Page 87 of Bitter Poetry

I bat his hand away. He chuckles.

I lost one shoe and wobble as the seemingly simple task of slipping my foot into it eludes me.

It finally goes in.

His cum is trickling down my inner thighs.

I need a shower, to change, to redo my damn makeup.

He steps up to me, trapping me against the counter and cups my chin, tipping it up, stilling the mania gripping me. His eyes lock on my cheek, his thumb brushing over the faint, barely-there bruise.

He wasn’t the only one who paid for my uncensored words.

“Trust the process, Dante said,” he murmurs. “So much easier said than done… One day, I’m going to open the fucker’s chest with a blunt spoon and rip out his beating heart.” His eyes lift to meet mine. “No one leaves marks on your perfect flesh but me.”

I’m lost in the post-climax daze, but later, I’ll be going over those words.

He turns in profile, releasing me from the spell, and smirks as he casually straightens the cuffs on his jacket. Taking my elbow, he draws me away from the counter toward the door. “Clean yourself up, babe.” He winks. “I doubt your husband has ever seen your face when you’ve just come. Don’t want to clue him into what he’s missing out on, now do we?”

I clean myself up.

Somehow, I go home and eat another stoic dinner with my husband. But I lay awake late into the night. The best I can offer myself is that I survived another day.

CHAPTER 27

DANTE

Sweat drips from my brow and trickles down the center of my chest and back. I jab left, then right, then go for the uppercut. My right glove glances off my opponent’s chin; his glove catches my ribs. We both dodge back and then come together again.

Leon has a good head for business. He often knows instinctively what has potential even before I assess the books. He said early on that we should expand our portfolio to include more legitimate businesses where possible. The Boxing Shed is just one of several new ventures and is already making headway into the investment and on the way to turning a tidy profit.

I needed an outlet for my rage, a way to release the tension burning me up. When I couldn’t find a decent boxing gym near the club we base our operation from, we went looking. When we found this one, it was run down. It wasn’t losing money, but it wasn’t making anything either. The previous owner had long since lost interest, and a deal was struck. Given its proximity to the new marina, we decided to go upmarket, gutted the venue, brought in state-of-the-art equipment, and expandedthe offering beyond boxing to other combat sports. We cherry-picked the best of the existing staff and built on that.

My opponent, Adam, is a former MMA champion and an old acquaintance of Leon’s. After an injury, he went back to college. He’s now the manager here, and while he’s overqualified as a sparring partner, I get the feeling he gets a kick out of thumping me. That or Leon has been in his ear telling him not to go easy on me. I’ve been training daily since the place reopened, arriving in the morning lull so we can pummel one another and I can work through my issues.

“Fucking sloppy,” the coach calls. “Keep pressing… Get your left hand up quicker after you attack, Dante… That’s better.”

My reflexes and skills have definitely sharpened, not that you would believe it listening to my coach.

Pain. I crave it. Only physical pain is cathartic. Enough of it, and I can forget for a brief moment that my woman is in another man’s bed, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

Yet.

My opponent’s next punch lands square on my jaw. The pain is sharp and centering, and I come out swinging.

I never thought I’d end up a pain junkie, but here we are.

My fists land fast and precise. Adam’s head snaps to the right and blood trails from his mouth.

“Time out!”

The barked command from the coach brings me back from the brink, and I pull my next punch just in time.

Adam grins around his bloody mouthguard before he pops it out. “Jesus. You’re a mean bastard today,” he mutters. “What’s got your panties in a bunch?”

“We both know you let me hit you.” I head over to the side of the ring with him, where I peel open the Velcro on my gloves and slip them off.

“For the record, I never let you hit me,” Adam says dryly. “Leon warned me you were crusty, but you exceeded my expectations.”