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The gym had emptied out an hour ago. Just the hum of the fluorescent lights and the wet slap of gloves against the heavy bag as you worked through your final combinations.

You heard him before you saw him. Khamzat always made noise - unwrapping his hands, dropping his water bottle, exhaling loud enough to shake the drywall.

“You still here, crazy girl.”

“You’re also still here, idiot.”

He grinned, leaning against the cage wall with his arms crossed. Sweat still darkened the collar of his shirt. His hair was a mess, and he had that look - the one that said he’d been watching you longer than you realised.

“What?” You caught the bag mid-swing.

“Nothing.”

“You’re staring.”

“I stare at many things.” He shrugged, unbothered. “Beautiful things especially.”

You snorted. “Save it for your groupies.”

“Groupies.” He laughed, the sound bouncing off the mats. “You think I have groupies?”

“I’ve seen your DMs.”

“Jealous?”

Khamzat was a ladies' man through and through, charming, smooth, and always looking for the next conquest. You were the opposite. You hated men. You loved the power you held over them, the thrill of making them want you only to leave them frustrated and wanting more, but you had zero patience for their egos or their needs. It was a miracle you two were best friends.

“Allergic to men, actually.” You turned back to the bag.

Jab, cross, hook.

“I think I’ve developed an immunity.”

“Ah, yes. The famous man-hating.” He circled around the bag until he was in your peripheral vision again. “But I am not men. I am Khamzat.”

“That’s worse.”

He clutched his chest like you’d stabbed him. “You wound me. After everything we’ve been through.”

This whole ordeal all started at the Allstars Training Center, long before anyone started asking questions about what you were to each other.

You were only supposed to be there briefly - just passing through, training while you stayed in Sweden.

Keep your head down, do your shit, leave.

Then he noticed you.

Not quietly. Not subtly. Khamzat Chimaev never really did subtle.

“You new?” he asked.

You didn’t even look up from your wraps. “No. Just better at staying unnoticed than most.”

That made him pause. Then grin.

From that day on, you was always together.

He started pulling you into everything - training sessions, food runs, random drives, recovery days that turned into hours you didn’t plan for. Like it was obvious you were coming with him, even when no one said it out loud.

You became the duo nobody really knew how to label.

At first it was just “him and that girl who talks back.”

Then it turned into “they’re always together.”

Then finally: “don’t separate them, it’s worse when they’re apart.”

You didn’t trail him like a fan. You didn’t orbit him like people expected.

You matched him.

If he was loud, you were sharper. If he was intense, you were colder. If he pushed, you pushed back harder.

People noticed how naturally it worked. The way you’d sit next to him without thinking. The way he’d pass you things before you asked. The way conversations around you always ended up involving both of you, even when only one of you was spoken to.

It became a kind of language between you two - one no one else really spoke.

“Why aren’t you two a thing again?” someone would ask.

You shrugged. “We’d probably kill each other if we was’’

From across the room, his voice came instantly.

“She’s right,” he said. “But I win.”

And that was the thing about you two.

No explanation ever really fit.

Yet here you were, two years later, still attached at the hip.

You stopped punching. Your shoulders rose and fell with your breath. He wasn’t wrong - the past few weeks had been ugly and Khamzat had been through it all with you.

Sighing, you leaned your head back against the cool wall.

Your latest situationship finally imploded. He turned out to be a clingy, spineless waste of space. And somewhere between the third and fourth vent session, Khamzat had gone from being the loudmouth you tolerated to the loudmouth you actually needed.

“Exactlyyyy,” he said, reading your silence. “Who brought you your favourite food when you were stress crying? Who let you kick his shins until they were purple?”

“Me cry? I think it was you who was crying.”

“That was sweat.”

“From your eyes?”

Khamzat chuckled in response.

"I told you he was soft."

"Yeah, well, you were right," you admitted, hating the words as they left your mouth. "But it’s whatever. I’m over it."

It wasn’t a total lie. You were over the guy, but you weren’t over the nagging feeling that something was wrong with you. The sex had been mechanical-boring. You’d gone through the motions, wet enough, responsive enough technically, but inside? Nothing.

No spark, no fire, just a dull rhythm that you endured to get it over with. You’d found yourself staring at the ceiling more often than not, wondering if you were broken or if you were just supposed to feel this hollow.

"You’re thinking too loud," Khamzat said, breaking into your thoughts.

You snorted. "I’m just thinking about how I need a drink."

"Bullshit." He turned his body toward you. "You’re thinking about him. Or rather, about how he didn't do it for you."

Your breath hitched. You looked away, picking at a loose thread on your glove. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you do," he pressed, his voice dropping an octave. "You joked about it before. How you don't feel shit. How you wonder if there’s supposed to be more."

Heat flushed your neck. You hated that he remembered those late-night rants, the ones fueled by vodka and frustration. "Maybe that’s just how it is," you muttered, defensive. "Maybe it’s all overhyped. Just friction and fluids."

Khamzat laughed, a dark, rich sound that vibrated in your chest. "That’s the man-hater in you talking. You’ve been fucking boys who don't know what to do with a woman like you."

"And what?" you challenged, turning to face him, hands on your hips, your eyes narrowing. "You think you’re different?"

"I know I am," he said simply. No arrogance in his voice this time, just a flat, confident statement of fact. He leaned in closer, the air between you suddenly charged, heavy with something that hadn't been there before. "You’re too much for them. You need someone who can handle the heat, who isn't afraid to push you past that overthinking brain of yours. These boys you choose, they don’t know what to do with you. They want to impress you, so they rush. They want to prove something, so they forget to pay attention.”

“Okay,” you said, raising a brow as you held his gaze. “And you know what to do, do you?” The corner of your mouth twitched. “Funny. You always seem to have all the answers.”

The words left your mouth before your brain caught up. They hung between you, sparking like a live wire.

His expression didn’t change, but something flickered behind his eyes. “What?”

“You heard me.” Your pulse betrayed your calm exterior. “You’re talking like I’m some problem you could solve”

“I don’t think you need fixing,” he murmured, his hand closing around your forearm, thumb brushing absent-mindedly against your skin. The contact felt far more significant than it should have. “I think you need to be wrecked. I think you need someone to make you feel so much you can’t think.”

You let out a short laugh, shaking your head.

Sometimes Khamzat certainty was impressive.

Right now, he was irritating as hell.

Standing there talking like everything was obvious, like he knew exactly what made you tick, exactly what you needed, exactly where everyone else had supposedly gone wrong.

“And that’s you, is it?” you asked dryly. “All this talk. All these ‘big guns’ you keep hinting at.” You held his gaze. “Put up or shut up, Chimaev.”

The nickname landed. You saw it in the slight flare of his nostrils, the way his weight shifted forward onto the balls of his feet.

Predator recognition.

“You are serious?.” he tested

“Are you backing down? Because that would be a first.”

He closed the distance in two strides. Not touching - not yet - but close enough that you could smell the salt on his skin, the faint spice of his deodorant. Close enough that his height became a physical fact you had to reckon with.

“Rules,” he said, and his voice had gone rough at the edges. “You say stop, we stop. No questions, no bruised egos. I mean it.”

“Fine.”

“And you don’t perform. No sounds you think I want to hear. No faces you think I want to see.” His jaw tightened. “I want what’s real. Even if it’s nothing. Even if you’re bored. I want to know.”

The request unsettled you more than any physical advance could have. Being known was different than being touched. Being known was terrifying.

“Fine,” you said again, quieter.

His hand lifted. Slow enough that you could have moved, but instead you did nothing but look at him. His palm met the side of your neck, thumb resting against your pulse point.

“Your heart is fast,” he murmured.

“That’s from the workout.”

“Liar.”

His thumb traced a line down to your collarbone. The touch was feather-light, almost medical in its precision - like he was mapping you, cataloguing every nerve ending.

“The men you’ve been with,” he said, “did they ever just do this? Just touch you for the sake of touching? Not as a stepping stone to somewhere else?”

You opened your mouth. Closed it.

“That’s what I thought.”

His other hand found your hip. Not gripping. Not claiming. Just... present. A warm, steady pressure through the fabric of your leggings.

“You’re thinking too much,” he said. “I can hear it.”

“I’m always thinking.”

“I know.” His lips curved, just barely. “That’s the challenge. Getting that brain of yours to shut up for five minutes.”

“Good luck.”

“I don’t need luck.” His hand slid from your neck to the back of your head, fingers threading into the damp hair at your nape. “I need you to breathe.”

You hadn’t realised you’d stopped.

The inhale you took was shakier than you wanted it to be. His thumb stroked the skin behind your ear, and something in your chest unlocked - a door you hadn’t known you’d kept bolted.

“There she is,” he whispered.

The kiss caught you off guard, not because it happened, but because of how it happened. Soft. Almost questioning. His mouth brushed yours like he was asking permission, and when you didn’t pull away, he deepened it by degrees - a slow, unhurried exploration that made your fingers curl into the front of his shirt.

He tasted like mint gum and something earthier underneath.

When he pulled back, your eyes stayed closed for a beat too long.

“Look at me,” he said.

You did. His pupils had blown wide, but his expression was still focused. Still watching. Still cataloguing every micro-shift in your face.

“We’re not doing this here,” he said. “Not against a gym mat with lights and security cameras. You deserve better than that.”

“How chivalrous.”

“How strategic.” He stepped back, and the loss of heat was almost physical. “My place. Twenty minutes. You know the address.”

He grabbed his bag before you could answer. Paused at the door, one hand on the frame, and looked back at you with something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“Bring the attitude,” he said. “I like it.”

The door swung shut behind him.

The drive to his place took fourteen minutes.

You counted.

Not because you were nervous. Because you were methodical. Because cataloguing the streetlights and the turns and the exact shade of the sky gave your brain something to do besides replay the kiss on a loop, the pressure of his thumb against your pulse, the way he'd said There she is like he'd found something he'd been looking for.

You hadn't showered fully, only freshened up. You'd stood in the gym locker room for a full ninety seconds staring at the tile before realising that washing him off your skin felt wrong. You wanted the salt and the sweat and the evidence.

His building was unremarkable. Buzzer. Stairs. A hallway that smelled like laundry detergent and someone's overcooked dinner. The door was open. Just a crack. Just enough light spilling through to tell you he was waiting.

You pushed it open.

He was there. Leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed, wearing a plain tee and grey joggers, still looking at you like you were a puzzle he was halfway through solving. The smirk was back, but it didn't reach his eyes. His eyes were something else entirely.

"No small talk," you said, dropping your bag by the door.

"No small talk," he agreed.

Three strides. That was all it took for him to cross the room. One moment you were standing in the doorway, the next his hands were on your hips and your back was against the doorframe and the air left your lungs in a rush that wasn't quite surprise.

Show me, you'd said. Prove it.

He pinned you there, one forearm braced above your head, the other hand sliding up your ribcage with deliberate, agonizing slowness. His thumb found the underside of your breast through your shirt and stopped.

"Breathe," he reminded you.

"Stop telling me to breathe."

"Stop forgetting."

His mouth found your neck. Not the soft, questioning kiss from the gym - this was different. Teeth grazing skin. Tongue tracing the tendon that had gone tight with anticipation. He sucked at your pulse point and the sound that escaped your throat was involuntary, a half-formed thing you didn't have time to edit.

His smile pressed against your skin. "That one was real."

"Shut up."

"You want me to shut up?" He pulled back, one eyebrow raised. His pupils were blown. His breathing wasn't as steady as he wanted it to be. "You want me to stop talking and just fuck you like the others?"

The question landed in your chest and spread outward like a bruise.

"No," you whispered.

"Good." His hands dropped to your thighs. "Because I have plans."

He lifted you. Not carefully, not like you were fragile - like you were weightless and he'd been waiting hours to get his hands on you. Your legs wrapped around his waist automatically, ankles locking behind his back, and the friction of his hips against yours drew a sharp inhale from somewhere deep in your diaphragm.

"Hold on," he said.

The bedroom was dark except for the streetlight bleeding through the blinds. He didn't pause to turn on a lamp or dim the mood or any of the other careful choreography you'd come to expect from men who treated sex like a performance review.

He threw you onto the bed.

Your back hit the mattress with enough force to bounce once, twice, before he was over you, caging you in with his forearms on either side of your head. His weight pressed you into the sheets, and somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice noted that this should feel claustrophobic, feel threatening.

It didn't.

It felt like being held together.

"Too much?" he asked.

"Not enough."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Moya dерзкая devochka." My bratty girl.

The Russian unspooled something in your stomach. You'd heard him speak it before - on the phone with his mother, cursing at the heavy bag - but never like this. Never low and rough and meant only for you.

He sat back on his heels, knees bracketing your hips, and pulled his shirt over his head. The streetlight painted shadows across his torso, the ridges of muscle, the scar on his shoulder you'd never asked about. You'd seen him shirtless a hundred times at the gym. This was different. This was yours to touch.

You reached for him.

He caught your wrist. "Not yet."

"Khamzat-"

"I've been watching you for years." His free hand found the hem of your shirt, rucking it up inch by inch. "I've been watching you pretend for years. With those boys. Making the sounds they wanted. Moving how they expected." The shirt cleared your head and disappeared somewhere behind him. "You don't pretend with me."

"I wasn't-"

"Shh" His thumb traced the edge of your bra. "You think I didn't notice? You think I don't notice everything?"

The clasp snapped open. Cool air met your skin, and then his mouth was there, hot and wet and so focused on one specific spot that your back arched before you gave it permission. His tongue circled your nipple and your fingers fisted in the sheets.

No sound. You were too busy trying to remember how your lungs worked.

"Still with me?" He lifted his head.

"Unfortunately."

He laughed - a real one, the same laugh from the gym - and the sound vibrated through your chest. "You are impossible."

"So I've been told."

"I like impossible." His mouth moved lower, kissing the soft skin below your ribs. "Impossible is my favorite."

The rest of your clothes came off in stages. Your leggings, your underwear, each piece of fabric peeled away with a patience that bordered on torture. He didn't rush. He didn't fumble. He mapped your body with his hands and his mouth.

And his eyes, they catalogued every flinch, tense and involuntary twitch like he was memorising them.

By the time he settled between your thighs, your hands were in his hair and your heartbeat had migrated to your clit.

"Look at me," he said.

You did.

His thumb found you first. Not inside - just against. Just a slow, circular pressure that made your hips buck and your jaw go slack. He watched your face the whole time.

Adjusting the angle when your brow furrowed. Adding speed when your breathing stuttered.

"There," he murmured. "Right there. I feel you. You're-" He swallowed. "You're so wet. For me."

"Don't let it go to your head."

"Too late."

His mouth replaced his thumb and your spine became a question mark. Tongue flat and broad, then pointed, then something in between that made colours bloom behind your eyelids. Your thighs clamped around his head. He didn't stop. He groaned against you, and the vibration traveled upward, outward, everywhere at once.

The edge approached like a held breath. Your muscles coiled. Your toes curled. And then -

He stopped.

"What-" You pushed up onto your elbows. "Why did you-"

Khamzat lifted his head, beard glistening, and smiled the smile of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. "Because I can."

"I hate you."

"No, you don't." He crawled up your body, leaving a trail of kisses along the way - hip, rib, breast, throat. By the time he reached your mouth, you could taste yourself on his lips. "You hate that you don't hate me. It's very different."

His forehead pressed against yours. You felt him, hard and hot against your inner thigh, and the wanting was a physical ache that had nothing to do with performance.

"Ready?" he asked.

"You've been edging me for ten minutes. What do you think?"

"I think I want to hear you say it."

"Yes. God. Yes."

He positioned himself at your entrance - and stopped. Just the tip pushed inside. Just the suggestion of fullness. His eyes found yours in the dark.

You felt your mouth curve. The old habit, the reflex, the armor you'd worn so long it felt like skin. "Is it in?"

Silence. One beat. Two.

Then his head dropped to your shoulder and his laugh shook through both of you, unguarded and genuine. "Is it in," he repeated, the words muffled against your skin. "Is it - moya gryaznaya devochka." My dirty girl.

His hands hooked under your knees and pressed your legs back, folding you until your thighs met your chest and your legs rested on his shoulders. The new angle made you gasp. Made everything tighter, closer, more immediate.

"You want to know if it's in?" He shifted his hips, and the pressure intensified - just the tip, still just the tip. "You want to make jokes?"

"I was just-"

He thrust.

Deep. Full. All at once, in a single stroke that buried him to the hilt and forced the air from your lungs in a sound you didn't recognise as your own. Your hands flew to his shoulders. Your nails dug into muscle. He held there, motionless, letting you adjust, letting you feel every inch of him sheathed inside you.

"Now," he breathed, "Do you think it’s in now?"

You couldn't speak. Couldn't think. Could only feel - the stretch, the fullness, the pulse of your own blood in places you'd forgotten existed.

"There she is," he whispered. "There's my girl."

The stretch of him didn't fade. Didn't soften into something manageable. He stayed buried deep, motionless, his weight pinning your thighs to your chest, and every breath you took pressed you against him in places you didn't have names for.

"Feel it now?" His voice was sandpaper and smoke.

You nodded. Words had abandoned you somewhere between the first thrust and the way he was looking at you - like he owned this moment. Like he owned you.

"Good." He withdrew. Slow. Every ridge of him dragging against your walls. "Because I'm not done."

The emptiness lasted half a heartbeat before he drove back in - harder this time, a punctuating thrust that forced a sound from your throat, raw and unpolished. Your nails raked down his shoulders. He didn't flinch.

"Again," he said. "Don't hold it. Let me hear."

His rhythm built like a tide. Not the frantic, jackhammer pace you'd endured with other men - this was deliberate. Each stroke measured, angled, aimed at something inside you that made your vision flicker. His hips rolled, grinding pubic bone against your clit on every downstroke, and the double sensation was a fork in a socket.

Your head thrashed against the pillow.

"Look at me." His hand caught your jaw. Thumb pressing into one cheek, fingers into the other. "I said look at me."

You did. His face was inches away - sweat beading at his temple, lips parted, pupils blown so wide they ate the iris. The streetlight carved shadows across his cheekbones. He looked unhinged. He looked beautiful.

"You spend so much time in here." His thumb tapped your temple. "Thinking. Planning. Controlling everything." Another thrust. Deeper. "Not here. Here, I control. Here, you feel."

His hand left your jaw and traveled down your throat, not squeezing, just resting there - a reminder of the power he had and wasn't using. His hips didn't stop. The pressure built, a coiling in your pelvis that had nothing to do with performance and everything to do with the way he was watching you come apart.

"Khamzat-"

"I know." He shifted his weight, dropping one of your legs so he could brace himself on his forearm. The angle changed. The new depth punched a gasp from your diaphragm. "Right there. I can feel you tightening. Don't fight it."

"I'm not-"

"You're always fighting." His mouth found your ear. Teeth closed on the lobe. "Stop fighting me."

The bite sent a shock down your spine. Pain and pleasure braided together, indistinguishable. His tongue soothed the sting, then traveled lower - your jaw, your throat, the hollow where your collarbones met. He sucked hard enough to leave a mark.

Your hips bucked without permission.

A smile against your skin. "greedy girl."

He pulled out. Completely. The loss was a physical ache.

"What are you-"

"Turn over."

You hesitated half a second too long. His palm connected with the side of your hip - not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to sting. The sound echoed off the walls.

"Turn. Over."

You moved onto your stomach, knees finding purchase in the rumpled sheets. His hands guided your hips up, pressed your shoulders down. The position was primal. Vulnerable. Your cheek pressed into the pillow and you could smell him on the fabric - salt and cedar and something uniquely Khamzat.

"Beautiful." His palm smoothed over your ass, traced the curve of your spine, settled between your shoulder blades. "You have no idea how long I've thought about this."

"Years, apparently."

"You're still making jokes." Another smack, sharper this time, landing on the fullest part of your backside. The sting bloomed outward, heat spreading across your skin. "Still have that brain running."

"I can't -" Your voice cracked as he soothed the spot with his palm. "I can't just turn it off."

"Then I'll turn it off for you."

He entered you from behind. One thrust, smooth and deep and so different from the front - fuller somehow, reaching places that made your fingers claw at the sheets. His hands settled on your hips, grip tight enough to anchor.

The pace was rougher now. Skin slapping skin. His thighs against the backs of yours. Each impact pushed a sound from your chest, and you stopped editing them, stopped filtering, because there wasn't room in your head for anything except the feeling of him filling you again and again.

“Where’d all that attitude go?” he teased, and then his hand was in your hair, twisting the damp strands in his fist. He pulled. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to arch your back, to lift your head from the pillow, to change the angle so the next thrust hit somewhere that made stars burst behind your eyelids.

"Fuck."

"That's it." His voice was strained now, the control fraying at the edges. "That's the sound I wanted."

The coil tightened. Pressure building at the base of your spine, radiating outward in waves. Your thighs trembled. Your breath came in gasps.

"Close." The word was half-sob. "I'm-"

"Now." His free hand reached around, fingers finding your clit with surgical precision. "Cum now."

The command unlocked something. The pressure detonated - not a wave, not a crest, a white-hot bloom that started in your pelvis and radiated outward until your fingertips tingled. You heard yourself cry out, a sound you'd never made before, muffled by the pillow as your body clenched around him in rhythmic pulses.

He didn't stop. He fucked you through it, drawing out each spasm until you were twitching, oversensitive, trying to crawl away from the intensity.

"Where are you going?" His grip tightened and he held you in place. "I didn't say I was done."

"Too … much - "

"No." He pulled out, flipped you onto your back in one fluid motion. Your legs fell open, too heavy to control. "Not too much. You can take more. You've been starved." He was over you again, pushing your knees wide, lining himself up.

The second orgasm built faster. You felt it approaching like a freight train, no subtlety, just barreling toward you while he watched your face with those dark, hungry eyes. His thumb returned to your clit, painting circles that matched his thrusts.

"Give me another." His forehead pressed to yours. "I know you have it. I can feel you."

"I can't-"

"You can." His rhythm faltered, caught, steadied. "You will. Cum for me again."

He thrust deep and held there, grinding against your clit, and the second orgasm broke over you like a wave. Different from the first - deeper, rolling, pulling sounds from you that were closer to sobs than moans. Your nails scored his back. Your heels dug into his ass. You clenched around him so hard he groaned, a broken sound that vibrated against your throat.

When you came back to yourself, he was still hard. Still inside. But his movements had slowed to something almost tender - gentle rocking that kept you on the edge without pushing you over.

"Open your mouth."

You blinked up at him, brain lagging. "What?"

"Open your mouth."

Your lips parted as you stuck out your tongue. He leaned forward, eyes locked on yours, and let a thread of saliva fall from his mouth into yours. The act was filthy. Degrading. Intimate in a way that made your stomach flip.

"Swallow."

You did. His thumb traced your bottom lip, wiping away a stray drop.

"Moya gryaznaya devochka." The Russian was a growl now, nearly gone. "You have no idea what you do to me."

"Show me."

Something snapped behind his eyes. The control he'd been clinging to evaporated. His hips slammed into you, no rhythm now, no calculation - just need, raw and desperate. The headboard knocked against the wall. He buried his face in your neck and fucked you like he was trying to crawl inside your skin.

His hand fumbled between your bodies, found your clit and pressed hard.

"One more." It was a plea now, not a command. "One more. With me."

The third orgasm caught you by surprise. Not a detonation this time - a unraveling, a slow collapse that started in your chest and spread downward until you were shaking, clenching, pulling him over the edge with you. He groaned your name against your throat, thrust deep and held there, pulsing inside you while his whole body shuddered.

Silence.

Nothing but breathing. His weight settled onto you, heavy and warm and impossible to escape - not that you wanted to. Your fingers found their way into his hair, stroking through the damp strands.

"Well," you managed, voice wrecked. "That was adequate."

He snorted. The vibration shook through your chest. "Adequate. I just gave you three orgasms and you call it adequate."

"I've had better."

"Liar." He pushed up onto his elbows, looking down at you with a grin that was starting to resurface. "You couldn't even speak. You were making sounds like - what was it? - like a dying animal."

"I sounded nothing like a dying animal."

"A very sexy dying animal."

You shoved at his shoulder. He didn't budge. "I'm not stroking your ego."

"You don't have to." He pulled out slowly, and the sensation made you wince, oversensitive. "Your body already did."

He rolled onto his back beside you, chest still heaving. The streetlight painted stripes across his torso. You stared at the ceiling, trying to remember how your limbs worked.

"So," you said. "That's the big guns."

"That's the big guns." He turned his head, studying your profile. "And you felt it. All of it."

It wasn't a question. You didn't treat it like one. "I felt it."

Silence stretched. Comfortable. The kind of silence you'd only ever found with him.

"Your turn next time," he said.

You turned your head. "My turn?"

"To take control." His grin sharpened. "You think I didn't notice? The way you were pushing against me? The way your nails dug in?" He reached over, traced a line down your sternum. "You want to be in charge sometimes too. I can tell."

"Maybe."

"No maybe. I know." He caught your wrist, pressed a kiss to your palm. "But tonight, you needed someone else to drive. So I drove."

"And tomorrow?"

His smile was all teeth. "Tomorrow, you show me what you've got, crazy girl."

"Careful what you wish for, idiot."

"I never wish." He pulled you against his chest, arms locking around you like you might escape. "I plan."

The air in the American gym tasted different - processed and recycled, heavy with the sharp tang of rubber mats and industrial cleaner, a stark contrast to the crisp mountain air of Dagestan.

You stood near the heavy bags, a clipboard pressed against your chest, translating instructions for the Russian contingent.

You’re his interpreter. Contracted through the UFC’s athlete liaison office, chosen because your Russian carries the same mountain cadence his does, because your father’s family is from Sildi, and the vowels sit in your mouth the way they’re supposed to. You’re good at your job. You’re calm and you’re professional.

Khabib was in the center of the octagon, grappling with a partner twice his size. He moved with a terrifying efficiency, a landslide in human form, his muscles coiling and snapping as he executed a perfect takedown.

When the round ended, he peeled himself away from the canvas, sweat dripping from his nose onto the floor.

He didn't look at his coach. He looked at you.

His dark eyes, usually focused and narrow in the cage, widened slightly as they traced the line of your collarbone visible above your polo shirt. He wiped his brow with the back of a taped wrist, but his gaze didn't waver.

It was a heavy, physical weight, like a hand placed on your shoulder, searing through the fabric of your clothes. You felt the heat rise in your cheeks, a reaction that seemed to amuse him, though his expression remained stoic.

He was young, early twenties, and fresh from a world where women were veiled and distant. You were neither, and the sight of you seemed to short-circuit his discipline.

You walked over to interpret the coach's critique on his ground game, needing to bridge the language gap.

Up close, the heat radiating off his body was palpable.

He smelled like salt and exertion, a raw, masculine scent that made your head spin. He nodded at your words, staring intently at a spot just above your head, refusing to make direct eye contact even though he had been burning holes in you from across the room seconds before.

His Adam's apple bobbed violently when you spoke, a nervous tick betraying his stoic mask. You noticed the way he shifted his weight from foot to foot, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, the tape crinkling with the tension.

"Tell him to keep his hips down," the coach barked.

You relayed the message in Russian, watching Khabib closely.

He swallowed hard, his eyes darting down to the hem of your gym skort and snapping back up to your face. "I understand," he muttered, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in your chest.

He knew the rules of his faith, the lines he wasn't supposed to cross. But the way his pupils dilated, the way his chest heaved slightly more than the exertion demanded, told you everything you needed to know.

He was hungry, and he was fighting a war with himself that had nothing to do with the fight coming up in the cage.

Hours later, the gym had emptied out, the noise of slamming bodies fading into the hum of the air conditioning and sooner or later, the sweat soaked mats turned into soft carpets.

The folder in your hands is cool against your palms - visa extension forms, a revised training schedule, two press obligations that need his signature by morning.

You walked down the hallway of the hotel, the silence amplifying the sound of your footsteps. You stopped in front of his door, room 304, intending to just slide the paper underneath, send him a text of what needed to be done and leave. But the door was unlatched, pushed to - but not closed, leaving a gap of a few inches.

You knock. “Khabib? It’s me. I have the papers.”

The door clicks open before your brain catches up to your fingers, and you’re stepping inside with the folder clutched to your chest like a shield, the suite is dark except for the bathroom light bleeding through a half-open door, and you hear -

A sound.

Low. Guttural.

A man’s exhale catching on something that might be pain or the opposite, and then another sound right after it, wetter, rhythmic.

You know that sound.

You’ve been alone in your own apartment enough nights to recognise the slide of skin on skin, the particular cadence of a body chasing its own undoing.

Khabib was there, sitting on the edge of the mattress, his back to the door but reflected in the vanity mirror across the room.

He held his phone in one hand, the light casting harsh shadows across his sharp jawline and the short hair of his beard. On the screen, you saw the image - a photo of you from the gym's Instagram page, laughing at something someone had said.

His other hand was wrapped around his cock, pumping furiously.

You froze, your feet rooted to the carpet. You should have left. You should have knocked again - louder. But the sight of him - so disciplined, so devout, broken open by lust for you, was an electric current you couldn't pull away from.

His dick was thick and angry, the head glistening with pre-cum in the dim light. He stroked himself with a rough, desperate rhythm, his hips bucking off the mattress.

"Please," he whispered in Russian, the word falling from his lips like a prayer.

He imagined your hands on him instead of his own.

You watched his biceps flex, the veins in his forearms popping as he gripped his shaft tighter.

The guilt was written all over his face even as he chased his pleasure.

He glanced briefly at a small prayer rug rolled up in the corner of the room, then squeezed his eyes shut, his hand moving faster on his cock. The conflict was agonizingly beautiful - his body demanding release while his soul screamed in sin.

He pictured your soft fingers replacing his calloused grip, your thumb brushing over the sensitive slit. He groaned again, louder this time, his head falling back slightly as the pleasure coiled tight at the base of his spine.

Then a third sound - your name.

Not the professional version.

Not the clipped, two-syllable address he uses in meetings when he says “thank you” or “please explain this part.”

The soft one.

He breathes it into the empty room like a prayer he’s ashamed to be making, and your feet carry you inside an inch more without permission, toward the sliver of gold light.

His eyes are still squeezed shut. His lips are parted, the lower one glistening with spit, and every few seconds his mouth shapes your name again, the soft version, the secret one, and you watch his hips buck up into his fist as if he can’t help it, as if his body is doing this without his mind’s consent.

He doesn’t know you’re here.

“Ysht.” The word falls from his mouth, the soft curse of a man who was taught that desire is a test and failure is a choice.

His rhythm stutters.

He’s close. You can tell by the desperate pitch of his breathing, by the way his abdomen clenches and releases in visible waves, by how his thumb swipes over the slick head of his cock on every upward stroke with increasing urgency.

You should leave and close the door.

You should step back into the dark and pretend you never saw this.

But your body doesn’t move.

Instead you catalog details the way you catalog contract clauses: the dark hair trailing from his navel downward, damp with sweat. The coarse sound his throat makes when he thinks of your hands on him instead of his own.

The specific way his wrist rotates at the base of his shaft, tight, practiced, a motion he’s perfected in secret across years in hotel rooms like this one.

You watched from the shadows, your own body reacting to the explicit display. He was putting on a show, even if he didn't know the audience was there.

He gasps your name once more and comes in thick pulses over his own stomach, his own fist, and his whole body seizes with it, jaw going slack and for one breathless second his eyes open.

And find yours in the mirror.

Time accordions. Compresses

He’s staring at your reflection, and you’re staring at his.

His hand is still wrapped around his softening cock, and there’s evidence of what he just did painted across his abdomen, and his face …

His face is terror. Is shame. Is something rawer than both.

“Wait.” The word tears out of him in Russian, not English, which means his brain has retreated to its first language, its childhood language, the tongue he uses to speak to God. “Wait, I-”

But you’re already gone.

The folder hits the carpet outside his door and somewhere between Suite 312, and you don’t stop to pick it up. Your heels make percussive sounds throughout the corridors, down the stairs and against the concrete steps that match the hammering in your chest, and his voice chases you down all three flights -

your name, soft and ruined …

The night swallows you whole before you can decide whether what’s burning in your throat is horror or hunger.

Your phone buzzes one minute later. A text message. His name on the screen.

Please.

You don’t open it. You don’t delete it. You stand in the parking lot under the sodium-orange glow of the streetlamps, keys trembling in your hand, and the word sits there on your lock screen like a door that’s been left ajar.

… Please.

The parking lot is empty. The sky is too wide.

And somewhere on the third floor of the hotel behind you, is a man whose entire identity that’s built on discipline and denial is staring at his own reflection, wondering if he’s just destroyed the one thing he wanted most to keep.