23. Seven
TWENTY-THREE
SEVEN
“I’ll see you tomorrow!” Connie says, waving to me. I wave back, unsure of how I became a person Connie even wants to see tomorrow.
I don’t know how I became a person anyone wants to see, let alone someone with several contacts in my phone who might want to hear from me.
It had been a strange realization, not one I’m entirely comfortable with, let alone understand.
Havoc is waiting for me near the backstage entrance. He’s scowling down at his phone, but as soon as he sees me, he pockets it.
“Is everything okay?” I ask him cautiously. His mood has been strange since we’d convinced his mother to leave.
“Yeah.” Havoc puts his arm around my shoulders. “Marcus keeps trying to call her, but I gave her a new phone with a new number. Now I’ve got Marcus blowing up my phone too.”
“Does she have other people to talk to?” I ask, remembering Caleb’s weird comments about how I might feel if he isolated me from other people.
Havoc winces. “Marcus made her cut contact with most of her friends. I looked up some of them and added their numbers, but I don’t know if she’s ready to reach out to them.”
“Do you think she’ll try to call him?” Then I realize I don’t actually know anyone’s numbers. They’re all in my phone. If I was in her situation — away from everything familiar — I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with them, either.
“She promised me she wouldn’t,” Havoc whispers. “But I don’t know.”
I turn so I can face him, then wrap my arms around him. I rest my cheek against his warm chest, inhaling deeply. “She’ll be okay,” I say even though I know she probably won’t be. Not right now, not for a while.
Maybe not ever.
I can only hope that she’d listened to me parroting what everyone keeps telling me and that she believes it more than I do.
Havoc gives me a crooked smile. “Yeah. Anyway, you don’t want to talk about my mother. I don’t even want to talk about my mother right now. You ready to hit the gym?”
I don’t actually want to, but I know he needs the distraction, so I nod. We haven’t gone many times since I’d sought him out in the stairwell. For that matter, we haven’t been alone very much since that day. “Okay,” I say.
I pull back from him, letting him take my hand and leading me in that direction.
It’s temporarily closed for our use, and I head into the locker room with him to change into my other clothes.
I steal a glance at him as he does as well, and it’s tempting to try to talk him into another type of wrestling, but I’m still feeling a little shaky over what I’d done to him.
“I hope you’ve been practicing,” Havoc says with a small smile. “Was Vortex a good personal trainer?”
“Not as good as you are,” I say honestly. I tilt my head, looking at him. “I missed you being here.”
“Of course he wasn’t as good as me,” Havoc declares. He gets changed quickly and pulls the martial arts hand wraps out of his bag. “You’ll be a pro MMA fighter soon enough.”
I snort. “Yeah, and you and Vortex will suddenly become best friends,” I retort. We get prepared to spar, then we head to the wrestling mat.
Havoc waits for me to get into the right position, correcting my stance, then nods at me. “Time to do some punching, Seven.”
I jab at him, which he sidesteps, then try again. Each time, he easily dodges, but he doesn’t have to correct my form too many times.
It’s progress, and while I’m impatient for results now , they keep telling me that it’s okay to take time to learn while I build up stamina and muscle.
“Good job, Seven!” Havoc changes his stance, and I realize he’s gearing up to attack me.
I mimic his earlier stance, preparing to defend myself. My reflexes are getting faster, but more often than not, he has to pull his blows.
Sometimes, I wish he wouldn’t.
I concentrate, forcing those thoughts out of my mind, and I manage to dodge three in a row. A giddy smile on my lips, I let triumph briefly race through me, and I’m rewarded with a light jab to the arm as I lose focus. I take a step back, signaling that I want a break to try to catch my breath.
Havoc stops and smiles at me. “Looks like you’re getting the hang of it.”
“Finally,” I grumble, but I can’t stop smiling. It may not be a lot to other people, but that’s three strikes I wouldn’t take if it was a real fight. I grab my water bottle and gulp some of it down, waiting for him to get close so I can step in for a hesitant kiss.
He steps into my personal space and gives me that kiss I want. It’s neither sweet nor demanding, but there’s enough of a hint of roughness that I know it’s Havoc I’m kissing. Vortex and Caleb would never kiss me like this.
“You’re always so fucking hot, you know that?” Havoc whispers. “You try so hard, and you do all this brave stuff, and I’ve never met anyone half as amazing as you.”
I blink up at him, startled. He’s said I’m hot before, and brave before, but it sounds different this time. “Not as amazing as you,” I try to deflect.
Havoc shakes his head. “You are. You’ve been braver than I have, that’s for sure. I don’t know anyone else who was in such a shit situation and said no and got out all on his own. My mom didn’t manage. Hell, I needed the military to drag me out.”
My cheeks flush, and this time, it has nothing to do with exertion. I get uncomfortable when they talk about me like this. I don’t know what to say, so instead of replying with words, I kiss him again.
Havoc pulls me flush against him, and I feel his erection bump against my stomach.
He always gets hot and bothered from exercise.
I want to coax him into more, but I can’t stop thinking about pushing him the last time. I’m not prepped and ready, either, and we’re in public…
But I want it. I want him .
I wrap my arms around him, my kisses getting needier and needier as I whimper against his lips.
Havoc groans and digs his fingers into my ass. “We locked the gym door, right?”
“Yes,” I say, arching against him. We always lock the door when we spar, and after Emily showed up here, I’m not taking any chances.
“Then I say we really piss Caleb off and mess up the gym mats.” Havoc pulls back and grins. “Actually. Have you heard of wrestling? The way the ancient Greeks did it?”
“I’ve seen it on TV,” I say. It’s not as interesting as the MMA fights, but it had held my attention enough to watch a few matches. “Well. I’ve seen regular wrestling. I don’t know what ancient Greek wrestling is, but it sounds like it would get us into trouble for real.”
Havoc’s smile widens. “The ancient Greeks lived like two, three thousand years ago. And they didn’t have athletic wear. The only thing they wore while wrestling was olive oil.”
“Caleb would kill us,” I say, but I can’t help but grin back at him. “I doubt there’s a bottle of olive oil in here, either.”
“That would be such a mess.” Havoc pulls away from me and takes his shirt off. “We’ll have to make do with just our sweat.”
I hesitate. I don’t really want Caleb to get annoyed with us, but at the same time, seeing Havoc smile like this makes it worth it. I take my shirt off, tossing it aside. “Completely naked?”
“Oh yeah. They didn’t have sexy thongs in ancient Greece.” Havoc takes his pants off. With a wink, he says, “I am an expert on ancient Greece, so you don’t need to look up anything I say later.”
“Uh huh,” I say, shedding my own pants. I glance in the direction at the door, but I’m positive I locked it. Caleb and Vortex can still get in, and the housekeeping staff, but… Havoc is so happy right now. “Show me how they wrestled, then.”
Havoc walks over to the training mats, and with one more glance at the door, he strips his underwear off, revealing his beautiful, hard cock. “Wrestling is all about subduing the enemy with holds and grapples.”
I strip my underwear off, too, unable to keep my eyes and attention off his cock. I want it more than I want to wrestle, but with any luck, we’ll do more than holds and grapples. I shiver at the thought, my own cock starting to get hard.
“I should warn you that I have zero wrestling training,” Havoc announces cheerfully. “I mostly know what I’ve seen on TV.” He gets into a wide-legged stance, his balls dangling between his legs.
I lick my lips and imagine sucking on them.
It’s so distracting that it takes me a moment to realize he’s saying my name, and I blink up at him.
“My eyes are up here,” he teases me.
“I can’t help it that you’re so hot!” I protest.
“I can’t help it either,” Havoc answers with a laugh. “All right, get into position opposite of me. Your goal will be to try to pin me to the mat.”
I snort. “Really?” I ask.
“Really,” he confirms.
I shake my head, but I mimic his position, extremely self-conscious of my own cock and balls hanging freely between my legs, and wait for him to advance so he can show me how this was apparently done by the ancient Greeks.
When he does, I move to the side. He must not have been expecting it because he misses grabbing me.
I have no idea how I’m supposed to try to get him pinned, but I’ll try if it means potentially being the one to get pinned instead.
Because if I get pinned… Maybe I can get something more.
I lunge forward and wrap my arms around his waist, trying to force him down, but of course I don’t have the strength for that. It still means I’m pressed against his body, and his erection brushes against me.
Fighting is very different when we’re both naked. My skin slides against his, and it’s impossible to concentrate on my stance or movements when I can feel the heat radiating from him.
“You can hook your leg under mine,” Havoc says, tapping my calf with his. “If you unbalance me, I might go down.”
There’s not a very good chance of that, but if he retaliates, he can bring me down. I nod, and even though I know it’s not going to work because he’s expecting it, I try to wrap my leg around his and tug.