“Think I should’ve comped her some tickets to the Costas fight?” I dragged my hood back up.
Mia snorted and hefted her impressively large gym bag as she headed for the door. I would’ve offered to carry it for her, had I not been afraid to risk harm to my personal area.
“What did you need?” she asked over her shoulder, dismissing me without the words.
She hadn’t looked me in the eye yet, and I wasn’t sure if that was because she’d almost gotten me off, I’d held her during her freak out, or she wasn’t going to deal with me until I consented to what she wanted.
Which was not going to happen.
That didn’t mean I necessarily intended to tell her that now. She?
?d rubbed my dick last night solely to get her way. She thought I was easily played. Pliable like dough. All she had to do was jerk me off, bat her pretty lashes, and boom, I’d kick her ass. Think again, buttercup.
But if she liked playing games, I was happy to oblige.
“You said you wanted to fight me,” I said cheerfully. “Normally, I get some credentials or some tape to show me who I’m dealing with. I’ve never heard of you, so I’m not agreeing to anything until I see what you’ve got.”
She hissed out a long breath. The cut on her upper lip seemed better, but the bottom one still looked mangled, despite being glossed with some kind of cream. “Fine.” She jerked her head toward the gym. “Come on.”
I pulled my hood farther down. “Sure I won’t grow a pair of ovaries by coming in?”
“Nope, I’m not sure at all. Since you seem to be straddling the line already, this might push you over the edge.” She shut the door in my face.
Smothering a grin, I opened it again and headed inside. I wasn’t immediately flattened by a wave of estrogen or assaulted with an eye-popping array of tampon dispensers, so I figured I could handle it.
I followed Mia down a narrow hallway to a scarred door very clearly labeled Ladies. Since no men were allowed here, I didn’t understand why it just didn’t say John. When I voiced that sentiment, she snapped, “We have male trainers, dumbass.” And left me standing in the hall.
Dumbass must be the most popular endearment in this part of town.
I propped a foot on the wall and waited, impatiently bouncing on my heel. A couple of women wandered past and sized me up. Some of their looks were speculative, some wary, some downright lewd. One of them didn’t lift her gaze from my crotch the entire time she pelted me with questions about my identity. Two of them called me Fox. No one called me Tray.
By the time Mia emerged in her sports bra and a pair of tiny bike shorts that made her ass look like a pair of puffed-up marshmallows suspended on two sexy sticks, I was considering a number of sexual harassment suits.
She compensated for the over attention I’d received by proceeding to give me absolutely none for the next two hours. It was like our previous afternoon at the bar, except in this case I got to watch her hot as fuck body do an assortment of moves that shouldn’t be performed outside a bedroom. Even watching her run churned me up.
While she jabbed and kicked and spun like a damn ice skater without the blades, I studied her form. She worked out with a male trainer and a female one sporting excessively curly blonde hair with the obvious camaraderie that came from fighting together for a long time. She seemed like such a lone wolf that I was surprised she had a network at the gym similar to mine. I even saw her laugh. Not often, but now and then.
Her endurance intrigued me, and I wondered what would truly wear her out. Even while she was guzzling water and mopping her sweaty brow, she never seemed genuinely tired. She showed the same seamless, unflappable grace at the end of her session as she did at the beginning. I’d never seen a fighter quite like her before.
And Mia was definitely a fighter. The usual discordant gym noises surrounded me and the usual scents filled my nose, but she took all my focus. She had some deficiencies, specifically the way she blocked kicks with her feet rather than her shins and her tendency to forget to properly guard her core, but overall, I was damn impressed. She worked on a number of disciplines during her session, from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to Muay Thai to Karate and appeared nearly flawless at them all. She possessed all the single-mindedness and determination I lacked lately.
If I’d thought she would’ve gone for it, I would’ve suggested she get with Timmins at The Cage. He had the kind of experience she needed to improve. He probably wouldn’t take on a woman fighter though. He was hopelessly old-school. Still, she had the kind of skill that could go far, all the way up to the pros if she wanted to.
I hoped like hell she didn’t.
Her blonde sparring partner wandered to my side as soon as Mia went to get changed. She’d been working out for over two solid hours and had sweated through her sports bra. I imagined her in the shower. Shampooing her ropey dark hair, flexing her lean physique under the spray, caressing those tight curves with that lucky ass bar of soap—
“So you gonna do it, Foxy?”
I blinked at the blonde. The version of “doing it” on my mind wasn’t the one she was referring to.
“Are you going to fight Spyder?”
I couldn’t keep from chuckling. “Spyder? That’s Mia’s fighting name?” Some set we were. Her a spider, me a fox. One swipe of my paw and I’d crush her.
Metaphorical? Maybe. Perhaps it was ironic, since Mia seemed more capable of drawing first blood from me than vice versa.
The blonde stared me down with a flat expression that fit what I’d seen her do on the mat. She was one hell of a grappler, better than some of the guys I trained with daily. “Considering yours is Fox, I wouldn’t get too judgmental. Now I asked you a question.”