Page 60 of Dominate

“It’s an incredibly distracting ass. It should be illegal.”

He laughs. The rich, warm sound fills the small apartment and chases away the remaining shadows in my mind. He wraps his arms around my neck and throws a leg over my lap, straddling me on the narrow sofa. The familiar weight of him settles perfectly against my hips. My hands roam up his back, feeling the hard ridges of muscle earned through years of relentless training at Oath.

“Are you still hungry?” he asks, his breath ghosting over my lips.

“Starving.”

But neither of us moves back toward the kitchen.

I capture his mouth. He opens for me immediately. The kiss lacks the frantic, desperate edge of the encounters we shared in hotel rooms and hidden stairwells during the press tour. This time, neither of us is trying to get somewhere else. My tongue slides against his. I want to keep kissing him.

We break apart panting. He rests his cheek against mine. His chest rises and falls rapidly against my own.

“Three days,” he whispers into my ear. “Three days until we step into the cage.”

“I’m going to knock you out, Rivera.”

“In your dreams, Butler.”

I close my eyes and bury my face in his neck again, breathing him in. Three days until the octagon door locks us inside. The entire world will watch us trade blows. They will analyze our footwork, our striking, our defensive guards. They will write endless articles about the bitter rivalry between the dominant champion and the hungry challenger.

They will see two enemies fighting for supremacy.

They won’t know the truth. They won’t know the hands throwing the brutal punches are the exact same hands that map every inch of his skin in the dark. They won’t know the man I’m fighting is the only man who taught me how to surrender.

“I’ve got you,” Micah repeats. His fingers stroke the nape of my neck, tracing the short hairs at the base of my skull.

“I know,” I whisper back.

For the first time in my entire twenty-eight years of existence, I actually believe it.

18

MICAH

The video footage stutters backward on the laptop screen.

Victor hits the spacebar. The frame freezes. Zane Butler stands suspended in high definition, his weight shifted entirely onto his back foot, his right hand drifting three inches below his chin. It’s a fatal opening. An error a rookie makes. An error Zane Butler has never made in his entire twenty-four-fight career.

Until now.

“He’s been off lately,” Victor observes, leaning back in the chair behind the borrowed desk. He crosses his massive arms over his chest, his dark eyes tracking the frozen image. “His timing’s a half-beat slow. Look at the lead leg. He hesitates before the pivot.”

I stare at the screen. I know exactly why the undefeated champion of Ironside MMA hesitates. I know the exact cause of the microscopic lag in his reflexes. A man cannot dedicate absolute focus to a heavy bag when he’s counting the minutes until he can leave Dan and come across town to me.

I keep my mouth firmly shut.

“Pressure, maybe.” Victor clicks the spacebar again. The footage resumes. Zane eats a jab from his sparring partner before throwing a brutal counter hook. “Big fight. The legacy is heavy.”

“Maybe.” I lean my hip against the edge of the desk.

Victor turns his attention away from the laptop. His gaze shifts up to my face, heavy and assessing. He reads people for a living. He built Oath by giving kids like me somewhere to go.

“You seem different too,” Victor notes. “More focused. More settled.”

I meet my coach’s eyes. He sees entirely too much.

“Just ready for this to be over.”