The Masked Fighter's One Night

1. NYLA

One

NYLA

The air is thick with cheap beer. There’s a ring in the middle of the concrete. Lights over it. Everything else is dark and loud.

“You good?” Tasha yells over the roar of the crowd, already counting a messy stack of cash.

“I am not good,” I yell back. “I am thirty-four. I have a real job on Monday. This is not what you promised.”

She grins, unbothered, hip cocked against a folding table covered in black shirts with a skull on the front. “Stay by the merch. Don’t wander. If Hush wins, we sell out in ten minutes, so be ready.”

“Who the hell is Hush?”

“The one who never talks. Never takes the mask off. Undefeated.”

She points.

He’s in the corner of the ring. And I forget there’s anybody else in here…

The man is tall. Built heavy. Black shorts sitting low on his hips.

Thick chest, heavy arms, a hard stomach that flexes when he rolls his shoulders.

Hands wrapped in white tape, gone gray at the knuckles.

A matte black half-skull covering the lower half of his face, straps tight in his short dark hair.

I can see his throat working under it. Heavy brows.

A cut already opening over one eye, blood sliding toward his temple. And a stare that pins me in place.

He isn’t bouncing. Isn’t showboating. The other man is hopping, talking shit, slapping his chest. Hush is standing still. That stillness is the scariest thing in the building.

I feel it low in my stomach. The kind of heat that has nothing to do with the packed bodies and everything to do with the way that mask makes his eyes look feral.

The bell goes.

I don’t remember the first thirty seconds. I remember the sound when Hush hits him. Hard. The other man drops. Two more shots. Sweat flies. It’s over.

The warehouse goes fucking crazy.

Hush doesn’t raise his arms. He turns his head, slow, and his eyes cut through the lights, through the bodies, through the merch table, and land on me.

I feel it everywhere. Between my legs. My nipples go tight against my bra.

I can’t move. He steps out of the ring and people part. He’s coming this way. Blood on his knuckles. Mask still on. Sweat shining down the column of his throat and disappearing under the skull.

He stops in front of the table. Close enough that I have to tip my head back. Close enough that I can smell him, coppery, clean sweat like soap and skin that’s been working, and something dark underneath.

Up close, he is enormous. I am not a small woman. I have hips and tits and an ass that makes fitting rooms a problem. He still makes me feel like he could pick me up with one hand.

“You don’t work here,” he says.

The voice is wrecked. Low. Like he swallowed gravel. It rolls straight down my spine and settles, hot, in my pussy.

“I’m covering for my cousin.”

He looks at my mouth when I talk. Then my throat. Then the heavy line of my breasts under this too-tight black shirt. Then back to my eyes.

“Covering’s done.”

“I, what?”

“Walk.”

I should tell him I don’t take orders from masked strangers. I should remember I need this gig to pay rent, and the fact that I have no business following a man who just put another to sleep in under a minute.

My body doesn’t care.

I walk.

His taped hand finds the small of my back. Not gentle. Not asking. The wrap scrapes through my shirt. His palm is so big it spans me easily, thumb on the waistband of my jeans, and every step makes my thighs rub together.

We leave the noise behind us, walk into a hallway. One flickering bulb. The smell of bleach. His breathing is steady behind the mask. Mine is not.

He opens a door with his shoulder. Locker room. Battered benches. A sink. His bag on the floor. The air in here is hotter. It smells like him concentrated: fight and man.

The door clicks shut.

I turn to say something smart.

He cages me against the metal lockers with his whole body. Not touching yet. Just taking up all the air. The skull hovers an inch from my mouth. I see the shine of his eyes, the cut over his brow still bleeding. I can feel the heat pouring off his chest.

“Name.”

“Nyla.”

“Nyla.” He says it slow. Like he’s keeping it. “I’m gonna put my hands on you. I’m gonna put my mouth on you. I’m gonna fuck you in this room with that crowd still screaming my other name. You don’t want that, you say no and you walk out the same way you came in. That’s it.”

My pulse is crazy. My mouth dry. I can feel how wet I am, panties clinging to my damp folds. I should be embarrassed. I’m not. I’m fucking hungry.

“I’m still here.”

His eyes go black above the mask.

“Good girl,” he rasps. “Now get on your knees and take this dick like you mean it.”