Page 17 of Dominate

Because every time I blink, I’m back under that showerhead.

Dark eyes and brown skin, water sliding down a chest I have no business memorizing. The weight of him against me. The sound he made when I moved.

Stop.

“Twelve and oh,” Jason says. “Your father’s name is on that gym. Rivera is a street brawler with a good publicist. Go out there and end him.”

End him. My stomach rolls.

“Yes, sir.”

He nods once and leaves. Dan slaps my shoulder, hard, and follows.

The door clicks shut. I sit alone, staring at my wrapped fists.

Then a knock, and Dan’s head reappears. “Time.”

The tunnel smells like sweat, disinfectant, and hot cable. Music thumps through the concrete. Ahead of me, the arena is a wall of noise, thousands of voices chanting Iron-side, Iron-side until the floor hums under my shoes.

I walk into it.

Light hits me. Heat hits me. I climb the steps, duck through the gate, and hear the door lock behind me, a sound I have loved since I was nineteen. Tonight it sounds like a cell closing.

I spin to face the far side of the cage.

Oath comes in like a storm front. Victor Kaine fills the tunnel behind him, one huge tattooed hand clamped on Micah’s shoulder. A lean guy with graying temples and a whistle around his neck leans in close and says something fast in Micah’s ear. Micah nods along, but his eyes never leave me.

Micah bounces on his toes, shaking out his arms. Black trunks, bare chest, the pale mark where his chain usually rests against his sternum. He’s left the medal with Victor.

His gaze finds mine across the expanse of canvas and cage.

Everything else drops away. The chanting. The lights. Dan barking in my ear.

He looks rested. He looks furious. He looks like a man who slept easy and came out swinging.

Good, I think, and I hate how much I mean it. Don’t you dare be the only one.

The ref calls us to the center. Touch gloves? Micah taps mine hard enough to sting, holding my stare the whole time. I feel that tap in my teeth.

“Protect yourself at all times,” the ref says. “Let’s go.”

The horn sounds.

We don’t circle. We don’t feel anything out. I fire a jab, and Micah walks straight through it, eating it on his forehead, and throws a left hook that whistles past my ear. I slip, pivot, and drive a low kick into his lead thigh, the kind that would fold most welterweights.

He grunts and keeps coming.

“Work the angle!” Dan screams from the corner.

I work the angle. Right hand, left hook, step out. Micah tucks his chin and shrugs off the hook, fires a one-two that catches my guard, and rattles my forearms. I can feel every hit in my bones. He punches like he wants to prove a point to somebody, and I think that somebody might be me.

He drives me back. The cage fence bites into my shoulder blades.

I know this position. I own this position. I hook my arms around his neck and fight for the underhook, and he clamps on, chest to chest. The crowd noise goes strange and muffled, like we’re underwater.

His breath is hot on my jaw. Sweat slicks between us.

“That all you got?” he pants.