The Flesh Cartel #1: Capture by Heidi Belleau, Rachel Haimowitz Page B

with a knee to the stomach. Mat buckled, and Rodriguez took the opening and grappled him to the floor.
    Through a clearing haze of fog, Mat heard the roar of the crowd swell. Rodriguez was working him into an armbar, and Mat instinctively locked his fingers together, thrust his hands back, and trapped Rodriguez’s thigh under his head. He spun, ended up on top; Rodriguez went for another armbar, but then gave up and just punched him in the side of the head. Mat took it once, twice; Rodriguez’s leverage was shit and he was hitting like Mat’s little brother.
    Which, shit. Focus failed for half a fucking second and he’d lost control of Rodriguez’s hip. He saw the leg coming up just in time to duck out beneath it, but he’d lost his leverage. Rodriguez popped to his feet again.
    They kept it off the floor after that, which was just as well because Mat did better on his feet, and the crowd always seemed to prefer that anyway. Punches and kicks and flying blood were all so much more showy than a grappling match that 99% of the crowd didn’t have enough technical knowledge to make heads or tails of. And he’d never be able to negotiate a less-shitty contract if he couldn’t please the crowd—
    Well, that pleased them well enough. Lost focus again, and he’d deserved the hit that’d just bloodied his lip for thinking of bullshit like that when he was in the cage anyway. He needed this fucking win. He needed this fucking money. No, Dougie needed this money, which made it all the more important. No way was he gonna toss it on some brooding bullshit —
    The bell rang, and Rodriguez, smirking around his mouth guard, danced back to his corner. Mat . . . kind of staggered.
    “What the fuck, Mat,” Darryl yelled over the roar as Mat spat out his guard into his coach’s waiting hand and swished the water someone gave him. He spat that too; it came away pink. His cornerman swiped an Avitene swab over his split lip, then pressed a freezing Enswell to it. Someone wiped at his temple, pressed another Enswell there, smeared it with Vaseline thirty seconds later. He couldn’t even remember getting that cut.
    Darryl shook him hard by the shoulders and shouted in his ear.
    “I’m on it, Coach,” he said, though he clearly fucking wasn’t. But then the bell rang and it was too late to argue. Rodriguez came out overconfident and swinging and Mat had a tough time thinking of much of anything for the next five minutes but not losing.
    He might’ve actually done a decent job of it, because Rodriguez was looking a lot less confident when the bell rang again, and Mat’s blood— finally —was running so hot he didn’t feel a single one of the dozen hits Rodriguez had landed on him this round. Darryl didn’t yell at him this time, either. Just rubbed his shoulders and gave him water and told him to aim at the right flank on counterpunch when Rodriguez dropped his guard.
    But when the bell rang for the third and final round, Mat discovered that sitting for sixty seconds hadn’t done him any favors. His adrenaline had flagged just enough for him to feel all his hurts and exhaustion. Three-round matches were long —too long for the measly six grand he’d walk out with if he lost. He needed the winnings and the sponsorships that came on the heels of enough victories.
    Because he really needed not to go back into that seedy fucking underground cage in three weeks. He needed not to come home with another unexplained bruise or injury for his brother to squint at.
    But maybe Rodriguez just needed it more , because no matter the angle of Mat’s attacks, no matter the speed of his blocks, he wasn’t scoring enough hits, and Rodriguez was beating him to a bloody fucking pulp. Whatever rally he’d managed in the second round, it was gone now. Whatever confidence Rodriguez had lost then was back with a fucking vengeance. It was all Mat could do not to let him take this to the floor again, where Rodriguez, almost ten pounds heavier and