Running Wilde (Wilde Security, #4) by Tonya Burrows
To my family.
We may be on opposite sides of the country now, but you are still and will always be my bedrock.
Chapter One
Washington, DC
The first punch careened off Vaughn Wilde’s shoulder. He barely noticed it, but the quick second caught him alongside his jaw and thoroughly rattled his cage. He staggered sideways, tasted blood. Swiped at his mouth with his arm and came up with a streak of red.
Well, look at that. He was bleeding. Fuck. He’d gone soft in the last three months of inaction.
His opponent plowed into him like a bull seeing red and slammed him against the un-padded side of the cage. The metal links were so cold they burned his sweat-slicked back as he struggled to break the hold.
All around them, the crowd’s cheers surged into a dull roar that echoed off the empty warehouse’s ceiling. Bloodthirsty bastards wanted to see him, the reigning champion, lose this match, his first back in the octagon since a bomb nearly took him out last November. Hell, he was going to lose if he didn’t get his head into the fight.
No. He didn’t fucking lose. Ever.
Most people would have felt a surge of adrenaline then. Instead, Vaughn’s vision cleared, and time seemed to slow.
He managed to free one arm and drilled his elbow into the guy’s spine. It would have been a crippling blow if he’d been able to put any momentum into it, but as it was, it only momentarily distracted his opponent, giving him the opportunity he needed to break free.
And now that he was…
He rained punches down with a single-minded intensity, driving the guy across the concrete floor to the other side of the cage. The crowd’s cheers swelled again. As fickle as they were bloodthirsty, they were now firmly in Vaughn’s corner, chanting his name, wanting to see the champ rack up another win.
He wanted another win. Not for them. For himself. He needed the blood and sweat, needed the adrenaline burn, needed a goddamn distraction from the unsuccessful search for a woman he was starting to wonder even existed at all. She had to be a ghost or maybe a figment of his imagination—because Vaughn Wilde always found what he was looking for.
Always.
His opponent got in a good kick to his bad leg—the one he’d had in a cast until two weeks ago—and he managed to keep it from buckling by sheer willpower.
Fuck. His mind was wandering again. Time to end this little dance of theirs. It wasn’t giving him the release he needed anyway.
He launched a full-out attack, pummeling his opponent, landing strike after well-aimed strike until the guy collapsed under his fists. And once down, dude wasn’t getting back up without help.
Vaughn stood in the middle of the ring, his chest heaving, blood dripping from his knuckles, the crowd screaming and pounding on the cage all around him, and he felt…not a goddamn thing. No rush from the win, no thrill from the fight—nothing but his heart thundering way too hard in his ears, his aching knuckles, and the sweat dripping off him in cold rivulets, stinging the cuts on his face.
The crowd thundered their approval. All except one guy, who stood silently with his arms crossed over his chest, a frown pulling down the edges of his mouth.
Fucking hell. How had his twin found him?
Cam just shook his head, and his shoulders moved in a heavy sigh. He jerked his chin toward the front of the building, then walked away.
Oh yeah. He had a few choice words to say. Vaughn didn’t particularly want to hear any of them, and for a half second, he considered pretending he hadn’t seen Cam…
But no. That was a cop out, something a coward would do. And he was a lot of unflattering things—knew it, accepted it—but coward was nowhere on that list.
He grabbed his shirt, jacket, and water bottle and left the cage. The crowd parted. Either they sensed his shitty mood or they were just smart guys that knew he didn’t want any backslapping congratulations.
Or mostly smart guys. One overly-tanned little shit stepped into his path, and little was an understatement. He couldn’t have topped five-five, and maybe one-thirty soaking wet. He wore a white tracksuit and had so many chains draped around his skinny neck, it was a wonder the dude was able hold his head up.
“You fucking cheater.”
Vaughn stopped, a surge of anger heating the back of his neck. He scowled. “I don’t cheat.”
“My cousin doesn’t lose!”
“Neither do I.” This conversation wasn’t worth his time. Vaughn tried to step around the entitled little prick, but a much bigger guy who had the hard, flat eyes of a killer blocked him.