Sweet Release (A Bad Boy Mafia Romance) (2 page)

Ella

A Modern Woman’s Guide to Moving On.

Step one: Divorce the bastard who has been beating you for the past four years. He isn’t worth sticking around for. Whether or not you pay a ‘witch’ to hex his junk is optional. It doesn’t work, but it feels damn good and could be money well spent just for that. Plus, you never do know.

Step two: Get back into school. Do what you always wanted to do. Finish that degree, or do something else, but take steps to never need to rely on anyone like He-who-shall-not-be-named ever again.

Step three: Learn a martial art. For me it was Krav Maga; I liked the idea of being hardcore like those Israeli special forces ladies, and if it’s good enough for them and the highest paid bodyguards, it was good enough for me. But pick whatever you like most. I almost learned Aikido.

Step four: Graduate from whatever, go out into the world, get a job, and for once in the last six years finally have both your own feet under you—each of them entirely capable of kicking ass if need be.

That’s where I was. Step four. Six years later, walking into day three of my first full time job, putting that hard earned student loan debt to good use. Thank you, Federal Government, even if I did have to sign over my first born child to get through school.

And thank you Jarome Tyson; possibly the most upstanding, respectful man I had met in a long, long time and willing to take me on fresh out of school with no resume. Jarome had a local reputation for doing his best to heft the poorest dregs of the city up and out of the pits and into… well most of them were still in the pits afterward, but they were on a slightly higher tier and you know what? That was good enough for me. You couldn’t go lower than rock bottom and I was happy to see that six tiers below me now.

Always be moving forward. That’s what my therapist had said, back when I thought I needed one. I probably did, at the time. She was a doll.

I strolled through the doors of the gym, waved to the sweaty receptionist behind the front counter who I’d seen take down a guy twice her size on my first day in, and made my way to the back room—my room—where waited my table, my sheets and towels, my oils and creams, my rack of what a casual observer would probably consider instruments of torture. (They weren’t, they were tools of the trade. But I could see where they might get the idea.)

There was a knock on the door behind me, minutes after I set my back down and started spraying down the table.

Jarome leaned against the door frame, that casual, easy smile of his directed at me. “I’m hearing good things,” he said. “I like that. You’re getting popular. Full book today. Congratulations.”

“It’s taking off faster than I expected,” I told him, brushing stray wisps of blond hair out of my face. I’d cut it short after The Event. It was just past my shoulders now. “I really appreciate you spreading the word.”

Jarome raised a wide, oar-paddle hand, “I didn’t do anything, just put the book up front. Everyone… behaving?” He lifted an eyebrow.

“So far so good,” I told him; though, the truth was just a little shy of that. Still, I could handle myself, and once I shut some of these guys down they stayed that way, and that was good enough for me. In a way it was flattering, as long as it didn’t go too far. The women were the best; plus, they pointed out to me the guys that were likely to be a problem—and offered to cream them on the mat if they heard about any funny business.

“Excellent. Well, I won’t keep you.” He turned to leave. “Oh, there is one thing; I hired a new trainer over the weekend. Mike Frazetta. I should introduce you later, when you go to lunch, so you know how to spot him.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “You’re growing by leaps and bounds it sounds like.”

He only shrugged. This place, Jarome had explained before, was as big as he planned to get. He had money left over from a boxing career before the gym, and made enough from the gym on his reputation alone that he had no plans to open up another place, move to a bigger space, or anything like that. “You know what I learned being somewhat famous and rich enough to pay off my car?” He’d asked when she first started. She hadn’t known, and had said so. “That the only wealth you need in life is a wealth of purpose. Everything else is temporary, and fleeting, and in the end worthless. Only your purpose in life can survive you.”

Wisdom from a near miss with death, she suspected. She didn’t follow boxing, and never really had, but she’d done research on Jarome Tyson after that and he’d taken a severe blow to the head during his last bout. Six weeks later he woke up from a coma, resigned, and made the papers when he opened the gym and promised to train anyone who walked through the door.

And he had as far as I could tell. the gym floor was a mix of people of disparate sizes, shapes, races, genders. I think that’s part of why I liked it. I had done the white middle class suburbia thing. It hurt, as far as I could tell.

My client book was full up for the day. Four in the morning, an hour lunch, four the in afternoon. I stretched my hands, warmed myself up on a heavy bag—both to get my blood moving and my energy clear, as well in case any of my male clients happened to be watching. This woman? Small she may be, but dangerous. Watch yourselves, boys. I smiled to myself as I pumped myself up. It had taken a long, long time to rebuild my self-esteem after my divorce.

Nine o’clock ticked around, and I took my first client. I’d seen him the first day, and thought he might be gay, but obviously it wasn’t my place to ask.

Ten o’clock was Neema, easily my favorite so far. She was Nigerian and spoke with the most beautiful accent, and had no end of stories to tell about where she was from and what she’d seen. Some of it was rough, but mostly her stories were about the insane things her and her family had done living in the African bush when she was a girl just surviving day to day and being happy. Eventually her brother had gone to medical school and brought her to America with him to get an education herself. She was wicked smart, and hardcore, and I loved her from the first time I met her.

And then, at eleven o’clock, I had Rex.

It was my first time seeing him—most of my clients were first-timers, though Logan, my nine o’clock, and Neema had both rebooked for Monday when I finished with them the first time.

I knew Rex’s type the minute I saw him. It wasn’t so much that he looked a particular way, physically; it was the way he walked, the way he looked at me, or at parts of me anyway, and the way he answered my preliminary questions about his health and needs with short, one word answers loaded with suggestive subtext. Unsurprisingly, he needed a lot of thigh and groin work. I politely informed him that I was fully capable of that, and then left him to undress and get under the sheet.

“I got nothing you ain’t seen, doll,” he said. But I excused myself anyway.

I waited outside the door, watched the clock, and gave him the three minutes that was enough for most people.

When I came back inside the room, Rex’s ass was bare, the sheet gathered at his ankles where he’d left it. The furry mound of his balls was showing between his thighs. Guys, we can tell when you stuff it down there to ‘show it off’.

I didn’t comment, though. In my book, everyone got one chance to learn the rules. I pulled the sheet up from his ankles and to his back. “In here,” I told him, in a flat, professional tone, “you stay covered up. Them’s the rules. Got it?”

Rex grunted. “Sure. It’s just hot is all.”

“I’ll turn on the AC,” I told him, and did that—I cranked it down to about sixty. I could always put on a hoodie. Maybe a little cold air would shrivel him up and make him embarrassed to ‘show off’ again, assuming plain human decency wasn’t enough.

I started the work. Deep tissue—real deep tissue. The work I did here for Jarome’s trainees wasn’t some namby-pamby feel-good massage. These were athletes who were sometimes racing deadlines to push themselves for the next match, or to pack on muscle, or meet some other critical goal. Rex’s massage was all elbows and knuckles.

To his credit, he did grunt, groan, and struggle to control his breath. I worked over his back and shoulders, his neck, and arms, and while I didn’t think he’d actually realized he needed it his glutes and hammys were, in fact, knotted and tense.

Once I finished his legs, and carefully tented the sheet for him to roll over. “Flip.” I said curtly.

Rex did, and I made sure he was nice and tucked under the sheet. “You got some serious muscle in that little body, girlie,” he said, eyes closed, face red and decorated with the ‘toilet seat’ impression everyone tended to get from the face-rest at the head of the table.

“My name is Ella,” I told him, as if he didn’t know and it was an honest mistake.

“Right,” Rex said, “Ella; yeah I saw that up front.” It wasn’t an apology, but it seemed like an acknowledgment at least.

I sank my knuckles into the muscle over his chest and stripped both sides an inch at a time while he breathed through it. Tension fled, knots unwound, and trigger points released sending, I hoped, referral pain straight to his jaw. All true healing hurts a little before it feels good. Wisdom. Seriously, like, actual ancient Chinese wisdom.

When I finally got to Rex’s quads, he was kind enough to spread his knees a little to make sure I had access to the upper muscle attachments, I’m sure. I glided my elbow through the mass of tough tissue, and made sure to work the tender, painful knots at the top, where his thigh blended into his hip.

I had almost managed to get through the whole thing, and was reasonably certain that Rex had pretty much learned his lesson on the dangers of antagonizing his massage therapist. I was self-congratulatory on that count—civilizing the male half of the human race one jerk at a time; Ella Robinson, medicine woman.

But, Rex had to ruin it.

It wasn’t that he got an erection. The truth is, lots of guys get erections during a massage and throughout my practicals in school all of them had generally been embarrassed and even stopped the massage themselves. It had to do with tension, and nerves, and sympathetic-parasympathetic balances and probably humors to for all anyone really knew; just a fact of life for men and not something I shamed them for or paid any attention to.

Not unless, that is, they drew attention to it on purpose in a particular way.

Rex’s erection jumped a little. When I looked up at his face to get a read, he was smiling. I sighed. Here it came.

“Hey, uh, I got another big knot,” he muttered. “I’ll tip you real good for a little extra work.”

“Really, Rex?” I used my elbow to push myself up to standing, and he winced when I dug into his hip. Legit therapeutic benefit. For him, too.

“What,” he said, “you a lesbian or something? It’s eight inches, honey; you don’t see that every day.”

I rolled my eyes, and walked to the door. I opened it and stuck my head out. I didn’t have to say anything, I just caught the eye of one of the trainers, gave them an eye-roll and a politely begging smile, and off she went to fetch Jarome.

Not everyone trained with Jarome directly, but they were all more or less officially his trainees. No one wanted to piss of Coach.

“I’ll be quick,” Rex said. “Been a few days.” He really still thought it was his lucky day. Amazing. Just amazing.

It wasn’t Jarome that came in a moment later though. Rex’s eyes snapped open, and he looked down his prone body at a man about twice his size, clean cut and stone faced. Unbelievably handsome.

Well, Rex probably didn’t think that—though, for all I knew he did—but I certainly thought it. Jesus, where did Jarome dig this one up? I knew all the trainers and this wasn’t—

Oh, wait.

“Hi,” I said, “Mike, right?”

Mike nodded. “Problem here?”

“Nah, buddy,” Rex said. “No problem. All good. We was just finishing up. Right Ella?”

“So you do remember my name,” I wondered out loud.

Mike looked directly at Rex’s flagging but no less obvious erection, and was visibly disgusted. “It’s Rex, right?” He asked.