: Chapter 2

“COME ON, you pansy-ass little toothpick! You call those arms? You throw punches like my mother! And she’s dead!”

I grin and watch as my shit-talk sinks into my opponent, Pablo, one of the guys at the gym who’s agreed to spar with me today. Probably not the best idea for him considering he only started fighting recently, but I respect him for having the balls to step up anyway.

His eyes flare, and I watch the tell-tale signs of him preparing his next strike.

“You think I’m just a nobody, don’t you?” He grunts. “Well think again, fucker!”

He comes in with a right hook, just like I was expecting. He throws it well, but he telegraphs like the young fighter he is, and I dodge it easily and counter with my own right to the ribs and follow up with a left to the jaw, which drops him to the mat.

If this was a real match–a title bout–I’d drive my knee right into his face, mount him, and start pounding him with both fists until he was mashed potato. But it’s not. We’re just doing a bit of friendly sparring, so I slip down and wrap my bicep around his neck and show him how easy it would be to choke him out from here, get him to tap, and let him up.

“Not bad, Pablo,” I say. “But even a blind man could see those punches coming. You gotta start throwing them tighter or opening up with jabs first and then following up with your heavier hits.”

Pablo nods. He’s a cocky fighter with a lot to prove, but he does listen, especially after he’s been beaten.

“Thanks for the advice, Gunnar.”

“Yeah, well the beers are on you today.” I grin.

“Deal,” he chuckles.

We both step out of the ring, and Pablo starts unwrapping his gloves. “Where you wanna go? Jenkin’s? Stewart’s?”

That’s when I hear a voice call my name out from behind me–a female voice too, which is odd in this gym.

I turn around and see Riley, my buddy Jason’s cute cousin, standing by the door waving at me. She’s got another girl standing beside her, a total hottie by the looks of her, and that’s when I remember that I committed to teaching her some self-defense moves this afternoon.

“Ah shit, Pablo, I forgot. I can’t go with you. Got plans already I forgot about.”

Pablo looks up at Riley and her friend walking over toward us, then glances over at me and raises an eyebrow.

“Plans, huh? I’ll bet you do.”

“Ah, fuck outta here,” I reply with a laugh. “Training. Gotta teach this girl how to not get assaulted by big, bad men in dark alleys.”

Pablo nods. “What a nice, kind, considerate man you are, Gunnar.”

“First time I’ve heard myself described that way.” I smirk, wiping my face with a sweat rag. “You go on ahead. I’ll text you if I’ve got time to meet up later.”

“Right-o. Have fun grappling with the girls,” he replies with a wink.

“Yeah, yeah,” I reply. “I’ll see ya.”

Just as he’s heading off to the locker rooms, Riley steps up beside me with her friend. Now that I can see her up close, I can see she’s even hotter than I thought she was before. In fact, she’s absolutely fucking gorgeous.

I can see why she wants to take self-defense classes from me: she’s tiny. There’s no way she’s over five foot four and that’s being generous. She’s got some hips on her, though, and a nice tight ass from the looks of it, packed into those black stretch gym pants she’s wearing. She’s wearing a black sports bra too, but even with that on, she’s still showing a nice bit of cleavage. I can already feel my dick getting hard, pressing against the cup I’m wearing beneath my shorts.

She may have put on a little bit of makeup before she came in this morning, but not much, and she still looks fucking beautiful, even with her hair just up in a ponytail.

Riley speaks up first. “Nina, this is Gunnar. Gunnar, this is Nina my friend who was–”

“Attacked the other night by some creepy ass guy in an alley?” I interrupt with a nod. “Yeah, I can see why.”

“What did you just say?” Riley asks as her jaw drops.

“What?” I reply with an innocent shrug. “Is that wrong to say or something? I’m saying I can see why she was attacked. I mean–your friend’s a total hottie, Riley, no wonder some pervy asshole tried to get his hands all over her.”

Riley sighs and shakes her head as I turn to Nina and extend my hand.

“Gunnar Jones. Middleweight champion of the world. Nice to meet you.”

Nina looks up at me, and I feel my cock swell even more against the inside of my cup. Jesus, this is going to be a hard session to get through (in more ways than one).

“Nina Sweeny,” she replies in a voice like music. “Nice to meet you.”

“So you don’t have any kind of training or anything?” I ask.

Nina shakes her head. “Oh no, nothing. Unless you consider running away like a scared deer to be .”

“Well, that ain’t good.” I smile and point to the red mark on her cheek. “Is that from the other night?”

“Yes.” She nods.

“What a goddamn coward.” I shake my head. “Only a coward would hit a woman. Riley tells me some guys scared him off? Did they get ahold of him?”

“No. They were older. He outran them and deleted his profile–the dating profile he used to meet me. The cops are trying to get the app to get his information, but I don’t think anything will happen to him.”

“Well he better hope he doesn’t run into me,” I reply. “I’ll show him the consequences of hitting a woman.”

Nina glances over at Riley, who is smiling. She glances down at her phone and back at me.

“I’ll leave you two for…an hour? Then come back and get her?”

“An hour should be fine.” I nod, then turn to Nina. “Unless Nina here falls madly in love with me while I’m working with her.”

Riley leans in and smacks me on the arm, frowning at me like I just said I was going to kidnap her or something.

“Can you shut the fuck up, doofus?”

“What?” I squirm, chuckling. “It’s been known to happen.”

Riley turns to Nina, shaking her head. “You’ll have to ignore Gunnar here. He isn’t exactly ”

“Hey!” I protest.

“But he’ll be able to teach you everything you need to know.” Riley turns back to me, leans in, and whispers. “Go easy on her, okay? She just had a rough night.”

“I’ll try, but she’s gorgeous, and I am a man.”

Riley groans and gives me another smack in the chest before turning around and walking off toward the door, finally leaving me alone with Nina and all her beauty.

I have to shake my head again at the red mark on her cheek.

“Is it really that bad?” she asks.

“What?”

She points at her scrape. “I tried to hide it with coverup, but–”

“Nah, it’s not that bad,” I reply. “I mean–it is, but you still look fucking great, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

The corners of her lips twist into a smile, and she looks down nervously at her feet.

“Seriously, if you can find a way to get in touch with that guy again, you let me know,” I say. “I’ll rearrange his face so he won’t want to leave his house for the next year.”

Nina nods, her lips pursed. I can tell she’s never run into a man like me before and doesn’t know how to respond. “Yeah, well I’m really hoping I never encounter him again.”

“I feel ya.” I nod. “So did you bring gloves? Why don’t you show me what you’ve got?”

“Yeah, Riley had a pair. She said you taught her some things last year or something?”

“Yeah, Riley knows how to handle herself pretty well,” I reply as Nina pulls a pair of gloves from her bag. I recognize them as Riley’s and watch as she attempts to put them on.

“No, like this,” I say, stepping closer.

She’s wearing some kind of scent–a perfume or maybe just something she put in her hair–but it wafts into my nostrils as I take her right hand in mine and show her how to tighten the strap around her wrist.

From this angle I can see right down her incredible cleavage. My eyes scrape every inch of her plump, perky tits as I reach over and take her left wrist and do the same thing as I did with her right, securing her glove onto her hand.

Her gym pants are hugging her curves in just the right way, showing off her oh-so-feminine hips that make me think this girl was just made for breeding. Some women give off that vibe and some don’t, and Nina does. I’ve never been a guy who’s had children on his mind or immediate agenda, but for some reason, I feel like this is a girl I could easily knock up and feel happy about it.

Riley, on the other hand, is just a one-night stand kind of girl. But I’d never sleep with her anyway because she’s cousins with Jason of course and that would be breaking the bro-code.

But Nina–Nina has something about her that’s just drawing me in like I’m a lion out on the prairie (do lions roam the prairies?) and I’ve found my mate. Every instinct in me is telling me to snatch her by the hair, strip her naked, lick every single inch of her body, and then plant my seed as deep inside her as I possibly can.

But that’s not what we’re doing right now. Right now I have to teach her how to defend herself from creepy predatory men.

“Okay, Nina, why don’t you show me what you’ve got?” I ask, stepping back and taking a fighting stance in front of her. I leave my hands low so as not to intimidate her.

“What I’ve got?” she asks, looking like a timid little rabbit.

I hold up my hands in front of me and step closer.

“Give me your one-two.”

“My one-two?” she asks hesitantly.

“Yeah, you know. One-two punch?”

“Oh,” she replies, clearly not really knowing what I’m talking about but doing her best to pretend. “Like…one…two?” she asks as she throws her right hand at my right and her left hand at my left. To be fair, it’s not as bad as I was expecting.

“Not bad, not bad.” I nod. “For a girl.”

“For a girl?” she snips back, looking offended. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She quickly throws back another one-two, which I counter immediately with an open-hand smack to the side of her head as softly as I can, using my left hand.

“Ow!” she cries out, stepping back quickly. “Oh my God!”

“That’s what I mean,” I chuckle. “Okay, come on. Keep going, show me what you’ve got Nina. Let’s go. More. Gimmie more.”

It takes less than two seconds for her eyes to flare and for her to recompose herself, and then she’s coming back at me, slinging punches at my hands as I dodge side to side, making it harder on her.

I’ve never sparred with a girl before–well, not since Riley–and I don’t consider Riley a girl since she’s Jason’s cousin and she’s off-limits. And I have to say, this whole experience is turning me on like I hadn’t expected when I agreed to take the job.

Nina has a fire in her, and she looks cute as hell coming at me with her little fists and a look of concentration on her gorgeous face as she throws jabs at me that could never hurt me in a million years.

I want to grab her, pin her down on the mat, and rip those gym pants and that sports bra right off of her.

Riley is twenty if I remember right, so Nina must be around that age too, which means she’s about ten years younger than me. Everyone says these days that dating a girl that much younger than you is grooming or means you’re a predator or something, but I just think the people who talk that way are jealous. Nina is fucking gorgeous, and she’s gonna be mine.

“Put your hips into it,” I tell her. “You’re small, Nina, you’ve got to put your weight into it or you’re never going to do any damage to anyone, especially a guy who’s bigger than you.”

“I am putting my weight into it,” she grunts.

“No you’re not,” I reply, feeling the impact of her blows against my hands. “You’re not doing shit.”

I swing back with another open-handed slap and knock her head to the side.

“What would you do if a guy like me attacked you, Nina? You think a hit like that could actually hurt me?”

For a second, Nina frowns, but then her frown morphs into the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen, and a warmth sinks into my chest. I even lower my guard for a second.

“No.” She shakes her head. “No I don’t think so.”

“Okay, so put your hips into it!” I swing out again and give her another playful smack on the head. Then, without hesitation, Nina steps in and pivots on her front foot and throws her hips into her strike.

To my surprise, she throws a serious right hook into my right hand. I can feel the extra power behind it and counter with a light jab back at her face. It barely connects at all, but it surprises the hell out of her.

“Gunnar!” she cries out, stepping back and wiping her lips with the back of her glove, I guess to make sure I didn’t draw blood or something.

“Ah, come on. You’re fine,” I chuckle.

“My lip gloss!”

“Lip gloss, Nina?” I ask, breaking out laughing. “Come on, are you here to fight or are you here to be a little helpless girl?”

Again, she frowns at me. Starting to be a pattern. “You know, I knew you were an asshole before I came here, but I didn’t realize just how much of one until just now.”

“Oh, you can stop all that right now.” I smirk.

“Stop all what?”

“Would you rather have an asshole, who knows how to fight and can teach you how to defend yourself? Or some politically-correct-pansy-ass-momma’s-boy, who likes to knit sweaters and can only call the cops for you you’ve been sexually assaulted and he’s been robbed and had his ass kicked?”

Nina just stares back at me, but I can tell she’s trying hard not to laugh.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Now come on, let’s keep going. Let me show you what to do if a guy gets his hands on you.”