Chapter 3
Three
Keep it movin’, ladies. The last thing Travis wanted or needed was more attention. Unless you’re volunteering for a no-strings-attached, hot, raunchy roll in the bedsheets that has absolutely no potential for anything further… Yeah, nope. Not even the thought of a quick lay was worth the trouble.
Especially the blonde. Way too high maintenance, though her Redbull induced energy could come in handy…
He shook his head, tossing the long strands of hair away from his face as he turned away from the two women across the room. Nope. Still not worth it.
The redheaded bombshell paid him little to no attention, but then again, she rarely gave any single person—male or female—any attention other than the blonde that always seemed to tag along with her while actively avoiding doing any kind of workout.
She was polite without inviting anyone into her personal space.
He could respect that. That was how he preferred things, too.
Not that it ever happened.
Travis ‘The Reaper’ Hayes was the closest thing this gym had to a celebrity.
As a retired MMA fighter who had gotten several of his own Pay-Per-View specials, aired from Las Vegas, he had been a household name for a while.
His mug was easily recognizable; with the long, sandy brown hair that was now streaked with silver throughout, the full beard that he kept trimmed, also sprinkled with grays now.
From his throat all the way down to each fingertip and down to each toe he was covered in black and gray shaded tattoos.
He’d spent a small fortune and a lot of time covering every single inch of skin from curious eyes. Some things were better left unseen.
A giggle to his left perked his ear, but not enough to turn. The gym was overcrowded with New Year’s Resolution holders, empty promises to ‘do better’ and ‘be healthier’. Most of them would be gone next week.
Red would still be there, though. Three days a week, she came in and rotated weight training with a light kickboxing routine.
He’d wondered about the scar that dissected the left side of her lower lip, the white of the scar a vast contrast to the rosiness of her lips.
It was still fairly new, he could tell. Scars were something he was familiar with.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Blondie got Red’s attention and pointed toward the neon yellow flyer that had been stapled to the bulletin board at the gym’s entrance. He groaned internally. Fuck.
Sure enough, he watched as the two women signed their names on the flyer, signing up for his kickboxing class that would start the following week.
The class that he intentionally started after all the New Year’s Resolution dropouts would call it quits.
There would always be the gaggle of women that signed up just to get the chance to ogle him, and on the rare occasion he’d let one gym bunny hop into bed.
And there were always men that would sign up in the hopes that they’d get to best him.
Not that they ever won. He was a machine.
A monster.
“Hey, we going to spar or are you just going to stand there looking grumpy all night?” Hector called across the mat, and Travis nodded. Hector was one of his sparring partners, one of the few that stood any kind of chance.
Tapping the Bluetooth earbud in his right ear, music began to play.
Disturbed ‘Indestructible’ came on and he set his feet, angling his body toward the five-foot, ten-inch Mexican.
His hair was cut close to his head, his face shaved except for a small goatee that covered his upper lip and chin.
Travis stood three inches taller and outweighed the other man by fifty pounds of pure muscle, but Hector was scrappy as hell, having grown up as the youngest of five brothers.
Travis had been an only child. But it was probably better that way. He’d had a hard enough time keeping himself alive, let alone anyone else.
The mind-numbing rage that used to accompany thoughts of his childhood had dulled over the years. Thousands of fights—some fair, some not so fair—a decade of therapy, and the twentieth anniversary of that night meant he’d had a lot of time to work the anger out.
It wasn’t gone, of course. He just knew how to harness it better now. And currently, beating the crap out of Hector was going to do just fine to exorcise those demons.
Merv, the fifty-something-year-old gym owner and longtime mentor of Travis’s, blew the silver whistle on a string around his neck, and he and Hector were moving.
Ducking, jabbing, landing punches, feinting, circling.
They traded punches, one after another. Hector landed a jab to his kidney and Travis grunted, baring his teeth in a grin.
Around his mouth guard, Hector grinned back, wiggling his hands in a ‘come get me’ taunt, and Travis struck fast and hard with a hook that put the smaller, younger man on his back.
Chest heaving with each intake of breath, he grinned down at Hector, flat on his back.
Reaching his hand down toward him, Hector hooked his arm around Travis’s forearm, and he hauled the other man to his feet.
Hector removed the mouth guard and blew out a breath as Travis tapped the earbud in his ear to turn the music off.
“That fuckin’ hook, man. You save it for last on purpose, don’t you?”
“You should know it’s coming by now,” Travis chuckled, rolling his neck from left to right. “You’re getting soft—”
“Ma’am? Ma’am!”
The anxiety in the male voice across the room was what brought his head around.
A heartbeat later he was launching himself over the rubber guardrails surrounding the mat, grabbing hold of the redheaded bombshell’s body just as she went limp, and her eyes rolled into the back of her head as she passed out.