Rolling With the Punches (9 page)

With a groan, I finally moved. I half-crawled, half-slumped across the floor, stretching out my hand until I just barely managed to grab my little handbag. I reached inside and fished out the offending item, feeling for the buzzing object. I hit the screen and pulled it up to my ear. "Hello?" I rasped as I quickly crawled back to the makeshift bed and the massive muscular man waiting in it for me.

"Caroline? Oh my god, where have you been?" The voice was Alexis's, and she sounded just as excited as always. "I've been looking around for you forever! We got invited to an after-party with a couple of guys here, and they're offering us a ride there in their limo!"

I paused, not sure how to answer this. But despite her giddy, schoolgirl air, Alexis wasn't stupid - and she had seen me being carried off by Rhodes after the fight. "Or maybe you are going to have to take a rain check," Alexis went on, speaking a little more slowly as the gears spun in her brain. "Is that what it is?"

"Yeah, that's it," I replied, nodding even though she couldn't see me. Alexis was always able to get a good sense of the situation.

"Well, then maybe I'll just end up seeing you at home," Alexis concluded. "I hope you feel better, and maybe you'll come out and join us next time!"

The other guys must have been at the other end, listening to Alexis talk. She probably didn't want to let them know that I was deserting them for another man. That was fine by me.

I hit end on the call, and then rolled over to look at the big boxer on the couch next to me. "So," I said, now that the phone had been silenced.

"So," Rhodes repeated, looking back at me. Those big brown eyes of his were still dark, the fire burning behind them somewhat dimmed and reduced down to smolders. I got the sense that he was waiting on me, waiting to see what I would say next.

Unfortunately, I had no idea what to say. I'd honestly never been in a situation like this! I usually don't even let a guy get to see me naked until at least the third date, much less do anything with him! I really didn't know how to leave. Was that even what I wanted to do?

With my mind a total blank, I turned to him and opened my mouth, praying for inspiration to strike. "This was fun," was what my brain managed to produce.

I wanted to smack myself. Fun? It had been amazing, mind-blowing, unlike anything that I'd ever experienced before. I wanted to pin him down and keep him as my toy, bust him out every night. That was definitely not properly expressed by "fun".

But Rhodes was nodding back at me. "It was, yes," he agreed. "But you know that I have a busy schedule. I'm heading out of town in a couple days, going to make a lap of the boxing circuit halfway across the country."

I nodded, even though I hadn't known anything like this. But it made sense, I supposed. This man had to go to lots of fights to keep in shape, to keep on improving his record, and it would be far too unreasonable to expect all those other boxers to just come to him. "So when do you leave?" I asked.

"Monday morning."

I considered this for an instant. On one hand, I didn't want to let this man go, ever. But on the other hand, this still left us with the entire weekend. That ought to be plenty of time for him to completely scrub any last remaining traces of my ex-boyfriend from my mind...

"I think we can get up to quite a lot between now and Monday morning," I purred to the big and bruised boxer. I paused for an instant, however, as indecision hit me. What if this wasn't what the man actually wanted? What if he was just after a quick one-night stand?" "If that's okay with you, of course."

Rhodes was already grinning, though, and his hands were quickly wandering into other spots, spots from which I normally would have slapped a probing hand away. "I can also think of quite a lot to keep us busy," he said, as his hand reached an especially compromising spot. One little wiggle of his fingertips, and I felt another surge of excitement sparking through muscles I thought were already dead from exhaustion.

It went against every fiber of my hind-brain's desires, but I managed to swat the man's hand away. "Not now!" I insisted. "Alexis is heading out to some after-party, and I have to get home!"

The boxer shook his head at me. "Not quite," he argued. "Alexis is off doing her own thing, which means that you're in no rush!" His hands resumed their previous activities with renewed vigor.

"And besides," he whispered to me, his breath hot on my ear as he pulled me in close, "I think that I might be ready for a second bout pretty soon..."

I could already feel him shifting and tensing behind me. I knew that I ought to argue, ought to insist that I had to get some sleep. How long could we even stay in this dressing room before someone came in and caught us? Yet as one big hand slid down between my thighs and gently pried them open, I couldn't seem to manage to say any of these concerns out loud.

Instead, when I opened my mouth, only a soft moan came creeping out. "Ah, screw it," I decided. And so I turned and threw my arms around the fighter.

There was just one difference between this match and the fights he was used to:

In this physical encounter, we were both going to end up winning.

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amantha Westlake grew up in the heartland of the United States, surrounded by the open fields of the Midwest. But a farmer's life wasn't for her, so she set her sights on moving out to the coast, to the big city.

Samantha now lives in San Francisco, where she finds her creative genius constantly inspired and challenged. When she isn't hard at work writing, she spends her time sitting at the coffee shop down the street and watching the passersby, imagining fantastic lives and stories for them.

Samantha can be contacted at
[email protected]
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amantha would like to thank the writer's circle that inspired her to pursue writing this work. Ava, Amanda, Olivia, Amy, Honey, Jenny, and the rest - your encouragement was invaluable in making this story a reality. And finally, a warm thank you to the reader! This work was made for you, and I hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed composing it.