Unleashed (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) (110 page)

Kaminski approaches me in the cage, knocks his head against mine, so I head-butt him back, stare into his oddly glassy eyes.

“You ready, boy?” he barks into my face. I don’t flinch, I don’t back up, I just push my head into his, and grin at him.

“Are you, old man?”

“I may be old but I’ll fucking break you. I haven’t been licked yet.”

“How’s it going to feel?” I ask him. I grab his taped fists, squeeze them hard in my grip. “When you lose to some young punk like me? You going to retire, run away from the underground, too?”

That gets him riled. He huffs, grinds his teeth together.

Anything to get him off-balance. Anything to win. That’s how it goes in the cage.

“Alright,” the bald referee says, separating us with two beefy arms. He points at Kaminski. “No cheap shots.”

We back up, the referee slices his arm down the air between us, and the fight is on.

First thing’s first, I need the spectators on
my
side. I charge toward Kaminski, duck his sweeping hook, stutter-step left and right like a football player, before running up the cage fencing and leaping off, landing a blow straight onto the top of his head.

Kaminski clutches at his head briefly, and I back up, my knuckles on fire.

But that’s all it took.

Already the crowd is silenced, and that’s what I want. I don’t want them cheering Kaminski on. I want my opponent to hear the deafening silence of doubt.

I need to undermine his confidence.

“See,” I tell him, lifting my fists, beckoning him, grinning, taunting. “Old man slow right there.”

Kaminski shakes off the hit, but he’s already noticed how stunned the crowd were by my darting move.

He lifts his fists, boxer style, and starts to approach me with hopping steps, keeping his options open.

He wants to be able to throw a jab and counter with a kick, or feint a kick and swing a hook, or grab a hold of me and slam me to the mat.

By hopping, by not planting his feet, he keeps every option open, and makes his own moves unpredictable.

I settle into my stance, leading with my right. I watch his eyes flick to my fists and my feet, and then he grins at me. So he’s noticed I’m fighting left-handed.

Good.

We circle each other, dance around each other. I pay attention to the rise and fall of his feet, his weight distribution, the exact timing of his bobbing.

Kaminski checks me out, too. He’s never had the benefit of watching me fight before, and he doesn’t know what I’m capable of.

He may be old, he may be bitter, but he’s no idiot.

I don’t dare take my eyes off him. I want to look at Cassie, see her face, give myself that adrenal shot of purpose.

I’m fighting
for her
.

So I conjure up her face in my mind instead, think about her future, everything she wants to accomplish, everything threatening to be derailed by her fucking father.

I think of our future, together…

Our future!

If I’d told myself a year ago I’d be thinking like this, planning
ahead
with a girl… well, I’d have laughed myself out of the room.

“Come on you fuck!” he growls.

He makes his move, swings a head-kick my way. It’s quick, deceptively so, but I block it in time, slap his leg away and spin out of counter-space.

Kaminski switches pivots, but I know his kick is going to be a feint. He tests with his foot, then immediately launches himself forward, but again I spin away, use my turning momentum to throw a punch into his side with my left.

He backs away for a moment, looking at me from beneath bunched brows.

Fuck
. I used the wrong leg to pivot my spin, and he’s confused. He thought I was a southpaw, a lefty, but now he’s starting to realize I may be fully ambidextrous.

I settle more weight onto my right leg, try to sell my left-handed stance.

It’s all strategy. Some idiot fuckhead might think I’m being cheap, but winning a fight is not just a matter of strength and speed; it’s all a mind game.

Get into your opponent’s head, find a way to beat him. Some people hate it when you talk about their mother, others hate it when you tease them about swinging the other way.

But for most fighters, getting in their head is about deceiving them of your abilities, and then surprising them when the stars are aligned.

I need to get Kaminski where I want him, where I can take him down to the mat, grapple him, use my body to leverage his into a position where he can’t fight back.

And then choke the motherfucking life out of him.

I hop forward, jab with my right, hook with my left. He blocks my hits, counters lightning-fast for an old man.

I take a thump in the side; it lifts my whole body off the mat.

I duck the follow, sweep a kick at his calf. He skips it, tries a thunderous punch toward my temple. I roll away, kick off the mat and take Kaminski off his feet by his knees.

He hits the mat hard, like a wet bowling ball slapping concrete. I scramble over him, hook my arm beneath his armpit, roll over his back and wrap up his waist with my legs.

I pin his hips to the mat, turn his body so he has no purchase, no push-off point.

I grab hold of my own wrist, and pull the nook of my elbow up higher beneath his chin, digging into the side of his neck, squeezing his throat closed, and every major artery, too.

I’ve got Kaminski locked up, a rear naked choke, and he’s trying to roll me, trying to get leverage.

“Got you, motherfucker!” I snarl into his ear. The sweat from his hair sprays at me each time he moves.

He’s growling, drooling saliva, and the skin tone of his body has gone from tanned to deep red. He’s
pissed
, and he’s embarrassed that I got him to the mat so quickly.

He throws a fist backward over his left shoulder, but I dodge it. I don’t anticipate the second punch, though, over his right.

Kaminski catches me square on the nose, and my whole body jolts loose, my grip weakens, and he rolls out and clambers to his feet, foot raised to stomp-kick my gut.

“Chance!” Cassie shrieks. I’d know her voice anywhere.

I roll, Kaminski’s heel smacks the mat, and I sweep a whirling kick at him, but he hops it!

I jump to my feet, blood streaming from my nose, leaving splatters of crimson all over the grey mat.

The ref looks like he’s about to stop the fight, get the blood cleaned up when Kaminski launches himself forward.

I sidestep his grab-attempt, crack him with my left right on the chin, and he goes down hard.

Now the ref stops me, pushes me up against the chain-link cage.

“Stop!” he bellows. He motions for someone to get into the cage and wipe up the blood, and then he starts to attend to my nose.

“It’s broken,” he tells me, but I already knew that.

I pull out my mouth guard, and get in the ref’s face.

“Fuck you. I had Kaminski on the mat. You may have just lost me this fight.”

“No blood, boy,” the ref says, jabbing a finger at me. “Once you spring a leak, we got to fix it up. It’s the rules down here.”

“Stop the fucking bleeding, then,” I say. “And don’t fucking get in my way again.”

He takes a nasal spray from his pocket, jams it up my nostril and soon I feel an ice-burn on the inside of my nose. The bleeding stops. He filled my nostrils with glue.