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to tap out just yet.”
     
    When the last fighter left, Rose, who’d been dying for a pee for about an hour, sneaked off to the bathroom. She dashed into one of the empty stalls, quickly wiped the toilet seat with tissue paper, and shivered with joy as she relieved herself. The joy was short-lived, however, when someone began whistling the theme tune to Jurassic Park—right outside her door.
     
    The urinals were there, and she heard the trickle. Rose pulled her pants up but didn’t flush right away. She wanted to wait till he left, whoever it was. However, he didn’t leave. He took his time at the sink nearby, whistling the same tune over and over. She crouched to peek under the door, to see who it was and what he was doing.
     
    Oh my God.
     
    The Light Heavyweight Champion of the World is right there…and he is buck naked! About to take a shower. Towel and shower gel at the ready.
     
    But he was texting on his phone first—a long, glorious message that gave Rose ample time to gawp at every inch of him.
     
    The guy might be a bottom-shelf a-hole, but damn , he was top-shelf hot. Unbelievably hot . She’d seen boys naked before (and slept with two of them), but that was all they were next to Avery Wright—boys. Just the thought of what he could do to her—if he knew her real identity—left her clenched and trembling. Her face and the tips of her ears felt molten hot. The flutter in her tummy became her new center, a source of strange and not-yet-coined hints and possibilities all swirling from a tiny pinpoint that she couldn’t quite locate. Now it was lower, more erotic. Now it was higher, making her heartbeat test the limits of her chest. Now it was back where it had started, making her feel all weird and outside herself.
     
    He put his phone away and strode into the shower room, out of sight. When Rose got up, the blood rushed from her head and she went faint. She had to compose herself before she left the stall. In the mirror, she saw how red she’d become. and it worried her a little. How long can I keep up this act if the sight of naked men affects me like this? Correction: ridiculously hot naked world champion fighters. Hmm, might make for an interesting Google search later. After my midnight training, which would be fierce tonight.
     
    Today had been one of the most stressful, frustrating days of her life; it needed a good kicking.
     
    When she got back to the office, Luca was on the phone to Tyler Culver. Great, another nightmare I had to somehow avoid. A few years ago, Tyler had taken Rose to the hospital after his two daughters, the Twitches, Ashley and Lena, had beaten the living shit out of her in the restaurant parking lot near the Culver’s house. The Twitches had actually been picking on Cate, Rose’s younger stepsister, but Cate never answered back and didn’t have a violent bone in her body. Rose, on the other hand, had argued and fought with her stepdad on a daily basis, usually coming off worst, and it had left her with a short fuse. Protecting Cate meant everything to her. So when she’d seen the Twitches in full-on bullying mode, Rose had leapt in and set about them. She’d fought hard, even when they’d taken turns bloodying her face and kicking her ribs to splinters.
     
    Cate’s cries for help still haunted Rose to this day. Mostly they were indoors, coming from her bedroom when Mike got angry and took it out on her because she was the nearest and easiest target. But that day, in the parking lot, her cries had echoed far and wide, the exaggerated clarity in Rose’s ears as she lay battered on the ground making every noise seem twice as loud and twice as close. They were dear to her, those cries, because they were for her. Only one person in the whole world cared about her enough to cry like that, and that was important.
     
    She would do everything in her power to get Cate away from Mike. In a few months’ time, Cate would turn eighteen and she’d be free from his custody.