Page 70 of Kings & Corruption

The music dropped a couple hundred decibels and Rock and Oscar moved into the space the crowd had created near the screen. Safe to say this wasn’t the first time a fight like this had happened at the Orpheum. I remembered the bruise on Neo’s face at the wedding, the dried blood on his knuckles a few days before, and it all made sense.

A woman stepped from the crowd and everybody stopped talking all at once. The mood in the theater turned reverent, all eyes on her.

She was about my mom’s age, but where my mom took pains to hide her age behind artfully applied makeup and a figure that reflected hours at the gym, the woman standing in front of the screen had done nothing to hide the creases in her face or the roundness of her body.

Her hair was bottle blonde, and she was at least a foot shorter than Marvin, who had a couple inches on Neo. There was something hard about her face, something that scared me a little. I understood why she commanded the attention of everyone in the room even though this particular crowd didn’t exactly seem soft.

“Welcome to the Orpheum!” Her voice was a raspy echo in the large room. “Tonight’s match is between pretty boy Neo here and our very own Mayhem. Usual rules apply.”

“Tell ‘em, Marge!” someone yelled from the crowd.

She looked from Neo to Marvin, and I waited for her to explain the rules. Instead she only said one thing. “Don’t be dicks.”

She stepped back and the crowd seemed to do the same, making more room in front of the screen, still playingCasino, as Neo and Marvin moved into the empty space.

They started circling each other, the crowd already cheering and shouting. I glanced up at Oscar, who had lifted his camera to take a picture of the scene.

“What are the rules?” I asked.

“There aren’t any,” he said without lowering the camera.

I was wrapping my head around the answer when Marvin landed a fast hard punch to the left side of Neo’s face. After that, everything moved quickly, a flurry of hands and feet and grappling that I struggled to see as the crowd got more worked up, surging the arena, shouting and cheering with every punch and kick.

I’d never been into boxing, which was fine, I guess, because this wasn’t boxing. Oscar was right: there were no rules, just two men trying to beat each other bloody any way they could.

I couldn’t have articulated technique or anything, but as I watched, I started to pick up on some of the nuances. Neo had been right about Marvin being slow. He was massive, and he had trouble keeping up with Neo’s footwork.

And there was a lot of footwork. Neo wasn’t quite as enormous as Marvin, but he was still a big guy, and I was impressed with how light he was on his feet. It was obvious he was trying to tire Marvin out, forcing him to work around Neo’s constant movement.

Blood dripped down Neo’s left cheek from the first punch, but he looked otherwise undamaged, unbothered, despite the flurry of kicks and punches that were exchanged between him and Marvin.

I could tell Neo was trying to avoid Marvin’s feet and the combat boots. It worked for a while, but then Neo went in for a punch to Marvin’s kidney. Marvin winced when it landed — he was obviously already tired from moving his hulking body around Neo’s lighter one — but a second later his leg came up in a savage kick to Neo’s chest.

Neo stumbled backwards. I couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the crowd, but the expression on his face made it seem like he might be wheezing, struggling to catch his breath.

The crowd shifted, and I lost sight of Neo as they cheered even louder.

Oscar was still taking pictures, so I tugged on Rock’s arm. “Is he okay?”

I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me when he didn’t answer, but a split second later, he lifted me onto his wide shoulders like I was a kid at the country fair.

Now I could see that Neo was fine, and not only that, but the pressure of Rock’s head against my pussy revved me up in spite of my recent orgasm with Oscar.

I didn’t know what it was about these guys that was turning me into a sex fiend, but I forced myself to ignore the throb in my pussy and focus on the fight.

Neo and Marvin exchanged punches, Marvin trying to get another kick into Neo’s body while Neo forced him to move, sneaking in punches Marvin didn’t expect, ducking under his arms to avoid the boots.

Neo had another cut above his right eyebrow that dropped blood down his cheek, but Marvin wasn’t unscathed. His face was already swelling, one eye starting to close, and it looked like he had a broken nose. He was slower now too. All the work Neo had done to keep him moving was wearing on him, making his feet look plodding, his punches lethargic.

Which was probably why he tried to use the boot trick again, this time aiming for Neo’s face when Neo got closer to try and land another punch.

But instead of taking the hit, Neo grabbed Marvin’s foot and drove him hard and fast against the screen where Joe Pesci was turning framed photographs over while he tossed jewelry into a bag.

“Not the screen!” Oscar yelled over the crowd.

The screen shook but didn’t break as Marvin slammed into it, and I gasped along with the crowd as Neo grabbed a fistful of Marvin’s beard, twisting hard and punching him in the kidneys until he fell to the ground.

Neo was on him like an animal taking down prey, straddling his chest and using his legs to keep Marvin’s hands at his sides while Neo landed punch after ferocious punch to his face.

---