Free Sweet Release (A Bad Boy Mafia Romance) by Victoria Villeneuve

he was smiling. “Eh, you got nothing much to do in a cell but work out and read.”
     
    “I guess so,” I said. Subject avoided? No? Mike was waiting for me to go on. I sighed. “Robert,” I said quietly; his name would burn me if I said it too loud, still, “was a dick. From the very beginning, actually, which is the only funny thing about it all because I remembered thinking when we first met that he was an asshole and I should snub him just to put him in his place. But I didn’t, for some reason and… things just escalated from there.” Once, my therapist had told me that I was finally able to talk about Robert without showing signs of trauma. Congratulations! Breakthrough!
     
    Mike was possibly a better therapist, or at least a better observer. His eyes darkened, a squall over an iffy sea. “So it was that kinda bad, huh?”
     
    “It was that kinda bad,” I said. I shook my head, shoulders, and arms out, divesting them of all that awful body memory.
     
    “He still around?” Mike asked.
     
    I chuckled nervously. “Uh, he’s somewhere. I don’t really keep up with him. Why, you offering to go beat him up for me?” I regretted making the joke right away. That was a face that said “yeah, actually, I am.”
     
    But Mike sighed, and shook his head. “Nah. You sound like you handled it.”
     
    “And how,” I grunted. “I just sort of woke up one day, like the alarm clock was going off on my life and I’d been hitting snooze for two and a half years. And, six years later, here I am, all shiny and new.”
     
    “Must be nice,” Mike said.
     
    “You get over it. Eventually.” I shrugged, and finished my whiskey. After talking about Robert, even for a second, I wanted another drink. But, that was a slippery slope so I took a water instead.
     
    “So,” I said, eager to talk about literally anything else, “how’s your rise to MMA fame and fortune going?”
     
    Mike smirked, and shook his head. “I got a ways to go. Two years before I’m off parole, for one thing. For another, my close quarters needs work. Jarome routinely wipes the mat with me once we get locked up.”
     
    “I could help you with that, if you wanted,” I offered.
     
    Mike grinned, and looked me over dramatically. “You sure about that?”
     
    “Uh huh,” I said, “you just try me, buddy. I’m hard core. Don’t think just because I’m little I can’t put you on your back and make you say ‘mama’.”
     
    His eyebrows rose, and the corner of his lip twitched up again. “Oh yeah?”
     
    I blushed at the look in his eyes. He’d gone straight to the gutter, just like I had. “Well,” I said carefully, “I mean… you know… like in the bed. I mean the ring! Jesus…” I wanted to hide my face.
     
    Mike was laughing, though, his head nodding slowly as he appraised me again. “That one of those, whaddya call it, Fraudian slips?”
     
    “Freudian,” I said, “and… yeah, it’s been a while…”
     
    “For me too,” he said. “I get it.”
     
    We were both quiet for a long moment.
     
    I moved my foot toward him. It wasn’t an accident, but it was almost unconscious. When I nudged his leg, he nudged me back.
     
    And then, just like that, he changed the subject. I couldn’t quite decide how to feel about it, so instead I just went with it. We talked shop, mostly—the differences between my style and his, why I like the up-close stuff more than his fancy Chinese style; surprise, it had to do with handling guys who were bigger than me, which was almost all of them.
     
    I told him all about Chelsea, my Krav Maga instructor, who was ex-Israeli military and was about as badass as a person could be, man or woman, and how she worked specifically with women who’d been abused. “She’s on a mission,” I said. “And she’s succeeding. I think about eight of the ten women I trained with were all getting out of abusive relationships of one kind or another. Chelsea has this way of making you feel