Takedown Teague (Caged #1)(30)

“I did…” Her voice trailed off. Her tone was completely unconvincing.

“Bullshit.” I put my empty glass down and turned to face her. “Maybe he said you were ready, and maybe you wanted to believe you were, but you weren’t. If you really wanted it, you would have known it, felt it. Your body would respond to that, and it would have worked.”

I tried not to think about how f*cked up the direction this conversation had taken and reminded myself that she was still pretty young. I hadn’t realized she was so na?ve, but it kind of fit with the whole small-town theme about her. I didn’t want to admit it, but the fact that Keith had backed off and not just…well…forced his way in was a pretty good thing.

“How do you know?” Tria asked as she looked at me. The edges of her eyes were a little red, and though I didn’t see any actual tears, I could tell they were close.

“Because…well…” I had no idea how to answer that without sounding like a total man-whore. I reached up and ran my hand over my face as if that was going to help me come up with a better answer.

“Because what?” Tria pushed for an answer. Apparently she was not going to let me off easy.

“Because I know women,” I said. “I know women and how they are when they’re turned on. If there’s something wrong with anyone, it’s him for not knowing what the f*ck he was doing. He didn’t know how to get you going.”

I looked straight into her eyes, and she looked into mine. It felt like some kind of understanding was flowing between us, but I couldn’t have put a name to it. It should have felt awkward—the whole conversation was bizarre—but it didn’t. It felt right. It felt good.

“You really think it’s not me?” she asked.

“It’s not you,” I told her definitively. I wanted to add that I would be happy to show her just how turned on she could get. I wanted to crawl right over the top of her and leave her dripping in her panties. I wanted to show her everything I could make her feel with my hands, my tongue, my…

“Do you want more?”

“Huh? What?” Her question caught me off guard, and my imagination exploded with possibilities.

“Juice,” she said, nodding toward my empty glass. “Do you want some more apple juice?”

“Oh, um…no, that’s okay.”

Fuck.

With the conversation abruptly changed, we both sat back against the couch cushions. After about five more minutes of small talk, Tria yawned and we called it a night. I walked upstairs, stripped, and dropped face down on my bed with my hands up by the pillow. I tried to relax, but my back and shoulders were tense, and my cock was simply not going to let me sleep without any attention first, so I rolled over on my back and took matters into my hand.

I was never one to think with my cock, but I really, really needed to get laid.





Chapter 8—Realize the Truth


I never worked on Saturday or Sunday, but I usually hung out at Feet First anyway. They had a couple other dudes who would fight on Saturday nights, but they weren’t very good. They were lightweights, and the fights were usually quick and scrappy, which some people liked.

There wasn’t nearly enough blood, if you asked me.

“Why don’t you fight against them?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a woman sit down on the bar stool next to mine, but I didn’t turn to her. My eyes stayed on the fight.

“Because I outweigh them by fifty pounds,” I told her. “I could probably just sit on them and knock them unconscious.”

She giggled, and I turned my head to check her out. The long, straight platinum blonde hair was easy to recognize.

“Erin, right?”

“You remembered.”

“You were the only thing worth looking at in the laundromat,” I said with a shrug and a smile. Flirt mode automatically engaged as she smiled back, and I bought her a drink.

“So, how’d you find me?” I asked.

“Saw that back tattoo on a poster outside the game shop on Fourth Street,” she told me. “I knew it was you, so I thought I’d come check out this whole cage fighting thing. Sorry to see you aren’t up there.” She nodded toward the cage.

“Not until Tuesday.”

“I’ll have to come back.”

“I think you should.”

For the next hour, we drank, complained about laundry, and stepped out for the occasional smoke. She was pretty cool, had awesome ink, and was smart enough to hold a decent conversation. She also couldn’t keep her hands off my inked skin, and I was both pleasantly buzzed and horny enough to really, really enjoy it.

“So, what else is there to do around here?” she asked with a raise of her eyebrows. She slipped the longneck bottle into her mouth and poured amber liquid down her throat.

“I could show you the locker room,” I said, watching her lips wrap around the bottle.

“Private locker room?”

“It is if I padlock it,” I replied. I licked my lips as I watched for her reaction.

“Hmm…interesting.” Erin flipped her hair over her shoulder and tilted her head as she looked at me. “I’ve never seen the inside of a cage fighter’s locker room before.”

“First time for everything,” I said. “Shall we?”