Dangerous In Love

by Alexa Davis

  Copyright © 2016 Alexa Davis

  Chapter One

  NICK

  I sat at the bar and wondered if twenty-four was the magic age when everyone realized they’re just wasting their lives, or if it was just me.

  I turned twenty-four last week and now sitting at the bar in this loud, chaotic club, like I’ve done hundreds of times before, my head felt like it was going to explode, and at nine p.m., all I wanted to do was go home.

  “Hey, Max, do you have any aspirin?”

  The bartender, who knew me well, reached underneath the counter and then tossed two foil packs of Ibuprofen my way. I opened them, popped all four into my mouth, and washed them down with my beer.

  In the club’s defense, my head had been pounding before I got here. My new trainer, Charlie, was all over my ass earlier today. He said I’ll get my ass kicked in the biggest match I’ve had to date because my head’s not completely into it. I tried to tell him that it might seem that way to someone who didn’t know me, but the night of the fight, I will be completely focused. I don’t lose – ever – and you’d think my record would speak for itself.

  But Charlie was different than my old trainer. Martin Zandt was sixty-six when he started training me when I was twenty. He was a tough, old coot that had been on top of the game as a prize fighter in his youth. He taught me everything I know, but he also taught me how to hone the hunger and the anger living inside of me and use that as much as I did the techniques I was learning.

  He never gave me shit about being a kid and enjoying life, either. He actually encouraged the type of behavior that landed me on the front of every tabloid in the country when I first came on the scene in Vegas and started winning. I was as much of a lover as I was a fighter by nature and Martin thought that was good for business.

  Charlie had a different opinion. He said if I was thinking with my small head, then I’m going to get my big one knocked off. My response to that was, “Neither of them are small.” He didn’t even crack a smile.

  It was bad enough I was stuck with a trainer who had no sense of humor, but I was stuck training in a crappy gym, too, instead of the state-of-the-art training center Martin was affiliated with. I guess in all honesty, Charlie’s gym wasn’t crappy. He had all of the equipment, and it was big, open, and clean.

  But the atmosphere was different – too laid back, I think. All of the guys in my league train at the other facility and it was like a big party every day.

  What I had been thinking, agreeing to this, I’ll never know. This was Martin’s fault. He had told me Charlie was the best. He said he was even better than him. So far, I just hadn’t seen it.

  When Martin retired last month at seventy years old, he was still a badass. I could only hope I was that much of a badass when I was that age.

  We threw him a surprise retirement party at the Mirage two weeks ago. He was wasted afterwards and on the verge of passing out, so I hadn’t felt right sticking him in a cab. I drove him home and it was the first time I’d ever been in his house. I practically had to carry him in and sit him on the couch. I’d been surprised to see the fireplace mantle and the walls were all decorated with photographs of him and a beautiful woman. The pictures all looked decades old, and when he noticed me looking at them, he said, “That’s Reyna.”

  “She’s beautiful,” I said. I had no idea who Reyna was. Before the night was over, I would. Martin started talking and the sun was coming up before he stopped.

  Apparently, Reyna was his wife. He married her when they were both twenty-one, before he got into fighting. He was discovered at his brother’s gym a year later and quickly rose to fame. Even back in those days, women loved bad boys, he told me. Martin said they started throwing themselves at him and instead of throwing them back, he fucked most of them. A year into his career, Reyna filed for divorce.

  He said that at first, he was relieved since that meant he could do what he wanted without sneaking around. He fucked a different woman every night and rarely did one twice. It sounded a lot like my life since I’d turned eighteen. I was almost basking in that fact before it dawned on me that he was sitting home alone at seventy years old, surrounded by photographs of Reyna with tears in his eyes as he talked about her.

  “So,” I asked him almost hesitantly, “You regret giving her up?”

  He looked at me with his watery and faded, green eyes and said, “About a year after our divorce, I ran into her at a restaurant. She was remarried and pregnant with her first child. She was so happy and still the sweetest, most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. From that day until this one, I’ve had regrets every single day. I traded true love – the kind that would have netted me a family and a good woman – to spend my retirement with, for this.” He lifted his hands and looked around the room.

  That was my first clue that maybe the way I was living my life would get old someday. I had never thought about committing to a woman, but I sure as hell didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone, either.

  The next clue that I needed to change my ways came about a week later when my best friend from high school called and asked me to be the best man in his wedding. He talked about his fiancée for almost an hour, and if I hadn’t interrupted him, he may have gone on all night. I started wondering what it might be like to love someone like that and maybe have them love you like that in return. It wasn’t my usual type of thought.

  Since then, I’d had that thought a lot and even my interest in bars, parties, and easy women waned. It had been over a week since I’d had sex – and for me, that was huge.

  With a sigh, I decided to give it up and go home to get some sleep. Maybe that was all I needed to get rid of this hellacious pain in my head. I stood up and dropped a twenty on the bar for Max. As I turned to leave, I heard a voice purr out,

  “Hey, sexy.”

  The voice belonged to a woman old enough to be my mother. She looked good for her age, if not a little plastic. She’d overdone the boob job and her forehead was a little too smooth, but my cock lurched in my jeans nonetheless.

  “Hey.”

  The club was crowded, but not enough so that the brush of her hard nipples pressing against my arm through her low-cut blouse could have been considered an accident. She had her duck face on as she looked up at me and batted unnaturally long eyelashes. I wasn’t sure if she was hitting on me or about to take a selfie. I thought I had decided to turn over my new leaf tonight, but apparently my cock hadn’t been on board with that plan. He was begging me to give this MILF a chance.

  I let my eyes run the length of her body. She had nice legs for an older lady, and in the barely there skirt she was wearing, I could see almost all of them. When my eyes made it back up to her face, she smiled and showed off a mouthful of way-too-white veneers.

  Her nipples weren’t all that was touching me now, either. She had one of her hands casually resting on the tattoo sleeve on my arm as she pushed up to her tiptoes so her mouth was close to my ear and said,

  “You looking for some fun tonight?”

  I looked her over again and then asked, “You hosting?” I never, ever take women to my house. It’s my haven, my escape from the rest of the world. My friends and family are lucky to get an invitation. There was no way in hell I’d risk some one-night stand beating down my door on a Sunday afternoon.

  “You bet, baby. I got a room upstairs.”

  Perfect; a tourist who would be moving on soon, I thought. Las Vegas was prime hunting grounds for a guy like me…or maybe a guy that used to be like me, after tonight anyways. “Let’s go.”

  She held on to me tighter as we made our way out of the club. When we reached the exit, she stopped next to a hot blonde about my age and said, “Baby, don’t come up to the room for a while.”

  I actually felt myself blush with shame. That was brand new, and I didn’t like it. The truth was I didn’t like myself much these days. I thought about Martin again, sitting there on his couch all alone surrounded by what could have been just
as the girl said, “Mom, you’re kidding, right?”

  She opened her mouth, but I interrupted her. “You know what, darlin’? I’m actually going to pass tonight. My head is pounding, and it looks like your room isn’t available, after all…”

  “She can find a guy with a room herself.”

  Even I wasn’t low enough to fuck a woman that would tell her daughter to find a stranger to spend the night with. It was ironic, I know. If I’d met the daughter first, I might just be that stranger. But the whole thing felt creepy to me now, and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of it.

  “You ladies can do whatever you like, but I have to go. I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in Vegas.” I had to use my other hand to disconnect the woman’s hand from my arm. She had her lips turned down in a pout and the sight of a middle-aged woman pouting made me even happier that I still had some scruples. Once I was free, I walked away to the sound of the mother telling her daughter,

  “Thanks for ruining my night.” I walked faster so that I didn’t have to hear any more. That was enough for me.

  I hit the front door of the casino and instead of the breath of fresh air I was hoping for, I was almost knocked back by a blast of heat. I’m from Vegas, but since my father saw fit to send my brother and me off to boarding school for most of our lives, I still had trouble with the climate. It was October and still over ninety degrees. Fucking desert.

  “Hey, Nick,” the valet said when he saw me.

  “Hey, Mike.” I handed him my green ticket and he took it before scrutinizing my face.

  “You okay to drive home?”

  “Yeah, only had one drink.” I’m six foot four and over two hundred pounds; one beer was like drinking tea.

  “Your eyes are really red.” If it had been anyone but Mike, I may have gotten pissed. He was an older guy that had worked at the resort since his early twenties. I didn’t doubt that he’s stopped countless tragedies from happening just because he genuinely gives a shit.

  I nodded and said, “Long day at the gym, and I have a fucking headache that won’t quit.”

  “Okay, then I’ll get the truck so you can go home and get some rest.”

  “Thanks, Mike.” He took off at a run. I smiled as I watched him and wondered how tired he must be at night when he got home. He was back with my big Ford F-350 in less than five minutes. I took the keys and handed him a twenty. His already bright face lit up more as he thanked me. At least I could go home feeling like I’d done something worthwhile today.

  On the drive, I thought about my new trainer again. He came highly recommended and he gave me one hell of a work-out today, but I got the feeling he and I weren’t going to be friends.

  His uptight way of approaching things reminded me a lot of my own father, whom I hadn’t gotten along with since I was four. Maybe I didn’t even get along with him then, but at least I can’t remember it.

  My dad was an asshole, plain and simple. My mother died when I was four and my brother was six. After a year of being raised by a nanny, Dad decided even that was too much presence and sent us off to separate boarding schools. I grew up only seeing my family on the holidays and school vacations, and it felt like attending a celebration of strangers.

  My brother Ethan and I had become good friends just over the past few years. After graduating from boarding school, he headed to the East Coast for college. He’d been at NYU for two years when I graduated high school. I came home to Vegas after graduation and refused to go to college. I’d never been as into school as Ethan was and I’d had my fill.

  Dad threatened to cut me off and kick me out, but he never followed through with either. I think he was worried about his high society friends in town finding out and it making him look bad. Whatever the reason, it afforded me the opportunity to do what I wanted – which was spend money, party, and chase tail. Dad and I ignored each other for the most part and for the first time in my life, I was actually having fun…that was, until Ethan came home.

  As I drove my big truck into the garage and pressed the button to close it behind me, I laughed. Ethan was five foot eleven in his shoes and very lean muscle. If I wanted to, I could crush him. But for some reason, hearing him say the same things Dad had told me about wasting my life had penetrated my thick skull.

  By that time, I was tatted up from my neck to my waist, and I looked like a billboard ad for one of those Pay-Per-View MMA fights. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I’d never fit in working for my Dad at one of his biomedical labs or wearing a suit and going into a law office or a courtroom every day like Ethan.

  My brother was actually the one who introduced me to Martin. He’d represented one of Martin’s fighters while doing his internship at the law firm. The fighter had gotten in a fistfight in a bar and nearly killed the guy with one, well-placed punch. The district attorney charged him with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. My brilliant brother presented evidence that the fighter was simply defending himself and got the charges thrown out.

  When Ethan introduced Martin and me, the old man took one look at me and our relationship was born – and so was my career. In the past four years, I had gone from never being in an octagon to practically living in one. My name, face, and body graced posters, billboards, buses, and cabs all over Vegas.

  It pissed my father off not only because he didn’t find it to be a “fitting” career for a Grant, but also because I refused to use the name Grant: I used my mother’s maiden name of Storelli. I liked that it represented my Italian heritage, and I also liked that it pissed off my dad.

  Now, four years later, I was one win away from being the heavyweight champion of the world and this was the time that Martin chose to retire.

  He insisted it was the perfect time because Charlie could give me more of an advantage. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because he thought I was going to lose and he wanted to get out while I was still on top.

  Either way, I was stuck with a trainer who had no sense of humor and seemed to take some kind of sadistic pleasure in putting me in the cage with the biggest and meanest sparring partners he could find. I’d gone three rounds today with some eighteen-year-old kid named Bryce that Charlie was training. He was six foot six and over three hundred pounds. One of his hands was bigger than my head. I got him to tap out in the end, but he didn’t go down easily.

  No wonder my fucking head was killing me.

  Chapter Two

  KARLI

  I was sitting in my room with my laptop open to my latest assignment while talking on the phone with my good friend, Michaela. She was trying her damnedest to try and talk me into going to a costume party with her in one of the private rooms inside of Circus Circus.

  I didn’t have any desire to party and mingle with a bunch of knuckle-dragging jocks. It was bad enough some days that I had to live with and work for one.

  “Not tonight, Michaela. I have homework, and Dad’s making dinner.”

  “You’re twenty-two years old, Karli.”

  I laughed. “Thanks for the reminder; I almost forgot.”

  “Oh shut up; you know what I mean. You don’t do anything but study, work, and spend time with your dad. You work for him – I would think that would be enough togetherness.”

  I smiled. “He’s lonely, Mich.”

  “Then he should join Match or eHarmony and let you have a life.”

  “He lets me have a life. Look what I’ve done with it. The last two boyfriends I had turned out to be the biggest losers on the planet. At least when I stay home with Dad, there’s no danger of meeting another one. I attract them like magnets. Besides, I do things.”

  “What things?”

  “I went to the football game with you last weekend.” I had hated every second of it.

  Michaela’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Trent, played football for Las Vegas University. She begged me to go with them and to the after party. I bailed on the party about a half an hour into it when I’d already go
tten hit on by two, dumb jocks and a third one rubbed up against me and tried to pretend it was an accident.

  “The football game doesn’t count.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No, because after the game, I had to beg you to go to the party and then you left after fifteen minutes – alone.”

  “It was half an hour.”

  “Oh geez, excuse me. If you would have stayed, you might have hooked up with one of the hot guys on Trent’s team since you completely ignore the yummy fighters at the gym you get to work at.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I ‘get’ to work there. Have you ever tried to get the smell of dozens of sweaty, funky guys out of a roomful of equipment?”

  “Well, I’ve had to air out my bed once or twice.”

  “Michaela!” I laughed. My friend was crazy. It’s part of why I loved her. “Anyways, you know, after the last, disastrous relationship, I don’t date jocks. I’m holding out for a nice, non-sweaty law student with his muscles between his ears, instead of places that makes him think he’s God’s gift to every woman over eighteen. I’ve had more than my fair share of players in my life.”

  “They’re not all players. Trent isn’t.” I had my doubts about that, but for now, I kept it to myself.

  “I know, honey, but I have too much going on in my life to even risk it right now. I don’t have time for head games. Dad gave me this whole week off so that I could get caught up on my homework. I’m not about to tell him I’m going to a party instead of having dinner with him.”

  “The party won’t be in full swing until nine, at least. You have plenty of time to do both. Please go with me!”

  I sighed. “I don’t have a costume.”

  “I have that red flapper dress you loved so much. We can do your hair all up in curls and you can wear your black stilettos. You’ll look so good! Please!”

  “Grr, you’re so persistent!”