Caged

Hudson "The King" Kingston is a cage fighter with a bout approaching and an injury picked up while shielding the narrator from harm. She agrees to stay with him for a few days and help him through it, since they have been close friends for a long time.

Their friendship has always run on flirting and teasing, with one rule neither has broken: they never cross the line. Spending days under one roof starts to loosen that rule, and the narrator notices the shift in how they treat each other.

She wants Hudson to be her first, and she says so only to herself. Hudson has never been a relationship guy, and she will not accept anything less than a real relationship.

The story is a friends-to-lovers romance told in first person by the woman, with a cocky, tattooed fighter as the love interest and a gym-and-cage backdrop. The heat builds from a long-standing tension. The question it turns on is whether a woman who would trust Hudson with her life can trust him with her heart.