Dirty Fighter: A Bad Boy MMA Romance Read online

  “Okay,” I said, smiling. I leaned up and kissed him, this incredible man who built himself up from literally nothing. I was so proud of him, and so amazed by everything he had accomplished. We kissed slowly at first, a lazy and comfortable kiss. I loved him.

  The kiss got hot quickly.

  All I could think about was how much he had done, how much he went through, for me. To keep me safe from my father he gave up his entire world. I needed him to know how much I loved him, even if the words weren’t fully baked enough to leave my mouth.

  I kissed him lower, first on his jaw, then his neck. He looked so damn good in a suit. The white shirt was just tight enough to show off how ripped he was, and the pants did him more than a couple favors.

  “Sit on the bed,” he said, breaking my train of thought.

  “Hm?” I asked, breathing in the smell of his musky cologne.

  He leaned down and kissed my lips, then lifted me up. He didn’t even look like he was straining. I was surprised and tickled by this. I laughed and kissed him and he kissed me back, smiling. His lips trailed down to my neck, to my chest, to my stomach—I could tell where this was going.

  Soon he was pushing up the skirt of my black dress and kissing the inside of my thighs. Slight stubble from the day rubbed against my delicate skin and drove me wild. He turned me on so much and God he didn’t even look like he was trying.

  I laid back on the bed, he slid one of my thighs over his shoulder, and his kisses got so high up my thighs that I could feel his hot breath on my clit through my panties. I could feel my face growing pink from embarrassment. I leaned my head up to watch, and his eyes were on mine as he kissed my clit through my underwear. I slipped back onto the bed and moaned, caught off guard.

  He kissed me through my panties a couple more times before he slowly slid them off. I felt chills run up and down my whole body as he moved. He tossed them aside, then his mouth was back between my legs. He was kissing my clit and my entrance; I felt flustered and so overheated. He started using his tongue, lavishing my clit like a lollypop, and I could have sworn the world was ending.

  “Oh, fuck, Adam,” I caught myself gasping as he continued on, licking a stripe from my entrance up to my clit, kissing, and then doing it again. My heart was beating out of my chest and I could feel my back arching against him. He slipped his tongue into my entrance and I swear I bucked against his face a little, caught off guard. “Oh my God,” I gasped out, feeling breathy and like I was losing my mind. He trailed another lick up to my clit, circling it with his tongue teasingly before he licked it properly again.

  I could hear myself moaning, I wasn’t going to try to stop myself.

  One of his fingers pressed against my entrance, just barely, before he slowly licked my clit again and slid it in roughly. I was gasping and whining now, so close, so fucking close. His tongue sped up on my clit and he began fucking me with his finger, crooking it against my g-spot until I was losing all control.

  “I’m going to come,” I gasped out, unable to do anything but warn him. He kept going, his tongue thick and rough against my clit.

  When I came it was like skydiving.

  I couldn’t make it down to Earth, I didn’t want to, I was shaking a bit and I distantly knew that I was moaning, oh God I was so loud. My breath stopped for a few moments until I could bring myself down, he slid a finger against my over-sensitized clit and I felt my whole body convulse for a moment. I was finally coming down, and as I looked up, I saw him licking his fingers clean like I was a treat.

  Fuck he was hot.

  “Get up here,” I said roughly, not having time to ask nicely. He smiled at me like he’d humor me and play along. He was stupidly hot.

  I pressed him down against the bed and pulled his shirt up and out of his pants. Sliding my hand against his hot crotch I could tell that he was more than a little turned on. Good. I unbuttoned his fly and slid his pants and his boxer briefs down. His cock popped out like it knew what was going to happen. I slid my hands against it, watching his face hungrily.

  His eyes were dark and he was partially sitting up, leaning back on his bent arms.

  I followed his example and made direct eye contact as I slid my tongue against the shiny red head of his cock. His breath seemed to slow down, like he was freezing in time. I smiled, sliding my hands up and down his length, and then took him into my mouth again. He moaned slightly, I broke eye contact and slid my mouth down slowly, closing my eyes. His taste was of slightly bitter, but mostly clean skin. He was so hot and large in my mouth. I couldn’t fit him all the way in.

  I used my hands to work the parts of him my lips couldn’t reach, working the underside with my tongue. I hollowed out my cheeks and sucked, making sure to look up at his face every few seconds. He tasted good. I could hear him groan here and there, I hummed around his cock and the vibrations elicited a complete moan from him.

  His reactions were amazing.

  I kept going, working him with my hands and mouth. I could tell that he was holding back and trying not to buck up into my mouth.

  “Shit, Brooklyn, I think I’m going to,” he started, his voice was uncomfortable.

  I made direct eye contact with him and kept sucking.

  “Oh my God,” his voice sounded so gone, he sounded lost. I loved it.

  He tensed up and was coming into my mouth, hot and salty. I swallowed it down, licking him clean. I was pleased to see that he reacted to being over stimulated too. I felt like I got even.

  Sitting up, he kissed me, not caring where our mouths just were.

  My heart was beating so fully, and as I finished off my fries and we started talking about high school again, the same thought flipped through my mind again: I loved him.

  20

  Adam

  I had stayed the night. It felt so good to wake up next to her, to have her sleep in my arms. I would do anything to be able to do that every single day for the rest of my life.

  When she finally woke up, she curled up against me. She was warm and perfect. I kissed her, our morning breath mingling, and she smiled.

  “I’m going to take a shower, wanna join me?” she asked softly, she was even beautiful just waking up. Her hair was just barely tangled, loosely covering her pillow as she kissed me again.

  “Yeah,” I said, unable to say anything else. I couldn’t believe I was here. I couldn’t believe after all that time, after everything we’d been through, that this is where we finally were.

  After the shower we laid together on the bed, holding each other and staring at the ceiling.

  I couldn’t believe this was the woman I saw putting firecrackers in another girl’s locker. I couldn’t believe this was the woman I saw on the movie screen. She was in my arms, she kissed me, we slept together, and it all seemed so impossible.

  I knew that I had to be honest with her, even if it hurt. Even if she was going to leave me. If I were to keep any secret from her I would never forgive myself, it would always taint some part of our relationship. It would haunt me.

  It just sucked that the secret was so big.

  I should have told her before we slept together, I should have told her the moment I saw her again, gotten it out of the way, but I was finally happy. I just had this one thing holding me back.

  She seemed to notice that I was lost in thought and rolled onto her side, her beautiful green eyes staring into my soul.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked softly, her breath was minty from toothpaste now. I looked at her, and then sat up slowly, deciding it was time.

  “I need to tell you something, but I don’t expect anything from it okay? If you want to stop talking to me, that’s fine, I completely understand,” I began, my mind doing circles. She sat up beside me, her eyes showing concern.

  “What is it?” she asked, her hand on my arm. I sighed, I couldn’t hold it back any more.

  “I killed my father,” I said softly. I could feel her tense up next to me. “The night before I came to yo
ur house, before we had to run, I killed him. It was an accident,” I started, needing to explain. “He was hitting me, and he just wasn’t stopping, so I pushed him away and he hit a table, and,” she cut me off. Pulling me to her she kissed me gently, holding me tight.

  I was stunned.

  How on Earth could she be so understanding? How could she hear that and want to ever touch me again?

  “I know,” she said, her voice gentle. My heart stopped in my chest. “I’ve known for a long time, I heard from my mom’s messages that a ‘Mister Peterson’ went missing, she said it was the same night dad died,” Brooklyn explained, still holding me. She’d known the entire time I had been back and had still kissed me, still held me. I wanted to cry, how was she so perfect?

  “And you don’t care?” I asked, turning to face her straight on. She shook her head and smiled sadly, looking down at the sheets on the bed as she fiddled with them with her thin fingers.

  “I mean, I had heard about how your father was, everyone knew. It’s hard to miss gossip in this tiny hell of a town,” she said, shrugging. “It didn’t help that you’d come into school with a black eye, or that one time your wrist was broken and you said you fell off your bike,” she explained. “I guess I understood you, I just wanted to keep my distance. People who go through things like we have tend to recognize each other,” she said softly.

  So she did know who I was before that night.

  When she had asked about my name, I always thought it meant that I wasn’t even on her radar. But she recognized me. She knew who I was.

  She held me tight, kissing my jaw gently.

  “I don’t blame you, if you’re worried,” she added. I kissed her back and could feel tears actually threatening to leave my eyes. It felt like redemption. “Nobody would, I mean a lot of people still think that he just skipped town and vanished,” she explained. “They waited a couple years. The house was foreclosed on from what my aunt said. The city sold it as soon as they could,” she said.

  “They thought you were dead too, by the way,” this caught me off guard. “You went missing too. If you haven’t noticed a lot of people are noticing you’re back, that you’re alive. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tried to talk to you about it,” she said, running one of her hands up and down my back.

  “You’re so understanding,” I said softly, humbled by her.

  “How could I not be? I went through everything you did,” she murmured. I couldn’t take it; it was too nice, too kind. I turned to her and we kissed softly, I wanted to worship her with my mouth, with my heart, I loved her. God I loved her. I had since high school, and I didn’t see any end in sight. She was the best thing that had ever happened to me, the best person I had ever known.

  I didn’t feel alone.

  I didn’t feel like I needed to fight anymore.

  I just wanted to hold her in my arms and never let go, never let anyone else see what she had done for me, what she made me feel. I never wanted to leave that bed.

  21

  Brooklyn

  I hung up the phone and started walking back upstairs. The house hadn’t become any less creepy with time, it didn’t lose its emptiness. When I left, my dad had only been dead for an hour tops. Until that point it was heavily filled with noise, from him or her yelling, from someone running water or having the TV on, it never changed.

  Now, though, even with Adam getting dressed upstairs, putting back on the suit he had worn to my mother’s funeral since he had nothing else, the house was quiet. The stairs were cold under my feet, hardwood that deserved more than it had seen in its life. I passed by the step that I was standing on when my father slapped me, and chills ran through my body.

  My room was even more haunting, a version of me that died that night, now with a handsome man buttoning the top of his shirt in the middle of it. I walked over to Adam, feeling pensive and nervous, and kissed him softly. He slid his hands to my back and we stood there for a few moments, not needing to interrupt the silence, not needing to say anything.

  I was just so comfortable with him. There was nobody I trusted more.

  I kissed him again, then walked to my closet to put actual clothes on, not just the shorts and tank top I’d been lounging around in.

  “I’m going to meet up with some friends at the diner on Walnut, is that okay?” I asked absently, not sure if he was expecting to spend the full day with me.

  “Just want to tell you, that you won’t ever need permission to do anything. Not even to me,” he said.

  I smiled. That made me feel more at ease than I already was.

  “But yeah, I should get in a run today anyways,” he said, smiling. He didn’t put the suit jacket on, just the shirt and pants, but he looked so good in it. He noticed me staring at him and my face got hot, I smiled and slid on my shirt. “Are you nervous about them?” he asked, sitting on the bed as he waited.

  “Yeah,” I didn’t want to lie. I slid off my shorts. “I don’t know what to expect, I pretty much ignored them for three years, I didn’t even say I was leaving,” I explained. I grabbed a skirt and slid it up and over my hips, turning around in the mirror to take a look at myself. “I honestly don’t blame them, I wouldn’t be thrilled if a ‘friend’ of mine did that to me,” I sighed, sliding on a pair of sandals. Walking over to Adam, I kissed him again.

  “I feel like it’s high school again and I am trying to get people to like me,” I joked, smiling.

  “Like you ever had trouble getting anyone to like you,” he teased me, laughing. I smiled back at him and kissed him, rolling my eyes.

  “I’ll give you a ride,” he said, grabbing his keys and sliding his wallet into his pocket.

  The diner was the same one I had been to the night I arrived. I hadn’t gone into it once in the 18 years I lived in the damn town, but now within a week I was going to have been there twice.

  I got there early, nobody else had arrived, so I asked for the corner table, a round one where a booth wrapped around it, and started with a cup of coffee. I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. I had money, some level of fame, and I was someone that teen me would have killed to be. But, I was still not happy, not when I was around anyone beside Adam. He understood me.

  As I started my second cup of coffee, the waitress mentioning how much she loved my last film, the bell on the door chimed to say someone had come in.

  I looked over at the people who I used to surround myself with.

  Jamie, who I thought was my best friend, was almost indistinguishable from who she was in high school. She looked exactly the same, almost dressed exactly the same, and it was a little daunting to see how little she had changed.

  Laura and Sam, twins, looked very different. They’d always had long brown hair, but Laura had chopped hers off and it was now blue. Sam’s was short and blonde. They looked like they had taken two very different roads of life.

  Kim was very, very pregnant, which surprised me because she never dated anyone the whole time I knew her.

  I stood up, awkwardly, to greet them, almost expecting a hug. I got a couple “hi”s and a smile, but that was it. I sat back down, occupying my hands with my coffee.

  “How is everyone?” I asked, wanting to start up the conversation. They all murmured something along the lines of “good” or “fine”, not really talking until after we all ordered our food. The waitress asked how we’d be splitting the check. I said I’d be paying for all of it. The looks the four of them gave me let me know that wasn’t the best thing for me to have done.

  “What is it?” I asked, put off.

  “You’ve been gone three years, and you didn’t even treat us that well before you left. And now, you act like buying us brunch will make up for that?” Kim said, raising her eyebrows at me. I was flabbergasted.

  “What—I just offered to get it because we haven’t seen each other in ages, I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said, confused. “What do you mean I didn’t treat you well? I mean, I am truly, completely sorry for how I
left things,” I added. “Nobody deserves to be treated like an afterthought, especially not by a friend, but I don’t understand what I did before that,” I said.

  They exchanged looks between each other, like I was crazy.

  “You were awful to us,” Laura said and Sam nodded. “You treated us like your little minions, to do your bidding and make you look good. You weren’t even nice to us. I didn’t think once that you saw us as your friends,” she said. I was completely shocked. I knew we were all rude to other people, that we bullied other people, but I thought that was us as a group, I thought we were all the same.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, shaking my head.

  “We hardly got to date because you’d always steal our boyfriends,” Sam said, continuing on her sister’s line of thought. “We were never even considered for being asked to homecoming or prom until you disappeared and got famous,” she said.

  I felt ganged up on, overwhelmed. I couldn’t imagine, even thinking back, that this was how they really felt.

  “And now here you come, miss hella-fuckin-famous,” Jamie said, the first words she had said to me. “Acting like because you have money, or because you’re well known, that we’re suddenly going to forgive you? That we’ll treat you how you had us treat you back then? Hell no, fuck that,” she said. I thought back to our last day together, watching movies and speculating about crushes and our future. I had no idea. I could feel tears welling at my eyes, and I tried to hide it by sipping my coffee, but they poured out anyways.

  “I’m so sorry,” I sobbed out. “I’m so sorry, I had no idea, I didn’t realize I was that awful,” I said, my heart breaking that they viewed me that way. “I promise I didn’t realize at the time, I thought—I thought, I don’t know what I thought, but I honestly wouldn’t have treated you like that if I knew,” I said, distraught. Our food came and the waitress tried to console me, but I turned her away and wiped my tears off with napkins, removing large portions of my makeup.