Cam took the first punch, an anvil to his shoulder that sent him back a step. He grinned. They circled each other, and Ana’s heart lodged itself uncomfortably in her throat.
Cam landed a punch to the giant’s right cheek, another to his midsection. He was more than holding his own in the fight, despite their difference in size, and Ana found lust competing with her fear. His face looked mean, ready to hurt, and a different kind of fear crept along her nerve endings. The good kind.
She shivered, drawn unconsciously toward the ring. He was so big. So dangerous. So everything. Her hand tightened in a fist of want.
She was so screwed.
Cam’s muscles sang and sweat dripped into his eyes as he delivered the punch he was sure would end the fight. The big bastard across from him reeled on his feet, suspended almost comically, and then crashed to the ground. Cam stood over him, breath sawing in and out of his lungs.
This hadn’t cleared his mind as he’d hoped it would. It might have worked, if he hadn’t seen Ana standing outside of the ring.
“Round goes to Cam!” a deep voice hollered from the corner of the ring.
It was time to get the hell out of there and away from this crowd. Away from Ana. He climbed between the ropes just as his opponent was dragged beneath them. He grabbed his shirt from where he’d left it draped over one of the lower ropes and pushed his way through the crowd so that Ana couldn’t catch him if she followed.
The aggression of the fight, the bloodlust, still rode him hard. Combined with everything he was still feeling, he needed a few more minutes before he saw her again. He was starting to lose control where she was concerned. Combined with his high from the fight, it was a dangerous combination.
He unwound the wrapping on his hands as his long strides ate up the street. The tiny hotel lobby was empty and he slipped up the stairs. When he finally made it to the shower, he groaned as the water poured down over him. He shouldn’t feel old. But he did. His shoulder and jaw ached where his opponent had popped him, and his brain felt beaten up from the ride he’d taken it on these last couple days with Ana.
“Cam?”
At the sound of Ana’s voice, Cam dropped his head back beneath the spray and squeezed his eyes shut. She was back already. Damn it, he would have to go out there and keep his hands off of her. He dragged a hand through his hair, shook his head violently.
There was nowhere else to go, so he stepped out of the shower and dragged his dirty jeans back on, ignoring the shirt that was too streaked with sweat and boat grease to consider wearing. He’d been in such a damn rush he’d left his change of clothes on the bed.
He walked into the room to see her sitting on the bed. She rose from her seat on one of the beds and looked at him with big eyes that raced over his body, searching for wounds from the fight. The dim bulb that hung in the center of the room cast a soft glow on her shining golden hair.
Her gaze snapped to the side of his face and she approached him, standing so close he could smell the fresh scent of her. She reached up with a tentative hand to stroke his injured cheek. He stood, his muscles tense and his breath stuck in his lungs.
He ducked his head and hissed at the contact.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re hurt.”
It wasn’t pain that forced the noise from him. It was the touch of her skin on his. The heat of her so close.
His eyes met hers, and what he saw within had his blood pressure spiking and his fists clenching.
She wanted him. He’d seen it in the eyes of all the women who approached him after a match, wanting to see what a man like him was really like. This time, though, it felt different. There was a desperation and a heat in her eyes that wasn’t entirely normal. She wanted him, yes. But her body was still reacting to earth. She wanted anybody. Needed anybody.
He wanted to be that anybody. Even if just for tonight. Even if she was too good for him. The thought made a spike of pleasure shoot through him. It took everything he had not to reach out to her. To touch. To taste.
To take.
He spun from her. “Go to sleep, Ana.”
He stalked to small sink, bent over it, and gripped the enameled metal so hard he feared he’d crush it. He prayed to gods he’d never worshiped that she’d go to sleep. That she’d stop looking at him with hungry eyes.
He didn’t hear her footsteps, and after a moment he couldn’t help but let his gaze be dragged around to her. She still stood in the center of the room, one hand rubbing her arm absentmindedly while she stared at him with her bottom lip bit between her teeth.
“Fuck,” he rasped.
What she wanted was plain on her face. What he wanted was plain on her face.
Pulled by the magnet of her, he strode to her, reached out and yanked her to him. Hard. He delighted in the gasp that escaped her lips just before he claimed them with his own.
His kiss was rough, lacking any finesse. It was made of the want and frustration and anger that propelled him toward her, made him desperate to feel her with his hands, his lips, his cock.
Her moan feathered over his lips and her hands fisted in his hair so hard it stung, which only propelled him farther down the rabbit hole of his complex desires. If he made this just about her, it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t deserve her.