Free Dark Devotion: Dark Series 3 by Lauren Dawes

for the XFO Middleweight Championship …”
    *
    The crowd erupted into cheers. Thor could hear them clapping at a frenetic pace even down in the locker rooms where he and his combined corner and cut man … woman … was taping up his fists.
    “Big crowd,” Lilith murmured, pulling another long strip of tape off the roll and tearing it with her teeth. Thor glanced at the goddess and grunted. “Nervous?” She wrapped the tape around his hand, securing the gauze bandage already in place.
    “What do you think?” he shot back.
    She shrugged, unaffected by his bad mood. “This guy is twenty-two and oh.”
    “So?”
    Lilith glared at him. “You might actually have to work to win this one.”
    “It’ll be nice for a change then,” Thor replied, squeezing his hand into a fist to test the tension in the tape. “Do this one again. It needs to be tighter.”
    Lilith rolled her eyes and started pulling off the tape.
    “You can be a real bitch sometimes. Do you know that?”
    She cocked a brow at him. “Good thing you’re an asshole so you don’t give a shit how much of a bitch I am.”
    Thor tried to stifle his smile. The goddess had a point.
    Outside, the sound of the announcer hyping up the crowd intruded on Thor’s pre-fight tranquillity. “And now, introducing our first fighters; in the red corner, fighting out of San Diego, California, at five foot ten, weighing in at one hundred and eighty three pounds…”
    “How’s the knee feeling?”
    Thor had torn his ACL a couple of weeks before. Being a god, he’d healed in two weeks from an injury that would have sidelined most humans for up to six months. “Fine.”
    Lilith finished the strapping, shaking her head at him. “Asshole,” she muttered under her breath.
    Even though she was just as surly as he was, Thor couldn’t have prepped for any fight as well as he did without her there. One of the other fighter’s corner men came into the room, knocking on the jamb a couple of times to get their attention.
    “You got any tape I can borrow?” he asked Thor, completely ignoring Lilith. Thor looked over at the goddess then back to the human.
    “Ask her. I don’t know,” he replied, sitting back to watch the sparks fly. Lilith was overlooked by every man in the sport unless they were looking to get their cocks sucked. The guy’s eyes shifted to Lilith, his gaze drifting down to check out her tits. The goddess’s anger boiled over. A full roll of tape was suddenly sent flying, hitting the guy in the face. It dropped to the floor with a thud .
    “What the fuck?” the human bellowed, stepping into the room and getting up in Lilith’s grill.
    Lilith stood toe-to-toe with the guy, her petite hands curling into fists. “You fucking misogynist bastard!”
    “You raging bitch!” he yelled back, his face getting redder and redder. “Women have no place in this sport unless they’re on their knees.”
    Lilith threw herself at him, tackling him to the ground. A flurry of punches rained down on his face and body. Thor stood to pull her off him. The female could inflict a hell of a lot of damage when left unchecked. Hauling her up, he held her back while the other guy recovered. He had a bloody nose and a busted lip. He pulled himself off the floor and retreated from the room, Lilith throwing more insults involving him giving fellatio to a goat.
    Thor chuckled, releasing the goddess. “You’re a hellcat, aren’t you?”
    Lilith grinned. “You’re only just realizing this now?” she said, going to the ice bucket and putting a few cubes into a towel. She held them over her knuckles for a moment. “I think I broke my hand punching that bastard’s hard head.”
    They fell into their usual pre-fight routine with Thor putting on some headcell phones and cranking up 50 Cent’s “Patiently Waiting”, while Lilith pulled out a worn and dog-eared paperback and curled up in a chair in the corner. Half an hour later, an official came and checked Thor’s wraps.