CHAPTER ELEVEN
DEX
I canceled the following Friday night fuck session with Zinzi the moment she threw me out of her car and went straight to knocking out my testosterone in the cage the next day, doctor’s orders be damned. At least, that was the original plan. The plan before Nelson and my girl decided it would be fun to fuck with me.
Look how well that worked out.
Not once in my two and a half years at Rippton U had I not spent my Friday night worshiping her body until I let Beau Bennett break me with his goddam fight rules, and when he did, Zin was there for me. We met on our first day of college—thank you orientation week for setting me up with the most gorgeous hottie on campus—at the union bar. She took one look, propositioned me and, well. Why give up on a good thing?
The problem was that now I wanted more . I always had with her, but I'd bided my time, earned her trust—or so I thought—and worked my way into her heart. Right up until she threw me out. Again and again, pushing me away. Anyone else might have taken that as a sign she didn’t want me but I knew this girl, and I knew why.
She was scared.
We never talked about her ex. The man who hurt her so bad she couldn’t trust anyone else. I never asked, and she never volunteered information. But I didn’t get the grades I did for no reason, and I didn’t live with a billionaire and a mafia heir for shits and giggles.
One night’s virtual stalking brought up everything I needed to know about Zinzi Jones in our first month together. I got curious about the girl I was shagging, and despite the rocking body she let me play with on a weekly basis, I knew those rules of hers had to come from somewhere.
And hell, did she have a reason to be scared.
One Ledger Raymond, currently serving a five-year sentence for essentially beating the shit out his girlfriend. He was also a fan of not so blunt trauma. It didn’t take me long while I was providing Zin with an overdose of orgasms the next week—insisting on one small lamp on for ‘ambience’—to find the faint lines where she’d been stitched back together.
He’d lost a good part of his inheritance thanks to her court case, and the plastic surgeon had done a great job, but he hadn’t been able to remove all the evidence on her body for the damage that she had suffered at the asshole’s hands.
I knew, and so I never pushed.
But I also refused to let her run from me just because I knew why she couldn’t commit. I played by her rules every damn week, breaking a little more inside every time I left, unable to sleep beside her because every time she threw me out, I wanted to stay and hold her. I hurt for her, loved her a little more for what she couldn’t face.
Until we hit here. Wherever the fuck here was.
And kissing her like I did that last night at the frat party, letting her know I really wanted her…that hurt as much as seeing another man’s hands on her skin. A man I fucking knew.
Lord Nelson Milton was lucky he still has his entrails as in innards and not his outards. And he was lucky I liked him as a roommate. Hell, I even understood why he did what he did with her. I just enjoyed busting his nose up more.
But that didn’t distract me from the girl who became the center of my growing obsession. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t craved more of Zin for a long damn time. More of what we had, more of her time. And it looked like we finally reached an impasse neither of us could compromise on in either direction.
I couldn’t keep going with the meager time I stole from her while for the rest of the week my heart beat outside my chest, raw and breaking. She wasn't prepared to give us any more than a few hours before midnight once classes finished up for the week.
That still drove me insane on several levels even if I understood her why . Instead of pounding my need out into her body, taking her home and reminding her why we were perfect together, I slammed my fist over and over and over into the unknown man's face until he was slightly less than recognizable, Beau Bennett’s fucking fight rules be damned.
Fuck it, I’d get him a bumper sticker and we could call it a day. I was done.
The ref, always good for a bloodbath as long as he didn’t have to get his pretty, unmarked hands dirty, called time but I couldn't stop. We didn’t have a standing eight count; when a man couldn't get up, the fight was done. But my mind didn’t want to play by those rules tonight.
Too many fucking rules and I’m done with them all.
Somewhere in my periphery, I noticed the twins' blond heads leave the arena. My brain may have switched off after that. Once the threat was gone I had no reason to do anything but what Jericho wanted: play up to the crowd and earn him money as recompense for the weeks I was off. I never did get to emcee, distracted by Zinzi.
And so the beatings continue.
Week after week. Saturday nights became Wednesday nights. Monday nights. What the hell was the point of anything if I worked around classes, without seeing Zin? Her soft and sassy touch seemed to have eased something in me that raged to the surface now, unchecked. My nails grew caked with blood and when the post ran out of room for extra marks, I let the ringside tattooist ink my skin instead.
I never chased Zin, and she never came to see me. The boys continued working with her, but they didn’t meet up at ours. Even Falcon watched me with different eyes, but I didn’t have time for him, either. All I wanted was to work, study, and fight. Maybe Beau left a different door open the night he came into my home and started cutting up my friends and threatening the girl I loved.
Maybe he could be the next one in the cage with me.
Afterall, a count was a count.
Tonight was like any other night. The face before me splattered with blood that wasn’t mine. Before the fight was over I could already feel the extra mark burn into my flesh. It had become such a ritual, almost daily at this point. Jericho yellowed something from the other side of the wire. I bared my teeth at him, spittle flying from my lips as I threw my boot into the man’s ribs.
Something cracked, and the man groaned.
I sent him a smile that never reached my eyes. “Enjoy the healing process, my friend.” I leaned down and punched him in the face.
Finally, the chicken-shit ref and his whistle got into the cage and yanked me off the man who blew bubbles in the blood pouring around his mouth. I barely managed to stop myself from nailing the ref as well, and I wasn't done yet. One of the busty bunnies who loitered at the cage door in hope of a sweaty lay with the victor handed me a towel.
I swiped the rag across my face and threw it back at her without a second glance, unwilling to see her plastic pout and thrust barely-concealed fake tits I didn’t want into my face.
“Next.”
And the next, and the next.
By the time I was done the cage had made more money than was reasonable for any regular Saturday night, even for an illegal cage fight, while I earned a few extra stripes etched into my arm. There were more scars under my name now than anyone else's, including the guys who'd been fighting on the regular for years. Dudes with more numbers in their age than I had seen summers, but I didn't give a shit.
“Next.”
"You're done for the night." Jericho gave me a hard look and shoved an obscenely heavy wad of bills that I didn’t need into my hands. He nodded toward the back area where I left my kit before we started hours ago. My limbs started to grow heavy without the constant deluge of chemicals from the ring that I’d programmed into myself day after day. "Clean up and get out. See you next week.”
"Next week." Blood ran into the corner of my mouth from a cut I hadn't felt open.
Adrenaline still pulsed faintly through me, raging in my blood. The shakes would set in soon, then the exhaustion. They might be done for the night, but I wasn't. I changed out of my running shorts and into my jeans, wiping my face with the towel.
I couldn't explain why the fuck I looked so beat up to any cop who might see me, so I popped my tee over my head to cover the bruises and bashing I’d taken in my pursuit of conquering fear and out distancing heartbreak.
Not that any of it worked. I still ached for Zin, craving her in dark and desperate ways. She used to pretend to hate me while I fucked her senseless once a week, pushing me away when I found her after class or in the library, and kissed her.
It still wasn’t enough. Nowhere near fucking enough.
What had been enough was the knowledge that when I begged her for a date those cold eyes that only lit once a week when I was in her bed flamed for me right then. When I promised her I’d treat her right, that I wanted to screw her rules—and her—to the wall and wake with her in my arms every fucking morning, that pledge turned something on inside her. Something that she hid from herself.
When I found her again and kissed her under the oak tree at the Kingsman House, erasing another man’s taste from her lips, she kissed me back like she yearned for more. And then she cried, because though she thought I walked away, I stayed. I made sure as fuck Nelson got her home safe.
If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be breathing right now. Not after what he started.
That night—it didn’t start as a test, but it felt like one for both of us. That kiss wasn’t real. We all knew that. But seeing her break for me when I faced off against her…I never wanted to see her hurt like that ever again.
When we talked about love and commitment, back when I kissed her in front of the campus knowing she’d hate the publicity stunt, I saw her eyes light. Then I saw the fear that shadowed the burn we had for each other. The man who hurt her before…I’d rip him limb from fucking limb and shove every one of his digits into a fresh orifice I tore apart with my own hands the moment he emerged from his cell. His punishment was far from done.
My feet walked the walk toward the exit on my behalf, heading around the ring like Jericho directed me. I’d feel every hit come at sunrise, but for now my system pumped with a numbing high that left me chasing inevitability. My shirt smelled like Zin the moment I put it on from the last time I’d been in her room, or maybe when she’d stayed with me for a brief time, sharing my space. When I’d last been inside her .
No matter what I did, no matter how many miles I ran or how many hard punches I threw, I couldn't be free of her.
Did I want to be free of Zinzi? No. I wanted to fuck her in her shower and crawl into her bed. I wanted to wrap my arms around her, worship her curves soft and breathe in her fucking delicious scent when she moaned beneath my battered body. I wanted to feel her mouth on mine and her dripping cunt wrapped around my cock while I made her scream for me in an admission that this—us—was so much more than just lust.
And I was hard again.
Painfully so. Some screwed up kink in me liked that I ached for her, that she denied me. My jeans strangled my cock, the denim already too tight with tonight’s accumulated sweat and grit that shrank my pants a size too small. Night air assailed my swelling face as I pushed open the back door to the ramshackle building.
I spat a glob of saliva mixed with blood into the gutter outside the nondescript structure situated in a block of similar dingy warehouses and filthy, unlit alleys. After years of fighting here first weekly and now almost every night, the cage had started to feel like a second home.
Rather than catch the train back to campus, I decided to run my excess rage out into the pavement, but a vision of glossy black locks and painted red lips slammed into me like a derailed freight train.
Zinzi leaned against the back of the building like she’d known exactly where I'd exit the place after my fights.
Fuck me. I knew I saw her here.
That was months ago. Motherfucking months .
She’d known I was fighting all this time. That she’d known and lied to me didn’t bother me because only one thought lingered at the front of my mind, freezing me in place.
This is the least safe place for her.
The twins might have left, my deal with Beau expired, or so it seemed, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still on their crazy as fuck radar. My blood, still simmering, boiled afresh.
“You looked pretty impressive in there.”
The girl who never wore skirts except when she was out to make a statement tugged a candy red lollipop out of her mouth to top off the delectable fucking image she made, her eyes focused only on me as her lips made a perfect ‘o’ the shape to match my cock.
No sign of the trembling girl whispering her apologies like the last time I saw her at the Kingsman frat party was in sight. I hadn’t been able to see her since then in case I did something really stupid, like bend a knee and beg a lifetime of love and forgiveness from every inch of her bones.
Hell, I’d come close a dozen times or more in the last two weeks after she blocked me on her phone. Part of me thought I’d never talk to her again, never be able to drink in her stunning form again. She pushed me away plenty of times. After the frat party I finally got the message, loud and motherfucking clear.
And part of me thought I’d broken her. That I’d cowed her into who she was scared to be. Not who we were together. The ballsy, bratty girl who could take on the world when we were together.
Who took me on, at my worst. Who flipped off Falcon Gianio and lived. Who kissed a billionaire lord and walked away from him. The poor girl on campus who didn’t give a shit about what brand of credit cards lay in a man’s wallet. Hell, she was one of a kind, and I thought I’d ruined her.
I thought maybe I lost her forever, and I was all too ready to grovel so damn hard for the girl I hurt.
But now Zin was here, and she wasn’t cowed at all. I liked that, because now she stood before me, unbroken, or at least, as unbroken as me, and I could play out every dark fantasy I wanted in this filthy alley with the girl I wanted so bad I ached.
When she was like this, I wasn’t afraid to hurt her.
Her stretchy, black lace top had scalloped edges that caressed the gentle curve of her stomach and accentuated her cleavage, leaving a slim line of toned skin on display. Below the strip of bared flesh sat a tiny, sparkly skirt that brushed the top of her thighs and barely concealed her round ass. On her feet were her customary biker boots leaving her legs bare.
I raked my gaze over her, the fresh rush of adrenaline switching undiluted rage to instant desire. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
"Watching you.” She sent me a sassy as fuck little smile and sucked the lollipop back into her mouth. Her lips wrapped around the cherry candy colored treat in a popping sound that left me hard and groaning. "Isn't that what you wanted? To spend more time together?"
I looked away from her. "You're pissed about that night." She didn’t have to tell me, and I didn't have to look at her to see her eyes flash in defiance, or resentment maybe.
All the hurt in the last two weeks of absence between us.
All that bullshit about being apart making the heart grow fonder or believing that playing it mean keeps them keen was just that—utter bullshit. All it did was fester the sort of obsession I wasn’t sure anyone could handle.
Except…maybe her.
Tonight, we’d both find out.
Dammit, I should have gone to her. I knew I should have. But I’d hidden in classes, inside the cage, and stayed away because that’s what I told myself that she wanted. Because I was as petty as her, and I wanted her to hurt, too.
Fuck, maybe I was human after all.
She wanted to see me in my natural state? Well, here I stood. Everything raw, exposed down to the bone. Filthy, and covered with the blood I'd drawn from other men. Hell, I didn’t even know how many.
"No, I wasn't angry at you. Not really. But…missing you hurt. Here.” She pressed her palm over her heart. “I didn't know how much it would burn."
“But you hate me , remember?” I snarled, stalking toward her. She didn’t back away or flinch when I braced both of my arms over her head against the fight club’s filthy exoskeleton, the roughened surface covered in graffiti and fuck knew what. "There are marriages that last less time than we've been together in this farce of a fuck buddy relationship. Couples who are public, who kiss and fuck less than we do. My world has been full of you for the better part of two years and then plus some. Only you. I can't do one night a week any more. I need more." I leaned into her space, stealing her breath by design. My design. “And no other man will ever touch you while you’re with me. I promise you.” I flicked my tongue across her bottom lip, tasting the sweetness of her treat.
“More?” She tried for cavalier and missed the mark by a fucking mile as she tugged the candy out of her mouth and stared up at me with wide eyes. “I couldn’t breathe when I was in your room, Dex. I was suffocating,” she whispered.
Her panic hovered right beneath the surface of her badass girl persona and I loved both sides of her. My arms ached to fold around her, but that wasn’t what either of us needed right now. She might think so, but we’d tried this and it didn’t end well.
Eyes full of need and fear and shadows I wanted to kiss away until she softened in my arms then fuck us both into any version of oblivion where she was mine forever watched me. Zin was much more than an obsession.
I needed to wake up tomorrow still wrapped around her for the first time, and give her the world.
Such a fucking perfect temptation.
Closing the final breath between us, I slashed my tongue across her lips in full, licking the sweet taste from her sinful mouth. "So much fucking more."
"Dex—" she whimpered, her sugar-glossed lips parting.
To protest or beg—I didn't care much either way. I took her invitation to let me in the moment her mouth opened, bruising her lips while I explored her with a dormant hunger I rarely acted on but that always lay beneath our playfulness.
My cock thickened as I unleashed the need I quelled for so long, unwilling to keep up the happy-go-lucky Dex facade to play along with her rules and her games.
Fuck the peace . This girl is mine.
My tongue sliced across hers, my brutal kiss driven by pure obsession, my heart drunk on the taste of her. Fuck, we hadn’t started yet and already I was intoxicated, addicted to her with a single kiss and craving more. I dropped one hand to cup her ass and pin her against my body until we were both panting and moaning into each other’s mouths.
Not a single word of protest left her lips when I drew back for breath, nor did her hands already tangled in my tee push me away.
My heart pounded its victory lap, but my eyes were only for her.
"I want you. Here, in my bed. Fuck, anywhere. Everywhere." My voice deepened into the sort of growl I knew did it for her on demand.
Goosebumps erupted along every inch of her exposed flesh, and there was plenty of that in sight thanks to that flimsy as fuck little top she wore. She gripped me tight, her nails digging half-moon ruts into my skin as she trembled from her lips to her thighs. Her pants came fast, almost panicked.
“I don’t care if you hurt me,” I murmured. Another addiction we could talk about on a different night. “The sort of pain you give me is what I need to fuck you harder.” When my usual dirty talk didn’t work to soothe her anxiety, I stared into her eyes, seeking answers.
She gave me plenty. All that I needed and more. But reading her stunning eyes wasn’t enough. I needed her words. Offering her a sliver of mercy, I eased back an extra breath, recalling her plea that I suffocated her, and waited.
"I'm scared." She shook in my hold but didn’t pull away like the last time I reached for her.
I watched her carefully. “Of me?"
"No, never you." Black silken locks dashed across her face, tangling around her pale throat like a collar. I looped my finger through a strand and tugged gently. “I’m not scared of you, Dex.”
I raised an eyebrow as I spoke against her kiss-swollen lips. "You were here tonight. You saw what I'm capable of, the worst of me.” I wasn’t going to stop until Jericho hauled me off.
The unspoken message flicked between us, and she nodded, sending one of her own.
You see everything I want you to see.
But Zin wasn't the only one scared of rejection.
“Yes." Her pupils blown wide, she held my gaze and sucked in her bottom lip. I followed the motion, if with my eyes alone for the moment. I’d follow up with my tongue the moment we were done talking. "I'm scared to go there with you, to find out who we could be together. You're right—I’ve seen friends destroyed by relationships and heartbreak like that is more than I can bear. I’ve been hurt before, so bad.” Her voice shattered a little at the end, taking a sliver of my heart with her because I knew what she’d suffered, even now when she still hid behind the stories of others. “I see the pain in– in– those around us when they fall apart. I'm scared to risk that again on my own," she whispered that last admission on a single breath, as though just discovering it herself.
I leaned closer on my fists, my knuckles pressed to the wall, pinning her there like a black butterfly dazed under the spotlight. "You’ll never be alone. Anything you risk, we do it together. And I’ll be the first to break if we stop now, Zin. What we have—it’s been more than good sex for years. I fucking love you, and I won’t stop. You’re so much more than just a fuck buddy to me. I don’t want to let you go." I didn't give her a chance to answer before I slammed my mouth over hers in a dominating kiss she returned breathlessly.
“Don’t go. Please. I don’t want to be without you.”
It was all I needed to hear. She hadn’t said she didn’t want to be alone—she said she didn’t want to be without me .
My heart thundered inside my chest, the too-close cavity crushing the swelling organ so tight I could barely breathe. “You’re beautiful,” I rasped.
“So are you,” she whispered back, light fingertips trailing through the grit and blood that coated me.
I claimed her mouth again, and neither of us spoke. Desperate sounds tore from her throat and I swallowed them all. Sliding both hands down to her ass, I flicked up her flimsy little skirt to cup her perfect globes. A single thin, silky strand slid between them. My girl came prepared. I traced my finger over her heat and back to her ass, pressing in enough to earn a feral moan from her.
"Fuck me. You come here of all places and dress like this? You look like motherfucking bait."
"Only you. I dress like this only for you," she whispered, latching her hands around my shoulders beneath my soaking shirt to claw at my salty skin with her nails. When she raised her gaze to mine, diamond drops framed her thick lashes.
She fucking loves me.
I ground my groin into her soft body, hooking her knees over my hips and pushed her thong aside. She dripped on my fingers as I freed my cock into my fist and slammed raw and deep on the first thrust. Her welcoming pussy strangled my cock, tight and slick and hot as I plunged into her.
Zin screamed into my mouth, lost in the moment, desperate and writhing in my arms.
“I love you,” I growled, pistioning my hips into her searing heat.
Nothing was fast enough to take the edge off my need as I pummeled her into the side of the building.
“ Dex, " she cried out, her liquid walls already tightening around my cock.
The fight hadn't worked. I couldn't thrash her out of my system, but I sure as fuck could burn her into my soul. Zin writhed, pinned on my cock where I had a front row seat to every inch of her pulsing arousal.
"If we do this again, if I come back—I don't leave. You stay with me. I stay with you. We wake up in the morning together, every damn sunrise. I’m never leaving your fucking room to walk across campus in the middle of the night nursing an aching heart ever again. Do you understand me?"
“I just want you.” She nodded, her words and pleas an insensible mix as she gushed hot and fresh on my cock. Her lashes fluttered as I drove into her faster.
“Just me?” I teased, my voice gravelly.
“Shut up and fuck me, Dex.” She rolled her hips, pulsing around my cock with the beginnings of her pleasure.
"You come for me and only me from right now,” I grated. "We do this the right way. You’ve got my heart, Zin. I’m yours. Always.”
Her cry ripped free as she milked me, root to tip. "Yes! I love you, I want you?—"
Clawed hands contracted on my shoulders at the same time as her pussy strangled my cock, marking me. I threw my head back, shouting my own release to the night. I didn't care who heard us. My only thoughts were for the stunning woman in my arms.
“I love you,” I whispered, bracing my arms against the wall behind her back so the brick wouldn't graze her tender skin, remaining lodged balls deep in her and unwilling to move.
She nodded, weary but sated. Her lips pressed to my neck where I thought she might have bitten me. It didn’t matter. Cool night air traced my scorched skin. I knew I had to move though I could have stayed buried in her all fucking night and do it all again later. A pained whimper fell from her lips as I shifted.
"Take it easy, Zin.” I withdrew from the hot, soaked sheath of her, careful of her tender, bruised skin, placing her feet back on the ground and holding her up when her legs failed. Tucking my cock away, I used the hem of my shirt to wipe her swollen skin where I’d slammed into her on repeat. I didn't have much to clean her up with, and she’d be dripping with my cum as we walked back to campus. "You have my heart. Always. From our first time. Hell, since the first day I saw you.”
I stroked her hair as she mumbled something into my shirt that I couldn't make out. Tucking my knuckles beneath her chin, I tilted her head back. Dark shadows of mascara tracked her cheeks. Lip gloss smeared across the corners of her mouth where I hadn't eaten it away. Her eyes glistened with fear and love and everything in between. She had never looked so fucking beautiful.
“I’ve got you.” I nudged her nose with mine and kissed her softly while she murmured something I couldn’t hear against my lips. "Say that again, Zinzi."
“I love you. And I've got you, too." She lifted her head as though parting from my skin was the hardest thing she could do right now and smiled. “I tried to hate you so I couldn't feel anything, but not letting you in just made it worse.”
My own craving was reflected in her dozy, sated eyes. I crushed her against me where she fit into every hollow of my body the way she always had.
Perfect, beautiful, and mine.
Just mine.