Uncaged Love: Volume 6 (Uncaged Love #6) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  About JJ Knight - Amazon

  Uncaged Love

  Volume 6

  A Follow Up to Jo & Colt’s Love Story

  By JJ Knight

  author of Revenge and Fight for Her

  Summary:

  When Jo escapes to Hawaii to wait out the last weeks before her wedding to Colt McClure, a new threat emerges, forcing her to fight again if she wants to protect her family and make it to the happily ever after she longs for.

  Copyright © 2015 by JJ Knight All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews, fan-made graphics, and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons , living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  JJ Knight

  www.jjknight.com

  Chapter One

  The crowd is crazy loud. The addition to Buster’s Gym is full of people shouting and screaming as the two fighter girls circle each other in the cage.

  I sit outside the mesh, my elbow propped on the elevated floor near a support bar. Sammy is in there. I’ve been training her for almost a year. This is her third MMA fight, and she’s struggling.

  “Pull in your elbows!” I yell. “Watch her eyes. She’s telling you where she’s going to strike.”

  I’m not sure she hears. I glance off to one side at Colt, who is hanging on to a towel draped around his neck. His eyes meet mine, and I see his concern. Sammy has all the technical skills. Over the last months, I’ve helped her become strong, fit, and capable.

  But she doesn’t have the heart of a fighter.

  That’s something I can’t teach.

  My belly warms at the sight of him, supportive with his presence even though it’s not me in the ring. He’s got a full schedule. Another challenge match to his light heavyweight MMA championship title is coming up in a week. Then all the other publicity that is expected of him, and his own training.

  Plus, our wedding is just four weeks away.

  But he’s here.

  I turn to the ring. Sammy steps back and delivers a solid roundhouse kick, textbook perfect. Her opponent, Bad Attitude, sees it coming, though. She spins into it, sweeping Sammy to the floor.

  But this is good. Sammy’s got a strong ground game, and she can slither out of most any pin from the girls at this level of competition.

  Bad Attitude tries to go straight for the submission hold, but it’s a mistake, and Sammy rolls into her, hooks her knee around the other girl’s thigh, and just like that, takes the upper hand.

  “Take her down!” I yell. “Go for the kill!”

  The punches fly. A lot of female MMA fights end with a submission pin, but Sammy likes to rack up the points just in case. She hits her opponent like she’s a Bad Boy, the body-shaped bag we train on for ground-and-pound.

  Bad Attitude can’t find a way out. When she stops even protecting herself, the ref calls the match. Sammy’s won.

  I exhale in relief. She’s moving up, and she’s not hurt. I’ve come to think of the girls I train as my girls, even though we’re all the same age. It’s not a maternal instinct, and it’s not sisterly either. It’s something else, like I’m responsible for them. Like they depend on me for guidance and protection.

  It’s a good feeling.

  The ref stands between the two girls and holds a wrist of each one. Then he lifts Sammy’s in the air, signaling her win. The crowd cheers. I notice a cameraman near the back door. Good. Maybe Sammy will get noticed and more fights will be scheduled for her. That’s a part of the business I’m not good at yet.

  The ref releases the girls. Sammy raises both arms in the air and lets out a loud roar. The crowd matches her intensity, and the room resounds with their support.

  For the first time in the year since my own last match, I feel a little twinge. Maybe I miss the adrenaline high of fighting. I don’t know. I’m happy. Just not exhilarated like I know Sammy feels right now.

  I look up at the high windows, remembering that day so long ago when I thought I’d lost everything and had nowhere to go. At that moment, the light shined on the cage and I understood. I got it. This was where I was meant to be.

  But too much has happened since then. We nearly lost our lives over bad blood between fighters. Colt came so close to dying. In the ICU of the hospital where Colt was struggling for each heartbeat, each breath, I promised the universe that I’d give up my fighting gift to save him. I’ve kept that promise.

  Colt comes over and drapes his arm around me. “Sammy got it done,” he says. “The instinct will come. She’ll get it.”

  We head over to the cage door as Sammy runs down. I slap her on the back. “Good match,” I tell her. “Solid win.”

  She nods and takes the towel from Colt. “Thanks for being here,” she says to him. “There’s always a crowd hoping for a glimpse of their hero.”

  He shakes his head. “These people are here for YOU.” He points to a couple of signs for Yosemite, Sammy’s fighter name.

  Sammy shrugs. “I’m picking up a few fans,” she says.

  “You bet you are,” I tell her. There’s another match after hers, so we head out of the addition and through the accordion door to the weight room and the front of Buster’s Gym.

  I take it slow. I try to never let seeing these familiar sights get old. This place is like home to me.

  When we get to the foyer, I breathe in the scent of lemon cleaner and think of my grandma, like I always do. She’s been gone a long time, but I will be able to carry something of hers on my wedding day. I touch the gold frog necklace at my throat. I got my way on that despite Colt’s father trying to turn our wedding into a publicity machine.

  “I’m going to clean up,” Sammy says, and heads to the locker room. Buster finally expanded it from the original girls’ bathroom. There wasn’t much here for us when I first started working here.

  When I met Colt.

  We’re in the entry where I saw him the second time, ran into him, actually, shirtless and beautiful. I look up at him now, standing in almost the same spot. He’s wearing a UFC T-shirt and jeans that fit him just so. For the thousandth time I’m in awe of the fact that he is about to be my husband.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asks. His lazy smile reveals the uneven dimples, one deeper than the other.

  “That I’m about to marry you,” I say. “How did that happen?”

  He drags me in close and lifts me against him. His blond hair brightens where the lights hit it. “Well, first, I saved you from those thugs on the street.”

  “I think I was saving myself.”

  “Darn right. I saved them from being smashed by your fists.” He laughs. “And then you started working tantalizingly
close to me, wearing that tight barbell shirt that drove me crazy.”

  “I hated that shirt,” I remind him.

  “Then our first kiss got caught on camera by nosy photographers,” he says.

  “Our little scandal,” I say with a smile.

  He spins me in a slow circle by the front door, bits of sunlight coming through where the black paint is chipped. “Then you seduced me in your scary little apartment.”

  I smack his arm. “I’m quite sure you seduced me.”

  “Mmmm.” He leans in very close, his lips breathlessly close to mine. “And I got to find out what every inch of you tastes like.”

  My heart hammers. He lets me slide down his body until my toes touch the floor again. And I notice a few things have, well, adjusted. I press my belly hard against him.

  He grips my shoulders. “Do we get to go home now?” he asks. “I need to get my future wife naked.”

  “Let’s just wait on Sammy to come out,” I say. “Then we’ll do whatever we like.”

  He leans in close. “You know what I like.”

  A woman with a microphone steps gingerly through the weight room, followed by the cameraman with a rig on his shoulder. Colt sighs. “They found us,” he whispers.

  “Did you want to talk to Yosemite?” I ask her. I really, really hate having the camera aimed at me.

  “Of course,” the woman says with an air of condescension. Her eyes are on Colt. “But if the light heavyweight champion wanted to give us an interview while we wait, we wouldn’t say no.”

  Colt straightens into his publicity stance, and I move to step away.

  “Oh, no,” the woman says. “We want the happy couple together. Hardly anyone has footage like that.”

  My face burns, but I force a smile. I knew what I signed on for when I decided to be with Colt. I’ve already had my face splashed all over the news.

  Every wedding detail has been mulled over on entertainment shows, and twice, a picture of a horrid sausage dress I briefly tried on has gone viral. There’s the “anorexic Jo” version and the “pound-packing Jo” version, both Photoshopped.

  Social media is the worst. I have studiously avoided ever having any accounts, although Colt’s publicity team finally put up an “official” Twitter account to slow down the number of fake ones going up with my name attached.

  Colt draws me against him. “What would you like to know?” he asks.

  I’m not sure I can keep this fake smile going. I hope Sammy will hurry up and force the attention of the reporter to switch to her.

  The woman turns to the camera and waits on the signal from the operator. Then she flashes her own winning smile and says, “We’re here at the training facility of light heavyweight champion Colt McClure. Today we’re lucky enough to also have his future bride with us.”

  Great, she doesn’t even give me a name. I’m just the bride.

  She whirls around to us. “Colt, are you going to take a break from fighting for the wedding day?”

  “I have a match against Andrew ‘The Armor’ Malone next week,” Colt says, his voice a low rumble. “That will prove to be a tough match.”

  “And after that?” she persists. “A break for nuptials?”

  Colt nods. “Can’t have my pretty face bashed in.” He pulls me closer. “This lovely woman might not say, ‘I do.’”

  The woman turns to me. “Are all the preparations in order? Dress? Cake? Invitations?”

  I grit my teeth and smile. “It’s going to be a small event,” I say. “Just us and family in Hawaii.”

  “So romantic,” she says. Then she blindsides me. “So I guess you’ve decided to undo decades of the women’s movement by abandoning your own fighting career to become someone’s little wife?”

  I feel sucker punched. My face freezes. I don’t even know what to say to that. Colt squeezes my waist.

  “We’re done here,” he says to the woman with a growl. “Consider yourself off my interview list permanently.”

  He turns us away. The cameraman lowers the rig, but the woman is smiling.

  Apparently she got what she wanted.

  Chapter Two

  Colt’s motorcycle roars as we jet out of the lot behind Buster’s Gym. His anger is clear, even as I sit behind him. His muscles are taut, his back rigid.

  I lay my cheek between his shoulder blades, watching the city whiz by. It’s one of my favorite places to be, the way I first knew him. We rode this Harley away from those awful guys who were messing with me outside a convenience store.

  So much happened just on this motorcycle. When I got let go from Buster’s Gym and thought I’d never see Colt again, I left my hair tie on his handlebar.

  And that awful night we both got shot, the Harley was right there, its mirrors busted and the headlight broken out by thugs.

  I’m feeling sentimental and lost, new emotions for me. For so much of my life, I got by on solitude. And my fists, when necessary. Now I have fighter girls depending on me, a future husband, and family. I’m also a target for the press, apparently.

  I’m not sure who I am anymore. I was born Joanna Barnes, whose mother left her in the hospital. I became Joanna Mahoney at age eight, forced into a new name by a stepmother who didn’t want my dead father’s name around anymore.

  When I ran away, I became Jo Jones with a fake ID, a nobody, a nothing, a smudge on the sidewalk of LA life.

  And soon I will be Jo McClure, the wife of one of the most famous sports figures of our time, and the daughter-in-law of possibly THE most famous prizefighter after Muhammad Ali.

  But who am I, really?

  Colt turns the wrong way on Cesar Chavez, and I wonder where we’re headed. I can’t ask him, not with the roar of the motor and the wind on our helmets. I just go along for the ride.

  We pass Zero’s old apartment, the one he gave up to base out of Vegas, where he does a semipermanent drag show. Only when we arrive at the broken asphalt outside my own apartment do I know what Colt is doing.

  He kills the Harley. My ears still buzz from the engine noise as I take off my helmet and hand it to him. I don’t ask what we’re doing here, but I do say, “I don’t have the key anymore.”

  “I do,” he says.

  I know his father is still paying the rent, because Zero crashed here a couple times when he came to LA. But I haven’t been through the doors in months. I didn’t see any reason to revisit this sordid piece of my past.

  He unlocks the door and flips on the dim yellow overhead light.

  I grimace. It looks so much worse than I remember. The sagging sofa. The rusty folding chair. Water stains on the ceiling, and carpet that rumples at the base of the wall.

  Colt takes my hand and leads me into the living room.

  “This is where I first knew the mightiest young fighter I had ever seen,” he says. He sits on one of the ragged cushions of the sofa. “I fell in love with her right here.”

  I sit opposite him on the battered coffee table.

  He leans in, his hands on either side of me. “She took a hard lick for me right on the edge of this table.”

  I nod, remembering going down when Annie — Colt’s ex — got a solid hit and slammed me into it.

  “That’s the day I moved in with you,” I say.

  “Best day ever.” He smiles and his uneven dimples appear.

  I’m not really sure what he’s trying to say. I look around. I know my clothes from my bedroom are gone, but other than that, the place is about the same. “There sure wasn’t anything worth taking from here, was there?”

  “I think there was something you left behind,” he says. His voice is earnest now. “I’m hoping you find it again.”

  I look away. I know what he’s saying. My fighter’s heart. He thinks I’ve lost it. Maybe he believes that our easy life has made me go soft. He doesn’t know about the bargain I made that night in the hospital.

  No heartbeat. No respiration. The words from that night echo in my mind even now.

&
nbsp; Once, I had a hurricane inside. It would rise up and when it started to blow, I was unstoppable. Nobody who tried to hurt me could even get close. I was wild, kicking, hitting, slamming my body into them. Once Colt turned me into a trained fighter, I could use this mighty energy to win.

  But I gave it up. Traded it for Colt’s recovery.

  “Don’t listen to that woman,” Colt says. “You’re not fighting for women’s rights. You’re not in charge of a movement or making a point. You’re just you. Doing the thing you’re better at than anybody I’ve ever seen.”

  I look at my shoes, a pair of black Converse sneakers. The bottom cuff of my jeans has flipped up, but I don’t move to straighten it. I can’t think about what Colt is saying. I can’t tell him what I did. I don’t want to hear what he thinks, that my giving up my hurricane was all in my head, and that I can just get it back.

  The best I can say to make him understand is this: “I gave my fighter’s heart to you.”

  At that, he pulls me into his lap and holds me tight against him.

  I relax into his chest, the way I always have. Before Colt, I didn’t want to be close to anybody, and men were a threat. But he changed me in all the important ways.

  He reaches for my ponytail and tugs out the band. He’s done this hundreds of times in the year we’ve been together, and it never fails to make me shiver.

  He looks into my eyes. His are his own personal brand of hazel, part brown, part green. His blond hair is dark in this light, cut short and classic, buzzed over his ears. He’s beautiful. I swallow hard, as it’s still hard to believe that he’s mine, that in a month he will pledge to be mine for always.

  “I believe I’ve been waiting to get you alone,” he says in a low rumble that vibrates through my body.

  His lips lower to mine and I let myself just fall, out of the hard thoughts, away from the stress of the match and the terrible reporter. His kiss starts gently, coaxing me to settle into him. Then it becomes more insistent, his tongue parting my lips, slipping into my mouth.