Surge (The Beat and the Pulse #7)- Amity Cross Page 0,2

sharply. He knew the story. They all did.

My hands slid from his shoulders, and I turned, threading my way across the patio toward Monica. As I approached, her eyes widened. I wasn’t sure if it was fear, but damn right, I hoped she was shitting bricks. Big, painful bricks. If I was ever going to get into a catfight with another woman, I’d throw myself headfirst at her with fingernails bared. Truthfully, I’d let Ren take the first swing because she’d go full fist and knock the bitch flat on her ass. Probably KO her, too.

“You have a lot of nerve,” I drawled, grabbing Monica’s arm and yanking her through the kitchen, away from the patio and any chance of Ren finding her.

“Nice to see you too, Josie,” she replied, wrenching her arm away.

Ugh, she was just as pretty as I remembered her. Tall and willowy with long, wavy chestnut hair, pouty lips, and big, brown eyes. Ugly beautiful. Meaning, she was so good-looking it bordered on hideous. She could star in a porn movie, rising to the top, and men would pay a premium to pretend to jizz all over her boobs in the privacy of their own home.

“What’s your game, Monica?” I asked, placing my hands on my hips. “It’s too late if you’re wondering. The knot has been tied.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” she argued.

“I don’t give a fuck. You don’t get to come here,” I said, itching to slap the bitch and pull her hair from her scalp. “Not today and not ever. Do you understand me?”

“Who died and made you the bouncer?” she shot back, looking me over with a sneer.

“Get out,” I snapped, pushing her toward the door with as much force as I could muster. “Take the bloody hint.”

“Bitch,” she hissed, wobbling on her ginormous stripper heels.

“Yeah, I’m a big, bad bitch. At least I didn’t sell my sister out to a rapist.”

Monica’s expression fell, and I didn’t have to shove her this time. She turned and wrenched the front door open, and for the second time that day, it slammed in my face.

Good riddance to stinky, pathetic trash!

2

Dean

I sat in my car, staring up at the facade of the Fitness First gym in Brighton.

It hadn’t taken much digging to find out where Monica worked. After Coach kicked his daughter out, she took a job working as a nutritionist at the chain of gyms. She’d been Linc’s and mine at Beat while we were training to qualify for the AUFC, and despite her sour attitude, she’d been good at her job.

Thinking back over my first few years at Beat, I allowed myself to wallow in the memory while I worked up the courage to get out of the car. Back then, Lincoln and I had been two delinquent teenagers in need of some discipline when we first rocked up to Beat. It was the typical story of fighting at school, acting out, and not being able to focus on study or work. We’d both been as bad as each other, using our identical looks to screw with little assholes who bullied younger kids. We fancied ourselves as vigilantes, fighting for those who couldn’t fight for themselves…and just because we wanted to beat the shit out of the turds we couldn’t stand. We had the best intentions but with pathetic execution.

The tipping point was the day the school counselor recommended we go learn some discipline. We wanted to fight, so maybe it was a good idea if we learned how…the right way with rules, technique, and the ability to know when to tap. Chance had it, our parents dumped us at Beat one night after school.

The first day I saw Monica Miller was the afternoon of our first MMA class. She waltzed in wearing her tiny pleated tartan skirt up around her ass cheeks with an air of ‘up herself private school girl.’ She was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, and at seventeen, we were already well practiced in fooling around with the opposite sex, so I’d naturally thought about what it looked like under those black knickers she was flashing. Then she called Coach ‘daddy’ and things became interesting. The Coach’s forbidden daughter.

It was obvious she had eyes for Ash Fuller, her dad’s star fighter. Linc and I had already been wowed by the guy, and he’d been even more messed up than we were. He was the whole package and then some. Ultimate bad guy, good-looking, and fucking great at everything