Submission Moves: An MMA Romance (4 page)

Rose looked around, feeling conspicuous. But no one was looking at her. Why would they? No one knew she was the girl in question. No one would ever suspect. Not in a million years.

This is crazy
, she thought, nerves gnawing at her belly. What was she getting into with this guy? Nick was nothing like any boy she’d ever been with. Nothing like anyone she’d ever met. His violent day job included, everything about Nick Rossi screamed danger. The kind of danger that got supposedly sensible girls like her in trouble.
 

Then again, factually speaking, Nick was the best looking guy to ever show interest in her. She was not one to lose her head over a pretty face, but it just seemed rather pointless to deny herself of this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
 

Her phone pinged, putting an end to the angel-versus-devil debate inside her head. It was a text message from her best friend Anna.

At the club. So fun!!! Not too late to join us.

Anna hadn’t been too keen on the idea of Rose hanging out alone with a guy she’d just met. She got even more apprehensive when Rose told her that said guy was making her wait two hours. “Just bail on him,” Anna had said earlier over the phone. For the life of her, Rose just couldn’t do it, even though she found the whole predicament rather humiliating.
 

She keyed in her reply.
If I get bored, I just might.
 

K. Be safe. Don’t let your drink out of your sight. Remember what happened to the friend of that girl in our Queer Theory class? If he turns out to be a creep, get out of there fast!

Actually, it was
a friend of a friend
of the girl in their Queer Theory class, but she didn’t bother correcting her.
 

“Hey, beautiful.”

Rose had just managed to slip her phone back into her purse when she turned and found Nick looking down at her with a lazy smile. When he slid into the bench seat across from her, the rioting in her tummy worsened. It seemed surreal. Moments ago she was just watching him on the octagon, then on TV, and now he was here in the flesh, close enough to get a whiff of. She never thought that the smell of soap and fresh laundry could be such a huge turn on.

“Hey yourself, and congratulations on your win.”

He ducked his head and grinned, looking like he could burst with joy but was struggling to keep it cool. Rose was instantly endeared. This win will change his life, Angelo had told her. It was a
very
big deal.

“I’m glad you came and stuck around. I wasn’t sure you’d even be here.”

Rose gave him an evasive smile, liking that he didn’t just assume that she would wait for him as instructed. She decided he didn’t need to be told that she had considered leaving several times.
 

He ordered another beer for her and one for himself now that he was finally allowed to drink. They talked a little about his gruelling training regimen until the waitress arrived with their orders. Nick got a come-hither smile with his beer, Rose was annoyed to note.

Thanks a lot, sister.

But the waitress was far from the only one casting admiring glances at him. She nodded to a group of slutty girls at the next table who’d been watching them. “I see you’ve got yourself groupies already.” She regretted it the second the words left her mouth. Who was this jealous monster judging and hating on women she didn’t know?

Nick paid them a quick glance and laughed. “Don’t be jealous, Rosie. I’m all yours tonight.”

Tonight being the operative word. Tomorrow, they’d be back to their own lives and back in their own rung in the pretty people pecking order.
 

“How did you get into MMA, anyway?” she asked, shunting those pesky thoughts to the deepest recesses of her brain.

He took a deep, audible breath before he began. “I grew up in the Southside, a pretty shitty neighbourhood. There was a gym there that had free martial arts classes, some sort of outreach shit. I guess they hoped us kids would be too tired kicking the crap out of each other to get into any serious trouble outside. I loved it. I was there a lot. I practically grew up in that gym. And when I was seventeen, the gym had Joe Grayson over. He’s the current heavyweight champion,” he explained when no name recognition registered on Rose’s face. “He watched me spar and said I had potential. Then he offered to hook me up with the MMA gym he goes to in Sacramento.”

He took a long sip of his beer while Rose waited, rapt. “The next day I was on a Greyhound to California. I took whatever job I could–delivery guy, bouncer, construction, dishwasher, pool boy…” He counted them off on his fingers.
 

Rose could detect immense pride in his tone. This was a man who was as proud of his accomplishments as he was of what he’d had to do to get them. He reminded her a lot of her stepfather, a self-made man who believed that no job was too small for a man with a plan.
 

“Most of the time I worked in the gym in exchange for free training. I was the favorite sparring partner of many of the pro guys there because I could go toe to toe with them. Eventually, Joe sort of took me under his wing, and he let me tag along and train with him when he went to Thailand. And then Brazil. And then Japan.” He finished his story with a shrug and another long pull of his beer.

“Wow. That’s very impressive.”      
 

He waved her compliment away. “I dropped out in the 11th grade. I haven’t even gotten around to getting my GED yet. There isn’t much else I’m qualified for. I figured I better make this work. I got two younger brothers, college boys. They’re the brains in the family.”

Her legs should’ve clamped shut at that. Rose didn’t think of herself as a snob, not really. But a girl was allowed to have standards, right? She was usually attracted to intelligent, educated, cultured guys. But there was no denying that she was also attracted to Nick despite his rough edges and decided lack of polish.

 
She chalked it up to biology. Because as impressive as he was physically, he was hardly boyfriend material.
 

A wave of shame followed that thought, shame for her prejudice and presumptuousness. He was very likely not looking at her and thinking ‘girlfriend material’ either. There was only one thing he could be after.
And he thinks you’ll put out.
That sure cooled her raging libido.
 

She shifted her eyes away from him and concentrated on her beer bottle in front of her. A moment passed in silence. When she looked up, she found him watching her with an odd, almost intense expression softened only by the small smile playing on his lips.

“What about you? You’re some fancy college girl, aren’t you? I bet you’re real smart.” He grinned. “That’s so
sexy.”

Rose laughed. Men said that to women all the time. Very few actually meant it. She had a feeling Nick did though, that he was the kind of guy who had enough confidence and self-possession that he would never feel threatened by a woman who was smart. In fact, he’d prefer it.
That
was sexy. She decided she liked his brand of flirting. His was candid and without an ounce of pretentiousness. He didn’t try to impress her. He was just being himself, and he was secure enough to know that was enough.

“What do you study?” He licked his lips, a gesture born out of habit, Rose guessed. Angelo did it a lot too. It was not meant to be seductive. But with Nick doing it, it was seductive nonetheless. Watching that pink tongue darting out of his mouth and grazing his lower lip sent a delicious zing between her legs.
Whoa.
 

“I majored in Political Science and Women’s Studies.”

They were interrupted before Nick could reply.

“Excuse me, are you Niccolo Rossi? Can I get a picture with you?”

Rose found herself feeling irrationally possessive as a parade of adoring fans repeatedly interrupted their conversation to chat Nick up and take photos with him. Some were even rude enough to ask Rose to take the photo for them.

“Sorry about that,” Nick said with a sheepish smile when he finally extricated himself from one particularly gung-ho fan whose play by play analysis was longer than the actual fight. “You wanna get out of here? Go somewhere more private where we can talk?”

She did want him all to herself, but she also felt guilty taking him away from all the adoration he deserved. Plus the prospect of being somewhere “more private” with him terrified her a little.

“Don’t you have some victory party to go to?”

He shrugged. “Sure, the guys are at a club somewhere. But I don’t really go to those. That’s not the first thing I wanna do right after a fight.”

“What is it then? What’s the first thing you wanna do after a fight?” Even as the words left her mouth, Rose knew she’d somehow walked into dangerous territory. She’d been lured into it.

He leaned his elbows on the table and looked straight at her. “Fuck.”

Her eyes widened. Was that ‘fuck’ the expletive or ‘fuck’ the verb?

“The first thing I wanna do after a fight is work off all the excess adrenaline and testosterone in bed with a hot woman under me.” He spoke in a low tone, almost a whisper.
 

Now she should be offended. But she wasn’t. She was wet. Her hands trembled ever so lightly and her toes curled inside her shoes.
 

Just then, a smile broke through his poker face and he threw his head back, laughing. “You should see your face. You look just about ready to bolt.”

Her pride and what was left of her sense of propriety didn’t let her correct him.

“You don’t seem like that kind of girl though, so relax.”

His assumption was accurate; Rose was not into casual hook-ups. But she couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. Why did guys do that, divide girls into two camps—the proverbial Madonna and the whore? Women were more complex than that. She could appreciate that he thought well enough of her because she wasn’t “that kind of girl.” But this unenlightened, outdated version of gallantry would not be doing either of them any good tonight.

“I thought maybe we’d skip to the second thing I wanna do after a fight.”

“What’s that?” Rose asked, careful to keep any trace of regret from her tone.
 

“Eat. You hungry? Wanna grab a late dinner with me? Lady’s choice. Pick the fanciest place you can think of.”

Her hunger was for something else entirely, but she liked his company and was not ready for the night to end. “Sure, I could eat.”

“In the interest of full disclosure, I gotta tell you,” he leaned across the table once again to whisper, dark eyes glinting, “I
will
try to get you out of your clothes tonight.” He leaned back, casual as you please, and took another swig of his beer, never taking his eyes off Rose. “Tell me now if it’s off the table. We’ll have a nice dinner, flirt shamelessly, and if you’ll let me, I’ll kiss you goodnight when I take you back to your hotel. No pressure.”

Had she just been propositioned? Was that what this was? Her face remained carefully expressionless while her brain and her libido wrestled for dominance. It wasn’t even a close fight. “Why don’t we just skip to that then, the part where you try to get me out of my clothes? Not that I don’t appreciate you offering to buy me dinner first.”

A slow, wicked smile spread across his face. “Finish your drink,” he ordered in a low voice.

Rose obeyed, downing the rest of her beer in three large gulps. This was such a bad idea, and she knew it. But damn if it didn’t feel good.

CHAPTER 5

Rose only had a second to take in her surroundings before she heard the door close and locked behind her. She was in Niccolo Rossi’s room! A room he shared with someone else, judging from the twin beds and the two sets of luggage neither occupant bothered stowing in the closets.

The set up was nothing fancy. It would take a few more wins before Nick earned himself a suite, red carpet treatment, and a bevy of hotties throwing themselves at him. Tonight he had to make do with a regular room and a regular girl he picked up by the pool. She shook her head. Not the best thoughts to be entertaining when you were about to get hot and heavy with a guy.

“I share the room with Angelo,” Nick explained. “But don’t worry, I put the DND sign on the door. No one’s gonna bother us.”

Rose winced, unseen by Nick, who was standing behind her. It was all very…tacky. She couldn’t think of another word. He might as well broadcast it on the Internet that he was about to hook up with a random girl. An exaggeration, of course, but to Rose, who wasn’t used to any of it, that was how it felt.