Authors: A.J. Sand
Drew takes me down one of the crisscrossing paved walkways, passing a crowded gazebo, and more fountains, statues
, and food vendors than I can keep track of, until we find what might be the last empty plot of grass. “You’re good on the ground…” she says as I start to remove my shirt. The air feels combustible today and I’m already sweating.
“Drew?” I ask once my shirt is off completely. Her
gaze roams my bare torso then holds where my shorts are exposing the V-lines below my abs. I take pride in the way her eyes stretch. I have worked hard as fuck for these, so I find every chance I can to show them off. But spasms, twitches and warmth—basically any and all possible responses to the way she’s looking at me—ravage me beneath the surface. “You were saying? My ground technique is good?”
“
Right…um…but your holds aren’t what they used to be,” she says, gulping down, then shaking away whatever dirty thought she was so obviously lost in. “These guys are out to hurt you, so you need to focus on getting them down as quickly as you can—”
“So I can choke them until they pass out…”
“Yes,” she says without any hesitation. “Your other option is a knockout. I think it’s the lesser of the two evils. And the faster you do it, the less bloodshed. That’s what we want, right?” Drew gets into fighting stance. “Okay. Come on.”
Ha, ha.
It’s hard not to smile at her, and I don’t bother putting my fists up. As much as I like the idea of getting all tangled up and sweaty with Drew, I can’t fight her. I duck her jabs, which she throws with full power, and I give her a gentle push back. “Quit it.”
“We used to do this all the time…” she says, laughing.
“Yeah,” I say with a smirk, “but that was always foreplay.”
Her mouth falls into an “O” shape,
and I can tell her mental bearings are thrown off for a moment. “Okay…so, now you’re scared?” she asks as she swings a roundhouse kick at my chin. I block it and catch her leg, holding it so that she’s hopping around.
“No. I don’t want to hurt you, and all those guys have
, like, seventy, eighty pounds on you. Let’s just jog a lap or two around the place. Push me to run as hard as you want. I’ll do the toughest workout you’ve got in mind,” I say, and she lowers her leg. “Okay?”
“Okay.
” Drew, disappointed, drops her hands, but in a swift move they’re back up. She pulls my nose and hammers me in the throat with her fist.
Goddamn, she’s fast. I push away from her
, coughing. She’s laughing, of course. “Fuck, Drew, was that necessary?”
“Yes! T
hat’s what they’re gonna be doing!. And also much, much worse.” She kicks my shoulder once and my chest next. She shoves me hard enough to knock the wind out of me, and then jumps onto my back, wrapping one arm around my neck and pulling my head back with the other. It hurts like a bitch.
“Drew!” I yell, but she tightens the hold and ignores my plea.
People walking by slow down. I’m sure we look so fucking crazy.
“
Everything’s fine!” Drew shouts at them, and in my ear she says, “Don’t wuss out. Get me off you.” With a shitload of reluctance, I grip both her arms, swing her around, and slam her to the ground. She bounces a little from the impact. “Ow, dammit, Jess, you didn’t have to do it like that.” She begins to whimper, arching her back in pain.
Fuck.
She’s still grimacing when I kneel down beside her, and I brush away the hair stuck to her forehead. “You okay?”
S
he grabs my wrist as a sly smile hits her face. Extending my arm along her torso, she curls her legs over one side of my neck as her knees squeeze my upper arm. “I don’t cry that easily,” she says, laughter overtaking her words. Sharp pain explodes at my elbow when she twists my wrist, and I howl out. People aren’t even pretending not to stare anymore. The only thing that makes this marginally less painful and embarrassing is that my shoulder is in her crotch. Okay, okay, maybe it’s not awful at all. Not a bad way to get your arm snapped in half, if you absolutely have to. Hey, and maybe I’m into the freaky stuff because I’m definitely getting a stiffy.
She rolls her eyes. “Are you…are you smiling? Well, then. Who knew you liked it so rough, Jesse Chance?
We should’ve picked out a safe word.”
“Is ‘ouch’ gonna work?”
“Nope.” She raises her hips and a pulsating burn fires down my forearm. Drew swings one of her legs around, and crushes my head between her thighs. Where the hell did she learn how to use them like this, as a weapon?
With Buck? In bed?
Wait, no, no, no…I don’t want to know. But the truth is Drew’s legs would be lethal even if they weren’t wrapped around my neck.
“Now, get out of it
. Don’t worry about me. If it hurts I’ll tap, but this is going to hurt
you
more if you don’t get out.” She winds my wrist dangerously close to a break, and I scream, my enjoyment completely wiped out.
She doesn’t let up at all as I try to maneuver out of the hold, and she bucks against my neck as hard as she can. Ignoring the throbbing discomfort in my arm, I walk my feet back until my torso is almost parallel to the ground. Balancing on my free arm, I tuck my knees under, dive to her right, and my
trapped arm pulls free. I feel her sneak attack coming, so I twist around and pin her wrists to the grass, but she manages to throw her knees up in between our bodies.
“Gotcha.”
“
Oooh,
you pinned
a girl
,” she teases with an eye roll. “
Winner
.”
“Not just any girl!” I say. “The one I taught to hit like a badass. So, like I said…gotcha.”
Her gaze sinks into mine, and the way she smiles at me is enough to shut out noisy, overcrowded, lively Mexico City. Drew bites her lip as she pulls one leg out, and then the other, stretching them out on the grass at either side of me. My senses hone in on her completely: the irregular rhythm of the breaths we’re exhaling right into each other’s mouths, the warmth of her wrists on my palms, and the press of her thighs against my knees. I can smell the sweat on her skin, and the scent has lust racing through me like electrical current. Her eyes bare a hunger that makes me wish for guilt, because it might be the only thing that will stop me at this point. I graze her earlobe with my lips.
Sta
ggered breaths pump onto my shoulder before Drew angles her head toward mine. As soon as our lips touch, my tongue slips in and glides over hers. She links our hands and reality smacks right into me then, or rather, it crushes my finger. Her ring—her engagement ring—is digging into my bones. And suddenly, so is my conscience. I can’t ignore its weight, no matter how good this feels. We’re with other people. We can’t do this.
With the self-control of an entire convent, I crawl off her and
stand up. When I spot a vendor nearby, I jog to him and buy two bottles of water. I wish I could ask him to dump his entire cooler of ice over my head. I drain my own bottle completely with the hope that the brief time away from her will bring my dick back down to zero.
Drew’s still on the grass, and her eyes laser me when I
approach. “How’d I do? Er, getting out of the arm bar?” I ask, offering my hand to help her up. Nope. My attraction doesn’t even dip down a single rung.
“Good…um, you were good,” she whispers, sucking in her breaths like they are coming
through a straw. “But let’s do it again.” This time, though, we practice putting her in holds, which makes me realize how much it sucks that I’ll be doing this with a bunch of dudes. I’m still turned on the entire time, but I focus on her ring, in my mind, because she remembers to take it off during the second round of training. We stay in
Alameda Central
for a few more hours, but we don’t talk about what happened between us. I want to write it off as
nothing
, but because of who Drew was to me—who she
is
to me—my mind thwarts any attempts at making the kiss inconsequential.
D
uring dinner, Miguel calls with news that he got word of a fight coming up in a few days. Five thousand is the payout for a win. But he has to confirm it with “his guy.” It turns out that fifty-five hundred will be the total I can make if I win three fights. Two nights later, Miguel tells us to take the metro train to Iztapalapa, a borough of Mexico City not too far from where we’re staying. It’s heavy on dilapidated housing and cracking roads, with the forgotten poor everywhere, and greenery nowhere. It’s definitely not the part of the city you’d see on tourism websites. There are women in scanty clothing idling in front of buildings and catcalling passing men, while aggressive vendors intimidate customers into buying sketchy-looking items. Iztapalapa is far more urbanized than anything I’ve seen so far, even more than the initial drive into Mexico City. It’s just swarms of people and buildings stretching on for endless miles. And all of it existing beneath a cover of smog.
Drew clutches my hand as we move through the crowded streets, on our way to meet Miguel’s friend, Sandrine
Estrada, at a popular cafetería called Dulce. We find the small diner in a neighborhood where the slums are literally crumbling in the shadows of shiny mansions and luxury condominiums. When we walk in, I spot a petite, redheaded woman at a corner booth, who has to be Sandrine, and she, too, guesses we’re there for her.
“I’m Miguel
’s guy,” she says with a laugh. She’s also a talkative thirty-something French expat who—over taquitos—explains that she came to Mexico many years ago with some idealized desire to do good in the world but discovered that there was far more money and respect in doing the bad. You wouldn’t know how much she likes
the bad
just from looking at her, though. She’s dressed for a country club in tan wide-leg pants, a navy blue V-neck blouse, and ice pick-sharp stilettos, but every time her cell rings, and she strolls off to the corner to have a private conversation, I’m reminded of what she really is, the middleman’s middleman: people like Miguel contact her when they’re looking for better fights because she mingles in cartel circles.
“Did he tell you
about tonight?” she says, squashing her cigarette in an ashtray.
“Not really. I was in once he told me about the money.”
The café is a noisy spot with clattering plates, loud conversations, and the incessant
ding
of the bell calling up orders, so we’re essentially shouting at each other not even two feet across. We could be planning a murder; though, no one would be any wiser because everyone’s shouting.
“Ah, yes. I couldn’t get you into the five grand round
s. No one knows who you are. People weren’t going to bet on you, but after tonight, if you do well, it shouldn’t be a problem. If you do better than you did the other night, of course. I saw you fight in Guadalajara. You were trying to be noble.” Sandrine sticks another cigarette between her lips and exhales smoke out of her nose. “There is no honor in this, Jesse, and don’t bring it into those places with you. Those guys will kill you if you let them. Without hesitation or remorse or any regard for who’ll miss you. They will wear your blood like a badge of honor and dance over your lifeless body. Never forget that.” I get chills from the detached tone of her voice, and I wonder how many times she has witnessed a death in the cage.
Enough for her to be impassive.
And whatever number it took to get her there is almost too scary to imagine, small or large.
“So, is
this The Cull? This is real cartel stuff?” Drew asks. Unlike Sandrine, her tone is nothing but concern. If the anxiety between both of us were converted to power, no one in Iztapalapa would ever have to worry about electricity ever again.
Drew’s
question clearly surprises Sandrine because her eyes widen, and then she studies her with the tilt of her head. “Yes and no. The Cull is elite fighters only, but this is an event that funnels unknowns into The Cull, usually. It’s almost like a tryout. You survive there, and they’ll know you. The cartels also like to show off their best fighters at the end of the night. El Sindicato and the Ortiz-Peña Cartel organized tonight, and the Durango Cartel will have fighters participating, too. I think it’s much more fun for them when they can have their guys beating the shit out of each other.”
“Aren’t they
all rivals? How do they keep the peace?” I ask.
Her phone beeps and she only stops smoking for a moment to look at the screen. “Easy.
Money.
These three cartels haven’t really had a problem with each other. They’ve brokered shaky alliances, but
alliances
, nonetheless. And then there’s that little thing called mutually assured destruction, the threat of violence from other
really
violent people. If something goes wrong at a fight with all those trigger-happy men present—”
“Everyone in there
would probably die…” I say.
“Yes,” Sandrine confirms with
jarring finality in her tone as she presses away on her cell phone. “You must really need this money.” Sympathy and unasked questions bounce around in her eyes as she looks over at me. I ignore the warning pinch of a panic attack because Drew clutches my hand beneath the table.