Chapter 2
E mmeline
In the days after my drinks with Annie, I couldn’t get the conversation out of my mind. Arriving home from work, I pulled up adjacent to my spot in my building’s car park.
A grey Tesla straddled the line from the next bay, making it impossible for me to use my space.
Again.
Annoyance flashed through me. By nature, I was non-confrontational, and even though I ran on caffeine and adrenaline ninety percent of the time, real arguments made me shake. I knew who owned the Tesla. It was a single guy who lived on my floor and who walked everywhere with his phone clamped to his ear and his voice too loud.
If I had the guts, I ought to park behind his car to block him in. For a second, I considered it. But that would mean him coming to my door with a demand for me to move once he’d noticed. I couldn’t wait all evening for that. Instead, I gripped the steering wheel and took my chances on visitor parking, which was outside the covered area.
Autumn rain spattered my windscreen but, luckily, there was a free spot. I backed into it and ran through the cold evening to get inside. Once in my apartment, I shivered and rinsed the stresses of the day away in the shower. Then I bundled myself into a fluffy dressing gown, left my hair to air dry, and took a hot chocolate to the couch. Tomorrow, I had the day off. A rare and beautiful thing. I’d do a workout, laundry, and get in a food shop.
That reminded me I needed to eat. The curse of surgeon life was how much I lived on hospital food and takeaways. My fridge generally held half-eaten cartons that really needed to be thrown away. My cleaner did the honours once a week or I’d be in danger of food poisoning when too exhausted to sniff test with accuracy.
For the thousandth time, I longed for a home-cooked meal, though I didn’t have the skill or time to make one.
On my phone, I started a delivery order, at the same time, turning on the TV to auto-play YouTube videos. I selected my dinner to the tune of salacious celebrity gossip mixed with interesting news from around the world.
When I was finished and the food ordered, I raised my gaze to the TV.
A sparring ring of some kind filled my screen, tall nets surrounding it and a heaving crowd jeering at the match. What on earth? I never watched things like this. I grabbed the remote to change it but then froze.
A bare-chested fighter with dark-blond hair and a powerful form stood in the middle of the ring and snared every piece of my attention.
He threw out a quick one-two punch at his opponent then spun around and kicked the other man in the gut in a vicious display of skill. It was the end sequence of a bout, I gathered, something that would never usually interest me, but for some reason, I couldn’t look away.
The second man fell, and the fighter dropped down onto him, sweat dripping from a golden and thickly muscled body. Blood smeared from a split eyebrow until it blended with tattoos that decorated him from his temple down one side of the face and merged with more at his throat and chest.
A black-clad referee knelt beside the contestants and peered at the downed man then made some kind of call.
I turned up the sound.
“Knockout. Another win for Malachi ‘The Warrior’ Hunan,” an announcer crowed to roars of approval from the audience.
He raised the successful fighter’s hand above his head. The act highlighted the rippling muscles of Malachi’s chest, and my blood stirred through my body.
“Unbeaten and unbeatable. Let’s hear it for the UK’s number one MMA star,” the announcer continued. “Give it up for The Warrior!”
The crowd roared louder, and Malachi prowled the ring with his arms raised in victory.
I sat taller on my sofa cushions.
Never had I been interested in blood sports. As a doctor, my job was to heal people, and it had given me countless examples of how to avoid getting badly hurt. But there was something about this man in this moment that woke a deep need in the centre of my brain in pure, carnal lust.
Perhaps it was the bright-red blood. Maybe the sheer power he held in that huge body. I had no idea, but I was captivated.
The clip changed to show segments of the fight, then moved to a ringside interview. Malachi popped out his mouthguard and swiped the blood and sweat from his face.
He grinned.
My lady parts tightened.
The interviewer, a beautiful woman with red lips and killer cleavage, talked about the fight and the opponent being aided out of the ring behind them. “That makes an unbeaten season for you, Malachi. Warrior by name, warrior by nature.”
He gave a self-deprecating shrug. “I didn’t choose the nickname, but it fits.”
God, his voice. Low and deep. I squeezed my knees together, unable to shift the ache that had taken hold of my lower belly.
She asked him about a move he’d pulled, and he gave an insightful answer, so matter of fact, though one of his eyes was blue-black and swelling, and fresh blood dripped from his cut.
The interviewer gave him an appreciative once-over that made me want to cat-claw her. “A little bird tells me you’re taking time out. What’s next for the man no one can beat? Plans for training? Plans with a lady?”
Malachi showed no reaction to her flirting but looked directly into the camera, his dark eyes alert and filled with some kind of intrigue. “Let’s just say there’s a special woman out there for me, and I can’t wait to chase her down.”
The clip ended. I paused the next one that appeared in its place.
My pulse jumped out of time. Chase her down. Surely he hadn’t meant the same kind of chasing that I’d fantasised about? It was a coincidence, created by my imagination, but God, that image was strong.
I closed my eyes and lay back on my couch. My apartment sat on the banks of a river, and outside my floor-to-ceiling windows, the glittering city of Deadwater reflected back at me. I could watch the view for hours, but right now, I didn’t want the view watching me. Leaping up, I swished the curtains closed then dropped back down to my couch and paged through the video until the fighter filled the screen once more.
A quick check of my phone gave me six minutes until my food arrived.
A countdown to get my unexpected lust out of my system. With my gaze on his beautiful face and incredible body, I opened my dressing gown and slid my hand into my silky sleep shorts.
My clit throbbed. I was so wet for this man, a complete stranger, but at least he’d never know what I’d done.
He’d never know that I had pictured his big hands with split knuckles on my breasts. His dirty mouth between my legs and his opponent’s blood smearing my thighs.
I stroked myself to a fast climax in the name of The Warrior and I regretted nothing.
* * *
T hat was, until 3AM when I woke with a start and couldn’t get back to sleep. He’d been in my dreams, chasing me and catching me. I tossed and turned but abandoned the attempt and took up my phone.
By themselves, my fingers typed in a search term I’d heard the doctors use. ‘The game.’
It brought back a whole load of nonsense until I narrowed it down to my city, then, buried in a chat forum, I discovered a thread from a year ago with people discussing a rumour. It centred around a nightclub called Divide, owned by a man named Arran Daniels, apparently a gangster.
I knew that club. I’d never been there—I’d grown up in Surrey and went to medical school in London, only moving to Deadwater on placement—but Divide was infamous. It had a strip club inside the same building, a fact that turned up my nose.
Yet down in their basement, according to the gossip forum, they hosted a dark game.
I read the comments with rising and undeniable interest.
User917: The men are held in pens like animals. Bare-chested and with masks on. Hot as hell. They start fights even before they’re released.
Showgirl25: I call bullshit. How would you know?
User917: Because I watched it on the cameras.
Showgirl25: No way do they film that. It would be illegal.
User917: It’s streamed only and not recorded. That’s why there’s no footage. It only exists for those lucky enough to witness it. And in the fact that the winners are obsessed.
I turned off my phone and stared into the night-black of my bedroom, trying to imagine myself as one of the hunted women. The more I heard about this, the more compelling it became, especially when I put Malachi in the frame.
I wanted to be caught and claimed. I wanted someone to be obsessed with me to the point of recklessness. That’s why Annie’s date offer had fallen short because any man she knew would never live up to something like this.
I was losing my mind.
An idea took shape. If I wanted to get this intriguing concept out of my head, there was only one way to do that. I needed facts, not rumours.
And if I needed to sleep again, I had to take the edge off my rising heat.
For a second time in one evening, I brought myself to an orgasm with the MMA fighter on my mind, certain in the knowledge that it was nothing to what a man like him could deliver in the flesh.
The following morning, I slept in late, something I never did. By the time I got back from my gym workout, it was lunchtime. I showered and dressed, talking myself back from the metaphorical ledge of going to the nightclub and asking to see the boss.
It was silly. I wasn’t going to do it.
They wouldn’t even want me. I was a decade older than most of the other women who signed up, I imagined. There was also the fact that I had a demanding career.
My phone chirped. I picked it up and opened the message from my friend.
Annie: Ian is excited to meet you. He’s agreed to dinner and to me sharing his contact details. I’m so glad I could do this for you!
Under the message was the contact form for Ian. It came with a photo attached. Ian looked to be in his forties, with neatly cut short brown hair. Clean-shaven. Suit with an expensive watch tastefully hinted at under his sleeve. Exactly what I’d expected, and alarmingly similar to the jerk down the hall who kept abusing my parking spot.
On my browser, I typed ‘Malachi Hunan’ and gazed at his rugged face, comparing it to the safe option Annie had offered. In some of the photos, Malachi was bruised and bloodied, though always grinning. Others contained scandalous headlines of women he’d slept with. Fresh desire pulsed through me.
I wanted him. I’d maybe be caught by someone like him, if I did this thing.
“I need my head read,” I muttered.
Somehow, I still found myself retrieving my little car from the rain-spattered visitor’s spot and driving down the harbour road.
The warehouse appeared ahead. Red-brick and massive, it loomed on the banks of Deadwater River, eight storeys high and with two entrances at the front marked with neon pink signs that read ‘Divine’ and ‘Divide’.
At night, I would avoid this place for fear of the type of people who frequented it. The men who used the strip club. The alleged gang that ran it all. By day, it was only a shade less intimidating.
More, I was captivated by the thought of what happened in the basement.
In the mostly empty car park around the back, I parked up and breathed slowly to stop my hands from shaking. I checked my phone, almost willing it to ring with work needing me to cover an emergency, but no, it remained stubbornly silent.
“It’s this or Ian,” I urged myself.
That final thought gave me the push I needed to get out of the car and go.