FORCE: Alpha Badboy MMA Romance (4 page)

BOOK: FORCE: Alpha Badboy MMA Romance
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5

 

Cameron’s knuckles were barely healed from the gashes of the mirror glass. After that night, shit fell apart in Colorado and it was time.

The gym at Southside smelled the same. Nothing here ever changed.

“So, what brings you back?” Cameron’s father wouldn’t meet his eye.

It was before noon. Larry was still sober.

Cameron spent the last week driving a slow road back to Detroit to find out six months gone hadn’t changed a thing.

“You know what brings me back.” Cameron did his best to keep his voice steady. Even sober, his father was a dinosaur sized asshole. “Where’s Ash? He’s training today, right?”

The clock showed 3:34, Asher usually came through the steamed up door of the gym right about now.

It had been almost six months since Cameron decided he couldn’t stand looking at her anymore and moved to Boulder to train with Armad Sinclair, a three time heavy weight UFC title fight winner who now ran one of the most successful training programs in the country.

Cameron didn’t tell anyone it took them a few weeks to allow him into the program. His reputation for resisting authority and being unpredictable preceded him.

Only to be let go last week because he couldn’t seem to keep his mouth shut and follow the rules. Big damn surprise.

Their training program was unique and demanded complete dedication. There was no life outside of the RAZE gym under Armad’s dictatorship; it was more cult than a training program.

Cameron never shied away from hard work; it was the bull shit rules about sticking to the strict daily schedule of meditation and group meetings every morning and night like some macabre fighter’s therapy session.

“He’ll be here. You been training?” Larry sucked the air between his teeth as he talked.

“Yeah.” Cameron’s eyes darted from the front door to the hallway behind the bank of worn, cracked blue and red folded mats that leaned up against the gray cinderblock wall.

The noises were the same, grunts and thuds and voices that urged the fight forward and demanded more from the embattled dancers that filled the training rings. There was a smell that eluded time itself, the combination of everything that made a place like this thump with its own heartbeat over the last fifty years.

Cameron hated that this place felt like home even as the dark fingers of childhood memories wrapped around his throat. He remembered his dad standing over him at five years old, his lip busted open, drops of blood falling in perfect round circles onto the mat below his feet.

Larry’s voice telling him it would not be the last time he spilled blood in the ring; reminding the little boy if he ever caught a tear coming out of him, he would show him a real beating. The images as real today as they were two decades ago.

A handful of years after Cameron took his first broken lip, it was Victoria that urged him on and gave him whatever comfort he would accept, handing him the icy cold towel for his swollen shut eyes. The face of a young girl that had no business being in a place like this at her age, quickly became the very reason he fought so hard to win.

To see her wince when he took a hard knee and watch her little hands clap when Cameron landed a concussion yielding blow to whomever met him inside the ring or the cage became the axis on which his fury turned.

With hair the color of shadowed bronze and brown eyes dappled with gold flecks, he made sure she was never far away. At least until six months ago.

She was here, now — somewhere inside this stinking icon of testosterone-dripping warrior training. There was no mistaking that he could feel her presence inside this unholy place where they spent the afternoons and weekends of their childhood.

While they worked, other kids were out riding bikes, getting candy from the corner store and sharpening sticks on the sidewalk for some battle that never seemed to come.

No, Cameron and Asher and Victoria were raised humping mats that weighed more than the three of them combined. Picking up dirty towels, sponging down mats covered with sweat and blood and who knows what else, and learning the intricate and beautiful dance of the fight.

“Well, if it isn’t the prodigal son. Welcome back.” Roger came around the corner, leaned on his cane every other step and Cameron felt his chest tightening.

“Heya. Thanks.” Cameron looked at the same eyes that inhabited her face, having to shake away the eerie similarities of father and daughter.

“Where’d you go? You fighting somewhere? You didn’t go back to the big-house did ya? Mess up some cop’s daughter or somethin’?” Roger let out a roaring laugh.

Even sober he talked like a drunk. He wasn’t much better than Larry, but at least he knew his lips turned upward every once in a while.

“Naw. I just traveled around. Went and saw Ahmad out in Boulder for a while. Fought out there for a couple months. Nothing much.” Cameron felt like a predator, his eyes never staying in one place for long.

“Roger ‘n me been training Ash to take the Winter Regional middle weight, he’s fighting like a pro.” Larry said.

“Yeah?” Cameron could hear the contempt in Larry’s voice. “Good for him.”

“So, you staying on through the holidays and after graduation? Or you just gonna fly in and back out and not tell anybody anything? Leave us all wondering if you’re dead or what.” Larry sniffed.

The man that called himself their father leaned back to rest his forearms on the top of the rope around the floor ring, swaying slightly back and forth as he looked out the foggy glass of the front windows.

“I called Ash. He knew I was okay. Don’t start your bullshit. Just because I didn’t call you, doesn’t mean nobody knew where I was. Your pity party don’t work on me.” Cameron directed his remarks to Larry’s smirking grin.

“Well, it’s good you’re back. Ash missed you terrible. You gonna stay around?” Roger’s six feet leaned hard on his carved wood cane. Cameron stood a good five inches above him, and it was hard to see he’d changed so much in the short six months.

“Yeah, I think.”

“So you think you gonna just move back in? You just move out without a word, come back into town like some hero…” Larry just kept charging the brigade, daring Cameron to accept the gauntlet he kept throwing down.

Cameron watched his knuckles turn a ghostly shade of white, he could feel the sound in the room turn to a low buzz. Any semblance of control he held was quickly waning as Larry’s voice pitched into his ears in a bizarre irony of self-righteous piety.

The buzzing stopped, and Cameron knew he needed to leave,
fast
before the tightness in his shoulder turned into a released canon ball right into Larry’s sweaty, swollen red face. Cameron lurched to stand full, towering over both the men that had been his broken and misguided mentors and parental figures for as far back as his memory served.

“MAN!!”

Cameron’s trigger went off.

Someone jumped him from behind -- locking their arm around his neck, twisting his head to the side and in the split second it takes to decide whether or not to bring the hammer down, the voice resonated with familiarity.

“Fuck dude…relax! What the fuck! I thought you weren’t coming until Thanksgiving.” Asher’s enthusiasm broke the spell and Cameron felt himself come close to a smile.

He pulled around to the front of his brother, their bodies coming together in a hearty back pounding bro hug.

“Got out of Boulder a little early. Gotta spend some time, holidays and all. Then see my little bro get that diploma. Little smart ass like you graduating early. Can’t just hump along like the rest of the pack and walk across the stage in June?”

It was true, he was missing Asher and would have come back for his graduation in December. But it was also true that Cameron had almost lost his mind thinking about her the last six months. What she was doing, who she was with, if she was safe.

He practically jerked his cock right off every damn night laying in that empty apartment thinking about the curve of her ass, the twinkle in her eyes, how she would taste under his tongue, the noises she would make the first time the tip of his cock slipped inside her.

He’d fought it long enough; it was time to light this candle or end the war that raged in his head over the last fifteen years.

“Ha! Damn dude, what they been feeding you? You taking shots or what??”

Asher poked at Cameron’s chest, the broad pectoral muscles thicker by at least two inches of pure lean muscle since he left.

“No, I don’t fuck around with that shit. You know me better. Naw, just nothing else to do but work out.”

“No hot ring girls to fuck out there?” He chuckled along with his whisper.

Asher’s crooked smile showed the glimmer of his white teeth, and his eyes were lit from behind like someone had just given him a long wished for gift.

“Shut up. When did you get such a nasty mouth?”

Before Asher could answer, Cameron almost forgot where he was.

There she was, walking up from the back hallway, her glowing brown doe eyes already fixed on Cameron with a tilt of her head and a cynical smile on her ruby pink lips.

There was nothing more beautiful in the world than what he saw right then. It occurred to him that he hadn’t gone more than a couple weeks without her since they were carrying lunch boxes to school everyday.

Fuck, Cameron felt his blood boil, thick and searing hot and his heart buckled under the pressure.

“Look who wandered back from the rockies…” Asher’s voice was light as he slapped Cameron on the back, but he could barely feel anything outside of the already raging thoughts of how badly he needed her.

“Hey, big brother.” Victoria lit up as she slipped her arms up and around Cameron’s neck.

The way her softness molded into him did nothing for his balance, and it took every iota of his will to give her a quick hug and then let her go. His cock had no shame and quickly jerked up about three inches in his pants as she pressed her body against his.

Six months of trying to shake her from his thoughts, to prove to himself that he could be away. After a month Cameron knew the only way to break the hold she had on him would be to put him in his grave.

“Quite the fucking family reunion, huh?” Larry grumbled like a thunderstorm.

Never one to find enjoyment in anything besides his own special kind of cruelty, he gave a nod of his head and turned on his heel to walk back toward the training room.

“You gotta suit up. Devon’s waiting for you.” Roger tilted his head for Asher to get moving.

“So, you just here ‘til graduation? Or are you stayin’?” Asher tried to disguise the hopefulness in his voice.

“Not sure. I’ll be around for a while. Graduation isn’t for another six weeks. I’m gonna train over with Reggie.”

For self-preservation, years ago Cameron split his training time between Southside and Tyson’s gym owned by his old friend Reggie.

There was one thing his father knew how to do, and that was train fighters. Unfortunately for Cameron it had come to pass that he’d almost killed his own father with a single punch after a lost training bout and a particularly vicious verbal assault from a drunken Larry.

Having a break from Larry worked out for both of them because Larry was still alive and Cameron wasn’t in prison.


Go
Asher. Get dressed and warmed up. You have ring time in 25. GO.” Roger growled.

Cameron didn’t hear anything.

Victoria crossed her arms over her chest, her chestnut hair hanging in two pigtails on each shoulder and Cameron knew as much as he ever did, that she was meant for him as much as blue was meant for the sky.

She filled out her jeans with the same ripe curves that flooded his memory every night since he left.

“Well, glad you’re back Cam.” Roger put his hand on Cameron’s shoulder. “You gonna come and spar now and then? Asher’s moved up — he might not be able to take you, but he’d give you a run. You’re always welcome here, you know that right?”

Roger wasn’t much better than Larry in the fathering department, but there were moments when he was far more human. Still, a shadow of something dark hovered around him and Cameron hated all the years she had to live with him after Emily was gone.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Roger gave a tip of his head, leaned on his cane and started back toward the front desk leaving her standing just inches away. He could smell her, and it may as well have been nerve gas because Cameron felt his brain lock down and his cock roar from down low.

Cameron played over and over in his mind every way he wanted to touch her, to taste her, to feel her from the inside. But now that the time was here to call this shit real, he felt like he was in for the fight of his life, and he couldn’t be sure how she was going to take it.

There was no doubt in his worldly mind that Victoria was his, always had been, always would be, he just needed to clear her head of whatever the world was telling her about what they should or shouldn’t be — and get her to be fucking real about it.

“So, Boulder, huh? You train with Ahmad?”

BOOK: FORCE: Alpha Badboy MMA Romance
5.13Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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