Straight in the Sheets

An MM Rivals-to-Lovers Sports Romance
by Chase Power

Free with Kindle Unlimited

Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Rivals to Lovers, Forced Proximity, Grumpy/Sunshine, He Falls First, Control/Surrender, Competence Kink, Touch Starved, Only Soft For You

Two fighters. One corner. The fight they can’t win is the one they’re losing to each other.

Cade Mercer is the number two middleweight contender with one shot left at the title. At thirty-one, his window is closing. He’s built his entire life on discipline, solitude, and the systematic elimination of every variable that could compromise his focus. Eight weeks at a remote training camp is supposed to be the final push. What he doesn’t plan for is the variable he can’t eliminate.

Nico Reyes is the twenty-four-year-old rising contender who’s been studying Cade since he was nineteen. He’s loud, relentless, and built like a weapon designed specifically to get under Cade’s skin. He came to camp to test himself against the best. He didn’t come to fall in love with the man he might have to fight.

Every grappling drill is foreplay. Every sparring round is a power negotiation. Every night separated by a wall thinner than the distance between their mouths. When the tension finally breaks — in a training barn, against a wall, with wrapped fists and no more excuses — what starts as a collision becomes a pattern, then a need, then something neither of them has a system for.

But the cage is coming. Their divisions are converging. The fight world is watching. And two ranked middleweights who share a bed will eventually have to share a ring — where love is a liability and control is the only weapon that matters.

You’ll love this book if you enjoy:

✅ Rivals to lovers with real athletic competition
✅ Forced proximity in remote training camp isolation
✅ Grumpy/sunshine with a slow-burn detonation
✅ He falls first (and fights it every step of the way)
✅ 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno heat — graphic, explicit, emotional
✅ The “control freak learns to let go” arc of your dreams
✅ MMA setting where every fight is foreplay
✅ HEA guaranteed

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⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains explicit sexual content (graphic MM scenes), strong language, sports violence (MMA sparring/fighting), and depictions of emotional vulnerability and fear of intimacy. Intended for readers 18+.

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Chapter One: Arrival

The camp sat at seven thousand feet, carved into a ridge that looked like God had taken a knife to the mountain and called it architecture. Pine trees so thick the road disappeared behind me within thirty seconds of the last turn. No cell towers. No gas stations. No excuse to leave.

Perfect.

I parked the truck, killed the engine, and sat in the silence for ten seconds. Not meditating. Not centering myself. Just listening to what nothing sounded like.

I grabbed my bag from the bed of the truck. One duffel. Clothes, wraps, mouthguard, a book I’d probably never open, and a photo of my mother I kept in the side pocket because sentiment was the one weakness I allowed myself.

The main building was a converted lodge—timber frame, wraparound porch, industrial kitchen visible through a window. A whiteboard near the entrance listed arrivals and room assignments in Coach Ray Delgado’s rigid block handwriting.

MERCER, C. — Cabin 3, Room A

Next to it:

REYES, N. — Cabin 3, Room B

I didn’t recognize the name. Filed it, moved on.

The cabins were spread along a gravel path behind the main building, each one a squat wooden box with two bedrooms, a shared bathroom, and walls thin enough that I could hear the plumbing groan when I turned the faucet on to test it. I’d slept in worse. I’d slept in much worse, actually, back when I was fighting in regional shows for five hundred bucks a pop and crashing in my car between weigh-ins because motels cost money I didn’t have.

That was nine years ago. Eighteen wins, three losses, twelve knockouts, and one busted marriage ago. Different life. Same hunger.

Preparation wasn’t obsession. Preparation was respect for the thing that was trying to kill you.

Ray Delgado was fifty-eight, built like a fire hydrant, and had trained more champions than any coach in the sport. “Your sparring rotation’s set,” he said. “Got you with Okafor for the first two weeks. And a young middleweight. Reyes. He’s raw, but he’ll push your pace.”

“Don’t know him.”

“You will. Ten and one, seven finishes. Hits like he’s got something to prove.” Ray finally looked up. “Kid came up through regionals. No silver spoon. No big gym. Just hands and a chip on his shoulder the size of this mountain.”

“He’ll make you better,” Ray said. “That’s why he’s here.”

The screen door of Cabin 3 banged open at approximately five-thirty that evening, followed by a duffel bag being thrown—not set, thrown—onto the porch, followed by a voice on a phone call that carried through the thin walls like the walls were a suggestion rather than a structure.

“—no, I’m here, it’s fine, it’s like summer camp for people who get punched in the face—”

Laughter. Loud, easy, genuine. The kind of laugh that took up space without apology.

That was when I saw him clearly for the first time. Nico Reyes was five-eleven, maybe one-eighty-three, built lean and explosive—the kind of body that didn’t look dangerous until it moved. Golden-brown skin, black hair longer on top than any serious fighter should keep it, a scar through his left eyebrow. Tattoo sleeve on his left arm, geometric, half-finished.

His eyes reached me. Held. Not half a second. A full two. Maybe three.

He stood up, grabbed his plate, and walked down the length of the table toward me. “Cade Mercer,” he said. Not a question. “Ghost.”

“I’ve watched all your fights. The Okafor KO in round two—that left hook to the body was the cleanest thing I’ve ever seen in a cage.”

“You always this chatty?” I asked.

“You always sit down where you’re not invited?”

“I invite myself everywhere. Saves time.” He leaned forward. “You’re the gatekeeper. No offense. You’re the guy everyone has to go through. I want to go through you.”

The phrasing hit differently than he intended. Or exactly as he intended. I held his eyes. Brown, almost black in the lodge lighting.

“You’ll get your chance,” I said.

“Looking forward to it.”

The wall between our rooms vibrated with bass. He’d turned on music. Eight weeks. Fifty-six days. One wall.

I rolled over and faced the window instead.

It was going to be a long camp.

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Two Corners — Fight Night — A scene TOO HOT for Amazon

December fourteenth. The arena. Cade fights for the title. Nico fights on the same card. The hotel room after the fights. Blood still on their knuckles. Adrenaline still in their veins. The filthiest, most tender, most victorious sex scene in the series.

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