The fighter an mm romanc.., p.1
The Fighter: An MM Romance, page 1
THE FIGHTER
AN MM ROMANCE
VIV ALLEN
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2026 by Viv Allen
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.
Cover design by Artscandare Book Cover Design
First edition May 2026
DEDICATION
For anyone who has a hard time looking in the mirror, I hope you find your Con.
CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Fighter is a high-heat MM romance, and while the love story between Tav and Con is not too dark, there are some dark themes in the book that I wanted to make readers aware of. Please see the blurb and list below.
A one-night stand turns into more when both men discover they have a forbidden connection…
Tav
I haven’t told anyone my real name in years. To protect my sister, I fight in brutal illegal matches run by the city’s top crime lord. With every punch, with each crack of bone, my soul has been carved out until all that remains is a husk—until I meet a fancy suit in a bar who takes me to his home and then takes me apart. Conrad touches me like he knows me, and he makes me remember what it’s like to be something other than empty.
Conrad
As soon as I see the shadowed form in the corner of the bar, I know I have to have him. All it takes is one night with the mysterious man with two-toned eyes before he’s invading my every thought. But Tav is cagey. He has secrets. And although he doesn’t know it yet, I’m going to discover every single one, and then I’m going to make him mine.
Tav says his life isn’t his own, but I’m not giving up. I have secrets too, and I’ll use all of them to make this city pay for every spilled drop of Tav’s blood.
Triggers and story elements:
*Millionaire x Fighter
*Black Cat/Golden Retriever
*One Night Stand into More
*D/s elements
*Bondage
*Toys
*Violence (not between the MCs)
*Some torture (and off-page description of past torture)
*Reference to a drug overdose death
*References to sex work
*Hurt/Comfort
*Cock warming
*Cum play
*No non-con or dub-con
*Somnophilia (with prior consent)
*”I’ll burn the world for you.”
*A very happy ending
The Fighter takes place in Detroit, but all mentions of buildings, neighborhoods, and suburbs are fictional.
AI Use: No generative AI was used in the production of this book. I sweated every word out of my pores.
ONE
Conrad
The large man sitting in the corner of the bar was more shadow than human, a hulking form that bled into the rest of the darkness. My curiosity took over my better sense, and I kept glancing his way to see if he’d moved. If someone joined him. To get any sort of clue about who he was, why he was there, and whether he’d welcome company.
I usually avoided clubs and bars like this, preferring to meet my temporary partners through websites where preferences and kink were laid out like a menu. Order up. But Benjamin had recently purchased Collar, a once popular gay nightclub that was past its prime, and he wanted my opinion on which improvements required priority.
As I shifted my weight and my shoes stuck to the floor, sticky with unknown fluids, my first inclination was to burn it down and start over, an opinion I didn’t think he’d appreciate. I sighed and looked around for my friend, but he was nowhere to be seen. Probably back in his office, christening it with that bartender he’d been making eyes at all night.
I took a sip of my whiskey, grimacing at the watered-down taste since the ice had melted an hour ago. The music was more trance than house music, and the bodies on the floor around midnight were well on their way to not remembering a damn thing. I was sober as a teenager. I’d come from my office where I’d been working late and still wore my suit and long coat to combat the Michigan winter. I’d been here an hour and still hadn’t taken it off because removing my coat seemed like an admission I planned to stay, and I didn’t plan to stay. Well, I hadn’t, until I’d spotted the man in the corner.
He remained very still as he hunched over the end of the bar. A shot sat in front of him, untouched. Getting laid was not on my agenda tonight, but something about the man’s posture, his presence, drew me to his side, my whiskey left behind on the scarred bar top. Heading his way wasn’t even a conscious decision on my part. I was minding my business alone, and then suddenly I was at his side, my body angled to his.
I didn’t touch him, unsure he wanted to be touched, although I felt like he did. Maybe I was imagining it, but something in his posture felt needy.
His shoulders were massive, his large hands clasped in front of him on the bar. I let my eyes drift down, to his tree trunk legs. His knees were bent, large, booted feet propped up on the rung of his barstool.
The tension poured off him in waves, nearly sending me into a second-hand anxiety attack. A smarter man would walk away, leave him to sit in his dark, brooding corner. But I couldn’t take my eyes off his sharp cheekbones, his heavy brow and jutting jawline covered in stubble. God, he was half-Neanderthal, and what I wouldn’t have given right then to mold that power beneath my hands.
His biceps pulsed, and while I was thinking about how they were the size of my head, he turned his, meeting my gaze with a powerful intensity. There was a light behind me, and it illuminated his face. I couldn’t see his eyes at first, his prominent brow throwing them in shadow, but then he lifted his chin slightly, and I was struck by the uniqueness of his eyes. They were two-toned — one pure brown, the other one a lighter brownish green. His hair was dark brown, way due for a haircut, and a couple strands brushed the pale skin of his forehead. Long, dark lashes blinked once.
“What’s your name?” My own question surprised me, because typically, Wanna fuck? would have been first, but something in my gut craved to know who this man was. A muscle in his jaw ticked, and he began to turn his head away from me. My hand shot out, nearly without a conscious thought on my part, and I grasped his chin, hard, and wrenched his face back toward me.
The man could have strangled me with his bare hands or crush my skull with one swipe of a massive paw. This was a risk, but I couldn’t seem to walk away, and I needed this man’s attention. His focus.
He didn’t pull away, he didn’t struggle, but his nostrils flared, his eyes wide, the whites showing around those two-toned irises. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched his hands curl into tight fists on the bar top.
“What’s your name?” I said again.
His lips parted, and I thought he was going to tell me to fuck off, to go to hell. I thought he was going to punch me in the kidneys so I’d be pissing blood for a week. Instead, he said one word in a voice so low, it was a rumble in my gut. “Tav.”
Later, much later, I’d think about that decision, for him to tell me his name. I’d think about what kind of courage that took, the trust he’d placed in me, a stranger.
For now, I took it as a gift. “Tav.”
He didn’t answer me, his eyes shifting to take in my face.
“I’m Conrad.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. His entire body was trembling, but he still hadn’t pulled away from where I gripped his face.
I let my eyes shift down, slowly, so he could see where I intended to look. And even in the dim light, the bulge in his jeans was unmistakable.
I leaned forward, my own cock straining in my pants. His body swayed back slightly, as if he was unsure what I planned to do. I placed my lips at his ear. “My car and driver are out front. A gray Bentley. I’m going to go out there now, and I’m going to wait. If you join me in the next ten minutes, then I will take you to my apartment. And if you come back with me, you’ll be on your knees for most of the night either with my cock in your mouth, or in your ass. You will beg and beg, and you will come when I allow it.”
A shudder wracked his huge body and the side of his thigh pressed against the front of my pants, as he widened his legs.
“And when we’re through,” I continued, “My driver will take you home.” I pulled back from him, dropping my hand from h is face. I glanced at the clock over the bar and repeated. “Ten minutes.”
I turned on my heel and walked toward the front door of the club. With every step, I wanted to turn around, check to make sure he was following me. I wanted to go back and beg him to come with me, to tell him that I’d changed my mind, and he could have more time.
But even in those couple minutes I’d been in Tav’s presence, I knew he didn’t want a man like that, one who changed his mind, one who wavered. He’d liked how I’d gripped his chin, how I made him look me in the eye. He’d liked the demands I’d made. So I walked out into the cold Detroit night, not looking over my shoulder once.
Nik sat in the front seat of my Bentley. I knocked on his window and he lowered it, his dark blonde eyebrows raised expectantly, ice blue eyes steady. My breath puffed white in front of my mouth. “We’ll leave in ten minutes,” I said, “With or without a guest.”
He gave no reaction other than a nod.
Nik Alenin was more than my driver. He was a cold, loyal, Russian bastard, and I loved him for it. He knew me better than anyone, sometimes even better than Ben, who’d I’d known longer.
I opened the back door and stepped in, then settled into the backseat, staring sightlessly out of the shaded windows. The partition was up, separating me from Nik. He couldn’t hear or see me, and I was spared from the history audiobooks he listened to in order keep himself busy. If I had to hear about the civil war one more time in a male narrator’s monotone, I was going to lose it. Crazy fucker was obsessed with America’s wars.
I checked my watch. Seven minutes.
I fidgeted.
I never fidgeted, confident that bed partners were a dime a dozen. If one declined, I’d find another. It was how I’d lived for so long, I couldn’t remember another way.
But Tav… those eyes, that body, that coiled energy simmering below his skin… it all told me that he was not interchangeable with any other man tonight. It was either him, or I went home alone. He was different, and wanting license to his body and his pleasure for a night was enough to make me lost my cool.
Almost.
I checked my watch again. Five minutes.
I tapped my foot and shifted in my seat, the leather squeaking under me. This was foolish. Tav wasn’t coming. I should knock on the partition and tell Nik to step on it, to get home.
Tav. Was that his real name? Could it be short for something? He seemed like a one-word man. But then, so was I usually.
Three minutes.
Ben and his fucking club. I was going to tell him I thought it was a shithole. Maybe I’d help invest in fixing the place up. I needed that corner gone where I had seen Tav, that was for sure. I knew I’d never be able to look there again without seeing his shadow and wondering if it was him.
One minute.
Fuck. Fuck. I dug my fingers into my thigh so tightly, I knew there’d be marks. Maybe I’d read him wrong. He could have been there for any number of reasons, and he might not even be into men. The shadows could have been playing tricks on me, that bulge in his pants not really there.
With a second to go, I raised my fist to knock on the partition, but before my knuckles could make contact, the door to the Bentley opened, cold air rushed into the back seat, and Tav’s body slid beside mine. He shut the door behind him, those multi-colored eyes darting around the cabin of the car, as if he was cataloguing everything.
I let him, wanting him to be comfortable. Because I was about to make him very uncomfortable, very soon. No way was he going to do what I was going to ask him to do if he didn’t feel safe.
“Seatbelt,” I said, buckling mine.
Once Tav had secured his, I knocked on the partition, and the car began to move. I flicked a finger toward the shaded glass. “My driver can’t see or hear anything. Okay?”
His palms lay flat on his thighs, and he turned his head to face me. After a slight hesitation, he nodded. A flash of something raw flitted over his face, and then he locked it down.
I trusted my instincts with people. It was how I stayed alive growing up in a shitty Detroit suburb. It was how I kept Benjamin and Devlin alive when we’d sneak out of our trailer park and steal cigarettes. It was how I stayed alive now, when sometimes the weight on my shoulders felt unbearable. And I could tell that Tav needed a focus. Something to do. Something he was ordered to do. “So, you are here in my car, and we’re going to be at my apartment in about fifteen minutes. By getting in this car, I’m assuming you want to do those things I mentioned in the club.” I didn’t phrase it as a question.
He didn’t answer, but his eyes held mine, so I took that as confirmation and continued. “Tonight, you obey me. You don’t have to call me master or sir or any other title. Conrad is fine. But you obey me. I own your body until I release you in the morning.”
He again didn’t answer. Which didn’t unnerve me, really. I preferred the quiet ones.
“If at any time I ask you to do something you don’t like. Something that you aren’t comfortable. Any time I take something too far, you say red, and I’ll stop. It’s as simple as that. Do you understand? I need you to answer vocally now, please.”
His hands fisted on his thighs, and the muscles in his neck strained. Those were the only indication of his nerves and anxiety. “I understand.”
“And you’ve been with a man before?” I thought I knew the answer, but I needed to be sure.
He nodded.
Good. I let my gaze drift down his broad chest, and I smiled when I saw his hard nipples through his thin shirt. He wore a heavy leather jacket but had left it unzipped. At the club, I thought it had been a fashion statement, but now I noticed that the zipper was broken. The elbows were scratched and worn. With every breath, his stomach expanded and contracted, and I saw the firm ridges of muscles in his abdomen. He was hard in his jeans, the outline clearly visible as it curved toward me. “Take out your cock, Tav.”
His eyes flickered. A quick jerk to the right at the partition separating us from Nik. I tilted my head. “I already told you he can’t see her hear us. I realize we just met, but I’m going to need you to trust me when I tell you something.”
He swallowed.
“I’ll ask again. One more time, and if you don’t want to do it, I’ll stop the car, and you can get out. No questions asked. Now, take out your cock.”
His fingers slowly uncurled on his thighs until his palms lay flat on the denim. He didn’t take his eyes off my face as he flicked open the button of his jeans and slowly slid the zipper down. He tugged down the snug black briefs until his erect cock was freed and slapped against his belly.
He was thick, very thick, and quite long, not that I was surprised because his entire body was huge. He was cut, his tip already weeping with precum.
“You like orders,” I said as a statement.
His hands were back on his thighs. “Sometimes.”
I liked his voice. For such a large man, it was startlingly quiet. It had a breathy quality to it that I felt down my spine and into my balls.
“Is now one of those sometimes? From me?”
He answered this one quickly. “Yes.”
That set my mind at ease. This wasn’t fun at all if he wasn’t into it. “Stroke yourself,” I said. “Gently. You won’t come.”
He didn’t take his eyes off my face, particularly my lips, as he reached down and gripped his shaft. I stuck my tongue out, wetting my lips slowly, giving him a little reward for obeying. His breath caught, and his hand sped up a bit.
“Let go.” I was cruel, I knew. But I had plans.
With a soft hiss, he released himself immediately. I reached below my seat and pulled out a black box. I sifted through the contents, finding what I was looking for, then placed the box back where I got it. I held up a leather cock ring, and Tav’s eyes widened slightly. His cheeks grew ruddy, and what I wouldn’t have given to fuck him right then, seeing how excited he was.
“I’m putting this on you, and it will remain on until I take it off. I don’t know your endurance, so I think this is best.”
He nodded, gaze still on the cock ring in my hands. And I had to admit, as excited as he was to wear this, I was just as excited to put it on him. The trust he was placing on me, to wrap this around his genitals without hurting him, was astounding.
