Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 89090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“Yev!” Polina shouts at the same time Vasily slowly makes his way to his feet.
When my challenger punishes my ribs and spleen with a punch firm enough for the crowd to cough with me, I finally get the answer I’m seeking. It isn’t from Vasily, though. Polina takes matters into her own hands. “Okay. All right. I’ll go home with you.”
“Tonight?” I double-check, not wanting to leave one stone unturned. “You’ll come home with me tonight?”
“Yes!” Polina shouts, her chest heaving like mine. “But only if you win.”
For a second, I forget the grief I’ve been treading in for the past six months. I smile and wink at Polina like the possibility of that occurring never existed before I swing my focus to the crowd, who seems more fascinated by our exchange than the match.
“You all heard that, right?” I bob down low, sending Bigfoot skidding to the other side of the ring when his feet can’t keep up with the overexertion of his swing. “I’m not hearing things? I did take a couple of knocks to the head, so I might not have heard her right.”
“Yev!” Polina shouts again, her face as red as a beetroot.
“What? I’m just checking.” After a grin too blinding considering how much blood is smeared on my teeth and that I buried my brother only weeks ago, I act like a contender instead of a round announcer.
The hold I place on the brute’s neck doesn’t have a name. It is a choker maneuver Feo and I made up when we commenced training for this very circuit. It won’t kill him, but it saves me needing to beat him senseless until his owner throws in the towel. There is no tapping out in this circuit. You’re either carted off the mat on a stretcher or left on it to rot.
He’ll sleep off my clutch in a couple of hours.
I’d say right around the time Polina stops hitting me with the stink eye to rival all stink eyes.
12
YEV
Sasha plants his big, tattooed hand across my chest when Polina shouts in Vasily’s face, “Oh, please. You were five seconds from pimping me out to him for a month before I agreed to his offer.”
After grabbing a clutch purse from the back of his pricy-looking ride, she slams shut the back passenger door, then gets up in his face like I might skip some of the shitfest tonight.
She’s pissed.
Majorly so.
“And you know we have to abide by the terms now since you ran to Sasha so fast to collect your payout, everyone in there”—she waves her hand to the warehouse slowly emptying—“knows our wager was for far more than an innocent sleepover. How much did you profit tonight, Vas? A million? Two?”
“Let me go, Sasha,” I grumble under my breath when Vasily stops Polina from leaving in the same manner Sasha stops me from intervening. His grab would be more painful on an arm as delicate as Polina’s, though.
I shrug out of Sasha’s hold when Polina’s numerous requests for Vasily to let her go fall on deaf ears. His girlie nails dig into her skin, which ensures mine will shred his from his fucking bones.
I’ve barely made a fist when Polina’s head slings my way. Her eyes have the same glossed-over appearance they wore when I bounced around the ring for the first time tonight, but her stance is as strong as her snarled demand. “Walk away, Yev.”
“Polly…”
She wedges herself between Vasily and me before locking her pleading yet still lust-filled eyes with mine. “Walk. Away.”
There’s the ball crusher I conjured up multiple times over the past eight years—all pretty and high-strung. She’s just wearing a heap more clothing than my deviant mind imagined while stroking one out.
After drinking in the slightest furl of my top lip no amount of grief could hide, Polina lowers her tone a smidge before assuring, “I’ll be there in a minute.”
I maintain my ground until Vasily lets go of her arm, and then I only take half a step back. A scar on Polina’s cheek I didn’t notice weeks ago exposes this dick got the jump on me once.
It won’t happen again.
Realizing she’s waging a war she won’t win, Polina exhales a harsh breath before she spins to face her douchebag boyfriend. It is no easy feat with how close I’m standing. Her ass has to butt with my crotch, and her glossy locks tickle my chest, but she acts as if she can’t feel my cock twitching against her while she presses her lips to the corner of Vasily’s mouth. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“That wasn’t our deal. I said a week.”
Polina’s hair slaps me in the face when she cranks her neck back to me. “I have to work.”
“And what the fuck does that have to do with him?”
As if accustomed to him trampling both her private and personal life, she struggles to find a response. After a beat, she murmurs, “He shops at my boutique.”