Fierce Protector: Hard to Handle trilogy, Book 1 (7 page)

“Of
course
I do, air-brain! Watch him kick some ass, then get him to give you a ride.” She grinned. “And ride, and ride and ride . . .” Trish added lasciviously. Eva slapped her ass and made a show of harrumphing her way across the little house to her room. Locking the door, she knew that she would have no control over what came next; her shorts and panties slid down and off, and her fingers sought out the sexy wetness this new, wonderfully mature, unbelievably handsome man had caused. She pictured every part of him, wreathed in his seductively masculine scent: his firm, capable pectoral muscles and the sensitive nipples which she would suck as they moved through the gears of foreplay; his arms – God, his arms – bulging with strength but winningly comforting, as wonderful for a long hug as they were for lifting her bodily into the air while her legs wrapped around him; his incredible legs, trunks of ferocious strength with the firmness to support him as he held her aloft; and his huge, thick, unbelievable cock . . .

In her mind it slipped inside her, pushed home by a gentle but firm thrust from his rippling abs. The dimensions of it seemed at once far too great for her tiny frame, her slender hips, her inexperienced, tight entrance, and also a perfect fit, sexily snug even as he pushed every inch inside her, Eva’s wet place seemingly made to accept him. She arched her back, let the fantasy develop, felt this lovely man hold her, kiss her, and fuck her slowly and deeply.

Eva soared on a wave of liquid ecstasy.

Chapter 5 – MMA

“You have seven new messages,” intoned the mechanical voice. Eva hardly needed to listen to any of the message to recognize who had left it, and what he wanted. With increasing frustration – bordering on desperation in the most recent voicemails – Hank was asking for, begging for and eventually insisting on having her help. It was money that he needed, entirely unsurprisingly. He explained at length that there had been a misunderstanding, that something for which he had been responsible had gone missing – and Eva didn’t need more details to understand what
that
might have been – and that he was now in a degree of trouble which varied from message to message. The most recent one made him sound as though he was expecting to have his door bashed in at any moment.

Eva took a series of deep breaths and called him. “Oh, Eva I can’t tell you how glad I am . . .”

“Hank, just keep it buttoned for a minute, OK? You need to listen to me.” This was her firmest tone, one which insisted on not being interrupted.

“Alright, I’m sorry,” he said, unusually obedient.

She sighed. “You’re my brother and I love you. And the last thing I want is for you to be in trouble.”

“Thanks, Sis,” he said.

“Shut it. I don’t have the kind of money your
friends
are going to be needing,” she said flatly. “I can’t write you a check like before, or go to Western Union like the time before that. I told you to start looking for work. Have you found anything?”

Silence on the line was exactly what Eva had expected, but the opposite of what she had hoped for.
What is it
, she wondered to herself,
that makes people ignore the evidence of history and go on believing in people? What makes us do it?

“I tried, I really did,” he said at length. “But I just don’t see myself as a busboy or a construction laborer,” he explained. “It wouldn’t be enough.”

Eva was losing her cool. She felt cheated, and it showed in her acidic tone of voice. “You’ve got twenty-four hours, mister. I want to hear that you have an interview, at the very least. You hear me?”

Hank became transformed. Anger poured down the phone in a bitter torrent, a long built-up frustration finally given voice. “No, you’re going to need to hear
me
, Eva. You don’t get it. This isn’t like before, some minor hoodlums, some street thugs, a dealer with more product than sense.
These
people . . .” he said, searching for the word, “they’re
serious
, Evie, they’re gonna hurt me if I don’t get them what they say I owe.”

“Then call the cops,” Eva said, in full knowledge of how unhelpful it was.

“You gotta help me, you just gotta. I ain’t
asking
you now. That’s over. You don’t want to live with the consequences of saying no again, I’m certain you don’t.”

“Don’t threaten me, you ungrateful spider,” she chastised. “You’ll get nothing that way, I assure you.”

“Well, we’ll see about that,” he said darkly.

Eva stood up from the sofa and scowled down the phone. “What did you say?”

“I think it’s time for a visit from your favorite brother,” he said chillingly. “Then we’ll see how helpful you’re prepared to be.”`

Eva tried to keep her voice level. Knowing that she was rattled would only embolden him. “You have no idea where I am, numbnuts. I made sure of that.”

“You made sure of nothing,” he said, half whispered as if to underline the threat. “I know exactly where you are.”

“Bullshit!”

“And I’ll be seeing you soon.” The line went dead.

***

By the time everyone had taken a shower and was ready to go, there was only a half hour left before the event. Tyler shooed them out of the door and into Eva’s Pontiac for the short journey to the local gym.

“If you’ve never seen anything like this before,” Tyler enthused, “you’re in for a treat.”

“You mean, the treat of watching extremely highly training warriors beating the
bejesus
out of each other?” Trish asked sarcastically.

“It’s an
art form
, honey. That’s why that call it Mixed Martial
Arts
.” Neither of the women were convinced. “OK, can’t you just be impressed by some seriously sculpted male forms instead?”

Trish giggled. “
That
, we can appreciate.” She nudged Eva, noticing that her friend seemed a little withdrawn.
Just nervous about seeing Zack again
, she reasoned.
Any girl in her right mind would be.

Tyler agreed. “Yeah, you and half the women of Texas. Mitch told me that Zack got quite the ovation Zack last time” he reported. “You’d have thought freaking
Ironman
had flown in for a visit or something.” Zack’s standing among the local women couldn’t have been higher. The only issue was his extreme selectivity; none of the adoring females he so politely kept at arm’s length had ever succeeded in getting a date with him, let alone enjoying his perfectly toned musculature. It was frustrating for some, a turn-off for others, but for the vast majority it had created a uniquely alluring combination: hot, human and hard-to-get.

To their surprise, Zack had arranged tickets for them at the front desk, and all three were ringside. Just as they took their seats in the modest, 300-seat arena, Eva noticed Mitch arriving with another guy, assumedly Zack’s other lifelong buddy, Flynn. “I’m just going to say hi, OK?” She slipped between the rows of seating and excused herself around some expectant members of the audience before tapping Mitch on the shoulder.

“Hey, little lady. You ready to see something special?” Mitch introduced Flynn who had, up to that point, only heard of Eva from Mitch and Zack.

“Nice to meet ya,” said Flynn with a friendly smile. “Wow, it just goes to show Zack’s still not given to exaggeration.” Eva gave him a quizzical look. “He said you’re the prettiest girl in Texas, and he ain’t wrong, right Mitch?” Flynn took in the sight of Eva’s slender frame and the long, auburn hair which so perfectly framed her face.
And what a face.

“Dude, you can get yourself in trouble with an ex-SEAL martial artist if you want, but I ain’t letting her know
nothing
that Zack said.” Eva giggled at length, enjoying the social slapstick as these two men acted out a bumbling, Texan version of the Marx brothers.

“Want to tell me how this works?” she said, eager to defuse their embarrassment.

“Sure,” said Mitch. “It’s just three knockout tournaments, and they’re all a little different. The first up will be the juniors.”

“The under eighteens,” added Flynn helpfully.

“They have their own mini-tournament, and the folks who’s here now are mostly their moms and dads,” Mitch explained.

“Then there’s the Non-GI tournament,” announced Flynn. Eva arched an eyebrow. “Non-military types,” he explained. “I know Zack ain’t serving no more, but he’s
definitely
in the GI category. You’ll see why.”

“After that,” Mitch concluded, “is the GI tournament, during which Petty Officer First Class Zachary Norcross, US Navy, retired,” he said, forming parentheses with his curved hands, “will annihilate at least one opponent in front of a huge, screaming crowd of hot women.”

“Mitch,” Flynn sighed. “
Seriously
, dude.”

Mitch held up his hands. “I’m sorry, but how else can I put it? The place will get packed in the next hour, and by the time the GI tourney starts it will be
freaking
chaos.”

“Sorry Eva,” said Flynn quietly. “He still needs to learn
style
.”

“Whatever,” said Mitch dismissively. “It’s not like he ever tries to get a phone number or anything, though I guess it’d be just as easy as doing twenty pull-ups, for him.”

Eva loved their double-act and couldn’t help smiling throughout. They were fiercely protective of their friend, while simultaneously happy to laud his ability to destroy almost any other fighter. Something told Eva that their insistence of Zack’s chasteness in the face of rabid temptation wasn’t simply for her benefit; she knew already that he was, to put it mildly, a most unusual young man.
Wonderfully unusual
, she thought to herself. A warrior and a martial artist, but sensitive all the same; a good grill chef, and who knew what else?

Mitch and Flynn excused themselves and headed to the locker rooms to help Zack warm up. Eva returned to her seat, where Tyler filled her in on the rest of the rules. “They fight five rounds, each of five minutes.”

“The GIs do,” Trish interjected. “The others fight only three rounds.”

“True that. Anyway, Mitch told me that Mr. Norcross has only fought a couple of times since he was injured, and that he takes it easy if his body isn’t feeling perfect.”

Eva made a face. “How can he take it easy if he’s supposed to beat the crap out of some guy?”

“You’ll see,” he promised.

Tyler got them beers and hotdogs during the initial rounds, in which teenagers competed while wearing protective headgear and gloves thicker than the standard sets. Eva saw at once how different it was from regular boxing. The ring, for one thing, was not the traditional square, but an eight-sided arena. There seemed to be little in the way of rules, with opponents permitted to hit with their hands, elbows, knees and feet, sometimes seemingly all at once. She watched a seventeen year-old blonde kid with a marine haircut aggressively demolish a slightly younger competitor, who seemed stunned by the ferocity. The same fighter then ass-whipped a more experienced kid in the next round, despite being a year younger and three inches shorter. He won the final in a way Eva hadn’t expected; his opponent, having taken a rain of blows to the head from the blonde fighter’s elbows and fists, seemed to teeter unsteadily and then tapped the matt three times in submission, immediately ending the fight.

“Don’t they get shit from their friends for giving up like that?” Eva wanted to know.

Tyler finished his beer, tipping it back almost triumphantly. “Not really,” he said. “Everyone in this business knows that it’s better to know your limits than to stay in the fight and wind up in an ambulance. You know, direction is the better part of value.”

Trish rolled her eyes elaborately. “Discretion is the better part of valor, you hayseed.”

“No, it’s ‘erection is better placed in the vulva’,” he quipped, earning a pummeling from his girlfriend which only stopped when Eva arrived with fresh beers. The rounds seemed to whizz past as the three waited patiently for Zack’s turn to fight. Mitch and Flynn were absolutely right about the crowd; it had increased ten-fold since they had arrived, and was preponderantly women in their twenties and thirties, some hunting in packs a dozen strong, others shaking loose men folk who gathered at the bar while their partners crowded as close to the ringside as they could.

Zack was not the only object of their affection, Eva noted. A sculpted Adonis of a fighter, Garth Needham, had clearly built a substantial following, many of whom had brought banners and air-horns; it made for the noisiest fight yet by far, a short and almost shockingly brutal dismissal of a dark-haired fighter who gave away six inches and a lot of reach. One round plus a minute were enough for the referee to bring the fight to a close.

“Jesus. They don’t take any prisoners, do they?” marveled Eva.

“Honey, you very literally ain’t seen
nothing
yet,” Tyler assured her. “These are the non-GIs, still. Once Zack steps up, you’ll think this were just kids’ play.”

Needham battered his way to the final, where he faced an even taller and – Eva noted with wide-eyed appreciation – even more muscular opponent. Bare-chested, as they all were, he seemed to be a mass of pure muscle, but highly co-ordinated and intelligent. They were evenly matched, producing a final worthy of the name, a tense, three-round slugfest of precision hitting, dancing footwork and the cold, controlled brutality known only to highly-trained practitioners of martial arts.

Needham was bloodied and had been pinned down several times, but in the third round’s dying seconds, with the crowd roaring for it to happen, he twisted to dodge a flying fist and replied with a hard, sickening connection between his right elbow and his dizzied opponent’s left temple. Seemingly in slow motion, the huge man took two steps back, then lost his footing and crumpled to the floor. It was like watching a granite statue collapse, its supports chopped from underneath. The arena erupted; seldom had Eva heard such astounding noise from a mere three hundred spectators.

“You ready for this?” It was Mitch, beer in hand, face plastered with an excited grin. “Oh, man, I swear to you, girl, it’s like watching David to Zack’s goddamned
Goliath
. I don’t care who they put up there.”

As it turned out, Zack’s bout was the first of the GI category’s initial rounds. The crowd settled for a moment before the announcer accompanied Zack’s entrance from the preparatory rooms. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to introduce a young man who is known personally to many of you,” he said, the crowd responding wildly at each pause, “and is respected by everyone he ever meets.”

He’s a friggin’ local legend
, Eva thought, butterflies enlivening her stomach. “Wow, is he famous or something?”