TKO (A Bad Boy MMA Romance) Read Online Free Page A

higher than anyone else’s.
     
    This was definitely going to be interesting, I thought to myself as I left the office, suddenly feeling quite a bit less tired than I had earlier.
     
    Little did I know just how much of an understatement that was going to turn out to be.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 3 - MARC
 
                  Even as I tried to reach out my arm to hit the alarm as it blared, my muscles sent out a bolt of pain in protest to the slightest movement. So for a few moments at least, I just let the damn phone alarm ring while I stared up at the ceiling angrily.
     
                  Finally, I willed myself to contort my body awkwardly to reach the fucking thing and shut it off before rolling over and putting my feet on the ground, taking a moment to get my bearings.
     
                  This was bad. I couldn’t remember a time I’d ever felt like this before, and even in the comfort of my own apartment, I didn’t like it.
     
    It had been two days since the injury, and while I had spent yesterday resting up in bed, icing the injuries to try and get the swelling to drop, today I had to go meet my new physiotherapist.
     
                  The new apartment, though, was one of the few things that could dull the blow of this whole experience. The emcee at my big fight hadn’t been exaggerating when he said I came from a patch of dirt in New Mexico. To say that I had humble beginnings was to put it lightly. My grandmother’s little farmstead barely supported us, and I had a stiff mattress with an itchy blanket in a cupboard of a room to look forward to every night after a dinner of meat and potatoes. It was a hard life, but it was part of what made me into the man I became, so I never looked down on it, and I damn well didn’t let anyone look down on me for it—not that anyone had the guts to do so.
     
                  Still, growing up like that gave you a certain set of expectations out of the world. And when I started getting bigger and bigger in the world of Mixed Martial Arts, my world changed so fast I hardly knew how to handle it. In all honesty, I still didn’t.
     
                  My Las Vegas apartment couldn’t be more different from what I was used to. It was like living in a palace. Located in an upscale part of town, by the glitzy standards Vegas had, it couldn’t have been in a more central location. The sleek black tile floors contrasted sharply with the full-panel windows that gave me a full view of the bright, colourful lights in the streets below from my penthouse. I made sure the place had excellent lighting; dim lights might have been more fashionable for a place like this, the interior designers told me, but personally, I preferred a full view of my living space.
     
                  When I first moved in, the place was a very modern-looking, upscale place, but really, I would have preferred something more rustic. I kept the living room and kitchen as they were, since most of the Vegas crowd I’d entertain for would prefer that kind of look, but I already had the interior designers do a number on my own room.
     
                  The floors were hardwood, and the smell of hand carpentry filled the air as I stood up from my ranch-style bed and made my way across the cabin-like interior. The room was pretty minimalistic, but that was by design. A lot of money went into this place, and even more went into the wardrobe.
     
                  I headed into the shower, and as the water started running, the sensation made me want to just fall asleep against the cool glass.
     
                  My muscles might have been seriously injured, but my body still looked intact. Hot water ran down every rippling muscle of my tanned body, from bulging biceps and forearms to the rock-hard pack of abs I’d worked so hard to hone. My body was a fighting machine. It always had been. A