Page 51 of Beautiful Sinners

Jax goes limp, signaling he’s done. Liam springs to his feet, and an exhausted Jax rolls over onto his back, arms flung over his face as his chest rises and falls.

“Why don’t you go beat up on the new guys?” Jax suggests.

Liam looks directly at me, smirk firmly in place. Challenge accepted, motherfucker.

I take off my shirt, and Rafe clicks his tongue when he sees the beat-up state of my body.

“Looks like someone already did.”

Tristan slides in front of me. “Con, man, don’t. Your ribs are broken.”

I have a lot of anger that needs an outlet. Anger at Aleksander and Aleksei. Hating myself because I couldn’t protect Syn. She almost died because I wasn’t strong enough to stop Aleksei. All my training, every life I was forced to take for the Society, meant nothing when Aleksei held a gun to her head. I’d never been so scared in my life.

I need this, I sign.

“Fuck. Fine. But you know she’ll lose her shit if you get hurt.”

Then I’ll have to make sure I don’t get hurt.

I’m already barefoot, so I don’t have to kick off any shoes before I duck under the ropes and step into the ring. Liam picks something off the mat and comes over with a roll of tape, but I shake my head no. I don’t want to wrap my hands. I want to feel every hit and every slice of pain that travels up my arm with each blow.

“You sure?”

I nod yes.

“Not much of a talker?” Liam jokes.

“He doesn’t talk,” Tristan says from the corner.

“Like, at all?”

I fucking hate when people talk about me and not to me. I should be used to it. Still pisses me off, though.

Jax moves to the other corner where bottles of water are set out on top of a metal stool. He takes one and guzzles the entire thing, but his awareness stays cemented directly on me.

“Will the two of you get on with it so I can go fuck my wife.”

“Our wife.”

Rafe and Liam break out in matching shit-eating grins just as I throw a forward jab that connects with Liam’s face.

He wipes a trickle of blood from his mouth. “So, it’s like that, huh?”

Yep.

We circle each other in the ring, deciding who will hold the dominant position. Liam stops; takes a step back. His gaze flicks over me in contemplation, trying to suss my weaknesses through my injuries. The angle of his jaw hardens with determination, and he explodes forward with a roundhouse kick aimed directly at my head. I barely manage to tuck and roll in time.

“Looks like you may have met your match, Liam.”

“Shut it, Rafael.”

Using the distraction to my benefit, I execute a punch-kick combo which completely knocks Liam off balance. He counters with a flurry of kidney punches that hurt like hell because of my ribs. I’m able to get him to back off with hard knee thrusts to his stomach.

“What the fuck? I was only gone for five minutes,” Keane barks, but my focus never strays from my opponent.

We spend the next five minutes trying to beat the shit out of one another. Our sparring becomes more desperate as we duck and weave away from each other only to clash moments later, neither of us wanting to relent. I’m most definitely going to feel every one of Liam’s punches later, but the fight itself does wonders to help release some of the chaos that has been boiling over inside of me.

In my peripheral, I see Rafe hold up a Benjamin. “Hundred bucks says Liam takes him down in the next two minutes.”

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