Brawler's Baby: An MMA Mob Romance (Mob City Book 1) by Holly Hart

Flower's companion – Pot – waddled into the room. The man’s thick, muscular frame forced him to walk in an almost side-to-side, crablike fashion. He poked his head under the bed before, presumably satisfied that it was empty, heading toward the bathroom.
    I protested feebly, hoping that Maya hadn't left any more evidence of her illicit presence in my motel room behind. Imagined images of a thong on the white-tiled floor crossed my mind, and I held my breath nervously.
    Flower tossed my denim jeans, an old gray t-shirt and a frayed leather jacket at me. "Clothes," he grunted.
    I kept one eye trained on Pot's movements, ready to spring into action the second he showed any hint that he'd realized this was all an elaborate deception.
    "You can look at my dick all day long," I declared loudly. "For all I care. I'm not moving an inch until you tell me what the hell you're doing here."
    Flower looked at me in frustration, as though completely baffled by the concept that someone would do anything other than exactly as he ordered. Well, I've never been one for following the rules…
    He sighed heavily, threw his hands up and looked to the ceiling with irritation while muttering something pejorative under his breath in Russian.
    "Mr. Antonov wants to see you." He said.
    I cocked my head, feigning incomprehension. "Mr. Antonov? Remind me who that is again?"
    He slammed his hand down on the table. "Enough! You met, tonight. He will see you. Tonight."
    "You're in my house now, boyo." I remarked mildly. "A little manners would do you a world of good."
    Pot gave Flower a look, shrugging his shoulders as if to indicate that they'd been mistaken, and that I was, in fact, alone in the motel room. I allowed my body to relax imperceptibly, my shoulders losing some of the tension they'd carried ever since I first started worrying about whether Maya had left something incriminating behind.
    "Find what you were looking for?" I grinned cockily, safe in the knowledge that our secret was safe.
    Where’s Pot gone?
    A second later, I wished I’d kept my eye on him, because that was the exact moment that something hard hit the back of my head, and I crumpled, unconscious, to the floor.

10
    C onor
    A wheezing, yet still somehow imperious Russian-accented voice rang out above the foreboding sound of boots scraping against an old stone floor, and the rustling of my jeans as my legs dragged against the cold, hard flagstones.
    "You can drop him there."
    Brain still fuzzy from being knocked out, I had barely a second to process my the fact that my knees were no longer smashing against uneven pieces of rock before my arms were relinquished without warning by the two burly halfwits who had dragged me into their master's presence. I fell unceremoniously to the floor, with a thud that knocked the wind right out of my lungs.
    "Lads," I groaned, grabbing my midriff and massaging it tenderly with my thumbs. "You don't have to take everything so literal, like. You could have put me down nice and gentle, no harm no foul – you didn't need to drop me like that."
    My guards stared attentively straight in front of them, as if whatever lay in their eye line was every bit as interesting as the Mona Lisa in Paris, or the latest exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, instead of an old, dirty brick wall.
    Idiots
    I hauled myself to my knees, my body not shy about protesting every one of the indignities that had been heaped on it over the past few hours – from fighting in the octagon, regaining consciousness while being shoved in an old, rickety haulage truck with old pots of paint and other construction supplies which then drove here, wherever here was, at top speed across what seemed like the entire town, if not further, and then finally being dumped on my ass, on this solid stone floor.
    Oh, and that's without even accounting for the fact that I was wiped out from what had been one of, if not the best, fucks of my life…
    "Mr. Regan," the Russian