Free Fight for Her #4: MMA New Adult Contemporary Romantic Suspense by JJ Knight

afraid of going public?” Lani asks. “Afraid of your little girl’s face being in the news?”
    I keep going. Whatever intimidation she thought was going to work on me is done. Since they know about Lily, it’s time to go for the police. In fact, screw it, I’ll do it now. I tug my phone out of my pocket. I have just hit the button to wake it up when I’m knocked to the ground.
    “I don’t think so,” Lani says and snatches my phone from my hand. She flings it across the cemetery. I can’t see where it lands.
    I roll away to stand up, but she’s on me, on my back, her arms locking around my neck. God, she wants a fight. A real fight.
    “This is so stupid,” I say.
    “Keep talking while you can, bitch,” she says.
    Her arm tightens around my throat. It’s not really constricting me, but her weight pushing me into the dirt is painful.
    “Why are you doing this?” I ask.
    “You didn’t do what you were told.”
    I grapple for her wrist, trying to pull her arm away. She’s surprisingly strong for her size, and well trained. I don’t know anything other than what I’ve seen in matches.
    I grab a handful of dirt, squeeze my eyes shut, and throw it at both our faces. She lets go in surprise and I roll away, rubbing my sleeve across my eyes before trying to open them.
    “You little bitch,” she screams.
    I scramble for the fence. This girl is bat-shit crazy. No telling what she might do.
    Lani recovers enough to come after me. She jumps on my back and we go back down. Damn it. I cannot lose this girl. But even if I do, I realize she’ll still be around. She’ll try it again.
    And next time I might be with Lily.
    My hatred of this girl burns so hard that I find a strength I didn’t know I had. I roll on my back even with Lani on it. When I’m on top of her, I slam my elbow back into her ribs. When I hear her “Ooof,” I do it again on the other side.
    She doesn’t let go, though. She’s tough.
    Lani might be trained, but I was one scrappy bitch growing up in the rough part of town where I ran around. She starts working her legs to get the advantage on me, to get me off her. But I’m not giving up either. I plant my feet on the ground and lift my hips, then slam back down on her with all my might.
    This stills her for a second and I elbow her again, over and over, as much as I can.
    Now she’s riled. Her body lurches at the same time her arms push hard on my back. I fly off her. My elbow digs into the dirt, and I roll over.
    But she’s fast. She’s on her feet, and before I can get above hands and knees, she’s kicked me hard in the belly. I feel like my gut has exploded, pain rocketing through me. She switches legs and kicks again, and I know I have to get up. If I don’t, I’ll get hurt very bad very fast.
    I spin away, stifling the urge to throw up everywhere. I can barely breathe.
    She comes up behind me with a strange stutter step. She’s going to do some martial-arts move. The motion feels familiar from watching Parker. I lunge out of her path to throw her off and hopefully miss the worst force of whatever blow she’s planning.
    Her foot grazes my thigh. It hurts, but probably not nearly as much as what she intended. Time to find out how fast she runs.
    I suck in a deep breath and take off. I’m wishing for tennis shoes, but at least I’m in decent flats. I’m not sure where I’m going or what I’ll do, but it seems better to force her to chase me and have both of us be tired to even the playing field. Hopefully her fighting moves won’t come with quite as much force when she’s winded.
    I realize I went the wrong way as we approach the far side of the park. The fence on this side is a solid mass of white. The chain link could at least be climbed, although Lani would probably pull me back down. Now that I’ve gone deeper into the cemetery, no one can even see us fighting to call the cops.
    That’s at least one thing I can do. Keep the action as publicly viewable as