Punching and Kissing (13 page)

But I couldn’t hit him.

Not even once.

It wasn’t like hitting the bag, or hitting pads, or even the times we’d sparred and he’d told me to try to tap one of his gloves, or his side, or the side of his head. This was me, actually trying to land a punch on him.

“Come on,” he grunted. “Come at me.”

I shuffled closer. Backed off. Shuffled closer again. I could feel my heart racing.
Hit him?!
I didn’t want to hit him. He was...
Aedan.
There wasn’t anyone I wanted to hit less.

“Forget it’s me,” he told me sharply, as if reading my mind. “Pretend it’s someone else, if you have to.” His jaw tightened. “Make me some guy who’s hurt you.”

My mind went back to The Pit. The scrape of the concrete wall against my naked ass. That bastard’s hand, cupping my sex.

I flew at him, aiming hooks at his kidneys. He blocked one and deflected the other, but had to step back a little, lowering his guard. I knew what I had to do next—go for the face. I launched a jab at that gorgeous, hard jaw—

And my fist skirted wide. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hit him and I couldn’t pretend he was someone else. Not when I felt like this about him.

His mouth drew back into a snarl. “Come on!”

I went for the head again, but my hits were half-hearted. Hitting him was like trying to injure myself—my brain just refused to do it.

“You better come at me,” he grunted. “Because I’m going to come at you.”

And then he did.

Aedan

Hit her.

I’d known what I had to do ever since I’d climbed into the ring. Hell, I’d known it the moment she’d come to me on the docks. But that didn’t mean I could do it. Moments ago, I’d been staring at her as she tried to use her teeth to do up her glove, so feckin’ cute I wanted to weep. Now I had to hit her?!

She probably thought I was taking it easy on her, letting her warm up. The truth was, I couldn’t lay into her. I waited for her to hit me, hoping that once the fight got going, it would be easier to open up on her. But she didn’t want to hit me either—I could see it in her eyes. I tried to goad her into it, even tried to get her to think of me as some guy who’d hurt her, which made my guts twist. But any anger I roused in her was gone in a second. She couldn’t follow through.

And that meant it was time to hit her.

I waded into it, knocking aside her punches and getting closer, pushing her back towards the ropes. She blocked the first two jabs I threw at her but the third one sent her off balance. She staggered back, her guard down.

Now.
I had to show her what happened when she dropped her guard. If she never got hit, she’d never get over her fear.

I raised my fist. My guts knotted. Jesus, she looked so beautiful, so soft and delicate.
How do guys do this? Why would anyone want to break something this amazing?

I had to.

I hit her with one good blow to the side of the head, making sure it landed on the padded helmet. Maybe half my usual power. She staggered sideways and I saw the flash of shock in her eyes.
Feck.

I was back to being a monster again. Or maybe I’d never stopped.

But it had worked. She’d had that first hit—I’d popped her cherry and now she knew it wasn’t going to kill her. She came at me again, pushing me back with a good combo. I relaxed a little and got in a quick little hook, signaling it well so that she’d be able to block it.

But her eyes were on mine. Distracted, she lifted her arms out of the way...just as my fist swung into her side. I felt the hardness of ribs against my glove...and she went down.

Sylvie

Pain exploded in my side, red-hot fire that turned to numbing cold. My whole left side seemed to go weak. Just being upright was too painful, so my legs crumpled under me and dumped me to the mat. The shock of hitting it started the pain all over again.

My head bounced off the mat, that sudden, shocking slam, like being a kid again and slipping on the bouncy castle. If it had been the concrete floor of The Pit, my skull would have cracked open.

The bright lights above me were blocked out by Aedan. He came down on one knee beside me, his face contorted with horror.

He’s down on one knee,
thrilled some far-off part of my brain.

“
Are you okay?”
he yelled.

I frowned. What did those words mean? I wondered if maybe I’d hit my head. I thought I remembered something like that happening.

Buttercups.

“Are you okay?”
he yelled again. And then his voice seemed to become clearer and the lights didn’t seem quite so bright and I stopped thinking about buttercups and—

I blinked at him and nodded.
Christ,
my side hurt.

He ripped off his gloves. Then his hand was sliding up under my t-shirt, feeling my ribs. There was the pounding ache of a bruise, but I didn’t feel the sharp pain that would mean broken bones. His hand moved higher, probing gently.

I locked eyes with him. I was lying very still, getting used to the feeling of the rubbery mat under my back. I knew moving would hurt.

His hand reached the top of my ribcage and he stopped there. He let out a sort of pant of exasperation. “You were meant to block that, you feckin’ idiot!” But his eyes didn’t say
angry.
His eyes were terrified...and relieved.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

We stared at one another. He was looking at me the way a mother looks at the child she’s just dragged out of the path of a truck. Then, as the seconds passed, the fear and relief died away. And....

Both of us seemed to become aware of where his hand was at the same time. His palm was under my t-shirt, right at the top of my ribcage. The edge of his hand was pushed up against the underside of my breast, lifting it a little. The heat of him throbbed into me.

And then suddenly his other hand was cupping my cheek, the tips of his fingers in my hair, and his mouth was coming down on mine.

Sylvie

It happened so fast that I only just had time to close my eyes. A firework went off in my brain, its explosions spelling out
YES!

His lips were hard and hot, capturing mine and pushing them wide, demanding I open. I’ve never experienced such a moment of going weak as when those lips hit mine. It was as if two week’s worth of pent-up male frustration poured into me. All those times he’d looked at me. All those times one of us had pushed the other away.

I opened, feeling weirdly perfumed and soft under his aggression. Yet when his tongue touched me, it didn’t plunge in. His lips held mine braced open, my mouth vulnerable, while the tip of his tongue just licked around the very inside of my lips, every hot contact sending a scorching shudder through my body. I writhed under him, the throbbing in my side melting into insignificance as the pleasure soaked down through me. His knee was between my legs and—God, I could feel the hot, hard tip of him pressing against my thigh through our clothes. Throbbing. Ready.

His tongue finally met mine, dancing with it, both of us panting together as things slid inexorably in one direction. His hand brushed down my ribs, going lightly over the place it hurt, barely brushing my skin. Then it returned, this time pushing harder when it reached my breast. My whole body went tense. Would he—

His hand slid smoothly up over the soft flesh with no hesitation. His hand captured my breast and gently squeezed and, even through the thickness of the sports bra, it felt amazing. Where his thumb rubbed across the naked skin, it felt as if it left a burning trail. I immediately wanted his hands all over me, both of us naked, our bodies rubbing together until every damn inch of me had felt him.

I moaned up into his mouth, my tongue fighting with his, desperate to sample him. He was hardness and brute strength and salty, raw power.

He reluctantly broke the kiss, leaving two last panting kisses on my lower lip, and said. “Let’s go somewhere else.” And then he was lifting me up to my feet and then, almost immediately, heaving me up over the ropes and down to the floor, swinging me through the air like a doll. He jumped down beside me and pulled off our helmets, then stripped off our gloves. He grabbed my hand and towed me towards the locker room.

The
men’s
locker room.

Just as we got to the door, he pushed me up against the wall and said, “Wait.” He kissed me again and it pinned me there as securely as a butterfly speared with a pin.

I felt him leave me and duck into the locker room. I kept my eyes closed. There was the sound of coins going into a machine and then the metal clank as it dispensed something. Then he was back, grabbing my hand again and towing me along.

When I opened my eyes, I glimpsed the condom in his other hand. A deep, hot throb went through me.

He pushed through a door and led me down a hallway I’d never been in. There was a stairwell at the end with a
No Admittance
sign hanging on a chain across it.

He stepped right over it, and lifted me over as well. Then we were climbing the stairs. Halfway up, he started kissing me again and we stumbled up like that, blindly feeling for the handrail. At the top, we pushed through another door, eyes still closed. I felt the sudden warmth of sun on my skin….

I opened my eyes and saw that we were on top of the building, the city spread out around us. A low wall around the edge would provide some privacy...if we lay down.

My stomach flipped over and then exploded into deep, dark heat.
Jesus, are we really going to do this? Now? I could be dead in a few weeks!

And part of me answered,
that’s exactly why we should.
I needed to feel alive. I wanted this more than ever.

He pushed me up against an air conditioning duct, the metal sun-warm through my top. He raked his fingers through my hair. “Christ,” he muttered, “Christ, I’ve wanted you. Since I saw you in that fecking dump of a place.”

I remembered him looking at me, back at The Pit. “Then why didn’t you—”

He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “You shouldn’t get involved with me.”

“Why?”

“I’m...bad, Sylvie. I’ve done bad shit.”