A Fighting Chance (19 page)

Her lips hum across my cheek and stop at the corner of my mouth. “I’m
saying
it
.
” 

So I kiss her, and we surrender to desire we both know is reckless and forbidden. But it’s also hungry and unstoppable. Between ragged breaths, my tongue strokes hers, and her fingers dig into my back as mine
get caught in her hair. I feel her touch inside as much as I do out. I’m shaking when my teeth graze her neck. My lips trace the line of her jaw, and the sounds that come out of her only stoke the desperate fever in my bones. Again, a woman moaning is the hottest thing ever.
Especially
this one.

Drew, breathless,
steps back, her fingers still clawing me. “What else are you asking, Jess?”

“What else do you want, Drew?” I whisper, but her lips just fall on mine again. We collapse
against each other, and the friction of our bodies is overwhelming. I drown in the heightened pleasure of her touch as her needy fingers press into my neck and her breasts mash against my chest. We kiss with even more abandon than before, sinking into every ounce of raw, naked lust we’ve both been suppressing. We’re just lips and teeth and tongues and moans. All the stuff rabid sexual tension is made out of. The rough way our lips move makes mine feel bruised, and I don’t care because the taste of her mouth is that damn intoxicating.

The thing about lines? They stop being dangerous the moment you cross them; they stop mattering then, too. And instead of admitting that, you just set another limit, raise the stakes, draw another boundary for your sins, and find a way to justify your actions. Like how I tell myself Drew and I are
just
kissing. It’s the mix of alcohol and old feelings in a hot nightclub. Nothing a little morning sunlight won’t fix. I tell myself at least we’re not sleeping together. But the truth is, I would. Right here if she let me.

Fuck.

Nothing this bad should ever feel so good.

Drew breaks away first. “You want to fuck me, Jess?” Biting her lip, she waits in nervous anticipation as I process her words.

Who the hell would say no? “Until you can’t take it,” I say.

“You still remember what I like?”

“Yup.” She gasps when I lean in and flick my tongue very slowly over her earlobe over and over again. “And I still like eating pussy. I’m better at it, too.”

“Damn…” she whispers.
Drew buries a shudder under giddy laughter and the verbal foreplay loses its appeal. I grab her hand and we head for the exit.

“I’m gonna tell Miguel we’re going,” she says, once we’re outside. There are plenty of cabs waiting across the street, and I signal a driver as Drew types away on her cell phone. “He’s not responding. I don’t want to just leave without seeing what he wants to do. Who knows when he’ll read the text,”
she continues. “You wanna check the men’s room and the first floor, and I’ll run to the second floor?”

Way to cockblock unintentionally, Miguel.
“Yeah,” I say as we walk back into the club’s choppy strobe light darkness. “Text me if you find him. Meet back here in ten?” Nodding, Drew hurries for the staircase as I go toward the restroom. I find Miguel near the bar laughing with a different group of women and he signals for me to come closer.

“We were just looking for you.
What’s up with your phone, dude?”

He lifts his chin at two of the girls, who are snapping duckface selfies on his cell. “Ladies,” Miguel says, with a squeeze to my shoulder, “meet
El Americano
!” I’m wary of the publicity but I shake all their hands as they pepper me with questions I don’t understand. “They were at the fight. They were watching you dance, too. How’d you like Camila? She’s good, right?”

“You sent her over?”

“I told you, I’m here to make you look good. Get people talking. Where’s Drew?”

“Upstairs, I think. We were gonna head out.” I fake-yawn before he can figure out what we are really up to.
Even though I suspect that he probably saw us.

“Let’s wait for her to come back down. I need to tell you something, anyway.” Miguel says goodbye/flirts with the women one last time before we walk to the staircase.
“I found out something for you. So, that guy you fought, José, I kept thinking about what he said to you…” His voice trails off like he suddenly feels guilty for bringing it up. In truth, I wish he hadn’t, but I nod for him to continue because now I’m curious. “I asked Sandrine to find out for me. He’s a low-level cartel fighter. Very low-level. He was being literal. He couldn’t stop fighting you. He probably would’ve been killed. Probably happened anyway, since he lost. Cartel puts money into him for training, housing, all that stuff, and he has to pay it back, with interest. Losses…aren’t good.”

Is this what Henry meant by sponsorship? Is this what he was trying to get me involved in f
ive years ago?
My father is a fucking money-hungry idiot. My muscles contract in a wave of boiling rage as I remember the way he painted what Francisco Acevedo did for fighters. Mansions. Money. Girls. And a way to bond with
him
. Irresistible bait to a seventeen-year-old boy, especially one starving for daddy’s affection.

“That’s crazy. Is that normal?” I ask, but Miguel’s attention is turned to whatever he’s frowning at above us. I turn around and Drew smacks right into me at the bottom step.
I catch her, literally, mid-run, and I see relief force out the slight look of fear on her face. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“
Oh, thank God. There was a guy, um…he was grabbing me…uh…I just swung.”

“Slow down,” I say, holding her against me.
“Did someone hurt you?”

She nods. “A guy upstairs.
I was walking around looking for Miguel. He came over and said someone wanted to meet me. I refused and he said no wasn’t an option. Then he tried to drag me up to another floor, so I punched him and ran.” Drew is composed but my anger hits me so hard I back up. “It happened so quickly.”

I glance up at the shadowed figures
above us. “Which guy?” I say with clenched teeth, and adrenaline courses through me with vicious heat.

“
He’s wearing a bright red tie. He has spiky hair,” Drew explains. There’s already some swelling around her knuckles.

“Does it
really hurt?” Miguel asks.

“It looks worse than it feels. Promise,” she says.

“Okay, good. I’m gonna go have a word with him.” I take the stairs two at a time, and Miguel’s right on my tail.

“
You’re really just going to talk to him?” he asks with an amused look of doubt, but I nod because that’s actually Plan A. Whether we get to Plan B is wholly dependent on Grabby.

“That’s him!” Drew points as she sidle
s up between us. His bright red tie stands out against his black on black suit, sweat bonds his dark curly hair to his forehead while the back is still spiked up. He’s all ego and shit-eating grins, and he’s already hassling another woman at the bar. The sight of his hand clamped around her upper arm sends me to a level of fury I didn’t think I was capable of reaching anymore.

Miguel and I storm up, and after I tear
his hand off the scared shitless woman, we both shove him backward. Bottles from the bar top shatter to the floor, and the guy even knocks down a chair as he tries to grab for
anything
that will slow the forced momentum. A chorus of excited chatter rises once I have him collared against the wall, and I sense a crowd gathering behind us.

The man ho
lds up his hands, his expression filling with terror and bewilderment. “What? It’s not fun when it’s not someone you can just manhandle?” I say.

“Qué? What are you talking about?” he asks in heavily accented English. Up close
there’s a fresh bruise on his jaw, courtesy of Drew.

Without knowing if
she is behind me, I point. “My friend. You tried to take her somewhere against her will. Maybe I should take
you
somewhere. Down that flight of stairs, face first.”

“
No, not necessary.” An insincere smile breaks through his frightened look. “I did not know she was with you, my friend. I understand now.
Lo siento.
I’m very sorry, okay?”

I’ve heard disturbing things about Mexican jails,
and I’m not
really
interested in confirming any of them, so I ease up a little. A burly man with a mustache shakes the beam of a flashlight between Red Tie and me. “Hey,
hablo
English?” I ask.

I can tell from the way the corner of his m
outh twitches that I’m botching the language, and I don’t know why but I also get a sneaking suspicion that he’s about to out-douchebag the man I have pinned to the wall. “What’s the problem?” he hollers over the music.

“This guy is
harassing women. He did it to my friend, and I saw him—”

“Enrique?” the security guard says, interrupting me as he pries my hand off the guy. The two of them start laughing and speaking in Spanish, my grievance apparently disregarded. Enrique gestures up at the dark staircase leading to the third floor, and my gaze moves with his hands. There’s a secur
ity guard posted on the landing and as my eyes drift, I spot a glass panel in the wall above us, and vibrant multicolor lights are bouncing around shaded bodies beyond it. It’s either a private party or some exclusive part of the club, and that’s where he was trying to take Drew.

“Time to leave,” the security guard says to me, grippi
ng my arm with a rough shake.

“Wait. You’re escorting
me
out?” I ask, incredulous, but I go with him as he yanks me toward the first floor stairs.

“
Si, y
ou and your friends have to go,” he says. 

“They’re kicking us out,” Miguel
informs Drew. She shoots a disbelieving glare between Enrique and the security guard, but we all stop short of the banister when a giant figure descends the private floor staircase, his massive shadow covering us in deeper darkness.

“
Oh. Shit,” I say when he steps into the glow of the overhead lighting. It’s Carlos Garcia. He’s in street clothes now, jeans and a black t-shirt, and his hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail. He’s clutching a Modelo and a giggling woman.
“How’d you hear about this place, Drew?”

“From someone
at
the fight.” She shields her embarrassed look with her palm. “A girl I talked to was just naming a bunch of places. She’s a local, and she said this one was good. Lots of locals and not too many tourists.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong…” I reassure her with a hug.

“I was going to bring you here at some point. It’s popular with the fight crowd,” Miguel explains.

“Enrique! Qué pasó?” Carlos yells over our heads. He doesn’t notice us at first
as he walks toward Enrique. But then he backtracks until he’s standing in front of us, and his eyes immediately plow into Drew. I wrestle out of the security guard’s grasp and block her with my body as another spike of adrenaline rockets into my bloodstream. With irritated reluctance, Carlos pulls his focus off her, and a grim, dark stare settles on me, instead. I was wrong before about his eyes. They aren’t always empty. There is something in him that I didn’t see before when he was in the cage, and it’s sinister and feral.

He leers at Drew as he
talks to the security guard standing near us. “What’s he saying?” I ask Miguel, ignoring the deep chill lashing my back.

Miguel
takes halting steps toward them, leaning in. “Uh…he’s asking what’s going on, and what the bouncer was about to do with us…” he explains. His voice shakes as worry bleeds in, and it evokes apprehension in me, too.

“
Hola,
” Carlos says to Drew. It’s the only Spanish word I recognize but he continues to speak, tapping the security guard when he’s finished.

“He says, ‘You are
very beautiful. I remember you from earlier tonight, at the fight,’” the man translates. “And he wants to know if you enjoyed it.”

“No.
It was disgusting.” Gently stroking my arm, she asks me, “Can we go?” Carlos’s expression hardens with unfettered rage as he launches his beer bottle to the floor, eliciting startled screams from a few women. His eyes bounce between my face and where Drew’s holding me. He doesn’t like that she’s disregarding him for me. This guy is so full of crazy that it doesn’t take much to set him off.

“
Yeah. Let’s go.” But I don’t for one fraction of a second take my eyes off Carlos as I plant a foot behind me. He takes a step toward us, but it’s the security guard who actually clutches Drew’s arm before either of us can move any farther, and my already stampeding heart rate kicks up a notch.

“He wants to know if you know who he is,” the security guard explains as Carlos speaks. Cocodrilo’s gaze, choked with lust, coasts down Drew’s entire body as he waits.
She’s
really
nice to look at, and guys have been checking her out for as long as I’ve known her, but what Carlos is doing—rolling his tongue along his lips and flicking it at her—is really fuckin’ disgusting.