: Chapter 3

MY HEART IS RACING, and I feel completely out of place in this environment. The air is thick with sweat, and Gunnar is intimidating. He’s wearing a sleeveless tank top that shows off just how thick and striated his arms and shoulders are, and although I’ve seen him fight on television before, seeing him up close like this is completely different.

He’s an absolute beast of a man–twice the size of Brian, my would-be-rapist-date from last night. I can’t even imagine what I’d do if Gunnar decided he wanted to pin me down and have his way with me. Unless I had a rocket launcher or something, I’d be completely screwed. There would be no way I’d be able to fight him off. I can already tell by the way he’s been messing with me and hitting me with those open-hand slaps that the strength difference between the two of us is massive.

I’ve never been this close to a man like him before. He’s like a walking distillation of pure, one hundred percent . You know how they say in cooking you need to reduce down a sauce until it’s just a concentration of whatever it is you’re cooking with? Like chicken broth or something like that? That’s Gunnar. A raw, reduced down, concentration of pure man.

You can practically see the testosterone steaming off his skin.

“All right, Nina, so let’s say a guy comes at you like this. What do you do?”

Before I can even react, Gunnar is behind me and has his arms wrapped around my neck. My heartrate skyrockets as memories of last night flood through my mind.

“Shit,” I curse, struggling against his grip, which feels like a vise–a curved bar of solid, inescapable steel. “Oh my God, I guess I would–”

I try to wriggle free, but it’s completely futile. Gunnar has me, and he could do whatever he’d like with me.

“No that’s not gonna work,” he chuckles. “You can’t just wiggle out of this, Nina. You’re a girl, all right?”

“Yes, I know I am!”

“You’re not gonna be able to just fight against my strength, okay? So what you need to do is something smarter. You wear heels?”

“Sometimes. Not really, but sometimes.”

“On a date?” he asks. “Like if you and I were on a date would you wear heels?”

I groan and try not to smile. “Yes, Gunnar, I would probably wear heels if you and I went on a date.”

“Okay, great. So if you and I went out on a date and I ended up being some crazed, creepy, pervy, predator and I had my arms around you like this trying to take advantage of you–you should take your heel and stomp on the instep of my foot with everything you’ve got. Got it?”

“Like this?” I ask, pretending to stomp his foot but landing just beside it. Gunnar chuckles, fakes a grunt of pain, and releases his grip on me just enough that I can slip out from under it.

“Just like that,” he replies. “Now that’s when you do something like take those girly nails of yours and claw my eyes out, grab my dick and twist it off, or spray me in the face with pepper spray.”

“I don’t have any pepper spray.”

“Well you need to buy some. Mace, pepper spray, a taser, a fold-up knife. Whatever. Go out with Riley and get yourself something to level the playing field a bit. I’m surprised your last boyfriend didn’t buy you some to put on your keychain.”

“Yeah, my last boyfriend…” I scoff.

Gunnar picks up on this and leans closer. “What was that?”

“Huh? Oh nothing.”

“No, what’d you say?” he presses.

I feel my face getting red. “Um, let’s just say I uh…haven’t had a whole lot of luck in the boyfriend department.”

“

Gunnar snorts. “I figured you’d have a whole line of suiters. What are you telling me? You’re like the Virgin Mary over here or something?”

“Um…I guess,” I reply, feeling like I suddenly want to disappear under Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak. Gunnar Jones must have had hundreds of gorgeous girls–actresses, models, celebrities–and here I am, the nineteen-year-old virgin who just got catfished by a predator on a dating app last night and assaulted. Talk about a difference in lifestyles.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those man-haters, Nina,” Gunnar asks, looking me up and down like I just landed in a spaceship from Venus.

“No, I–”

“Or wait. You’re a lesbian?”

“No, I like men!”

“So what’s the problem?” he asks. “Are you like a super-dweeb who’d rather sit in her room watching those weird Japanese cartoons and writing Han Solo fan-fiction instead of going out and meeting real guys?”

“What?” I gasp. “No! I just went on a date last night!”

“Yeah, with a total weirdo who tried to assault you. Come on, Nina. You gotta start learning how to pick ‘em better. A girl like you should have a ring on her finger by now, or people are gonna start thinking there’s something wrong with you.”

I know that somehow this is supposed to come off as a compliment, but I’m having a hard time taking it as one. This is what I meant when I told Riley last night that Gunnar was abrasive and full of himself, and it feels as though things are already starting to go off the rails.

“Okay, um…aren’t you supposed to be teaching me how to defend myself?” I ask. “Because right now it feels as if this is a therapy session and you’re my psychiatrist. And no offense, Gunnar, but you are psychiatrist.”

Gunnar actually cracks up and points his glove at me. “You know what, Nina? You are right about that. You have to actually graduate high school to get a shrink degree, so there’s no way they’d let me have one of those.”

“You didn’t graduate high school?”

“Hell no! Let’s just say my upbringing had its ups and downs.” He chuckles again to himself. “But you’re right. Let’s get back to it. What would you do if a guy did this?”

The next thing I know, Gunnar is sweeping my legs out from under me, and I’m pinned down on my back with him on top of me. His massive arms flank either side of my head, and his masculine scent fills my nose like an overpowering cologne.

.

The thought leaps into my mind as my body reacts in a way I was simply not expecting.

Gunnar simply oozes masculinity and sexuality, and as he looks down at me, grinning with confidence and the knowledge that he has complete control over me, I feel something awaken inside of me that I didn’t even know was there.

This man could do anything he wanted to me, but I know he has restraint and will not. I know he’s holding back, and there’s something unbelievably sexy about that. I don’t know how I know, but I also know that if I were ever in any real trouble, Gunnar would protect me. And he’s the first man I’ve ever known in my life that I can say for sure I know that about.

“So, Nina?” he asks. “What would you do in this position?”

“This position?” I actually giggle. Jesus Christ.

Gunnar chuckles back when he realizes what he’s just said. “Yeah that does sound kinda bad, doesn’t it? Okay, Nina. What would you do in this…

“Um, I don’t know. Knee you in the balls?”

To my surprise, Gunnar actually nods, impressed.

“See? You’re learning. If I were a big, dumb asshole rapist, then you kneeing me in the balls would be a great first move. It wouldn’t work on me because I have a cup right now, but it would work on some asshole out in the real world. You know what’s also a great move?”

“What?”

Gunnar leans in, and the first thought that goes through my mind is that he’s going to kiss me.

I feel my heart skip a beat, but just as his lips are about to press against mine, he dips his chin and aims his forehead at my nose.

“A headbutt,” he says. “Headbutt the son of a bitch right in the nose as hard as you can. That’ll stop him.”

My entire body relaxes, and I release the breath I realize I’ve been holding in my lungs. “Now it’ll hurt you too, but if you do it hard enough, you’ll break the fucker’s nose and he’ll be way worse off than you, and you’ll be able to get up and get the hell away from him.”

“Or grab my mace and spray him until he can’t breathe any longer.”

Gunnar grins. “See? Now you’re learning.”

The moment hangs between us, Gunnar smiling at me like a proud teacher, and I can feel my lips twisting up as I smile back at him. I’ve only ever seen him on TV with his face pounded all to hell, bloody and beaten after a fight, but up close and personal like this, he’s actually incredibly handsome.

From this distance, I can see the scars all across his face, a visual resume of his life as a fighter. There’s something…romantic about it, even though I know it must have come with pain and suffering on his end.

I feel hot.

With his thick, muscular body on top of mine and his strong hand holding me down in place, I feel small and overpowered. But at the same time, I feel safe. His shaggy brown hair hangs just above his eyes and looks like he cut it himself with a pair of dull scissors, making him look like he just strolled in out of the wilderness where he was living in a cabin he built himself out of logs. His arms are so brawny he looks like he could pick me up and lift me over his shoulder like I was a bag of oatmeal.

I shift slightly to the side beneath him and realize as my thighs squeeze together that my panties are wet beneath my gym pants just from being so close to this man. And that’s something that’s happened to me before.

“Nina?” I look up and realize Gunnar is staring directly into my eyes. The power from his gaze is nearly as powerful as his grip, and I find it impossible to look away.

“Y-yes?” I stammer.

“You all right? I didn’t scare you, did I?”

“What? No,” I reply quickly. “I was just…thinking about something.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what? Having sex with me?” Gunnar’s words shock me like a blow to the chest, so much so that I’m not even able to respond. “Because that’s what I was thinking about.”

“Wait, what? No! You’re Riley’s friend. You’re off-limits!”

Quickly, I wriggle out from underneath Gunnar and stand up. I can see him already smiling at me as I take a few steps back. He walks forward and cocks his head to the side.

“Off-limits, eh? Because I’m Riley’s friend?”

“That’s right!” I nod vehemently.

“And that’s the only reason why you don’t want to have sex with me, Nina?”

.

.

“Um…”

“Because I’m actually Jason’s friend. And Jason is Riley’s cousin. So I’m not really Riley’s friend, and even if I was, it’s not like Riley and I were ever boyfriend and girlfriend, so it’s not like I’m off-limits in that respect, you know what I mean?”

“Is it hot in here?” he asks, taking off his gloves, then slipping out of his T-shirt to reveal his shredded physique beneath. God, his chest is ripped and his abs are a total washboard. He’s one hell of a man and he clearly knows it.

Filthy thoughts fill my mind. I glance around the gym as he advances on me.

Most of the crowd has filtered out. There’s a couple of guys training on bags behind us in the corner, but that’s about it. My heart is absolutely pounding inside my chest as he gets closer and closer, and before I know it, Gunnar has me pinned up against one of the support columns with his arms on either side of my neck, his intense eyes locked on mine.

“You never should have told me you were a virgin,” he whispers. “Now I want you all to myself.”