Page 45 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER EIGHT

ZACH

“ S hit ,” Bennett and Noah swore behind me when Jojo appeared ringside, looking like my dirtiest fantasy and my worst nightmare all at once.

She wore a hot pink T-shirt cropped so that it showed off a large swath of her flawless, toned stomach.

Her black yoga pants fit her like a second skin, and she’d woven her white-blonde hair into a tight French braid.

Her hands were wrapped and taped with the skill of someone who was no stranger to martial arts, and her feet were bare, those perfect toes taunting me as she approached.

“Nope, no fucking way,” I said to Dane. “I will not fight her. I’m not beating the shit out of a girl, and especially not that girl.”

“I, uh,” Dane stammered, scratching the back of his head with his bullhorn. “I mean, I guess you could forfeit, but do you really wanna do that? To, uh… her , in particular?”

She continued into the ring, the circle of shirtless, sweaty dudes that surrounded us parting for her without a word. Somehow in the midst of my freakout, I still had the wherewithal to plan the violent murder of the seven or eight guys I witnessed blatantly check out Jojo’s ass as she passed them.

“What’s the matter, Zach?” she asked, moving to the opposite corner of the thick mat and dropping her backpack to the floor. The fluorescent bulb above us lit up her every feature, those icy eyes alight with determination and mischief. “Is the Ferrero Heir afraid to fight a girl?”

I just glared at her in silence, knowing Bennett would step in to be a dick about this, and he did not disappoint me.

“Are you fucking joking, Jolie?” he hissed, marching to the edge of the mat and into the light so the entire gym could get a look at his furious face. “I know you’ve seen Zach fight—you don’t stand a chance. Stop this lunacy this instant.”

She ignored him, of course, choosing instead to rip her pink shirt over her head to reveal a shiny black sports bra and that tight, hot body the three of us had quietly obsessed over back when we were creeping on Joanna Miller’s morning workouts for reasons .

A chorus of wolf whistles sounded from around us, and now Bennett and I were both sending murderous glares around the ring.

Noah stepped up next to Bennett, the slight frown tugging at his mouth only hinting at the level of distress I was sure he felt. “Jolie, please,” he said quietly. “Zach doesn’t want to hurt you.”

She’d bent over to rummage in her bag, and she paused to peek up at him with a wicked grin. “But what if I’m into that, Noah?”

“Jolie,” he snapped, quickly arriving at the end of his patience. “Do not do this.”

“No,” she bit back, standing up and pulling two long wooden sticks from her bag that I recognized as bastons—a weapon used in the Filipino martial art of Eskrema.

“You three, the Academy, and this entire fucking City need to take me seriously. I am an Heir , and it’s time everyone realized I’m not here to fuck around. ”

She kicked her bag to the side and began to bounce on her feet, swinging her bastons in fast circles around her arms in an expert display that had my fucking jaw nearly on the floor.

The crowd gasped, their whispers and murmurs increasing in volume as one by one they realized, as I had, that maybe we’d underestimated our Princess.

Jojo paused her twirling to ask me with all the nonchalance in the world, “Weapons okay?”

I glanced at Bennett and Noah, giving them a sharp nod.

Noah sighed, dragging a hand down his face in frustration, while Bennett produced a knife from the stash we kept in my gym bag. I’d never touched the baston, but I’d dabbled in Eskrima and done some fighting with a knife, so I happened to have a baraw.

And I also now had a plan.

I took the long knife from Bennett, then I looked at Dane. “Fighters have chosen weapons. First blood wins.”

Dane whooped and switched his bullhorn on. “We’ve got a special treat for you all tonight! We have the Ferrero Heir versus the wannabe Knight Heir, and the fighters have chosen to use weapons! First to draw blood will win the fight and become the Holywell Fight Night reigning champion!”

The crowd roared, their bloodlust permeating the dank air of the gym. Jojo, though, just shook her head at me like she was disappointed.

“ Pussy ,” she mouthed at me, definitely catching on that I was planning to nick her a little bit with my knife to end the fight quickly, which circumvented me having to hit her at all.

I gave her a dark look that said she was going to pay for this later, then I reached one hand behind my neck and yanked my T-shirt over my head.

I hadn’t been planning to fight tonight, but I did have my tight training shorts on under my sweatpants, so I shoved those to my ankles as I kept my eyes locked on my girl.

She watched me strip, entranced, and I preened at her heated perusal of my body.

That’s right, Princess. This could all be yours if you’d just get with the program .

I twirled my knife with a few quick flicks of my wrist, my eyes still glued to her, while we both waited for Dane to give the signal.

He raised his bullhorn to his lips. “Fighters, ready…. Begin!”

The crowd roared, and then Jojo was on me.

She attacked like a cobra, slashing at my torso with a fast downward strike of her stick that I only managed to block with my blade by the skin of my teeth, unprepared for her speed.

I recovered and countered quickly, lunging at her in an attempt to dislodge one of those damn sticks, but she dodged me with practiced ease.

She struck at me again with both of her sticks one right after the other, and I parried them both before shoving her backwards with a loud grunt.

We danced apart, the sounds of the crowd deafening as Dane pumped them up, and it was all I could do to will myself not to get hard in my little shorts as I watched my girl twirl those bastons with fire in her eyes as she readied her next move.

As we circled each other, a realization dawned on me.

“I take it you’re the one that put Donavan in the hospital, Princess?” I called out to her.

She grinned like a shark. “It was you three that put him in the hospital. I put him on the floor to bleed out like rapist scum deserves.”

She wasn’t wrong. I’d acted like an asshole when it happened even though I’d actually felt sick that she’d been targeted that night because of me. Lisa had orchestrated all of that bullshit because I'd let myself indulge in Joanna Miller for a few short, glorious minutes on the dance floor.

So I’d pushed her away fast and hard like an Heir should have.

But she wasn’t Joanna Miller—she was our Jojo, and all bets were off now that she’d decided to show us all what kind of a fucking warrior had been hiding under those thrift store clothes and hair dye.

Obsessed would be putting it lightly.

I could only grin at her, proud of our girl for destroying that sick fuck, before she ran at me.

We clashed again, and I struck first this time, trying my very best to slash a shallow cut to her arm or thigh with my blade, but she beat me back with each and every thrust. We went around and around, back and forth, moving fluidly together around the ring like we were performing a ballroom dance instead of trying to make each other bleed.

She attacked, I defended, then I attacked, and she defended. The thrill of facing such a capable opponent almost overpowered the anger and frustration I felt at having to fight my Jojo in the first place.

Finally I broke away, spinning and dropping low to sweep my leg into her lower body in an attempt to bring her to the ground.

She dove clear of my attack, rolling to her feet with her sticks still clutched in each hand as she turned to face me again.

I smirked, spinning my knife through my fingers again as we orbited each other, both of us breathing hard and high on adrenaline.

“Will you stop fucking around and finish this?” Bennett hissed at me as I neared my corner.

“You think I’m fucking around?” I snapped back, and Jojo snorted .

“I want Bennett next,” she announced to Dane’s delight, but before he could put his bullhorn to his mouth again, Noah barked at him.

“Don't even fucking think about it, Jefferson.”

He let out a dramatic sigh before switching the bullhorn on again to shout, “Two minutes left! Will this be our first Fight Night title match to end in a draw?”

The boos sounded before morphing again into the shouts and cheers, the volume ratcheting up as the gym became one giant pressure cooker ready to explode at the first sight of blood.

Jolie’s eyes met mine for a split second, an understanding passing between us.

We charged at each other, meeting in the middle of the ring in a violent clash of wood and steel.

I slammed my blade into the stick in her left hand, finally dislodging it from her grip and launching it to the side of the ring.

She transitioned immediately into fighting me with one stick, parrying each slash of my knife until she swung a lucky strike right at my closed fist, sending the knife sailing from my grip.

I jumped at her, grabbing her remaining stick with both hands and wrenching it away. She threw a punch at my face, which I blocked, but not before she buried her knee in my stomach.

“Fuck me, Princess,” I swore at her, barely blocking another punch as I doubled over.

“I don’t think so, Zach,” she retorted through big, panting breaths. “Wouldn’t want you to have to stick your dick in anything below your standards .”

Goddamn it, I was going to be paying for that comment for a million years.

I growled at her, my frustration mounting. I went all in, throwing my much bigger body at her and finally managing to tackle her to the ground.

We hit the mat, me landing on top before she rolled us, and I fought with everything I had to just pin her to the floor so I could take a little bite out of her ear or something to just end this.

She kicked at me, managing to scramble out from under me, and I realized a split second later that we were a few feet away from my knife where it lay discarded on the edge of the mat.

She scurried toward it .

“Oh, I don’t think so, Princess,” I growled, grabbing her ankle and yanking her backward before she could get ahold of my baraw.

“Shit!” she yelled, turning to throw an elbow into my face, which hurt like a bitch, but unfortunately for her, my arms were longer than hers.

I had her now.

With a mighty roar, I swiped the knife from the floor and rolled her to her back in one fast, smooth motion. I pinned her beneath me and shoved the blade right up against her throat, glaring down at her with a look that dared her to fucking move a muscle.

The crowd went wild, Dane shouting something about time being up, but it all faded into the background as I stared down at my captive—my feisty, powerful, now spitting-mad Princess, who’d pushed me so hard through this fight that I’d wound up holding a goddamn knife to her pale, delicate throat.

“Do it,” she hissed at me. “Finish what your mom fucking started, Ferrero.”

That was a punch in the gut that knocked the breath from my chest. A current of bone-deep rage flooded my veins, and I fought to keep the hand that held the blade against her sweat-slicked skin from shaking dangerously.

“How dare you,” I growled, leaning down to get right in her face.

“You want to know something, Princess? They told us they’d strangled you until you were dead, shoved you in a cement box next to your parents, and sank you to the bottom of the fucking Obsidian.

Noah cried every night for months. I stopped sleeping completely because I spent my nights watching the door like a paranoid psycho.

Bennett never smiled again. We imploded like a dying fucking supernova because we’d watched you suffer , and then you died , and our lives didn’t make any fucking sense without you.

” I leaned in further, moving the last two inches I needed to press my sweaty forehead to hers, whispering, “So, how dare you insinuate that I would ever do anything that would take you away from us again. It’s never going to fucking happen, and you need to get that through your beautiful, stubborn head. ”

Her defiant glare had faded away as I spoke, her big eyes widening and those pretty lips parting ever so slightly as she stared at me—somehow speechless for the first time since she’d barreled back into our lives .

I was done with this whole fucking display.

I pulled the blade from her neck and tossed it aside before I dragged my body off of hers, standing up to face Dane.

“It’s a draw,” I announced, glaring around the gym and daring any stupid fucker to argue with me. “Show’s over.”

As the crowd grumbled over Dane’s subsequent announcement and official ending of the night’s festivities, I made my way back to my corner where Bennett and Noah stood with grim looks on their faces as they stared right past me, no doubt watching Jojo as she collected herself and left the ring.

“She’s magnificent,” Noah whispered.

“She’s dangerous,” Bennett countered.

She was both of those things, but most importantly?—

“She’s ours.”