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We fall into warming up naturally, side by side on the mats, no formal arrangement—just the comfortable sync of two people who know their routines. I’m aware of every time she moves in my peripheral vision. The stretch of her shoulder when she reaches across her body. The focused exhale she makes resetting into stance.

Cruz’s voice from last night is still stuck in my head.

Eli bending her over the—Stop. Stop that right now.

I’d been tipsy when Cruz had said it at the bar, but it had stuck tight enough that I couldn’t scrub the image from behind my eyes all the way home. Eli, and Dakota, and Cruz in a chain of pleasure. The thought had evolved in the dark of my bedroom when I’d looked up our new fighter. It moved in a direction I hadn’t expected, hadn’t steered, just watched happen like a passenger in a runaway car. Her mouth. How she’d look with her lips wrapped around my dick. Whether she’d make noise or go silent.

I am very aware, standing three feet from her now, that I need to function like an adult.

“Alright,” Eli says, walking over, clipboard tucked under his arm. His green eyes dart between us and land on me. “Brady. You two spar. Light contact, I want to see how she adapts to a different style.”

“Light contact,” I repeat.

“Don’t get cute,” Eli retorts.

Dakota’s mouth curves. She absolutely clocks the exchange, knows Eli is saying it as much for his own benefit as mine.

We take our positions on the mat, touching gloves, and then she rolls her neck and looks at me over the top of her guard, and I think okay, she is definitely flirting, or at the very least she knows exactly what she’s doing. And then she moves first and I have to stop thinking entirely.

She’s fast. Not Cruz-fast, not power-driven. Her speed is different, clever, the kind that works angles. She doesn’t come straight for me, she comes diagonal, and my body handles it before my brain catches up, slipping right and throwing a jab that she rolls under without breaking rhythm. My follow-up cross finds nothing but air.

“Hm.” She circles left.

“Was that a taunt?” I ask.

“Just observing.”

I go for a leg kick, she checks it clean, returns a body shot that I take on my elbow but still feel up into my ribs. Good hip rotation. She’s got a nasty compact frame for that, not tall but built like a loaded spring.

“You lead with the jab to bait the cross,” she says, not breathless at all, which is mildly offensive.

“That’s a trade secret.”

“Cruz told me you do that.”

“Of course he did.”

We circle. Eli is quiet along the edge of the mat, watching.

I push forward, throwing a three-piece combination, and she covers well but backs up, and I chase because I’m a striker and that’s what I do, and she uses my aggression, pivoting neatly to put me off-axis and tagging me clean on the temple with a right hook.

Not hard. Barely contact. Butplacedbecause she knew she had the window.

“Good,” Eli says, voice rougher than I’ve ever heard it.

I shake it out, grinning despite myself. She’s grinning too, lower lip caught briefly between her teeth, and my whole body takes note.

“Alright.” I reset. “You’re better than I expected.”

“You’re better than I expected too,” she says. “You don’t overcommit. Most strikers are sloppy up close. Though that’s expected at your size.”

“My size.” I look down at myself, then back at her. She’s not much shorter than me, maybe three inches, and she holds her ground like she’s made of concrete. “You’re calling me small.”

“I’m calling you compact for a striker.” Her eyes are laughing.

“Right.”

We go again. And somewhere in the fourth or fifth exchange, when she ducks a hook and comes up inside my guard, close enough that I can hear the breath she pulls, close enough that I could count the beads of sweat on her collarbone. I forget what I’m supposed to be doing with my left hand for about half a second.