Kait drew her shoulders together and looked down at her own drink which she’d been nursing for the past half hour. It was her third cocktail, and she’d yet to get that warm, pleasant buzz that normally accompanied an intake of alcohol.
“I was… attacked,” Kait admitted sadly. As she said the words, she realised that she hadn’t told anyone about what had happened that night in the parking lot. No one except Jasper. Just thinking about him made her mouth go dry. She raised her glass and drank deeply from it.
“Oh my God!” Anna’s eyes widened, and she pulled herself closer to her friend across the table.
“That’s…that’s terrifying! What happened?”
“There were three guys,” Kait recalled grimly. “They followed me up to my car and jumped me.”
“Did they want money?”
“I don’t know,” Kait swallowed stiffly. “They threatened to do…things to me.”
“Urgh, what bastards!” Anna seethed. “How did you get away from them?”
“This…this guy showed up,” Kait felt her cheeks beginning to burn as she mentioned Jasper.
“Oh?” Anna waited expectantly for more information.
“He was really well built, and he basically…beat them up I guess. He sort of saved me.”
“Wow!” Anna knocked back the remainder of her drink. “That’s like something out of a movie, Kait. That guy was like your knight in shining armour.”
Kait lowered her gaze to the table. She had thought Jasper was her knight in shining armour too, but now she didn’t know what he was.
“Another round?” Anna eyed their now empty glasses.
“Sure, I’ll get it.” Kait slid out from their booth, eager to move away from any further questions about Jasper.
She weaved through the crowded venue and approached the bar, squeezing herself between two burly men. As she waited to order more drinks, she noticed that the crowd consisted mainly of muscular men. All of them were craning their thick necks up towards the huge flat screen television positioned behind the bar. They clutched their drinks and jeered at the screen. Kait lifted her gaze casually, expecting to see the bright green backdrop of a football field and tiny men sprinting madly around it. Instead she saw the foreboding setting of a giant cage, a blue mat at its base. Two men in head guards with their knuckles wrapped in protective layers of bandages hopped around each other, occasionally taking a brutal kick at the other’s chest. Each time a kick landed successfully, the gathered crowd in the bar whooped in appreciation.
One man wore blue, the other red. The man in red was pale with arms laced with fierce some tattoos. He was taking quite a beating from the man in blue whose back was currently to the camera as he delivered several more critical kicks. The crowd in the bar were getting whipped into a frenzy.
For some reason, Kait couldn’t take her eyes off the screen. Normally she’d have no interest in such a brutal sport, but something was holding her attention, compelling her to watch. The round concluded, and as the men retreated to their respective corners of the cage, the camera panned and showed the face of the man in blue.
Kait froze.
He was covered in sweat and blood, breathing hard as he sat down on a small stool and was handed a bottle of water from someone just beyond the cage. He drank from it hungrily as text appeared on the screen stating his name and current stats for the fight. The stats meant nothing to Kait, but the name certainly did.
Jasper Duboix.
She’d known it was him just from looking at it, but the name confirmed what she was feeling. Jasper was on the television, currently partaking in a live cage fight. It explained his impressive physique and ability to take out the men who had attacked her. Kait blinked repeatedly at Jasper’s image. Though his face was bloodied, he was still impossibly handsome. His dark eyes were locked on the mat of the cage as he contemplated the next round.
“What can I get you?” A barman called out for Kait’s attention, pulling her gaze away from the television.
“Oh, um,” she suddenly struggled to remember why she was even standing there. All she wanted to do was keep watching the fight, to keep watching Jasper.
“Two cosmopolitans,” she found her voice and remembered her order. The barman nodded and briefly disappeared.
Kait looked back up at the screen as the next round was about to commence. Jasper was standing up now, bouncing on the spot, his eyes narrowed like a predator.
Chapter 6
“You took your sweet time,” Anna exclaimed as Kait returned brandishing fresh drinks. “Did you get chatting to some hot guy at the bar?” she asked with a cheeky grin.