Trapped (Caged 2)

Actually, not even that. Amateurs know something about what they’re doing. This douche was clueless. Yolanda handed him his own mouth guard, which he initially tried to refuse, but she made him take it. She collected his shoes and socks and placed them with his shirt outside the cage.

Showtime.

Usually with challenge nights, I dove right in and took people out pretty quickly. I’d give just enough show to make other people think maybe they had a chance but not much more. Challengers were considered winners if they went more than five minutes in the cage without tapping out.

I fully intended to “lose” as far as time went. I was going to drag this fight out as long as I could, and I was going to enjoy every last minute of it. By the time this was over, his own family wasn’t going to be able to pick him out of

a Summer’s Eve lineup.

I started slowly walking around the cage, watching him watch me.

He came at me first with heat and pride, but I stepped to the side and watched him fly past. I grinned behind the mouth guard, crossed my fists in front of my chest, and waited. I danced back and forth on the balls of my feet as he attacked again.

This time when I stepped to the side at the last second, I raised a foot and kicked him in the back. He stumbled but didn’t quite fall. If looks could have killed, I would have been in a lot more trouble. As it was, the main threat to me came from laughing too hard.

I let him come at me a couple more time before I turned and jumped at him. He literally had no idea what hit him as I slammed my fists into his gut and chest and then flipped him around and nailed him in the lower back. He twisted and turned to get away from me, and I let him run to the edge of the cage, panting.

The crowd was screaming so loud, I could hear nothing but the pandemonium. Somewhere in the back of my head, I knew Tria’s voice was among them, but I didn’t let myself think about it. Thinking about her would be distracting, and I didn’t want to lose my focus on beating the shit out of this douchebag.

I raised my hand and curled my fingers back toward myself, beckoning him.

He ran for me, stopped quickly, and tried to fake to one side. I grabbed his elbow and wrenched it backwards. With his arm twisted behind him, I kicked the back of his knee and dropped to the floor with him under me. I punched twice with my free hand—once in his back and once in the side of his face. He went limp, but I knew he wasn’t out yet when he shook his head a little. I leaned back, flipped his stunned ass over, and knocked his head against the ground. I spit my mouth guard out to the side.

“You fucking pup,” I snarled in his ear. I slammed the back of his head against the floor of the cage again. “You have no idea how to play with the men—just like you had no idea how to play with a woman!”

His eyes widened and then narrowed as his struggles increased without any effect.

I laughed again, flipped him over onto his face, and kidney punched him a couple of times. I held him down to the ground, but he still wouldn’t tap out, which worked just fine for me. I leaned over close to his ear again.

“You couldn’t even figure out how to get it in her, could you?” I laughed. “Poor little pup doesn’t know what to do with it, but I do. I’m up in her three times a day, you know. Can’t get enough of that pussy! It feels so good!”

He bucked against me, trying to shoulder me off, and kicked his legs out ineffectively as I kept laughing and snarling into his ear.

“I love filling her with cum. And she loves taking all I give her!”

I smashed his face down once more before getting off of him and watching him crawl toward the edge of the cage. One of his buddies was over there, past the area where spectators were supposed to be to watch the fights, but I didn’t think anything of it. I couldn’t remember the guy’s name, but it was one of the guys in the truck with us back in Beals. Conner or Devin or something. The guy dropped down to the bottom of the cage as if he were encouraging Keith, but to keep going or tap out, I didn’t know.

I danced around on the other side of the cage while Keith pulled himself back up. Right before he was about to turn around, I kicked him in the back of the knee, sending him down again with a sharp snapping sound. The crowd roared—some groaning as if they knew what that felt like—but most just kept cheering.

Keith hit the mat and then pulled himself up using the edge of the cage next to his buddy. He could barely stand at this point, and I raised my hands up and did a quick spin in a circle.

I turned back to Keith, who had managed to gain his footing again. He took a step toward me, but he was off balance. One of his eyes was pretty much swollen shut, and he couldn’t have had any depth perception anymore. I moved to one side and reached out to grab his shoulder and take him down to the ground. As my hands gripped his upper arm, his other hand moved in quickly.

At first, I barely felt it. It was just a little touch to my side that didn’t feel like a punch. It was smoother and colder than knuckles.

It also went deeper.

I could hear a lot of screaming coming from all around the cage, but my focus was on the self-satisfied look on Keith Harrison’s battered face as he yanked the mouth guard from around his teeth.

“Fuck you.” He sneered at me, obviously pleased with himself, but I didn’t understand why—not at first.

My gaze followed his arm down to his hand, which was clenched into a fist around an object shoved up against my side. He shifted, and his hand moved up slightly. The pain that ripped through my torso was excruciating as blood poured out of the opening in my skin. He stepped back, pulling a slender silver blade from my side.

Despite the spinning in my head and the sudden taste of blood in the back of my throat, I stayed upright. Keith Harrison was still in front of me with a half-crazed look in his single open eye and a bloodied knife in his hand. Everything around me seemed to slow down, including the gasping and screaming from the crowd. The sound was deep and long—like I was hearing it from across a lake or from the other side of a hill.

I realized the fucker had just stabbed me.

I should have been shocked and horrified for a dozen reasons. One, how the fuck did he get the thing into the cage? Yolanda searches everyone who comes in, even me. Two, how fucking stupid could he be, stabbing me in front of a hundred witnesses?