Royally Screwed: A British Bad Boy Romance

by Jessica Ashe

  “Broken bones always heal,” Duke said casually. “Trust me, that guy has had more broken bones than you’ll see in ten years on the job.”

  “He has a subdural hematoma,” Alison said. “The blow to the head lead to a build up of blood beneath the skill. We drained a build up of blood to keep him out of immediate danger, but if he takes another knock like that he could suffer a stroke. Or worse.”

  Gayle and I read between the lines a bit quicker than Duke, who was still trying to process everything he’d heard.

  “So how long will that take to heal?” Duke asked. “I can guarantee you the first question he’s going to ask when he wakes up is ‘when can I have a rematch with Elliot?’”

  “The build up of blood is always going to be there,” Alison replied. “The risk of further damage is low enough that we don’t want to risk brain surgery. However, that means he must avoid any serious trauma to the head.”

  “He’s a fighter,” Duke said. “How can he avoid serious trauma to the head?”

  “By not fighting,” Alison replied impatiently. “Riker cannot fight again. Never.”

  This was all my fault. I’d practically wished for this. I’d wanted him to stop fighting, and now he had no choice. All it took was a life-threatening injury.

  Riker would be devastated at this news. Fighting was his life, and I doubted I would be able to replace that role, no matter how much I wanted to.

  “You should all go home and get some sleep,” Alison suggested. “He’s going to be out for hours.”

  “I’m staying,” I replied immediately. “Can I wait in his room?”

  Alison hesitated and then nodded. “Just you though. I don’t want too many people crowding over him when he wakes up.”

  “You two should go home,” I said to Duke and Gayle. “I’ll call you if anything happens.”

  “Your battery’s dead,” Gayle pointed out.

  “Oh shit, you’re right.”

  “I have a charger in my locker,” Alison said. “I’ll go get it.”

  “Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.”

  “That’s the idea,” she replied, as she left the room.

  “He’s not going to take the news well,” Gayle said.

  “I’ll tell him,” I replied. “Better he hate me than either of you.”

  “He’s not going to hate you,” Duke said. “Trust me on that.”

  “We’ll see.”

  I didn’t have Duke’s confidence. All this was my fault. I should never have gone to the fight. At one point, I thought he’d seen me, and I’d been a distraction, but I knew that couldn’t be the case.

  There’s no way he’d have been able to pick me out in the crowd while in the middle of the toughest fight of his career.

  But I still felt guilty.

  I’d gotten what I wanted, but I’d never felt so empty.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Riker

  I woke up to the sight of a drowsy looking Nora battling to stay awake by the side of my bed.

  She looked exhausted. Her face was pale, and there were large bags under her eyes. To me, she was still the most beautiful person I’d ever laid eyes on. There was no one else I’d rather be looking at right now.

  My body quickly adapted to being awake this time. I could open my eyes without it blinding me, and after clearing my throat I could actually talk.

  “You look as bad as I feel,” I said groggily.

  Nora jumped at the sound of my voice as if she’d previously been sleeping with her eyes open.

  “You’re awake.”

  “More so than you by the looks of it.”

  I tried to sit up in bed, but the second I lifted my body from the mattress, the blood seemed to drain from my head and I became dizzy.

  At least my muscles seemed to work now. I moved all my limbs, and even made sure there was still life in my cock. Never hurt to check these things.

  “Hang on,” Nora said, before pressing a button to raise the bed and tilt me into a half-sitting, half-laying position.

  “You’re here.”

  “Yes, I am. There’s no problem with your eyes.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I went to the fight.”

  I almost answered ‘I know,’ but stopped myself just in time. I didn’t want Nora to know I’d seen her in the crowd. If she knew that, she might work out why I was distracted just before I took the knock-out blow.

  I couldn’t let Nora blame herself for this mess.

  “I thought you hated me fighting,” I replied.

  “I do, but I wanted to support you. Besides, I know how important fighting is to you.”

  “It’s my life.”

  Nora looked down at her feet and rubbed her tired eyes.

  My life was fighting in a steel cage. That was all I had. What did that say about me? Even when someone positive had come into my life, I’d just pushed her away and kept her at distance.

  I told myself I just wanted to protect her, but it wasn’t only that. I was scared. It sounds stupid for a fighter to be scared of something so minor as a relationship, but the truth was undeniable. I’d panicked out of fear, and I didn’t know if I would get a second chance.

  “It’s probably a stupid question,” Nora said slowly, “but how are you feeling?”

  “Weak,” I replied. “My entire body feels lethargic, as if I’m recovering from the flu.”

  “They’ve given you a lot of drugs.”

  “There’s some pain in my chest when I breathe.”

  “That’ll be the cracked ribs.”

  “Yeah, I thought the feeling was familiar.”

  I never noticed ribs breaking during fights, but I could sure as hell feel them after. I had a broken nose as well, but that would heal easily enough.

  “Any headaches?” Nora asked.

  I closed my eyes for a second, but couldn’t detect any pain in my head. My body ached all over, and there was a feeling of numbness about me, but no pain.

  “I’m fine,” I replied. “I’ll be up and about in no time.”

  Nora smiled. She was trying to be reassuring, but nothing in that smile had me convinced. There was bad news.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing that can’t wait until you’re better.”

  “I’m not going to get better if I’m worried about what bad news you have. Spit it out. As you know only too well, I’m a big boy. I can handle it.”

  Nora smiled a little more warmly this time, but she still looked uncomfortable.

  “The doctors can explain it a lot better than I can,” she said.

  “And I won’t be able to understand them. Put it in layman’s terms for me.”

  “You took a nasty blow to the head.”

  “I figured that much out,” I replied. “I still remember the knee slamming into me. Then everything went dark.”

  “You have a subdural hematoma—a build up of blood under your skull. The surgeons had to operate.”

  Any surgery involving my skull was not a thought I relished, but at least I couldn’t remember it.

  “I’m okay now?”

  “You aren’t in any immediate danger. You just need to make sure not to get another blow to the head like that.”

  “Well that’s not so bad,” I replied. “I just need to make sure I keep my focus next time, and avoid getting knocked out.”

  “You don’t understand,” Nora said softly. “There can’t be a next time. You can’t fight again, Riker. It’s too risky.”

  Nora had never wanted me to fight, so at first I didn’t take her words seriously. I was about to argue when I noticed the look in her eyes. Tears had formed in the corner of each eye, and they weren’t tears of joy to see me awake.

  She meant it. I couldn’t fight again.

  If I couldn’t fight, what the hell could I do? I wasn’t about to start stacking shelves in a supermarket. I didn’t have what one manager had once described as a “customer-facing personality.” In othe
r words, I scared off the shoppers.

  I had to keep fighting. I had to make it into the UFC. I had to face Tyler Young in the ring.

  “I’ll wear a head brace,” I said desperately. “Something with a bit of padding.”

  “That won’t help. Besides, I can’t imagine your opponents would allow that.”

  For the first time since I’d woken up, I tore my gaze away from Nora and stared up at the ceiling. There had to be a way out of this, but I sure as hell couldn’t think of one right now.

  “How long will I be stuck in here for?” I asked.

  “A month or so. They need to do daily tests, and you’ll have to have some physical therapy as well to make sure your coordination and balance haven’t been affected.”

  “What then?”

  “Then we sit down and work this out. Together.”

  I tried to shake my head, but that hurt my neck. She’d told the nurse she loved me. Had she meant it, or had it just been in the heat of the moment?

  Either way, I couldn’t be with Nora now. Before the injury, I had a job she hated. Now, I didn’t even have a job.

  “I don’t need you to look after me,” I said defiantly.

  “I’m not going to be looking after you,” she replied. “You’ll be back on your feet before you know it.”

  “I’m only good for one thing, and I can’t do that any more.”

  “Actually,” Nora said, smiling, “you’re good for something else as well, and the doctor said you won’t have any problems with that.”

  In spite of everything, I smiled. I couldn’t help it. She just had that effect on me.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m not sure everything’s working down there. How about you come a little closer and we can test it out.”

  Nora laughed. “You are under a cocktail of drugs that could knock out an elephant, you have broken bones, and I haven’t slept in over thirty hours.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that until the doctors say otherwise, the only thing you’re doing in that bed is resting.”

  My cock hardened enough to raise the bed covers and make it clear that rest was the last thing on my mind.

  Nora caught sight of it and smiled. “How are you even awake?” Nora asked. “You should be asleep, not horny.”

  “That’s the effect you have on me. Come on, I’ve always wanted to do it in a hospital.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t already. You’re in here often enough from what I hear.”

  “Ugh, nurses these days are so boring. It’s all ‘no, you need to rest,’ or ‘you’ll tear your stitches out,’ or ‘I’ll get fired,’ or ‘that won’t fit inside me.’ ”

  Nora shook her head in mock despair. “You just need to get better insurance, I suppose. Actually, speaking of stitches, you have a rather nasty scar on your side. The doctor asked me how you got it, but I didn’t know.”

  I clasped my hand to the scar. It still hurt every time I thought about the dull blade piercing my skin and tearing at the flesh. “Tyler,” I muttered in reply.

  “The guy from prison?” Nora asked.

  I nodded. “He didn’t fight fair.”

  Nora lifted the bedcovers up to get a look at the scar, but I distracted her with a glimpse of something much larger and altogether more interesting.

  Nora stared down at my cock as it twitched with desire and longing. She bit her lip and gasped gently, as the same desire flooding me washed over her as well.

  “Whatever you do,” Nora said, licking her lips, “don’t tell your doctors about this.”

  Before I could reply, her hot, succulent lips were wrapped around my cock, and her head had disappeared view.

  “Oh shit,” I yelled, as her lips nearly made it to the base of my cock, before she came up, sucking as if her life depended on it.

  I let out a low groan, before realizing that perhaps sounding like I was in pain while in hospital, was just a surefire way to get interrupted.

  She couldn’t fit my entire cock in her mouth, but she got damn close, which is more than most women did. The tip of my head tickled the back of her throat, but she managed not to gag. Just.

  My cock throbbed and pulsed in her warm, wet mouth as Nora kept inching further and further down my cock. When she pulled up, she gasped for air, and then went immediately back down on it, determined not to stop until I’d finished.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  My muscles stiffened—or at least, the ones that still worked did—and I gritted my teeth before releasing and exploding into Nora’s mouth.

  Nora kept her lips clamped tight over my cock; not a drop of air, or anything else, escaping the seal, until she had swallowed every last drop.

  When her head reappeared by the side of the bed she was licking her lips with seductive abandon.

  “Now do you promise to get some rest?” she asked with a grin.

  “Whatever you say, nurse,” I replied. “Speaking of rest, you should get home. You need the sleep even more than I do.”

  Nora didn’t put up too much of a fight. She had even less energy than me at this point. I kept the smile on my face until she left the room. Once she was out of sight, I let my real emotions wash over me.

  Much to my surprise, I was still smiling.

  I’d thought that fighting Tyler was the only important thing in my life, but over the last few weeks I’d barely thought about him.

  I’d lost my identity. I was no longer a fighter. I’d lost the only thing important to me.

  But I’d gained something even better. Nora.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Nora

  According to his doctors, Riker had been despondent for the last month, but whenever I visited he seemed to gain a new lease on life.

  In my absence, he dwelt on the loss of his career, but I could distract him from all that. He’d passed every exam the doctors had given him. His brain was in perfect working order, and he had no coordination or balance issues.

  Alison kept an eye on him in when I wasn’t there, and I noticed that she had warmed to him over the last few days. She no longer lectured me on my poor taste in men, although she still spoke about the cage fighting in the same tone of voice she reserved for street violence.

  After another week, the doctors signed Riker out. He was allowed to leave. I got there early to help him pack, but he’d already done it himself. God forbid he ever actually rely on me for anything.

  Riker also had a visitor. A familiar face that I hadn’t ever expected to see again.

  I rushed into the room, expecting to break up a fight, but the two men were laughing and looked on good terms.

  Both turned to look at me when I burst in.

  “Hi,” the man said, holding his hand out to me. “I’m Elliot.”

  “I know who you are,” I replied, refusing to shake his hand. “I’m hardly likely to forget.”

  “Nora, it’s okay,” Riker said, motioning to Elliot’s still outstretched hand. I shook his hand reluctantly.

  “I’m sorry for what happened during the fight,” Elliot said to me. His voice didn’t match his appearance. I’d expected him to sound a bit like Riker, but he had a strong English accent that didn’t go with the muscles and tattoos.

  “You’ve already apologized,” Riker said. “And I told you then it wasn’t necessary. You didn’t do anything illegal. I would have done the same thing.”

  “Yeah, but you wouldn’t have knocked me out. It takes a lot more than that to make me go down.”

  Riker laughed, while I watched on not believing what I was seeing. The last time these two men had been together, they’d been kicking fifty shades of crap out of each other. Now they were laughing and joking around.

  “You’re only being a cocky shit, because you know we can’t have a rematch,” Riker replied.

  “Well you’ll never know,” Elliot replied. “I’d better be going. You want a hand getting out to the car?”

  “
No, we’ll be fine,” I replied.

  Riker might be on speaking terms with Elliot, but I couldn’t imagine he would accept help from him.

  Alison came in shortly after Elliot left and told us when Riker should take his pills, of which there were plenty. She was definitely warming to Riker, but still insisted on lecturing him on fighting whenever she got the chance.

  “Come on,” I said once Alison had left. “Let’s go get you home.”

  * * *

  “Where are we?” Riker asked I parked the car in the driveway of a small house on the outskirts of town.

  “My house,” I replied. “This is where I grew up.” The place where Mom had died.

  “I thought you didn’t want to come back here.”

  “I didn’t, but I figured we needed some time out of the city while you recovered. This place has fresh air, and there’s even a tiny yard.”

  “You sure about this? You seemed pretty adamant about selling this place.”

  “I’m still going to sell it, but there’s no rush.”

  Riker smiled at me unnervingly. I didn’t think of him as the smiling type, but he’d been doing it a lot these last few days. Retiring from fighting was going well for him so far. There would be rough times ahead—I wasn’t kidding myself on that point—but I had some optimism for the future.

  “You’re in a good mood,” I remarked. “Should I be worried?”

  “I’m allowed to be happy. I’m out of the hospital, and I’m going to be living with you. That’s enough to put a smile on any man’s face.”

  “You don’t think it’s too soon for us to be living together?”

  This was definitely a bad move on paper, but it didn’t feel like a bad move in my heart. We’d jumped ahead a few stages, and Alison would give me grief, but I had watched him nearly die. That had a way of making you reevaluate all the rules around this kind of thing.

  “No, not really,” Riker replied. “Once you go off to work, we’ll spend less time with each other than we did this summer anyway.”

  “But, you know, we’ve only dated casually up to now. We seem to be skipping a few steps.”