Rolling With the Punches (6 page)

Rhodes must have been exaggerating his limp, I realized! He had been teasing out Lamar, making him lower his block so that he could go for such a tempting target. He knew that, sooner or later, the other fighter would take the bait - and this would leave his guard down, perfect for a counterattack.

And now that Rhodes had his opening, he didn't hesitate to take advantage of it. He swung around, moving off that foot and stepping up to slam an elbow sideways into Lamar, just below his ribs. This blow, unlike the others, definitely had Rhodes' full weight behind it, and I watched with barely concealed delight as Lamar nearly bent over double, gasping as the air was knocked forcibly out of his lungs.

But Rhodes wasn't done yet. He put out his leg, his good leg, in front of Lamar, even as his hand came sweeping back in a smack to the man's back. With the stumbling block of Rhodes' leg in front of him, Lamar couldn't catch his balance in time. He went tumbling forward, down onto the floor of the ring.

Lamar managed to get his hands under him as he fell, and caught himself before landing flat on the floor. But he was down, and the fight was all but over. Rhodes spun on one foot and brought his fists up, hammering blows down onto Lamar's back and sides. The flurry of punches was fast, but they did their job, keeping the man from rising back up.

Rhodes didn't need to land a knockout blow. The referee came charging in, a whistle in his mouth that had been hanging from a lanyard around his neck and blowing so fiercely that his puffed cheeks were red. "That's it! That's it!" he was shouting over the cries of the audience. We were all on our feet, and most of the men were stamping and clapping, the women cheering with delight. It had been an amazing finish.

Reluctantly, as the referee dove in to pull the two men apart, Rhodes backed off and ceased throwing punches. I could tell that he hadn't even initially heard the whistle of the referee. He had been totally and completely focused on the fight, on making sure that he won and that his opponent, now that he was down, wasn't going to come back up.

After a minute, however, and after the two men had been separated by the frantic tugs of the referee, Lamar managed to do just that. He struggled back up to his feet, but he was definitely unsteady, and was bleeding from a cut on his lip. He looked as if all of the fight had gone out of him, as if he wanted nothing more than to find a soft couch or cushion somewhere and curl up to go to sleep.

Rhodes hadn't escaped all of the hits either, I saw. The man's eye looked suspiciously puffy, and I suspected that it would soon swell up into a lovely purple shiner by the time he got back to his dressing room. But despite the blows he had taken, the big, muscular man looked exultant. He wore a wide grin as the referee stepped in once again to hoist his arm up in the air in victory.

I blinked. Was the man grinning at me? As hard as it was to believe, his eyes were definitely focused down on me! And as I returned his gaze, he closed his undamaged eye slowly, and then reopened it.

Okay, there was no way for me to mistake that as anything else. It was definitely a wink. Rhodes had just winked at me.

All around Alexis and me, the crowd was still clapping - at least most of them were, I noticed. Several men wore fixed rictuses of smiles stretched across their faces while their eyes screamed, and I noticed that small ticket stubs were scattered across the floor. What was that about?

Alexis caught my confused expression. "They're the losers, silly!" she giggled to me in between claps and whoops of support for the fighters in the ring in front of us.

This didn't help much. "Losers?" I repeated in confusion.

"Well, yes, of course! All of the folks here bet on these fights, you know. Sometimes quite a lot of money. They get very excited about winning, or really upset about losing."

I just stared at her. People had been betting on this fight? I had thought it was just for entertainment!

I commented as such, and Alexis let out another giggle. "Of course it's for entertainment!" she said, as if I was stating the obvious. "But these people bet on everything! And it is really fun to be with the winners after a match like this - they're willing to just throw away money on anything, now that they've won! I kind of do my own betting, trying to pick the people who pick the winners!"

My face probably still looked utterly confused, but I didn't press Alexis for any further explanation. I knew that it would probably just leave me further in the dark. My best friend definitely understood the deep social waters in which she swam, but I was hopelessly lost at sea. The best I could do was just let her take the helm, try and hold on, and do my best to not get marooned behind or to fall overboard.

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Instead of trying to talk to Alexis any longer, I turned my attention back to the boxing ring in front of me. It was now filled with people, crowds from both supporter's sides having rushed forward into the ring. Some of them bore towels, others bottles of water, clearly intended for the weary fighters. Others were holding ticket stubs aloft and were shouting. I saw several of them standing in a circle around the referee, all of them red-faced and yelling. Perhaps these were the losers who were convinced that the man had made a bad call on the fight.

Despite their yelling, however, the referee clearly wasn't backing down. From the way he stood, it was obvious that this wasn't the first time he had been angrily confronted after a match. Instead of looking down or refusing to meet the eye of the yelling men, he stood toe to toe with them, shouting right back into their faces and gesticulating just as wildly. It almost looked as though he was conducting an orchestra of some sort, and it made me smile briefly at the thought of him in a tux and tails.

Even with the boxing ring now crowded with people, however, it was easy to spot Rhodes. He still towered over most of the other, much smaller well-dressed gentlemen around him. Some of the men were undoubtedly shouting to Rhodes, and I could see hands patting him on the back and shoulders, but he was ignoring them all. He had accepted a towel from one of the offerings, and was rubbing it over his damp face and through his sweaty hair.

The man was looking around, and he seemed to pause once again as he spotted me watching him. I froze too, feeling a bit like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Considering the man's huge size, perhaps that was an apt comparison.

My body wasn't moving, but it wasn't unfeeling - and I could feel a strange tingle creeping up from the tips of my limbs, suffusing my muscles. I wasn't sure what this was from, but as it slid up my neck, I suddenly found myself picturing that moment in Rhodes' dressing room, his hands ripping at my skirt as I had kissed him passionately. Was that what this was about?

As I forced myself away from this inner vision, I looked up - and a squeak of shock slipped out from between my lips. While I had been lost in pleasant recollection, Rhodes had managed to shoulder through the group of people in the boxing ring that stood between us - and was now at the edge of the ring, staring down at me through the ropes!

In an easy motion, the man reached down with one big, strong arm, and lifted up the ropes. He ducked under, and jumped down, landing right in front of me! I could barely take my eyes off of him, but I briefly caught Alexis's face out of the corner of one eye. For the first time that I could remember, she looked just as shocked as I felt.

"What are you doing?" I managed to get out after a second, as Rhodes continued to advance forward towards me.

The man bent forward, his lips only inches from my ear. "Why, claiming my prize," he whispered to me, as if this should have been obvious. I could feel his hot breath on my neck as he spoke, and despite myself, those visions came creeping back into my head.

"Claiming your prize? What are you talking about?" I demanded.

At least, that was what I started to say. Somewhere around the question mark, the damn boxer, apparently tired of waiting, simply reached forward and wrapped his big hands around my waist. With seemingly zero effort, he lifted me up and slung me over his shoulder!

In a blur of motion, I found myself suddenly upside down, my face all but squished against a very broad back, hot and slightly damp with sweat. In this upside-down pose, I could feel my breasts shifting inside my dress, and currently only the pressure against this man's back was managing to keep them from spilling out!

My rump was pointed right up into the air, and I had a momentary flash of panic as I remembered how short the hem on this sundress was. What if it was riding up? I was almost certain that it was riding up. What if everyone else in this arena was able to see my panties right now?

I kicked my feet back and forth in protest. I wasn't quite sure what I was protesting, mainly because I wasn't quite sure what was going on. But as I managed to pull my head up from Rhodes' back, I saw that the ground beneath him was moving. He was walking somewhere!

"Hey! I didn't sign up to be kidnapped!" I shouted, swinging my feet. Unfortunately, my current folded-over, upside-down position meant that my lung capacity was somewhat diminished. My heroic shout instead came out as a little simper.

Similarly, my leg-kicking wasn't having much of an effect either. I managed to get a couple good hits in on Rhodes' chest, and I felt briefly satisfied that I must have caused him some pain - until I remembered my previous looks, very admiring looks, at the man's abs. They probably didn't even feel my blows after what he was used to facing in the arena. I was probably doing more damage to my feet.

A second later, even that route was closed to me, as Rhodes' other hand wrapped around my knees, holding my calves against his chest and stopping me from moving. His grip wasn't tight, but it was as solid as if the whole man was made from iron. I wasn't going to be headed anywhere.

After realizing that I would be free when and only when Rhodes released me, I instead tried to figure out where we were headed. We had left the center of the arena, and I had felt the bump as we had climbed up the steps towards the exits. I felt Rhodes bend forward a little, dipping his head to clear a doorway, and saw that we had left the open space and were once again in a corridor.

A couple more turns, and I suddenly felt hands sliding up my legs to shift me around. With the skirt of my sundress now somewhere around my waist, however, those hands were sliding right up along my bare thighs! And they were very warm and intimate. Even though I wanted nothing more than to be set down and released, I felt my breath quicken at that touch.

Higher and higher those hands crept, as I began to slide backwards, down off of this shoulder that had become my perch. Up along the sides of my thighs, up to my hips, where they very briefly dug into my buttocks. Eventually, as I slid down and once again found myself the right way up, those hands were on my waist once again - but this time, they had pushed my dress up almost completely, and were pressed deeply into my bare skin just above the bones of my hips.

I had closed my eyes as I had slid over that broad shoulder, and was still holding them shut. For this reason, the press of hot lips against my own caught me totally off guard.

Well, almost totally off guard. Perhaps a little corner of my mind had been hoping for this, and was now doing cartwheels inside my imagination. But only a very small part of my mind. Of that I was sure. I definitely wasn't overwhelmed with giddiness right now.

Oh, who am I kidding? It was amazing.

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