Page 5 of Falling for the Forbidden Fighter
“Any injuries I should know about?” she asks, watching my form. “Broken bones. Torn ACL. Anything.”
“Broke my wrist when I was a kid. My nose. A few fingers. None of it bothers me, though.”
“How’d you do all that?”
“Fighting.”
She doesn’t respond, but I feel her tense. Is she scared of me?
“Your accent…”
“Yeah?”
She laughs. “You kinda sound like Rocky.”
“Whoa. Whoa.” I stop the exercise. “You think every fighter from Philly is Rocky? That’s a prejudice I’ve never experienced.”
“I didn’t tell you to stop, Rock.” Catherine circles me, occasionally placing her hand on my lower back or thighs to make adjustments. “Lower. You do a lot of PT in the Navy?”
“We ran. Calisthenics. Some weight lifting,” I grunt, legs starting to burn. “I mostly trained the heavy bag and jumped rope outside of matches.”
“That’s it?”
I shrug. “Not much room on a ship.”
She instructs me to lie on my back. Again, she puts her hands on me, moving my legs into awkward positions. “That hurt?”
“Na,” I wince. “Well, it feels tight.”
“You are tight. Like most guys.” She presses her chest against my leg, bending toward my face. “We’ll fix that.”
A strand of her auburn hair drapes down and tickles my nose as she leans over me. I lock eyes with her, praying that I can keep the blood from flowing to my cock. From here, I can smell cinnamon. Everything about her iswarm.
“What about before the Navy? You’re, what, twenty-three?”
“Twenty-two. You?”
“Twenty-five.” Is she blushing? “I meant, what did you do before the Navy? Were you boxing?”
I pause, shake my head. “Not in a gym…”
Catherine looks like she wants to ask me something else, catches herself. What exactly did Sergeant Brewer tell Don about why I got kicked out?
“I was a dock worker. Port of Philadelphia,” I say so, we don’t have to get into it. “For a while, anyway. It was looking like I’dnever get into the union. Needed a place to live. A buddy told me I should try military.”
“You were homeless?” She seems shocked.
“Sometimes. I crashed on couches a lot.”
“What about your parents?”
“Who knows,” I grunt through the stretch. “Dad bailed before I was born. Mom ditched me before I was a year old.”
Catherine holds my gaze. I swear, her fingers dig deeper into my thigh.
“That’s sad,” she says softly.
Is it?
