Chapter 1

I’ll Play Nice This Time

January 10

Malcolm Frost had to be someone’s nemesis in the boxing ring—mine. Not that it mattered to me, since I still wanted to undress the middleweight contender with my bare hands and roll my fingertips over his hairy and pert nipples.

He made me feel frostbitten.

I couldn’t have him sexually, though. Never.

I wouldn’t have him, or so I told myself.

Sometimes I wanted things I couldn’t have, Malcolm William Frost included. The world spun that way sometimes. Spiteful. Upsetting. Off its axis. Goodness and love had vanished from the planet on most days. Why couldn’t I get the guy I wanted? And why all the sexual tension between us?

The sexy and muscular boxer refused to have our chiseled torsos touch, even though I wanted to be physically close to the man. Never could we wind up in a heated embrace of mutual bliss because Colm, as I called him, had Melinda Moretell’s heart; a bombshell of an actress with her ditzy charm, model qualities, and numerous sexy stilettos. He loved Melinda. Every part of her. Everything about the Hollywood actress. To my understanding, the actress belongedto him, and the two were inseparable, lovers until their dying ends. To break their bond apart seemed unthinkable; something I wouldn’t dare accomplish, at least not on purpose. Both were intricate puzzle pieces that fit beautifully together. Never would they separate, or so I believed, and convinced myself, as one of Colm’s best friends.

Again, I studied Colm inside the ring at Ranard’s Gym on Nelson Street in downtown Pittsburgh. Memberships were steep and limited to use the gym, and both of us were lucky to have one. The man resembled fire on the mat, quickly shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet, jabbing his practicing buddy, Brian “Beef” Tarkin, in the chest. Colm threw a bolo punch and followed it up with two rabbits. Beef had the reputation of being a palooka, a weak and unskilled competitor, who usually lost a fight. Colm used the guy as turtle meat to practice on, throwing random left hooks and a haymaker, which sent Beef against the mat, head-first.

Pleased with himself, Colm took off his head gear. A smile spread over his handsome face. Pride etched around his stunning eyes. Accomplishment twinkled in his pupils. The man opposed being arrogant. Instead, he humbled himself with pride and came across as charming. I considered him the man of my dreams, yet untouchable because of a certain actress in his life that I believed he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, marrying and loving forever, until death.

There, positioned on the sideline, outside the ring, I studied the twenty-six-year-old yet again and ogled his delicious features: thick curly hair the color of a crow’s feathers, piercing marsh green eyes, and an English-sloped nose. He had pinkish narrow lips, broad shoulders with convex-structured triceps, a muscled hairy chest, erect nipples the color of molten brown, and an athletic hourglass shape. He stood at five-ten, featured toned hips, thighs of steel, and had a chunk of cock hidden in a canary yellow Champion trunk.

Colm helped Beef up and off the mat and escorted him to the edge of the ring. They shook hands and exchanged words of encouragement. The loser climbed out of the ring and headed for the showers. Colm crossed the mat, walked up to the ropes on my side, and looked down at me.

He smiled and asked, “What did you think, Daron?”

The Liverpool accent had disappeared after living in America for twenty years; too bad for me since I thought it a turn-on. Colm moved from Liverpool to Greenwich Village with his mother, Eve, when he turned six. Eve functioned as a single mother, never married, and wanted her only son to have the best experiences in life, which she believed could only happen in America. The paperback romance writer felt that Pittsburgh had the slice-of-life they needed to survive, and the pair settled there, tucked in the polite city. Some two decades later, Eve now lived in San Francisco with a plumber, and sexy Colm just happened to live in downtown Pittsburgh, which pleased me.

“You’re definitely a fighter. God has given you a gift, and you’re using it with expertise. Kudos, my friend.”

He huffed and puffed for air. His silky and sweaty chest rose and fell as he waved me into the ring and said, “You need to get in here so I can beat the shit out of you.”

“Always a gentleman, aren’t you, Colm? To tell you the truth, I’m good right here,” I confessed, grinning from ear to ear. “You already know you’re better in the ring. There’s no reason to prove it again, my friend.”

Frankly, he could slip his lean and muscular body between two of the ropes and let me brush my lips and chin against its bulging physique. Then I could make his cock turn hard, and we could end up in the gym’s shower area together, naked and panting, sexually intertwined. That didn’t happen, though, and probably never would. Colm had Melinda for such sexual pleasantries, not Daron Tulsa—me.