Punching and Kissing Read online

  I could feel him watching me. Waiting. Giving me time.

  I was shaking. I couldn’t stop shaking.

  He didn’t say anything and he didn’t attempt to touch me. I think I would have screamed, if he had. He just crouched there next to me, guarding me. I don’t know how long I sat there—minutes, at least. Once, I heard someone approach down the corridor and saw his head snap up. “Fuck off,” he snapped, and the person scurried away.

  Except it didn’t sound like Fuck off. It sounded more like Feck off. He had an unfamiliar accent that reminded me of cold, unyielding rock.

  At last, I felt strong enough to try to stand. I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet, trying to pull my jeans up at the same time, knowing that whatever I did, he was going to catch a glimpse of my pussy.

  But instead, as he stood up with me, I saw him twist and look off down the hallway. He kept his eyes averted while I got my jeans pulled up and only looked back when all the rustling of clothes had ceased.

  Now that I was standing, I could see more of him—all the way up to his chest. But I still didn’t dare look up at his face. I was burning up inside with humiliation and raw, sick fear. I knew, on some level, that it was over and that I was safe, now. But I’d been shaken on a deeper level. I’d thought I’d known how shitty the world was, how terrifyingly, casually evil men could be, but I’d been wrong.

  I was safe, but I’d never feel safe again.

  And then he did something—he put his hand out towards me. A big, calloused hand, each finger easily twice the thickness of mine. He didn’t touch me with it. He just rested it in the air, an inch away from cupping my shoulder. He left it there, saying nothing.

  And I felt a warmth flow through me, expanding outward from that almost-touch. Reassurance that he wasn’t like them. That he’d never, ever hurt me.

  It shouldn’t have been possible from someone who’d just dealt such violence. But I knew it was true.

  I finally looked up at him. His hood was still up, his face hidden in shadow. His comforting hand was still almost touching my shoulder, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to see him, not a mystery savior.

  I stared up into the shadows, my eyes pleading.

  Slowly, reluctantly, he pulled back his hood just enough to show his face.

  Soft black hair cut short and messed up. His strong brow was creasing into a frown at having to reveal himself. But he didn’t look angry—not with me, at least. His gorgeous, electric blue eyes seemed to burn with concern. It was when he glanced down at the three men on the floor that I saw the look change to hatred.

  The dark stubble on his cheeks made his skin look even paler. Black hair, white skin, blue eyes and that strong brow...I knew that look, but I was way too messed up, right then, to place it.

  I saw the fight again in my head. It had been so quick! I’d seen plenty of fights in The Pit, but nothing like that. He’d hit with unstoppable power. It had been like watching the men get hit by a truck.

  I was still shaking, but it seemed to be dying down. I wrapped my arms around myself and that felt better. But his presence felt better still. It made no sense. I’d seen him destroy those three guys—I should have been terrified of him. But I felt...protected.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. That granite-hard accent again, brutal yet beautiful.

  He kept glancing down at the guy on the floor—the leader, the one who’d had me pinned against the wall. He was giving the guy such a look of pure, undiluted hate that I thought the floor was going to start bubbling and melting. The guy was still breathing—for now. But I realized with a lurch that whether he lived or died depended on my answer.

  It scared the hell out of me...but it was strangely reassuring, too. I nodded.

  “You’re crying,” he said tightly. The accent went with his looks, somehow, but my overloaded brain refused to process it. This time his gaze swept around all three of the fallen men, as if he was considering snapping each of them over his knee in turn. Ending them, so they could never hurt anyone again.

  “I’m okay,” I said. I pawed at my cheeks. I was crying. Big, fat tears of despair or relief—I didn’t know when they’d started, but they seemed to be stopping.

  He stared down at me, his eyes full of sadness. And he moved his hand back from my shoulder and offered it to me.

  I slowly took it, my small hand almost disappearing as he clasped it in his much bigger one. He drew me away from the bathroom, leading me down the corridor with a gentleness completely at odds with his strength. With every step we took, I breathed a little more easily. I knew that what had happened was going to live on in my nightmares for a long time—maybe forever—but I felt the strength returning to my body.

  As we moved through the dimly-lit corridor, I started to glance up at him. The sheer size of him, up close, was imposing. It wasn’t just that he was big; it was the hardness of him, as if he was carved from rock under his jeans and hooded top. He didn’t seem to have an ounce of fat on him but he probably weighed close to twice what I did. And I swore he wasn’t even breathing hard, as if beating those guys up had been nothing at all.

  “Thank you,” I said, because I realized I hadn’t said it yet.

  He shrugged awkwardly, glancing back at the three men on the floor.

  I was slowly taking in how gorgeous he was. The strong jaw and heavy brow, softened just enough by high cheekbones...and those eyes, pale blue and alive with a fierce, protective fire. I flushed at the memory of how I’d lusted after him when I’d seen him in the crowd. It was fate’s cruel trick—the man who’d seen me at my worst was the one I would have liked to see me at my best. As I blinked back the last of the tears, I pleaded silently, don’t remember me like this.

  He stared at me...and then he nodded. As if he could read my mind, as if we’d known each other for years. His grip was warm and comforting and, looking at where we joined, it felt...right, somehow. I didn’t feel as if I was in danger, despite everything I’d seen him do.

  “What’s your name?” I asked. “I’m Sylvie.”

  “Aedan,” he said reluctantly. And the name finally helped my brain make the connection between his looks and that flint-like accent. Irish. “You going back in there?” he asked, jerking his head down the hall towards the fight. “It’s not safe.”

  “I have to. My brother’s in the next fight,” I blurted.

  He stared at me, probably confused by the lack of family resemblance. “The blond fella? Koning?”

  I nodded, surprised that he actually knew our surname. Real names weren’t used much. The fight organizers gave people stage names to hype them up. Alec was The Dutchman. For Aedan to know his surname, he must be pretty close to the scene, more than just another spectator—

  Of course. He was a fighter, or maybe an ex-fighter. I didn’t recognize him, but then I’d only been going to the fights since Alec got involved.

  Aedan shook his head, looking even more troubled, now. The shake dislodged the hood and it fell the rest of the way, exposing his neck. He’d been….ruined there. It wasn’t just a simple, raised scar. I could see where something had cut deep and then twisted, tearing as it went. Then the wounds had been inexpertly stitched up and thick scars had formed, stretching down under his collar.

  I felt my heart tear in two. It wasn’t that it was ugly. It was that someone had done something so vicious and cruel to him. I wanted to tell him that it was okay, that it didn’t make him any less beautiful. But like an idiot, I just stood there, staring.

  He caught me looking and jerked his hood back up, throwing his face into shadow. I cursed myself, trying to think of a way to apologize, but the damage was done.

  “I gotta go,” he said, and dropped my hand.

  I felt something wrench, soul-deep. This was wrong. I knew, somehow, that he was important—maybe the most important person who’d ever walked into my life. But he was already walking, his powerful shoulders squared as if to fend off any attempt to stop him. With his hood up and his back turned,
he was suddenly closed off and distant.

  And alone.

  “Wait!” My hand was tingling where he’d held it. I grabbed it in my other hand, not wanting to lose that warm glow. “How do I find you again?”

  He kept walking. I could hear the sudden bitterness in his voice. “You don’t.”

  Aedan Feck. What the hell had I been thinking? Sure, I’d had to go pull those bastards off her, but I shouldn’t have started talking to her. If I really wanted the best for her, I had to stay the hell away from her.

  Even now, I could feel my hands unconsciously forming fists, my knuckles cracking as I thought about what they’d done. What they would’ve done, if I hadn’t followed her down that hallway.

  Her brother. Koning was her brother. Shit.

  I’d come to watch the fight because I needed to scratch that itch. Once, I’d been happy with that bloodlust inside me. I’d accepted it as part of me. But then I’d been woken up, in the ugliest way possible, to what I was. A thug. A beast. The more I fought, the worse I got. So I’d stopped, and now I hung around on the fringes of society instead. A non-life: working to keep me busy, fucking, a little drinking to take the edge off. Just whiling away the hours. I stayed away from my old life.

  And yet I still came to the fights.

  I realized I was rubbing at the scars on my neck, and pulled my hand away.

  There was a fight at The Pit most weeks, but I only came once a month or so. Probably why I hadn’t run into her before. Sylvie. My angel had a name, now. And fate was laughing at me. Her brother! I had to get out of there, now. I’d come to watch the fight, but suddenly I couldn’t stand to see it. Suddenly, it wasn’t just two guys in the ring. Suddenly, it was personal.

  I headed for the door. I had to fight the urge to look over my shoulder and try to catch another glimpse of her.

  Alec Koning was her brother. I’d been around the scene enough that I could peg a fighter’s chances just by looking at him. I’d seen Alec when he’d arrived and I knew his opponent, a guy called Morgan. “Ripper” Morgan.

  Sylvie’s brother was going to get annihilated.

  Sylvie

  The tiny, pipe-lined rooms where the fighters got ready were meant to be off-limits to the audience. But after what happened, I needed Alec.

  Going downstairs meant negotiating a rusting metal stairwell, sticky with spider webs and barely lit. Being somewhere dark, on my own, was the last thing I wanted right now. But the guys Aedan had fought weren’t getting up any time soon.

  The thought of Aedan made my heart skip in a way it hadn’t in a long time. Thoughts of boyfriends had been off my radar for so long that I’d almost forgotten what that felt like—that lift you get inside, when you think of his face, the little shiver that goes down your spine when you hear his voice.

  Crazy. Okay, sure, he’d helped me, but he’d ripped through those guys as if they were made of paper. He was obviously some kind of fighter, embedded deep into this world that Alec and I only fleetingly touched once a week. Not a guy anyone would want to get involved with. And yet....

  And yet I couldn’t stop thinking about him. The pain I’d seen in those pale blue eyes, the way he’d seemed so...protective of me. Before I’d driven him away by staring at his scars. Idiot!

  It was all irrelevant, anyway. I didn’t have room in my life for a boyfriend. Every day since Dad died had been about getting by, scraping together the money from my hotel maid’s job and Alec’s construction work and figuring which bills we could get away without paying. It had been getting harder, since both of us had our shifts cut.

  The only thing that had kept us going was Alec’s fighting. Rick, the guy who organized the fights, paid him a flat fee with a bonus if he won. The big money, of course, was in the gambling. The rich thought nothing of putting thousands on a fighter to win, or to draw first blood. But we never saw any of that. We didn’t have the money to put any bets on ourselves, even if we’d dared to risk it.

  Tonight, Alec had to win. He’d won every time so far, thank God, and hadn’t gotten too badly hurt. Tonight’s win would give us enough money that maybe it could be the last one. It would buy us some breathing room, at least. I could job hunt and maybe find something better paid than the maid job. Alec could do some of those community college courses and move up a little at the construction site—learn wiring or plumbing or something.

  If he won.

  I emerged into the cramped little room where Alec sat. With his olive-green tank top and cut-off jeans, he could have been some guy chilling on a beach. That’s what he should have been doing, instead of risking his life to pay our bills. Great cheekbones, blond hair—my brother had it all going on. He should have been a lifeguard or a DJ or something, knee-deep in adoring women. Not sitting there in this overheated tomb, maybe minutes away from— My mind rebelled against it. Please let him be okay, tonight, I offered up to whoever was listening.

  Alec turned and his face lit up as he saw me. “Hey!” Then he frowned and jumped to his feet. He must have been able to see I’d been crying. “What happened?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. Some guys shook me up.”

  His face hardened into a snarl. “Who? Where?” He glanced upstairs, ready to run up there.

  I pulled him into a hug. “It’s all over,” I told him. “They’re dealt with.” I squeezed him close. “Somebody came along and beat the crap out of them.”

  “Who?” His voice was surly, now. I knew what it was—he felt guilty he hadn’t been there, and now he needed to know every detail.

  I squeezed him harder. “It’s okay. Just some Irish guy. I think he fights here, or he used to.”

  Very slowly, he stepped back so that he could see me properly. “Irish?”

  I nodded, confused by how shaken he looked.

  “Not Aedan O’Harra? The one with the scars?”

  Now I stepped back. “Yeah.”

  His eyes had gone wild. “Sylvie, stay away from that guy.”

  “Because he used to fight here? You fight here!”

  He shook his head. “He didn’t just fight here. He fucking demolished anyone who set foot in the pit. He’s the meanest son of a bitch anyone’s ever seen. A legend.” He lowered his voice and took my hands. “Sylvie, he’s a real bastard. I heard—“

  At that moment, someone else descended the stairs. I recognized the footsteps all too well: unhurried steps in expensive leather shoes and an accompanying clang and rattle of metal. My mind had been spinning with what Alec had told me, but suddenly raw fear pushed all that aside. I felt my shoulders tense up. Alec squeezed my hands. But I could see that he was just as scared as me.

  “Well,” said a voice from the doorway. “Isn’t this cute?”

  Rick scared the crap out of me. Rick scared the crap out of everyone.

  Once, about twenty years ago, Rick had probably been an okay kid. Then—the story goes—his dad beat him so bad his leg didn’t heal right. Little Rick got a walking stick. And maybe from the pain in his leg, maybe from his dad’s cruelty, he developed a mean streak. The sort of kid who beat stray dogs with a car aerial until, exhausted and terrified, they’d fight one another.

  Twenty years on, he’d moved up to people.

  He got through most days, from what I’d seen, by downing coffee and snorting coke. It had left him thin, his eyes bulging from his skull. Not a guy who’d win in a fight. So he’d traded his wooden walking stick for an aluminum cane, vicious as a baseball bat but less conspicuous on the street. It was a gaudy thing with a crystal on top as big as my fist. He kept it polished and he didn’t use it all the time when he walked. He preferred to trail it along walls. It was the cane, banging against the metal staircase that I’d heard as he approached.

  Rick’s favorite way of punishing someone was to get them down on the ground and then beat an arm or a leg with the cane until the bones were powder. And this was the man who basically owned my brother, in the kind of backroom “management” deal that involves no paper or i
nk, only handshakes and threats.

  Alec could easily have taken him in a fight—maybe even with the cane. But Rick never went anywhere without his protection, two ex-heavyweight boxers called Al and Carl.

  We turned. Rick was in his favorite gray suit with a blood-red shirt and silver tie. He always dressed classy, as if that could disguise what he was. His two bodyguards were right behind him.

  “Am I interrupting something?” asked Rick. “That how it works in Holland? Brothers and sisters get....close?” He leered at us.

  I wanted to kill him. Alec was the one thing I had left in the world. How could Rick take something so good and twist it into something perverted? I shook my head.

  That was a mistake. With Rick, there never was any right answer. Whatever you did, it would end in pain or humiliation.

  “I don’t mind,” said Rick. “If you want to kiss him for good luck. A good, big kiss on the lips.”

  I heard Alec’s intake of breath. Normally, he tried to keep me away from Rick and I was happy to oblige. Coming down here had been a mistake.

  I shook my head again.

  “Rick—” started Alec. He tried to keep his voice level, but I could hear the anger there.

  “WHAT?” screamed Rick and slammed his cane against the pipes beside Alec. Everyone, even his two bodyguards, jumped. The sound reverberated around the room for long seconds. God, his pupils were enormous. He was really coked up. “She should kiss someone, for good luck.” He wasn’t going to let go of the idea. “Maybe she should kiss me.” And his thin lips twisted into what he called a smile.

  Alec was standing close enough to me that I could feel him tense up. I knew he was getting ready to fly at Rick and I knew how that would end. But the idea of kissing Rick made me sick.

  Rick stepped forward. Alec squared up to him. Shit! Rick was going to wind up beating him up, before the fight had even started. I had to do something.

  Before any of them could stop me, I stepped forward and grabbed Rick’s hand where it held his cane. His skin was cold and clammy, very different to Aedan’s warm touch. Rick’s eyes widened in surprise and I thought he was going to hit me. But then I gently lifted his hand, and the cane with it, towards my face, and he relaxed as he saw what I had in mind.