Untamed (3 page)

The sharks think him a goldfish in their tank. How wrong they are.

Clinking crystal and the hubbub of chatter and laughs are the background noises. Prideful chandeliers, and tuxedos and formal dresses are the background sights. Perfume, masculine and feminine, peaty whiskey and acrid cigar smoke are the background smells.

They circle him, lie in wait, their fins above the surface without self-consciousness. He’s the object of their fawning affection, their fake friendships, but he is also their target, and they’ll sink their teeth into him the first moment they get.

But he knows it. He’s no fool, even if that’s what people think of him by virtue of who he is, what he does.

He takes the compliments with a subdued grace and easy charm that endears him to the wicked people who scramble over each other to talk to him. It is a manner at odds with the visage of him in a steel-mesh cage, tattoo-sheathed arms laying punch after thunderous punch into a bleeding, reeling, drooling opponent.

I see scattered looks of disappointment in those that want him to beat his chest, here and now. That want him to be the cocky and aggressive creature that he is in the cage, the idiot fighter who speaks with slurred words and doesn’t know not to mangle the cap of a cigar, or the difference between a merlot and a cab-sav.

Those are the people that see him as nothing but a pit bull, or a cock in a fight, a chance to make money. They want to watch the
show
, which is purple bruises, red blood, and exposed white bone.