by Maris Black
By the time he flipped me back over onto my back and drove his cock back into me, I was completely out of control. I’d never been so lost during sex. Every time before had been so conservative, so planned, so skilled. Using my expertise to get a girl off had been my thing. Not that I hadn’t truly enjoyed every minute of sex before, especially with Layla, but this was different.
This was straight-up animal fucking like I’d never experienced before. I had no idea what was going on half the time. At some point, when I’d ridden the edge of pleasure and pain for so long I couldn’t tell the difference anymore, Kage began to slow his rhythm, his thrusts becoming much more deliberate and thoughtful. Sweat dripped down his face and onto mine. A drop landed near my mouth, and I darted my tongue out to taste.
Kage grabbed the lube once more and squirted it into his right hand. Then he wrapped that hand around my erection. Then he lowered his body onto mine, trapping my dick and his hand between our sweaty bodies. He started kissing me passionately, making out with me, stealing my sanity. Loving me.
“Come on, baby,” he coaxed. “Come on.” Using his hand and our bellies, he massaged my cock in the most amazing way, and I found myself grinding my hips to get it just the way I wanted it, slipping around in the tight, lubed space until I was quivering for release. I was worn out, but still I pushed my tired muscles to strive for it.
Kage was still sheathed to the hilt in my ass, but he was barely rocking, kissing my lips, sucking my tongue, swallowing my moans. Sensing my impending orgasm, he lifted my hips off the bed and started fucking me again, so that he was hitting my most sensitive place on every thrust.
I came like that, with Kage’s hand milking every drop of semen out of me, onto my own belly and chest. He watched every second of my orgasm, every expression on my face, and I could feel it inside me when he blew.
In that moment, with our bodies joined, our faces open, and our hearts exposed, I finally saw the clue that I’d been missing. What I saw was that Kage did want to hurt me. Desperately. He needed to take all of the pain in his heart and unload it on me.
Because he was damaged. I didn’t know exactly what that damage was or just how deep it ran, but it was a big part of who he was. And I had to be willing to accept his pain, and strong enough to take it.
Only then would I ever be able to love him.
Later as we lay together in Kage’s bed, my back spooned against his front, he reached around and toyed with my necklace charm. I smiled dreamily, on the verge of sleep.
He ran his fingertip back and forth across it for a long time before he spoke.
“I want this,” he said, so quietly I almost missed it.
“My necklace?” I asked in a groggy voice.
“No.” He hesitated long enough that I turned over and looked at his face.
“What do you want?”
“This.” He grabbed my necklace again and flipped the Claddagh charm upside down.
My heart got all tingly and warm, and a goofy smile spread across my face. Then, when the reality of what he was asking sank in, I got shy. Bit my lip and looked up at him through my lashes, surprised to discover that I was flirting with him.
It scared me to death, but I wanted it, too.
“Here,” I told him. “You do the honors.”
He untied the rawhide, flipped the necklace over, and tied it back. Then he admired it for a long time, a hint of a smile on his tempting mouth. Eventually, I leaned over and kissed him.
He cleared his throat. “Did you enjoy the show tonight?”
I chuckled. “Show? The Rockettes is a show, Kage. That was a massacre.”
“No, it wasn’t,” he scoffed.
“What? Yes, it was. You totally dominated that guy. And the way you followed my orders… that was ridiculous. I still can’t believe it. You were right, though.” I touched the cut beside his eye, which didn’t seem so bad now that the blood was cleaned up. “I couldn’t stand seeing you get hurt. It tore me up.”
Kage’s expression turned serious. “Jamie, that wasn’t really a fight. That was just a show for you. I couldn’t really do any damage to the guy in the first round, because you wanted him taken out in the second. That meant I couldn’t really get in the zone. I had to keep it together… for you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.” He put his hand to my cheek and ran his thumb across my lip. “As for getting hit, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Not in that fight. But I just couldn’t really get into the zone without tearing him to pieces. I was just playing around killing time, and he landed a lucky shot.”
“Oh, I forgot about the kick. At the beginning of the fight.”
“Now that one was on purpose.”
“What?” I stared at him.
He shrugged. “I let him kick me.”
My mouth went slack in disbelief. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I like it.” He cocked his head to the side and looked me straight in the eyes. “It gets me in the mood.”
I didn’t have a response for that.
He leaned in and kissed me. I kissed him back, but my mind was preoccupied. I reached up to feel my necklace. Ran my fingers across it in the same way Kage had done earlier, feeling the texture, and wondering if I’d ever really get to know the guy who had just been officially declared my soulmate.
21
WHEN Kage and I pulled up in a cab just after noon, there were so many cars outside my family’s house it looked like Thanksgiving. My mother’s and father’s matching white sedans were inside the garage with the door open, my sister’s Mustang sat in the driveway beside what I assumed was her fiancé Chase’s pickup truck. There were two strange SUV’s parked along the road in front of the house.
The most interesting car of the bunch, however, was a little silver VW Cabriolet with a pair of miniature pink pom-poms hanging from the mirror. I had seen that car more times than I could count. It belonged to Layla.
What the hell was my ex-girlfriend doing at my mother’s house?
I didn’t get a chance to warn Kage, who had jumped out of the car and gone around to the trunk to get our luggage, because my parents rushed right out to greet us.
Mom looked good. I supposed I had expected the cancer to have altered her appearance, but she looked just the same as the last time I’d seen her. Maybe even better. Her copper hair glistened in the afternoon sunlight, and her freckles were dark enough that I knew she’d still been outside doing her spring and summer gardening.
“I see you’ve still been working in the yard,” I said, trying to keep my eyes from misting at the sight of her. “I forget how much I missed seeing that. Our yard at college barely has grass, and at our place in Vegas, it’s all concrete and glass.”
“Well, we do have the Grotto,” Kage pointed out.
“That’s true. You know, it sort of reminds me of the gazebo in our backyard.” I looked at Mom and Dad. “You guys are still decorating the gazebo, right?”
“Of course,” Mom said. “Come look. It’s even nicer this year.”
The four of us walked around the house to the backyard, admiring my mom’s flower beds on the way. I could tell already she had been hard at work.
“This is beautiful, Mrs. Atwood,” Kage said when we came around the corner and passed through the wrought iron archway we’d gotten when I was in high school.
“Thank you,” she said, beaming with pride as we admired her handiwork.
White Christmas lights were strung all along the gazebo, and the gardens were fuller and more beautiful than I ever remembered seeing them. Flowers surrounded the gazebo and ran along both sides of the walkway. Small beds jutted out from the foundation of the house. They had added a little wrought iron bench, and a stone fountain with a cherub spitting a stream of water into a round basin.
“It looks gorgeous out here, Mom.” I wrapped my arms around her from behind and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “And you’re still as short as ever.”
She laughed and slapped me on the arm. “I guess I’ve tried to concentrate more on the yard this year. Everything has a tendency to get to me, and it helps to have that outlet.”
My father chuckled beside us. “You have no idea how much money we’ve spent on it this year. But I think it’s paid off. And what else would we do with the money now that you kids are pretty much out of the house?”
“Um… Buy me a new car,” I teased.
“I can get you a car,” Kage said, and my parents and I all whipped our heads around so hard I’m surprised we didn’t get whiplash. My parents were shocked, but I was mortified. In my mind, what Kage had just said is, “I’m fucking your son.”
My mom actually giggled like a little girl. “Wow, Jamie must be doing a great job.”
Kage didn’t even blink. “He is, Mrs. Atwood. You should be very proud. The stipend we pay him isn’t nearly what he’s worth. I guarantee you when he graduates from college, he’ll be pulling down high six figures easily.”
“Really?” My dad said, seemingly more impressed with me than he’d ever been.
“Yes, sir,” Kage said. “Especially with my reference. I haven’t told Jamie this yet, but I got some really good news this morning. Thanks in part to his efforts, I just got picked up for a fight in the UFC. It’s my shot at a contract. So if Jamie needs a car, I’ll get him a car.” He winked at me. “Think of it as a bonus.”
I couldn’t believe it. I opened my mouth and just started yelling. “Oh my God! Kage, that is so fucking awesome!”
My mom gasped at my language, and my father scowled, but I was so stoked I didn’t care. I threw my arms around Kage’s neck and gave him the hardest hug I could. He squeezed me back and laughed. I’d never seen him quite so happy. I think in that moment every bit of the darkness was gone from his eyes, and all I saw there was sheer joy.
I backed away from him, and my mind started whirling with thoughts.
“When do you fight? Oh my gosh, can I be in your corner? Can I walk out behind you when you do your entrance? Crap. We have to come up with a walk out song for you. Something to do with fighting, or winning, or hardcore. Yeah, something really hard. Are we gonna wear hoodies when we walk out? I always thought that looked cool. We at least need matching t-shirts. They can say, The Machine. Or just KAGE. Or Welcome to the Machine.”
He smiled and looked at me in that special way of his that made my knees weak. “You’re babbling again.”
“Am I?” All I knew is that I was grinning from ear to ear, and I’d never been so excited in my whole damn life. I wanted to hug him again. Hell, I wanted to kiss him, but for obvious reasons that was impossible.
My parents were just staring at us with bewildered expressions on their faces.
“That’s great news, boys,” my mom said. “Just great. This is what you’ve been shooting for, right?”
“Yes,” we both said in unison.
“Well, congratulations,” Dad said. “We’ll have to celebrate with a shot of the hard stuff after dinner.”
That made me feel good. It meant my dad thought of me as a man now. I had officially grown up in his eyes.
“That’ll be nice,” Kage said. “There is one more thing, though. Because of this fight, I have to leave in the morning. I was supposed to leave for camp today, but I didn’t want to miss bringing Jamie down here. This is way more important.”
“Well, that’s awfully sweet of you, Kage,” my mom said. She reached out and squeezed his hand. “Thank you. That means a lot.”
“Why do you have to leave so soon?” I asked.
“That fight they got me is short notice, because somebody got injured at the last minute. Starting tomorrow, I’ve got eleven days to lose thirty-five pounds.”
“Jesus. Thirty-five?” I asked. “Why so much?”
“I should be fighting Welterweight, but the guy who pulled out is a Lightweight. Gotta take what I can get. Marco’s got me signed up for an intensive training camp.”
“And that means you have to lose weight?” my mother asked, obviously confused.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kage said. “I walk around every day at one-ninety. The weight limit in Welterweight, the class I want to be in, is one-seventy. So I’d have to lose twenty pounds before the fight. That’s something fighters do all the time. Most of that is water weight. They sweat it out in a sauna before the weigh-in, then rehydrate over the next twenty-four hours before the fight.”
“Why on earth do they do that?” Mom asked.
Kage chuckled. “A long time ago, somebody decided it was a clever way to trick the system. To dehydrate themselves down much lighter for the weigh-in, then use electrolyte drinks and IV fluids to come into the ring the next day far heavier than their opponent. That kind of weight can be an advantage in a fight.”
“That sounds terrible,” Mom said. “It can’t be healthy, can it?”
Kage shook his head. “Not really. But the problem is that everybody started doing it, and now if you don’t, you risk being the small guy in the fight. It’s a vicious cycle.”
“And you have to leave tomorrow morning?” I was still hung up on that.
“Don’t worry. You stay here and look after your mom, then I’ll send for you before the weigh-in. I promise you won’t miss anything.”
His smile and his words made me feel a lot better. But eleven days? That was a long damn time. I’d gotten used to being with him. Every time he’d disappeared for a couple of days in Vegas, I got agitated. Now we were going to be apart for eleven whole days? I wanted to be there for Mom, but I already knew I was going to lose my mind.
I couldn’t say it, though. Not with my parents listening.
THE euphoria of Kage’s backyard announcement was short lived for me. In all of the excitement about the fight, and the dread of being without him for so long, I had forgotten about the surprise guest waiting for me in the house. When the four of us entered the back door, we came face to face with Layla and my sister, who were sitting on bar stools in the kitchen.
My laughter died in my throat.
“Jamie,” she said, striking a demure pose with her hands on her knee. “It’s so great to see you. You look… different.”
“If one more person says I look different, I’m going to lose my mind.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it, papi. Only that you looked like you’ve really been working out a lot. Your body—” She blushed. “Vegas has been treating you right, huh?”
“I guess. What are you doing here?”
I could see the disappointment on her face at my reaction to her presence, but dammit, I’d broken up with her. Then confirmed it on the phone. So how had she ended up in my parents’ kitchen?
“That’s no way to speak to someone, Jamie,” my mother scolded. “Did you leave your manners in Las Vegas? Layla called to see how I was doing, and I invited her to come and spend the weekend with us while you were in town.”
“Oh.” That’s absolutely all I could manage. I didn’t want to be rude or hurt her feelings, but the situation was forty kinds of fucked up.
Kage was standing beside me, but he wasn’t looking at me, and he wasn’t smiling. He was putting a hole through Layla with his eyes.
My parents were glaring at me, and Layla looked devastated, but my sister Jennifer was twirling a finger in her long auburn hair and smirking evilly at me. She cut her eyes over at Kage and then at me, and that’s when I knew. My sister was onto us.
And Jennifer had a big mouth. So there was no telling who else knew.
I shrank about two feet and skulked away into the living room, where Chase the douchebag fiancé was watching TV with my little brother, Paul. Chase was antisocial, always sitting in front of the television at family events instead of spending time with people, so I didn’t bother speaking to him.
“Paul, you’re not even gonna get up to say hi to your big brother?” I asked, ruffling his red hair.
He jumped up and squealed, throwing his arms around my shoulders.
“I didn’t know you were here. Where’s the wrestler? I want to meet the wrestler.”
Paul was only ten years old— the product of a lot of wine and a forgotten contraceptive eleven years after my parents had decided that two kids was plenty. But some accidents are happy accidents, and Paul was definitely a happy one. He had a sunny disposition and a love for all things outdoors, and he was the light in my mother’s eye. Her little garden helper she called him, among other things.
“He’s a UFC fighter,” I told Paul, then turned to find Kage.
He was still seething in the kitchen, listening to my mother explain how her surgery was scheduled for eight on Monday morning, but she had to check in at the ungodly hour of five.
“I mean, what starts at five in the morning?” she was saying.
“Kage,” I called. “Could you come over here? There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Kage dragged himself away from plotting on my ex-girlfriend and came into the living room. “This must be Paul,” he said, turning off his anger long enough to be civil to my brother.
“You’ve heard of me?” Paul asked, and I couldn’t help laughing.
“Of course,” Kage said. “Your brother told me about you. He said you were a wrestling fan.”
Paul nodded emphatically.
“Well, I can show you a few moves if you want. Things to use on bullies if you happen to meet up with any of those.”
“We’ve got a couple at school,” Paul said. “They don’t pick on me, but one of them is mean to my friend.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something I had to learn the hard way. It’s never good to start a fight, and you should always try to walk away if someone starts one with you. But… if someone does try to pick a fight with you, and you try your best to walk away but they won’t stop, it’s good to know some self-defense moves. Just so you don’t get hurt.”
