Rough Around the Edges (2 page)

He liked Sanchez, but he wasn’t going to mess around.

Turned out Sanchez wasn’t going to take it easy on him because he was new, either. As soon as the match started, he threw a fast jab at Ryan’s face.

He bobbed, and as Sanchez’ gloved fist flew by his cheek with a whip of cool air, he came alive.

His heart sped, but the rhythm felt easy, familiar. His body was quick to move, his muscles tensed in all the right places, but the fighting pose was as comfortable as lying in bed at night. A hell of a lot more comfortable, actually. This was where he belonged – inside a ring, where the only thing that mattered was the fight. He could control the outcome of a fight if he kept his head straight, and knowing that was enough to send a burst of hard-edged joy through his heart and into his veins, fueling his counter-attack.

As quickly as he possibly could, he reached for Sanchez and gripped one of the man’s shoulders, simultaneously bringing his knee up in an efficient arc.

Oof
. Sanchez doubled over, his hard body folding around the even harder point of Ryan’s knee.

A moment later, he pulled back, beginning to straighten.

Ryan let Sanchez’ shoulder slip from beneath his hand and bounced on his toes as he resumed his guard, wary of retaliation.

Nobody liked to be hit first, and Sanchez was no exception. As he stood again, slightly curled in a fighter’s pose, his dark eyes were wiser and calculating.

Ryan tried a few strikes, hoping to catch Sanchez off guard while he was busy plotting his counterstrike, but Sanchez had become more defensive. He dodged a hook and parried a jab, then lashed out with a hook of his own.

The punch landed above Ryan’s ear and tipped his head.

Ryan did his best to absorb the blow without stumbling. It was a relief when the initial shock faded, leaving him with an increased edge to his desire to walk away from the match victorious. Spotting an opening, he slid forward and gripped Sanchez, going for a sweep.

He almost pulled it off. Almost. Sanchez broke the clench at the last second, escaping.

Ryan liked to think he was good at anticipating his opponents’ moves, but as Sanchez launched himself forward like a speeding rocket, he was caught so off guard that he slowed, succumbing to a burst of shock.

In one of the most surprisingly-efficient maneuvers Ryan had ever witnessed, Sanchez succeeded in executing a scissor takedown, using his legs to grip Ryan and forcing him to the mat with a harsh twist.

Bam
. Ryan’s entire body shook with the impact, and then he was moving, his limbs tangling with Sanchez’ as they struggled for dominance on the ground.

Sanchez didn’t make it easy, but Ryan worked his way to the top, landing a few blows to his opponent’s ribs along the way.

The other man fired back, striking Ryan across the jaw once.

His face aching, Ryan leaned down low, his chest sliding against Sanchez’ sweat-slicked one. With practiced efficiency, he gripped an arm with all his strength and rolled to the side, letting his back hit the mat as he pulled Sanchez’ limb, hugging it tight against his chest and forcing it to unfold and extend as he trapped it between his thighs.

It didn’t take long for him to crank the armbar, forcing Sanchez to tap out, officially allowing Ryan to rise as an actual member of the gym, not just some jackass. Or at least, hopefully that was how the others saw him now.

“Lucky for you, Sanchez.” A deep voice rang throughout the gym – Cameron’s. “You’ve finally got a sparring partner in your weight class who’ll keep you on your toes.”

Sanchez rose from the mat, and he didn’t look half as pleased as Cameron sounded. Still, he nodded briefly in Ryan’s direction, accepting the outcome of the match with good grace.

Ryan took the briefest of moments to respond in kind before letting his gaze wander in the direction it had been trying to go all along – to where the women stood, their arms crossed as they discussed something in tones too low for him to hear.

He never got a chance to catch the curvier woman’s eye. Before he could so much as exhale, they’d both turned and were making their way toward the women’s dressing room. He watched them go with a sinking feeling that didn’t make any sense but was real nonetheless.

Were they ready to head home?

He still had a couple hours to spend on the bags and whatever else he could think of to do. How else was he going to spend his day off – go back to his apartment? No way in hell. He’d rather sweat to death than go and waste time behind those cheap off-white walls. He was definitely going to get his money’s worth when it came to his Knockout membership.

Realizing what an idiot he must look like just standing in the middle of the ring, he climbed over the ropes, focusing on the multiple bags hanging a few yards away, near the door. There was a heavy bag open – he’d take that.

“Hey, Sanchez, kickass scissor,” one of the Knockout members Ryan had yet to meet said.

“Yeah, badass,” another one echoed.

Surprisingly, they had praise for Ryan too – sparse praise, but still. “Not bad,” one of them said, and another nodded slowly, eyeing Ryan as if sizing him up.

Ryan tipped his head in acknowledgement before taking up his stance in front of the heavy bag.

Wham
. He threw an elbow and the bag shook, absorbing the sort of power he hadn’t dared to use in a sparring match. A tough synthetic shell full of sand, the equipment could take the abuse. Laying into it again, he let the muscles in his back and thighs do the work as he continued with punching and elbowing combinations.

Meanwhile, he listened half-heartedly to the conversations going on around him. Someone said something about Melissa and Ally – was Ally the other woman’s name?

Before long, the skin on his forearm and elbow burnt and his knuckles ached inside the relatively thin shells of his gloves. The feelings were familiar and so was the olfactory combination of male sweat, the faintly damp brick building and the just-detectable synthetic scent of his gloves. No matter how many times he used them, the smell from the factory never quite faded. Not that it was bad. It just…

Damn. He paused, though he wasn’t winded yet, and took a step backward. What was it about smell? The human sense of smell was weak, and yet, scents affected him like nothing else. Shaking his head quickly, he sent a few drops of sweat flying onto the black matte surface of the bag.

He wasn’t in North Carolina and he definitely wasn’t in New York. He was in Baltimore. Shoving aside the out-of-state memories vying for prominence inside his head, he mentally pictured the new city – its streets, the iconic Inner Harbor and the buildings that could be seen from there, like the Domino Sugar Factory and the aquarium.

The mental exercise – one he’d devised on his own, inspired by pure misery – didn’t really work. As a last-ditch effort, he threw a few hard punches at the bag. That didn’t work either. Breathing a sigh of exasperation as his mind whirled, he stepped back, away from the bag, as if it was the source of his problems.

If only it were that easy. He’d love to have some inanimate, physical manifestation of everything that was wrong with him. He’d beat the hell out of it, and even if things weren’t different after that, at least he’d feel a little better.

A shadow darkened the field of his vision, sending a bolt of unexplainable sureness down his spine. Raising his chin, he let his gaze settle on the curvy brunette who’d recently disappeared into the women’s locker room.

She’d put on street clothes, but that hardly registered – he couldn’t look away from her face. Despite the fact that her nose was only a few inches from his sweat-slicked chest, it didn’t wrinkle this time.

“Sorry,” she said.

Her lips formed a perfect Cupid’s bow, but he couldn’t admire it directly. Her eyes had locked his in a hold strong enough to incapacitate someone inside the ring. “It’s not a big deal.” In fact, it was more than okay if she wanted to stand five inches from his chest all day.

Her cheeks were flushed from exercise; redness had blazed its way across the bridge of her nose, stretching almost from ear to ear. The effect was significantly more becoming than the caked-on artificial blush so many women wore.

“Ally, right?” He’d been repeating the name over and over again in his head ever since he’d heard one of the other guys mention Melissa and Ally. Either Melissa was Mel’s full name and the curvy brunette was Ally, or he’d just made an ass out of himself.

“Yeah.”

“Nice to meet you.”

She finally broke eye contact with him, and as her gaze wandered lower, he could practically feel it burning a trail of heat across his mouth. An answering warmth flared in his torso, heating him all the way from his shoulders to his hips, and every last place in between.

As he stood there fighting the threat of an erection, she nodded, still not meeting his eyes. The pink flush across her cheeks increased, bordering on true red, and realization struck him.

He actually had to fight a grin as the knowledge that she was blushing – actually blushing – settled in. It was amazing how quickly his out of practice mind wrapped itself around that fact.

“Maybe I’ll see you around,” she said, her voice tinged with a hint of uncertainty that was worlds away from the way she’d wrinkled her nose at him earlier.

There was still a defiant spark in her eyes, though – a fact that echoed her earlier attitude and only increased the heat racing through his veins.

“You will. You’ll be here Friday night, right?”

“I was planning to come watch the fights.”

Perfect. Friday nights were when Cameron hosted open fighting matches – with cash purses – at Knockout. He’d filled Ryan in that morning and he’d jumped at the chance to compete again.

“I like to be here to cheer on the guys from our gym when I can.”

Her words sparked another flare of heat and a wicked impulse that surprised even him. His lips curled into a smile without his permission. “I hope you’ll cheer for me too, then. I don’t think I could lose if you were screaming my name from the audience.”

She recoiled, leaning back the tiniest bit as an almost comical look of surprise flitted across her face. A moment later, it was gone and she was wrinkling her nose at him. “That’s not going to happen.” Her tone was cool but her cheeks were as red as the gloves the guy on the next bag over was wearing.

She stepped past him, leaving him with a vague sense of satisfaction but no real hope of seeing or speaking to her again before Friday night.

When she paused, it proved that he didn’t know much about her, besides her name.
“I hope Cameron doesn’t pair you up with Sanchez again. He won’t take it easy on you next time – especially not in front of a paying audience.”

With that, she hurried out the door, admitting a blast of air as cold as her words. Melissa followed her, the way her lips twitched at the corners betraying the fact that she was trying not to smile.

The icy March air did little to cool the heat that had risen to the surface of Ryan’s skin. So much for not making an ass out of himself. He’d rarely, if ever, acted like such a smartass since leaving New York. And he definitely hadn’t spoken to anyone that way during the past nine months.

The weird thing was, he wasn’t sorry. Ally had heated him inexplicably from the inside out and some forgotten part of him had boiled to the surface. Maybe that part of him was a jackass, but at the moment, it was impossible to care. All he could think about as he resumed his combinations on the bag was making her blush again.

* * * * *

Dinner. Ryan had forgotten about it until he’d stepped through the front door of his apartment, trading the outdoor chill for the almost-warmth of the one-bedroom end unit. As soon as he’d put a foot over the threshold, hunger had pounced on him like a feral cat.

A hollow feeling filled his middle as he scanned the undecorated dining and living areas as if a hot meal might magically pop out of one of the walls, or maybe materialize on the couch or small kitchen table – the only real furniture.