Faking It(32)

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my idyllic vision of fighter lust out of my brain. “I’m supposed to meet him in the locker room.”

Chantelle sighed. “I’d give anything to get into that locker room. Oh wow, can you imagine? But you don’t have to imagine! What the hell am I doing waiting tables? Is there any chance that—”

“Nope. Put it from your mind, my friend.” If I took Chantelle back there no one was going to pay attention to anything I said. I wasn’t any slouch in the looks department. In fact, I was almost volleyball player tall, with great legs and gorgeous black hair. But Chantelle had the kind of personality that made everyone else seem a little drab. Or at least, that’s how it had always felt. Men just didn’t gravitate towards me when there was a bigger personality in the room. Especially in a locker room, I’m guessing, I thought.

Braden threw his opponent into the fence in front of us and slammed a knee into the poor bastard’s midsection. He was a wrecking ball. I’d seen him fight a few times on TV, and had seen the occasional bit of sparring in the gym, but Braden was something to behold in person. It was nuts that something so violent could also be so elegant, but it was undeniable: he was a graceful killing and kicking and punching and stomping and elbowing machine. His business was fractures and bruises and making other people wish they’d never been born.

“Do they get those bodies just from all the cardio?” said Chantelle. “Maybe I should start fighting.”

“Pretty much,” I said. “I’ve seen a lot of their workouts. When you see how hard they have to push it, you start to understand why they can’t sustain an ounce of fat on their bodies.”

Braden smashed the guy into the fence again, like he was trying to push him through the links. I pictured him squishing through like Play-doh. Braden looked over the guy’s shoulder and me and grinned. In the middle of all that and he was grinning like there had never been a more wonderful moment in all recorded history. I had a new question about him every second I watched him, but every time I’d try to write one in my notebook for the interview, the crowd would go wild and I’d forgot what I was going to jot down.

Chantelle slapped my hand away from my mouth again. I’d been biting the nail so hard that if I’d slipped, I might have taken my entire fingertip off.

The crowd roared. When I looked up the other guy was facedown on the mat with his eyes still open, motionless. Braden had finished him by punching him in the stomach, shoving him off balance, and then nearly kicking his head into the rafters.

“I don’t get how his foot doesn’t break,” said Chantelle. “Will you ask him? If I tried to kick something like that I think my whole leg would shatter.” Her voice held the kind of wonder that a child might have while watching a magician perform, if the child was also ablaze with arousal.

Yuck. So far the night had yielded little besides bitten fingers and thoughts I didn’t want to be having. Now it was time to get to work.

The announcer stepped into the octagon and gave Braden the mic. He immediately called out Vlad Stanton, the current lightweight champion. “And when you get done hiding in the mountains out in Romania or wherever the hell you’re from, you come take your ass kicking and give me what’s mine! I’m coming for that belt! You can run, but you can’t hide. If you don’t show your face down here I’ll come take down the mountains and drive you out of whatever little hole you’re cowering in.” He thanked the fans, his coach, his friends, and then, with an exaggerated bow, he said, “And most of all, thanks to me!” He waved at the crowd and opened the gate to the octagon.

“Ugh,” I said.

“I think that was hot,” said Chantelle. “I want him to make a speech to me. He should let me write his speeches, actually. Oh my God, he is so hot.”

She wasn’t wrong. There was something to the unapologetic posturing. I wasn’t sure what the appeal was, but damn if it didn’t rev me up a little. Me and every other woman, from the look of it. It was such a cliché, but clichés don’t come from nowhere. Maybe he wasn’t the kind of guy you married, but for a little fun? Or a lot of fun? It made me purr, even as I tried to concentrate. As Braden walked by on his way to the locker room I expected a storm of thrown panties to drown him, but he escaped.

“All right,” I said. “Five minutes and I go. Wish me luck.”

“You’re not going to need luck. I know how hard you thought about that outfit.”

I started to protest, but Chantelle’s raised eyebrow told me I was getting nowhere. Oh well, she wasn’t wrong. I was in a green dress that showed off my pale skin and contrasted with my dark hair in a way that I’m sure Cosmo would have said made me a puma or tigress or whatever feline currently represented female allure.

But I hadn’t done it for him.

I had done it for a successful interview.

I gulped. Keep telling yourself that, Alyssa.

I went to the locker room three minutes later. One of the cut men let me in. I took a couple of what Oprah called deep, cleansing breaths, and walked into the fumes of sweat and liniment and testosterone.

Braden was sitting on a bench laughing with one of his sparring partners while another team member cut his wrist wraps off with a small pair of silver scissors.

“You go ahead,” said Braden when he saw me. “I’ll be in in just a minute.”