Amid scandal, a nihilistic veteran trains an impoverished young MMA fighter. As the danger mounts, so does the grossly inappropriate heat between them. This is their story.

Content Notes: Dual POV, NSFW, M/M Romance, BDSM, HEA, Steamy.

You were warned.

He's been here a couple of times, and every time something about his face is familiar, but I can't place where I know him from.

He's gritty, even for this place. A backwards baseball cap is perched on his head, and a permanent leer is stretched across his hairy cro-magnon jaw. One hand is buried in his jacket, and the other twitches as Alyssa puts down his drink, like a cat's tail before it pounces.

Though I'm in a casual-seeming slouch with my back to the door frame, my weight is at the balls of my feet and my knees are soft, ready to fly across the club before that hand ever makes contact with Alyssa's ass.

At this point, I wish the motherfucker would, honestly.

The first few weeks at this job were the best few weeks. There was a dirtbag with a punchable face in here every night. Unfortunately, the dirtbags are fewer and more far between now, and most nights I'm in here with what could pass for Church Men's Group outings.

I haven't so much as hip-checked anyone in weeks.

I watch the man's eyes follow Alyssa's movements as she slips behind the curtain. At this club, the dancers and the waitresses share a ready room with lockers and mirrors that has its own private exit to staff parking. On weekends we have someone whose whole job it is to watch that curtain, but tonight its on me.

Almost like a lucid dream that I'm dictating, the gritty cavebro looks left then right, downs the rest of his long drink like a shot, and makes his way to the curtain.

Instead of flying across the room and interrupting the other customers, I slink around the perimeter of the club along the bar to get to the curtain.

I dart into the room to find it empty. The only thing that remains is the smell of body spray and mouthwash.

That doesn't make sense. There are only three girls out on the stage. Aside from Alyssa and the guy whose face I'm about to smash in, there should be at least a couple dancers in here getting ready. That's the whole idea of having one giant staff area: less privacy in exchange for safety in numbers.

Another quick glance into the club reveals nothing. Everything looks as it should.

I bolt for the exit, a grey door with a glowing red sign above it. The door-locking bar is cold against my hands as I shove it and spill out into the frigid night.

From out of nowhere, I've got something long and hard against my rib cage.

Military training takes over.

It's been a long time since I was a boy shivering in my diggies in Afghanistan, but the reflexes never went away.

My hands make contact and I jab. He folds in half, so then I grab. Fractured light dims as I throw my assailant over my shoulder. The groan that escapes as he slams into the cracked pavement sounds decidedly male, but before I assess the damage, I jump up to sweep the area for friends or other dangers.

"Alyssa!"

Her knees are bloodied like she's been dragged, and her wig is a mess but she's able to jump up to run to my side.

"Oh my god Evan!"

She throws her arms around my neck and I stiffen. My first impulse is to pull away, but instead I let her hug me.

As an afterthought I pat her on the back as I look over her shoulder at the sleazy dirtbag on the ground. He's stirring and his face is stretched into a grimace as he sucks air in between clenched teeth.

Is that recognition I see in his eyes?

Why can't I remember where I know him from?

Moving Alyssa to the side I loom over him and watch. The temptation to kick his face in is strong, but that moves what just happened from basic bouncing over into a possible assault charge.

"Is he okay?" asks Alyssa.

"Why do you care?"

She shakes her head. "Ew, I don't."

Her fingers fly up to her hair as she re-pins her Jessica Rabbit wig into place. "Well just, he's a good tipper. Most chasers are."

My last job, before I moved to Texas, was in a BDSM club. Our head of parking was a high-femme trans woman, too, and she sometimes dealt with shit like this. I wasn't working security then, but helped her out a couple times with her chasers. Lucia was white and taller, but she wore those same bright red wigs and lipstick, and Alyssa reminds me a lot of her, which reminds me a lot of that club, and why I left.

I never considered before that this is why I have avoided talking with Alyssa.

"Trans chasers. I'm trans," she clarifies after my long pause.

"I know."

Alyssa nods. "Cool."

The guy on the ground tries to sit up, fails, and then gets onto his hands and knees, and like a toddler, pushes himself into a wobbly stand. He looks at me awkwardly.

I stare him down. "Are you going to tip your waitress or not?"

Alyssa clears her throat "Oh, he doesn't have to-"

I cock an eyebrow that says: Oh yes he does.

The guy hands shake as he opens his wallet.

If I reach in, it's robbery. If he hands her the bills, it's a tip.

I crack my knuckles and the man makes a sound like when the batteries of a beloved children's toy begin to die. He throws all of the bills onto the ground and breaks into a hobbled run.

I help Alyssa pick up the money. Just as I'm about to ask her if she has a ride home, a voice from directly behind me says "That would be me."

I almost jump out of my skin. How did he sneak up on me like that?

I spin to take a look at the guy who is remarkably light on his feet and am floored.

He's huge.

No guy that big is that quiet without some kind of military background or special training.

And he isn't handsome. Handsome implies polished refinement and a trendy look, and he has none of that.

His good looks are more raw, with thick and glossy almost blue-black hair in a center part framing a light brown face and soft beard in perfect symmetry. Despite all the hard masculinity in his bone structure, he's got soft eyelashes and a kissable mouth.

Most importantly, he sends a current straight to my dick.

Fuck, there hasn't been a man who has made me react like that in a long, long time.

"Troy!" Alyssa's squeal interrupts my train of thought and I am grateful.

He rushes to Alyssa's side, brushing the gravel off of her long, bare legs. "What happened? I passed a guy limping away, should I go after him?"

The way he moves and talks makes me think Troy is closer to Alyssa's age than to mine.

When I finally find my voice again, I say "I doubt he'll be back."

Troy turns to me and our eyes meet. I hope I'm not imagining the way his inky pupils widen.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi."

But the hot, intense bouncer is looking at me, and then he takes off his glasses and looks at me some more, and those light green eyes against his pale skin and dark black hair are so startling that I can't look away.

"Hi," I say.

I already said that.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi, hi, hi!" says Alyssa, waving her skinny arms across her legs. "Evan, could you get me some band-aids from behind the bar?"

I look down at her skinned knees and the spell is broken. "Shit, did he drag you?"

I sink to my knees so quickly that my kneecaps smash on the concrete a little harder than I intended. Not hard enough to bruise, but almost. From down here, I can smell the stale cigarette butts overflowing from the industrial ashtray by the door. When was the last time it had been emptied?

"...no," says Alyssa. Her face is bashful.

"We need some antiseptic, too," I say to Evan, but he's already gone.

I pull my hand into my sweatshirt sleeve and use the cuff to brush the gravel out of the scrapes. It looks like they bled a lot, but there isn't as much scraping as I thought there would be. "What do you mean no?"

Alyssa glances at the door behind me, then drops into a crouch. "Okay, look, don't tell Evan, but the guy offered a ton of money for a blowjob, like a ton, and I'm not exactly in a place where I can say no."

A twinge of guilt flares up. If I earned more money, she wouldn't be in that position.

"Look, it's no big deal," she says, reading me well. Even when she's hurt, she doesn't want me to feel hurt, too. She never blames me for anything, even when things are my fault.

"He's not even gross or anything. But last time we did that, I told him the club cracked down hard on that kind of thing and Evan would crush his windpipe if we got caught so he was already jumpy. I was on my knees and he was about to unzip when Evan came crashing through that door like a water buffalo on steroids and the guy just kind of had a reflex and hit him. I feel like the poor guy's life just flashed before my eyes."

I have questions, but the door swings open and Evan enters with a first aid kit and tub of antibacterial wipes. He comes close enough that I can smell the mix of his heated body under his leather jacket.

The smell is 100% man.

He's hot and dangerous and if he's in any way even a little bit gay and interested, I'm so incredibly screwed.

Alyssa's eyes catch mine and an understanding passes between us.

I won't say anything that could cost her her job.

"Thanks Evan," I say, helping Alyssa clean up her knees. The blood was all from one small scrape. I think she's telling the truth about the guy, and I wish we could tell Evan, but without her tips, we're not making rent this month.

At least Evan's not offering to call the police or anything stupid like that.

"Yeah, thanks," says Alyssa.

I clear my throat and try to say as inconspicuously as possible "So what happened?"

Alyssa elbows me when Evan looks down to rearrange the first aid kit. Part of me wants to hear it from him, and another part wants a reason to hang out a little longer.

"Are you her boyfriend?" asks Evan.

Alyssa and I look at each other.

"Yes," she says, right as I say, "No."

"I mean, yes?" I say, right as she changes her answer to no.

We both laugh while Evan glowers, unamused. "I understand."

"You really don't," I say.

"Well I don't care," he answers.

That makes me want to clear it up for him even more. But where to begin? Calling it complicated was an understatement.

Alyssa catches my eye, then smiles. "We both date other people, if that's what you're asking."

She's an angel. She picked up on that really quick.

Then again, she knows my type.

At one point, she was my type.

"I wasn't asking," says Evan.

"Ouch," I say. I don't know if his response was a rejection of me, or of Alyssa, or about something else, but it still stings.

Instead of apologizing or turning it into a joke, Evan is silent. The discomfort is palpable and I wonder how long he's going to let us stew in it.

Scrap that, I don't want to know.

"So what happened?" I repeat, just as eager to get the story as I am to get away from the awkward silence.

I grab another band-aid to apply for good measure.

Evan holds out his big hand for the wrappers, and though I don't know him, it feels out of character for someone so gruff. I crumple them and place them in his hand. Heat radiates from it and I feel it without touching him.

He gestures at Alyssa. "I saw the way he looked at you in the club, when you turned from him, and then I saw him duck behind the staff-only curtain. I came out here after I found the room empty, and he ambushed me, so I flipped him."

"Right," said Alyssa, looking pointedly at me. "And then he made the guy empty his wallet in my hands."

Hooray for money, but I hope he wasn't going to be the kind of guy who would come try to come back for it, since he didn't get what was promised.

Evan grunts. "You know, dirtbags like that really piss me off. They think they don't have to listen to a woman's no. It's a pleasure shoving my fist in their face."

"I bet." I take a look at Evan's hands again. He's got those big, strong, veined hands that men get from doing hard work that requires good grip. My brain wants to take me to the feeling of those hands in my hair, shoving me up against a wall, but I force myself to stay on track. I hope he didn't hit the guy in the face with those hands. It would be like taking a hammer to the jaw.

"Come on, Alyssa, we should go."

Alyssa doesn't move. "You know, Troy loves punching, too. He does it for a living."

"Huh?" says Evan, searching my face.

I recognize that shocked look. He's looking for the typical signs of a fighter's face: the crooked nose, the cauliflower ears, and scarring around the mouth from lips being repeatedly smashed against the mouth guard and splitting open. I don't have many of those, because I'm good at what I do.

"MMA." I clarify. "Mixed martial arts. I fight for the prize money."

Evan nods. Is that respect I see in his eyes?

"You should swing by the dojo sometime. House of Pain. We have lots of dirtbags to punch."

For the first time tonight, Evan smiles. "I just might."

That’s all for Part 1!

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Otherwise, I’ll see you here next week, saucy readers.

-Dane