiling cheekily over her shoulder at me. As she slid her panties on, she drew a finger along her slit, and walked over to me. She popped her finger into my mouth. I swirled my tongue around it, making her shiver. She grinned. “I just want you to know how I taste. That way, you’ll be ready for next time.”

            Suddenly I couldn’t resist the temptation. I pulled her down beside me on the sofa. She only had her bra and blouse on, with her panties dangling around her knees. “What are you doing?” she asked as I leaned in to kiss her again.

            “Just you wait and see, “I said. Before she could ask any more questions, I positioned her so she was laying back on the sofa. I slid her panties back off, and spread her legs. Staring down at her glistening pussy, I knew I could make her come so hard that she’d scream. As I hooked her knees over my shoulders, she seemed to understand what I was doing and her head fell back on to the cushion.

            I dipped my head, and drew my tongue against her swollen pussy. Swirling the tip of my tongue around the hard nub of her clit, she bucked against me. I smiled. Round one had made her extremely sensitive. She was going to be easy to get off this time. I plunged my tongue into her pussy, and she moaned.

            “Oh fuck,” she murmured, moaning again. As she writhed beneath my mouth, her moans grew louder until she screamed, “I’m coming! I’m coming!”

            “Thanks.” She gave me a grin as she pulled on her skirt. She stuffed her panties into her purse. “These are a little too soaked to wear.”

            As she was fixing her hair, running her fingers through the soft strands, there was a pounding at the door. “Kirk, let me in. What are you doing? There are people out here who want to talk to you.”

            I unlocked the door, and let Martin in. Scowling, he looked Emily up and down like she was a hooker. I wanted to punch him in the face but I refrained. “I’ll be back after I walk Emily to her car,” I said in a hard voice.

            “You know,” Emily said. “There’s a qualifying fight at that gym on Edmunds. You should go for it. Our gym will sponsor you.”

            Martin’s face turned red. “You don’t need a qualifying fight,” he snapped. “Didn’t you just tell me that you wanted to do this for the rest of your career?”

            I gave him a confused look because he had been the one who wanted me to seek out gym sponsorship, and get into legitimate matches. That was when it hit me…he was jealous. He had wanted to be the one to save my career, make me a big deal, and here was Emily handing it all to me so easily.

            “I’ll be back in and we can discuss it then,” I said.

            “Yeah, get rid of this tramp,” Martin said.

            The way Emily’s face fell made my stomach drop. Then the rage followed. “You better get out of my way,” I said in a tight voice. Martin must have heard the anger in my words, because he backed off.

            “Let’s go,” I said in a softer tone to Emily. I put my hand on the small of her back as I guided her past my asshole of a manager.

            When we stepped out into the warm night, I felt myself relax slightly. “I’m sorry about Martin,” I said. “He’s a jackass. He doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.”

            Emily shrugged. “He’s a jerk. A lot of guys are jerks. I’ve learned not to take it too personally. I just don’t understand why you let him represent you.”

            I opened my mouth to tell her about how he’d stuck with me, but the words tasted foul and sour on my tongue. Suddenly all my old arguments didn’t ring true anymore. “You know, that’s a great question. I think it might be time for me to have a serious discussion with him.”

            “I meant what I said about the qualifying match,” Emily said with a sweet earnestness in her voice. I knew she believed what she was saying, but I didn’t know what to say back. These bare knuckle fights were what I wanted to do, but what Emily was offering was a path that could really take me places.

Chapter 7

Emily

            I could see the hesitation on Kirk’s face as I talked about the qualifying match. The fact that his manager had called me a tramp made me push forward with the conversation, though.

            “I’ll think about it,” he said finally as we got to my car. He pressed me against the car, and kissed me deeply. Our tongues tangled, and I sighed at the pleasure of having someone who turned me on so hard and fast.

            Kirk broke the kiss, and looked down at me with something like affection in his eyes. “I’m glad I met you,” he said.

            After he slid his fingers in and out of me, building me to a frenzy. I pushed his shorts down again, freeing his erection. Kirk lifted me, pressing me against my car as I wrapped my legs around his waist. He entered me in one swift motion. He fit inside of me so well that it all felt so natural. With a few swift thrusts, I came, fast.  Kirk pulled out, and he came outside of me.

            We stood by my car, panting, staring at each other. “I think I need to go,” I said. “If I don’t go now we might wind up doing this all night.”

            “I could go for that,” he said with a wobbly grin. It was nice to know that he was as affected by this as me.

            “Me too, but you need to go deal with your manager, and I need to get home…and recuperate.” I gave a shaky laugh.

            “I’ll come by the gym tomorrow,” he promised.

            When I got to the gym, I let myself in the back door. I always enjoyed the gym late at night. I had started coming in late during high school when I couldn’t sleep. I’d box until I was too exhausted to think, and then I’d head to the back office where I would crash on an old army cot.

            Tonight, I was still so hyped up on my after sex adrenaline that I decided to go a few rounds with the punching bag. I retrieved my work out gear from my office, laced up my gloves, and turned on a single light. I swung hard, dancing on the balls of my feet, imagining that I had a formidable opponent like Kirk had faced tonight.

            By the time I was done, I was spent, but I felt spectacular. I flopped down on a couch in the back of the gym with a bottle of water, and looked around the space that had been my home, my family’s life blood for longer than I could remember. In the warm glow of the single light and still on an exercise high, the place didn’t look shabby to me at all. Instead, it made me happy that I was working harder than ever to keep this place afloat.

            I knew I needed to go visit Pop. Ever since he’d moved to Florida to celebrate his retirement with a playful older woman, I barely saw him. We spoke once a week at least, and I always tried to avoid talking about the gym. I absolutely hated disappointing my father, and the gym had been in decline for so long that there never seemed to be anything to say. Now, though, I might actually have some good news to tell him. He’d have something to look forward to when he came back to visit me. He’d see the old gym thriving. And then he wouldn’t regret giving me this place.

            Excitement coursed through me. I knew that I was putting all my eggs in one basket, but something innately told me that I could trust Kirk. Now I just hoped that he’d take my invitation and come fight at the qualifying match.

Chapter 8

Kirk

            “Did you get rid of your groupie?” Martin asked as I got back into the warehouse space.

            I gave him a look. “That was Emily Morris. She’s considering sponsoring me. You idiot. You know you could have cost us that sponsorship. Why did you do that?”

            Martin frowned. He had the decency to look slightly chagrined, but I knew that he wasn’t really sorry. The next words out of his mouth were, “So you fucked her to seal the deal?”

            That was too much for me. I balled my hand into a tight fist and decked him in the jaw. “Don’t talk about her that way.”

            “What the hell, man?” Martin yelped as he cradled his jaw with one hand. “It’s not like she’s your girlfriend or something.”

            I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Of course, Martin was right. Emily wasn’t anything more to me right now than a fuck partner. Still, there had been something that passed between us when I had been inside of her. What was I doing? How could I be losing my edge just from meeting a woman? And yet, all I could think about was getting back with her. Making her smile. Making her come. I felt my cock getting hard just thinking about her, so I turned away from Martin.

            “Go to hell, Martin,” I said quietly.

            “What did you just say to me?” he asked, his voice coming out like a shriek.

            “Go fuck yourself, Martin,” I said more firmly. “Get out of here. We’re done. You’ve taken my career as far as you can, and now it’s time for me to manage myself.”

            “You can’t fire me, you ingrate,” Martin yelled. “I made you. If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be just some punk kid getting into fights on the street.”

            Suddenly I saw him how everyone else must have seen Martin. He was a desperate leech who had been trying to push me into whatever role would make him the most money or garner him the most prestige. He had stuck with me for what I could do for him, not because of any loyalty that he felt for me. The realization hit me hard. It made me want to punch him again.

            “Just get out,” I said. Keeping my voice hard, I pointed toward the door. Martin spluttered for another moment, but finally he swore at me again, and stalked out of the room.

            I sank down on to the sofa where just half an hour earlier, Emily and I had fucked so perfectly. Emily. The way she’d told me that I was better than these illegal fights. She’d meant every word she’d said, and it felt good. She cared about what I was doing, she was willing to take a chance to sponsor me even though she really didn’t approve of what I was doing now.

            I found myself thinking that I didn’t want to disappoint her. That thought was pretty foreign to me. For so long I had lived my life only for myself. My parents had drifted out of my life when I was sixteen. I had never really had a serious relationship. Martin had been the only person I’d trusted for a long time, and now that had shattered. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

            Standing, I began to pace around the small dressing room space. Trusting people hadn’t gotten me anywhere, had it? So why would I want to get close to Emily? But even as I thought the question, I felt pulled toward her.

            I ran a hand over the fuzz on the top of my head. What was I thinking? I couldn’t even get my brain going in the right direction, or going in any direction for that matter.

            Grabbing my wallet and keys, I headed out into the now empty warehouse. The lights were still blazing, but the space lacked the energy and excitement of the crowd, so it just looked forlorn. I climbed into the ring, and paced from corner to corner. When I had been fighting tonight, seeing Emily had given me the edge that I’d needed to win. That had to mean something. And when she had suggested the qualifying match, I’d actually thought about it in a serious way.

            Being a legit fighter would mean that I could compete for some real prize money, not just the pittances that I earned at my usual fights. When I got to thinking about why I had never pursued a more traditional, less illegal route, I got the uncomfortable thought that maybe I had been afraid. That wasn’t a term I would ever use to describe myself, but that was the only explanation I could come up with as to why I let Martin direct my career for so long.

            I threw some practice punches into the air. I always loved the way my muscles felt when they connected with another person. The bare knuckle fights gave me the intensity of the contact that I seemed to crave, but if I had Emily to spend all my spare time with…then maybe I could get used to using a pair of gloves.

            In these quiet moments in the ring, my thoughts screamed loudly at me. I couldn’t think about these things normally because there was too much noise around me. I didn’t know much at this point. I was suddenly manger-less, and I was into a woman that I barely knew. I couldn’t get my thoughts straight, and I didn’t think that I could ever get more confused than I was at that moment.

            All I really knew was that I had some very big decisions to make.

Chapter 9

Emily

            The mood at the qualifying match was completely different than Kirk’s other match, but still just as exciting. I had come early to talk to Allen, the gym’s owner. We swapped industry gossip and he asked about my dad, but I hadn’t been able to work up enough courage to ask him if Kirk was registered to fight. Nerves fluttered through my stomach as I found a seat in the bleachers.