MMA Fighter's Obsession

by Flora Ferrari

  He breathes through his teeth, glancing at Lola.

  “What is it, Lola? Is this a money-grab thing?”

  “What?” Lola hisses, her voice whip sharp. “Dad, I love you, but don’t sit there and try and make out that I’m some sort of …”

  She trails off, but the unsaid word hangs silently in the atmosphere of the booth.

  Gold digger.

  I recoil at the thought, a shaft of anger stabbing right through me.

  If Seb wasn’t my oldest and best friend, I know I’d explode like a lion whose territory has been infringed upon by lesser animals. To brand what Lola and I have as anything less than perfect, to something just money related, causes sickness to maelstrom in my belly.

  “I know it’s not ideal for you,” she goes on, a cord of strength in her voice. “But you can’t change the fact that we’re together, and we’re going to stay together. I don’t want to ruin your and Liam’s friendship, though.”

  “My head is spinning about a million miles per hour,” Seb sighs, massaging his forehead. “So what is this, exactly? This thing going on between the two of you?”

  “Why do you have to say it like that?” Lola snaps.

  “What, you’re going to dictate how I speak now?” Seb growls.

  “Seb,” I say quietly, causing everybody at the table to abruptly stop talking and turn to me. “Please don’t talk to her like that.”

  He grins in a vicious way I recognize from childhood, the same way he’d grin after telling a nasty joke about a classmate. He’d always apologize later, realizing the error he’d made, but Seb was hot headed, always letting his words fly without contemplating them beforehand.

  “Old, old friend,” he sighs, moving his finger around the edge of his whiskey glass.

  And then moving too quickly, and causing it to roll onto its side and almost off the table.

  I grab it smoothly and set it upright, and even this makes his expression warp in annoyance, as though that’s just another slight toward him and his family.

  I feel my patience gnawing to an even more threadbare state, my hands gripping the table so that my knuckles turn white.

  “It’s like this, Seb,” I say. “I always knew that I’d recognize the woman of my dreams the second I saw her. I knew it might happen one day. But I’d resigned myself to the fact that it might not, too. Well, when I walked into that interview and saw Lola, I felt something I’d never experienced before. It was like …”

  I pause, delving into my mind for the most accurate words, the same way I search for the most effective strike in the cage.

  “It was like suddenly, everything just made sense. I knew I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life. I only realized after this world changing feeling that she was Lola, your daughter. But what the hell was I supposed to do? I knew, Seb. I knew she was the one. I knew she was going to be the mother of my children and we were going to have a life together.”

  “After what?” Seb mutters sulkily. “A couple of minutes?”

  “Less,” I snarl, pride infusing my voice. “A couple of seconds, if that. Your daughter is the best person I’ve ever met and I …”

  I love her.

  “And I knew that what we’d have would be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “It’s romantic, Sebastian, isn’t it?” Anna says, touching his hand and then squeezing onto it when he reluctantly flips it over, their fingers interlacing. “You can see that much, at least?”

  “Romantic,” Seb says, speaking the word like it’s a dead person, somebody recently passed, as though he can’t quite understand how it happened. “Maybe it is. I don’t know. Anna, you know I’ve never been the most romantic type. But you’ll understand if this is all just a bit hard for me to accept. So you walk into the interview room and click you knew.”

  “Yes,” Lola says, passion making her voice wavy. I can hear the emotion underlying the word, making me want to pull her into my arms and kiss away any pain swarming inside of her. “It was the same for me, Dad. I mean, I didn’t dare think that Liam would want me, but—”

  “You’re a beautiful, talented girl, Lola,” Seb says. “Any man would be lucky to have you.”

  “And I do feel lucky,” I say firmly.

  “But I wanted him,” Lola flows on. “I felt it, too. It’s so fricking hard to explain. This isn’t some quick fling, Dad. This isn’t a money-grab or anything like that. This is me wanting to be with Liam forever. He’s claimed me, and I want to be claimed by him.”

  The waiter arrives with the starters and another round of drinks, but I feel something shifting in the mood when Seb reaches for his water instead of his whiskey.

  A lull smooths over the conversation as we eat our food, only commenting on how tasty it is, its texture, its quality. Beside me, I feel Lola bubbling with nervous energy, her thigh brushing up and down against mine.

  Even now, an answering call fires inside of me, something urging me to grip her thigh, to slide up to her …

  But I’m going to have to learn how to control myself around my queen, otherwise we’ll never get anything done. It’s not her fault she’s sex made flesh, every inch of her coated in take-me strokes of lust.

  It’s like I can read her thoughts in the twitches of her body, in the way she eats her food, the scraping of her fork against her plate.

  Maybe this won’t work.

  Maybe Dad will never come around.

  But he has to, he fucking has to, because there’s nothing in this universe that will stop me from claiming my queen.

  “You’re my age, Liam,” Seb says once we’ve finished the starters, as though he’s revealing a fact I was hitherto unaware of.

  “I’m your age,” I agree, just letting it hang there.

  It doesn’t matter to me, not in the slightest, that Lola is over two decades younger than me. When you know, you know, and I don’t care about the mere years separating us. They seem pathetic in light of what we have and what we’re going to become.

  “But why does that matter?” Lola cuts in, a flame of zeal in her words. “Liam is the fricking heavyweight champion of the world, Dad. He’s youthful in the cage and he’s youthful outside of it.”

  She winces and Anna does the same, but the moment seems to pass without Seb grabbing onto the potential ammunition that statement offers.

  Youthful outside of it.

  In the bedroom?

  I find myself smirking, but then force my lips into a serious line.

  “Anyway, I don’t see what age has to do with it when we feel the way we do,” she goes on. “So what if he’s forty-two and I’m eighteen? It’s not like we’re ignorant of that fact, jeez. To be honest, I like that he’s older than me. So many of the boys my age are so immature and have no idea what they want to do with their lives. Well, we can say for sure that Liam doesn’t have that problem, right?”

  A warm smile touches Seb’s lips, just for a moment, and his eyes flit to mine like they did when we were boys.

  “Yeah,” he allows. “Liam’s never had a problem chasing his dreams.”

  “And I want to support Lola while she chases her,” I say firmly. “I want to be with her every step on our journey. I want us to share the journey. That’s what we’re trying to tell you, Seb. We’re in this for the long haul.”

  “Honey,” Anna says, giving his hand a squeeze. “I know this is a shock for you, but just look at them. They’re crazy about each other. And they’re talking about commitment, about the long haul. Isn’t that just what we’d dream for Lola, finding a steady, capable man to settle down with? I get it, I do …”

  She goes on, when he’s about to cut her off.

  “But just because he’s your best friend, it doesn’t mean we should stand in the way of what they have. Just imagine if some friend of yours did that to you when we were first getting together. How would you feel?”

  Seb winces, but a smile touches his lips again. “I’d feel like ignoring that SOB until the end of
my time, truth be told,” he sighs. “So this is for real? You’re going to have a family together? You’re going to take care of each other?”

  “Yes,” I growl, a wolf defending his pack. “Lola means more to me than my MMA career, than my business, than anything in my whole damn life. I’m ready to make her my life. We’ll grow and evolve together.”

  I reach for Lola’s hand and take it for the first time since Seb and Anna arrived, moving my thumb over her knuckles, stilling her trembling with my steel support.

  “Dad, Liam’s chosen me, and I’ve chosen him. We’re going to have children together. And I want you to be okay with this, I really, really do. But …”

  She sucks in a quivering breath.

  “But I’m not going to let anything come between us.”

  “Neither am I,” I say, backing her up like I always will.

  “What is that?” he glowers. “An ultimatum?”

  “No,” Lola and I say at the same time, and then turn to share a brief, precious moment amidst the drama.

  Lola’s eyes twinkle as she says, “It’s just a fact, Dad.”

  We all pause again as the mains are brought out, mine and Seb’s steaks throwing steam into the air, whirling, as Lola eyes her lamb and Anna picks up her fork for her salad.

  “I want a promise,” Seb says after a mouthful of bloody steak. “I want you to promise me, Liam, that—”

  “I will never hurt her, old friend,” I growl, interrupting him. “I’ll always protect her. I’ll always support her. Forever.”

  “Well, you have my blessing,” Anna says, her cheeks glowing as her gaze flits between us. “I knew right away. On the beach, when you walked off together, I just knew something was going on. And I’m not like my grumpy husband.” She elbows him playfully, making him chuckle lightly despite his supposed anger. “Nope, I was over the moon about it. You make an incredible couple. Any idiot could see that.”

  “Except this idiot, apparently,” Seb says, but he’s grinning and his tone is self-deprecating. He nods, twice, the second one seeming to settle something inside of him. “I came in here thinking it was some fling, I don’t know. Something temporary, something that would make it so we could never be friends again, Liam. And that Lola was maybe not thinking things through properly.”

  He pauses and I feel Lola tense up beside me.

  But when her father speaks next, she relaxes, as though a cool breeze is flowing through her.

  “But Anna’s right. You can just see how much this means to you both. So, Liam, Lola…” He smiles without any resentment now. “You have my stamp of approval, for what it’s worth.”

  “It’s worth a lot, old friend,” I say. “A man should always be on good terms with his woman’s father if he can be.”

  “It really does, Dad,” Lola says.

  “Let’s stop kowtowing to this grumpy fool, then,” Anna teases, tickling his side. “And enjoy this amazing food.”

  “I second that,” Seb grins. “After all, old buddy, it’s your treat, right?”

  The whole table laughs and I feel a weight being lifted from the interaction, all the tension seeping away as we lose ourselves in the catharsis of the moment.

  But then something pricks at me with urgency and I know there’s one more thing I need to ask Seb tonight.

  I wait for him to excuse himself and go to the restroom and then follow him down the yellow-lit corridor.

  “Seb,” I call out.

  He turns, that same smile on his face.

  “Liam,” he grins. “Chasing me to the pisser now, is that it? Don’t worry, I’m not going to make an escape out the window. I meant what I said back there.”

  “It’s not that,” I say, feeling a tic of nervousness in my jaw, in my temples, everything tense and primed. “I need to ask you something, something really, really goddamn important.”

  Seb blinks.

  “Alright, Liam, alright,” he says. “Ask away.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Liam

  I sit in the back of the hired car watching New York flit by me, the hustle and bustle of the city still triggering something like awe in me after living here all my life. The sun slants down brightly from a clear midday sky, but nothing could be brighter than the feeling doing somersaults in my chest.

  I close my eyes and let my mind dance over the past couple of days after the dinner, Liam and I turning the Plaza suite into our sanctuary, only leaving for food but otherwise devouring each other the rest of the time.

  All through the dinner, something acidic was mocking me from the back of my mind, a cruel voice whispering that Dad wasn’t going to be okay with it, that he’d take a stand.

  And then what?

  But we’ll never have to cross that threshold, never have to guess what would happen if Dad had firmly said no, he’s now okay with this.

  I know Liam and I wouldn’t have been able to bridle this thing between us, this galloping, beautiful – say it, a voice whispers – this love.

  This morning, I woke with the sun shining on my face and a note from Liam on the bedside table.

  I’m sending a car to pick you up at noon. Be ready, beautiful xoxo

  I stared at the hugs and kisses with a silly feeling of joy swirling around me. I’d never have guessed that Liam would draw hugs and kisses, but of course he did, for me, for us.

  Something magical has happened to us ever since we first met in the Caribbean, when he defended my honor from that douchebag Markus.

  I haven’t asked the driver where we’re going, because I don’t want to know. I trust Liam more than I thought I’d ever be able to trust a boy, especially when my only experience with them were the high school jerks who delighted in mocking and ignoring me.

  But Liam’s no boy.

  He’s a man, my man, and I’m ready to go wherever he wants to take us.

  Even so, I draw in a gasping breath when I see that we’re driving up the long grey-brick road toward a helipad, the sign telling me that it’s a place where you can hire a helicopter for commercial and personal flights.

  The car glides to the edge of the wide open concrete, helipads dotted all over the place. Some of them are home to helicopters, their large metal frames sitting like resting beasts on the tarmac. Others are empty with large yellow H letters proclaiming their purpose.

  The driver comes to a stop just shy of a parked helicopter, my chest feeling light and breezy when I see Liam waiting out front.

  Despite the heat, he’s wearing a suit the same iron color as his hair, his beefy six foot seven form filling out the material, wide at the shoulders, taut at the middle. He’s got his hands crossed over his middle, clamped tightly.

  Liam’s not a man made for nerves, but something like that flitters across his expression when I climb from the car and approach.

  “Are we going for a fly, Mr. Caveman?” I say, using the nickname that started in the Caribbean and has taken on a life of its own here in the States.

  It’s only a joke, though, because even though he’s one hundred percent caveman when it comes to savage protection and possessiveness, he’s way too smart when it comes to business to be completely primal.

  But the look he gives me now is like something out of the stone age, a twist to his lips telling me he wholeheartedly approves of my outfit.

  I chose a flowing summer dress, and not just because the heat is ubiquitous. I love savoring the way his eyes linger on my body when the fabric rustles in the oh-so-slight breeze, drinking in the confidence his desire gifts me.

  “We were going to,” he says, striding across the pad and looping his arm around me. “But now I’m thinking I might have to take you back to the Plaza. Are you trying to drive me insane, Lola?”

  I giggle, planting a hand on his chest and squeezing onto solid muscle.

  “Maybe,” I admit. “I don’t want you forgetting why you chose me, do I?”

  I love you, I almost scream. I love you so fricking much. Do you feel the same?
>
  “I’d never forget that,” he assures me, leaning down and planting a kiss on my lips. It lengthens as sun-like warmth blooms between us. Then he breaks it off, smirking. “But we really have to get going. Before I lose control.”

  “Before I lose control, you mean,” I joke.

  “You just want to get back to the suite so you can write some more,” he teases with a playful tickle to my side.

  I roll my eyes, but I can sense the supportiveness in his expression. Between our frantic lovemaking sessions, I’ve been letting my fingers fly like miniature lightning bolts across the keyboard of my laptop, retrieved from Mom and Dad’s place when we went there for a fun, unbelievable dinner.

  Mom and Dad’s place.

  A stunned sensation thuds into me when I realize I’ve already mentally moved out of my childhood home, even though Liam hasn’t actually asked me to live with him yet.

  Just like the L-word, I try and rein this in.

  But I can’t.

  It stampedes ahead.

  “Are you ready to fly, Lola?” he whispers, tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear.

  “With you?” I whisper. “Always.”

  The helicopter surges over the city, rising higher and higher with my belly feeling like it’s dropping back down onto the tarmac. It’s a strange feeling and I find myself clutching onto Liam’s hand as though if I left go the rest of me will fall with my belly.

  “Relax, just breathe,” Liam whispers, his voice intimate in the over-ear headsets we’re wearing to blot out the racket of the helicopter’s engine and blades. “I’m here, Lola. Always. Open your eyes.”

  I giggle. “I didn’t even realize they were closed.”

  He places his other hand on my leg, squeezing in a way that strengthens me, sending reassuring pressure up and down my thigh.

  “Look,” he says. “It’s beautiful. Not as beautiful as you, granted, but that’s a high bar.”

  I laugh again, grabbing his side, needling him. I love these playful back-and-forth moments, especially the play fighting, mostly because it gives me an excuse to feel how firm his abs are, his muscles solid and cut with ripped lines.