In the Ring (BOXER Book 1)

by Rie Warren

  In The Ring

  RIE WARREN

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  In the Ring

  Copyright © 2016 by Rie Warren

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations.

  https://www.riewarren.com

  Warren, Rie.

  In the Ring / Rie Warren – 1st ed

  1.Contemporary Romance—Fiction. 2. Alpha Male—Fiction. 3. M/M—Fiction. 4. Erotica—Fiction. 5. Sports Romance—Fiction. I. Title

  ASIN: B01M734G3V

  Cover Design

  By Pink Ink Designs http://www.pinkinkdesigns.com

  Editing

  By Gilly Wright http://www.gillywright.com

  Table of Contents

  In The Ring

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Also By Rie Warren

  Connect with Rie

  Acknowledgments

  About Rie

  Chapter One

  Sucker Punch

  I’D GROWN UP FIGHTING in the streets on the West Side of Cincinnati. Yeah, I was the typical hardnosed runt from the family with too many kids to feed. From the inner city and the wrong side of the tracks, I’d been bullied and beaten to a bloody pulp until Hail Marys didn’t even pass my swollen lips.

  You name it. I’d survived it.

  During my teen years I became a bruiser. You could only take so many punches to the face before you decided beefing up and blasting back was your saving grace. I wasn’t a bully. I was the underdog who fucked up the bullies who’d made my childhood a living nightmare. When I was done with them, their faces looked a lot less pretty and a whole lot more pulverized. Amen.

  I’d shared a room with my kid brother Conor in our railroad house in East Price Hill. When I wasn’t lifting weights—AKA the concrete blocks used to raise the broken down Chevy Impala off the ground in our measly muddy backyard—I was a bookworm. I certainly didn’t let that piece of nerd-dom make the middle school gossip ring.

  The only time I wore my glasses was when my nose was shoved inside a novel. I’d spend all day at school squinting at my textbooks rather than wearing my bug-eyed, black-framed, cheaper-than-shit glasses. I put up with pounding headaches instead of more teasing.

  I read fantasy stuff. My addiction started with Choose Your Own Adventure books before I graduated to the big boys like Terry Pratchett and Tolkien. I used my library card until the magnetic strip wore off. The public library on Warsaw was someplace safe.

  I discovered another interest there, one I explored in the musty dark recesses of the library’s shelves. I became a favorite of the librarians until one grandmotherly type found me whacking off in the locked-down cage that held the art collection. Otherwise known as erotica. Specifically—in my case of getting caught red-handed and red-faced—books of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography.

  His nudes of women and of men and of men with men were bad news in the eyes of society and definitely those of my city, my parish, my Catholic-to-the-core family. I figured out early on getting a hard-on from looking at the black and white photos of muscled men wrapped around one another was wrong.

  Jerking the pud over homosexual stuff was bad.

  I was right, for once.

  At the age of fifteen, I stowed that shit away and read Hustler instead of whatever homo masturbating material I might be able to find. Boobs instead of balls. Babes instead of buff men. During my final high school years, I kept up the weightlifting. I made my grades. I woke my mom every morning so she could get to the bakery on time. I cooked for my siblings and checked their homework. Meanwhile, Da siphoned away the money as if he had a spigot in the top of his ever-present bottle of Jameson’s. By the age of seventeen, I hated everyone named James or Jamie.

  I hated my da more.

  When I turned eighteen and graduated from high school, college was out.

  Dirty cage fighting was in. UFC was all the fucking rage.

  It wasn’t hard to make a name for myself. I had distinct coloring. I was the fighting Irish. I wouldn’t go down no matter how hard I was hit, because back street beatings had taught me to take a licking and keep on hitting.

  I also never lost a fight. My following of greenback-betting fans, from hardcore cage junkies to industrial plant bosses to the higher-ups in the food chain of the fighting biz, multiplied with every appearance. I quickly learned how to make a buck with my fast fists and stomach-connecting kicks. It was a close combat mish-mash of everything I’d picked up on the streets or by watching videos. What I lacked in professional martial arts training I made up for in sheer bloody guts.

  The rules were limited once locked in the cage, and that suited my what-the-fuck-upbringing to a T. The nights were long, the abandoned warehouses packed to the gills, the atmosphere one-part exclusive nightclub and three-parts electric Fight Club.

  I always left a fat envelope of dollar bills at the house, under my sister Mary-Kate’s pillow. I’d sneak back out before anyone woke, while dawn chased my heels and blood streaked from my knuckles after another night of bare-fisted brawling.

  The chicks came at me a dime a dozen as soon as I hit the underground ring. Thankfully, the fighting managers got to me faster than the women. Slimy fuckwits I knew how to handle. Hot-for-a-fuck broads—complete with tits and pussies—were out of my league and getting nowhere near my bed. Not now, not ever, and not after Margaret Morrissey let me take her virginity when we were sixteen.

  Bad mistake.

  I hadn’t been able to come. She’d bled and cried. The worst of it was, instead of her pretty soft tits and rounded hips and gentle kisses, I longed for the impact of a hard-muscled, extreme-fucking, male machine to match my strength pound for pound for pounding.

  Not a woman. A man.

  At least I got that in the cage. Minus the fucking that was, unless I counted getting my face fucked up.

  Talk about awkward to say the least when the end goal was to procreate. A lot. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

  Being gay would put an end to my rising career as a big-hitting boxer.

  So the sex-thing with one-specific-guy-thing would be a bad move on my part.

/>   #

  Tonight was different. It was a complete one-eighty from my cage fighting glory and even my past two years of professional boxing bouts. I’d finally made it from Cin City to Sin City.

  Nerves gnawed holes in my guts. I’d picked up a manager, a coach, groupies . . . a trainer. I’d learned the ropes the hard way until I was two-hundred-nineteen pounds of mean rippling muscle.

  I’d earned every pain, every bruise, every laceration. I’d pushed my body harder than humanly possible.

  This wasn’t street brawling or UFC. The ranks closed the higher I climbed, tighter and tighter until they’d spit me out here. In the heart of glittering, over-the-top Las Vegas.

  I’d skyrocketed in my weight class from humble ain’t got a dime or a goddamn chance beginnings to being a real contender for the heavyweight belt. Tonight wasn’t a major title fight, but it was major shit to me. I was undefeated, going up against another undefeated motherfucker. I just needed to knock him out cold to continue my supersonic rise.

  I tried to wiggle my fingers inside the big black gloves—my knuckles taped, my hands wrapped. I jogged in place, swallowing down the feeling I needed to hock up half my stomach and maybe my liver, too. Lights blinded my eyes, beaming at me where I stood between Sean and Michael just outside the ring. My picture went up on the JumboTron, and the people in the packed arena went wild.

  My heart plunged then soared. My legs turned to melted rubber. It was surreal. Not in a Salvador Dali sort of way because—yeah—I’d been to the MOMA, and I kinda dug that painting shit. It was goddamn mind-bendy that all these people, this crowd, was here for me. Chanting my name. Punching their fists to the air where big name sponsor banners covered the entire ceiling like the audience sprawling over every square inch of the auditorium.

  Michael looked at me.

  I ignored the pout of his bottom lip and the way he leaned closer. His mouth landed near my ear, sending shivers along my body and down beneath my new satin Everlast shorts.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded.

  Inside I shook. Seismic plate shook.

  Fuck and me.

  Michael Fairweather was way too concerned about the state of my well-being and standing much too close for the state of the hard cup constricting my swelling cock.

  Michael. My trainer.

  I called him Mikey when I fantasy-fucked him at night, all alone, because—you know—I had a tough guy image to uphold even when all I wanted was my dick engulfed by his rock hard ass. The most perfect motherfucking posterior ever made. The hard-flexing butt I dreamed about eating out while I did mirrored squats with him in the gym.

  Michael want-him-to-be-mine Fairweather was everything I wasn’t. He’d been a college athlete on the scholarship gravy train heading toward pro soccer fame. His on-the-field opportunities came to a screeching halt when he’d suffered a career-ending injury. After that, he’d turned to his other passion. Making my cock hard twenty-four-seven. Or maybe that was my passion, since Michael didn’t have a goddamn clue what he did to me.

  He trained boxers. Big lugs like me. He’d been a fan since his father took him to the Chávez vs. Taylor fight in 1990—the fucking Fight of the Decade. Unable to pursue his dream, he now fully invested in mine.

  And he definitely made a big showing in all my wet dreams.

  Michael had a Colgate smile, winning charm, and more balls than me even though mine felt engorged and heavy, care of the slightest brush of his moist mouth against my ear.

  And he doesn’t even have a clue.

  With dancing gray eyes, wavy golden hair, at ease with everyone, Mikey was my total opposite. I was broody. He was breezy. I was a foul-mouthed bastard raised on the streets, and he had health, wealth, and wow-power whenever he smiled.

  I preferred to glare.

  He pissed me off because I wanted to hop on and ride him into the mattress until he screamed my name and creamed in my fist.

  But I couldn’t.

  Number one: he was a professional, and he thought I was one hundred percent straight and getting laid every night, because I was such a vag-loving, macho man-whore.

  Number two: I was his boss.

  Number three: morals and shit like that. Whatever.

  Number four: I wasn’t out. I could never be out. Like never ever ever ever to the max.

  Great. So great. Fucking awesome headspace for a huge fight. With my head up my ass wishing my cock was up Mikey’s, when his was unattainable and I was faux-hetero.

  I didn’t have any more time to jerk off over what if. Tonight all the sports networks represented. Vegas was big time. I’d made it. Now I just needed to win.

  Blinded by the spotlights and deafened by the roaring spectators, I hopped up to the ropes. Going from no-holds-barred bruiser to rule-abiding boxer had been a lesson in Oh my fucking God, really? I can’t make them bleed out?

  All the discipline at Michael and Sean’s hands paid off, and maybe, just maybe, we’d hit pay dirt tonight.

  Scantily dressed babes stomped around the ring in high, high, high heels matched by towering masses of dyed blond hair on their heads: Bindie, who was bendy, and Anya the dark-haired hottie—beneath her wig anyway—from the Ukraine, who’d been on the astronaut track before the Russian Federal Space Agency killed her program.

  Behind the flashy star-spangled scene, multilingual Anya wore glasses perched on her nose and an iPad on her lap as she studied aeronautics.

  Neither woman attracted me. Nor did any of the female spectators who flashed T and A in my direction or asked for said boobs and butts to be signed.

  Then there was Michael. He’d wrapped my hands in gauze and tied my tongue into knots at the same time. He’d pushed the gloves over my hands and made sure they were comfy.

  Now he lifted the rope so I could duck under.

  “Here we go, champ.” He patted me on the rump.

  The moment I stepped into the ring, everything clicked into place.

  Fight. Honor. Win.

  Chapter Two

  Sin City

  “IN THE RIGHT CORNER, he’s come to fight for fame and glory! From the mean streets of El Salvador, the undefeated Enrique El León Hernandez!”

  Enrique pounded his padded fists together before lifting them to the air. It was all about the showboating before throwing it down.

  The rip-roaring announcer turned his attention to me.

  Spotlights scorched my skin.

  “And to my left, in green and orange trunks, weighing in at two hundred and nineteen pounds, coming up the ranks undefeated, with fourteen wins, all knockouts, no draws . . .” The man held his breath as goose pimples replaced the cold prickles on my skin. “Ladies and gentlemen, THE BONNY BRUISER! The Irish Blight! Liam Ooooo’Shaughnessy!!”

  There was no ‘Ooooo’ to my name unless you counted the KOs under my soon-to-be-belt if I kept up my winning streak. I was simply Liam Shaughnessy, but my manager liked the addition. “Make ’em know you’re spitting, sparring Irish. Old school. They’ll lap it up!”

  I dropped my robe, and Michael passed it to Sean. Michael lifted his hands to my shoulders, rubbing and patting me. I was already sweat-slicked and oiled up. My body gleamed like the satiny robe that had covered my massive upper body from view.

  Camera flashes dizzied me so I lowered my eyes.

  Adrenaline pumped.

  My heartbeat thumped.

  I beat my chest, riling up the audience. Mikey spritzed water over me. I bounced on my feet and thrust my gloved hands in the air.

  A close-up of my back—my muscles rippling beneath the larger than life tat—shot up on the Tron. The huge shoulder-to-shoulder wings were inked in black, the light blue lettering curling throughout: On a Wing and a Prayer. That was my largest tattoo, the one I’d gotten after my first KO because I was doing this shit by pure guts and determination alone.

  I needed a damn wing and a prayer on my side.

  The ink that had been my cage-fighting rite of passage was a Ce
ltic cross over my left pectoral, right where my heart beat. The latest and most boss tat was the red, black, and orange dragon curling up my entire right arm. It breathed fire. Its fangs were bared. It looked badass, but it called to the fantasy-loving geek in me.

  Just as my manager Devlin predicted, the crowd lapped it up. I had the Celtic good looks fans loved. Female fans, that was. Pure black hair, snapping blue eyes, cleft chin, and a body that could’ve been stamped from iron or sculpted from stone. The men approved of my bruising fists, and the backers liked my no-nonsense, mop ’em up wins.

  Before leaving the ring, Michael removed the silver cross from around my neck. He pocketed the chain and patted me on the ass one last time. I warmed up while keeping my head down, focusing on the quiet bubble of concentration inside.

  When I glanced at Michael again, his face was equally blank. His lips usually set in a firm line when I fought. This time he nodded his head at me and quirked a grin. It was a silent gesture that basically told me to swab the deck with my opponent’s face.

  Did I like beating the shit out of other men to make a living? I liked making a living, period. Wasn’t that long ago I had to pawn my winter coat and thought about dealing pot to make ends meet so I could pay for my crappy two-room apartment on top of a Chinese take-out with enough left over to send home to my mom.

  I took pride in my sport. I was gracious to fans and did the charity thing. You never knew when you’d be on the losing side of life.

  Fight to win. Fight to survive. Fight for the sport of it and always be a sportsman, win or lose.

  Take the hits, fists, cuts, and blood, and come back at your opponent like an unstoppable freight train.

  The referee beckoned Hernandez and me into the middle of the ring. It was in the center of the ring that everything else shut off for me. I didn’t have to pretend to be anything other than what I was. A fighting machine.

  Ref drew our gloved hands together and said a quiet prayer while El León and I glared at one another.

  He let us go with a warning and a final benediction I could get behind. “Fight hard, fight clean, and good luck to the both of you.”