PUSH: Ultra Alpha MMA Badboy Mafia Romance (Southside Brotherhood Book 2) (7 page)

Flynn had never known his biological mother. She was a dancer at one of the many strip clubs under Colin’s thumb. After Flynn was born, she disappeared, leaving him in the hands of Margaret, Colin’s wife, while she stood nine months pregnant herself.

Soon after Flynn landed on their doorstep, Gideon was born and Margaret retreated into her own world of yellow pills, leaving the boys to be raised by the house staff and the cold hand of their father. The boys fought each other relentlessly from the time they could raise fists until Colin channeled their angst into the ring. That drove both boys to become skilled and ruthless machines inside the eight sides of the fighting pits.

Staring into the Kodak image of the four of them that decorated a side table in the living room, Flynn saw himself smiling back at the camera in a triumphant raising of some trophy, both boys covered in sweat and bruises.

Flynn put the fork to his mouth, then stopped as he caught just a glint of copper hair across the courtyard as Lilly disappeared into the back of the long, midnight-black limousine waiting to whisk her to her servitude.

Flynn felt like someone dropped him with a brick to the head. The air turned sour, and he fought the urge to run out the door and chase down the taillights as they retreated down the half-mile drive lined with mature willows.

He fought for a breath, leaving the tray of food on the coffee table as he stepped toward the window to see the last glimpse of the black car turn onto Lakeshore Drive and disappear.

The antibiotics were doing their job, and Flynn paced the living room, images of the girl who blew his world apart running in an infinite loop in his mind.

Some people say you fall in love a little at a time, like a wine glass filling drop by drop until it finally flows over the rim. That wasn’t his experience.

He and Lilly were connected from that first moment she emerged from the car and onto the steps of her new palace prison.

Long ago, Flynn’s stepmother instilled in both of the boys that love had no place in their lives. Neither she nor his father ever offered a soft place, a nurturing lap or a gentle ‘I love you’ whispered after a bedtime story.

Even the staff that helped with the practicalities of raising two boys kept their professional distance. They were all too aware what might befall them if it was discovered they were getting too close. Offering too much.

“Love is for the weak, for the pitiful souls with stars in their eyes. Don’t ever think love will find you, Flynn. You are unlovable and lucky we have allowed you here as part of our family. Don’t ever forget your place. The son of a whore. I... I’m a Godly woman. Otherwise, I would have thrown you back on the street the day you dropped on my doorstep.” Flynn could still hear Margaret’s cruel, indifferent voice from the doorway of his childhood bedroom.

Even all these years after she let a handful of capsules separate her from this world, he believed every word, up until
she
arrived, and the tangled web of every emotion he had ever pushed away rushed over him like a tsunami.

From that day, Lilly became his obsession.

Every breath he took filled with ways he could be near her. Colin entrenched her immediately in her new role as his captive as Flynn shadowed her like a mist, her scent flowing into him like billions of tiny hot daggers.

Their stilted conversations in the hallways and gardens after she arrived turned to paragraphs, and paragraphs into stories and stories into secrets as her green eyes looked past the stone of Flynn’s exterior and found something even Flynn did not know existed.

He found it impossible to fight her pull. After Colin had settled her into her new role as his golden ticket, he gave her freedom to move around her new home.

On a Sunday, a bit more than a month after she'd arrived, Colin was away, and Lilly ambled around the kitchen, unwrapping the stark green salad left prepared for her. Flynn locked onto her scent as he came through the back entry, heat rising up from his toes as he heard soft footfalls on the worn oak floor.

“Hey.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, his uncivilized cock already lurching up at the sight of her.

Lilly startled before allowing a half-grin to turn up one corner of her mouth, but the words that followed did not reflect her smile.
“What do you want?” Almost seven weeks in her new home had done nothing for her general mood.

“I want to know if you thought about what I said. Last night.” Flynn blocked the aisle between the cabinets and the center island as she tried to move by.

“Which part? The stupid part or the ridiculous part?”

“Stop it.” Flynn grabbed her wrist as she turned to go back around the opposite direction.

“Don’t touch me.” Lilly wrenched her arm, but Flynn’s grip was iron.

“Why don’t you just go? I’ll buy you a fucking plane ticket, and you can go back.”

“Why don’t you mind your own business? God, who do you think you are? I don’t need another master; I have plenty already.”

The feel of her skin under his fingers ignited the wolf inside. Being this close made his chest constrict like drying concrete, threatening to suffocate him.

“I said stop.” He tightened his grip on her. “Don’t do this. You don’t have to. What can they do to you if you go back home, huh? Nothing — I won’t fucking let them. I don’t want you to leave, but I don’t want you to stay and be a pawn in this sick, fucking life. Trust me, it only gets worse.”

He stared at her cherry pink lips as they drew into a frown. She blinked twice, then filled her lungs, and he knew the fight going on inside her.

“Trust you? I haven’t trusted anyone since I gave up on my own mother protecting me. Trust. You’re funny. Who do you trust? Huh? You’ve had such a fairy tale upbringing here? So full of trust and love?” The slight Irish lilt in her voice thickened as her ire rose.

Lilly’s mother had worked very hard to prevent Lilly from adopting the voice of home. The kids at the village school made fun of her ‘accent’ as they did her mother who, until her shameful pregnancy, had lived her life in America where she prayed her daughter would one day live.

Flynn listened to her and could only think of how he would scale a fucking wall to try to get her out of here, out of this sick arrangement that would ironically make her his younger stepmother.

“Yes, fucking trust me.”

He knew he would never have her, but he wanted to save her, to protect her.

Flynn fought the urge to let his eyes fall downward. The lush curve of her chest rising and falling with each quickening breath sent his wayward dick in an upward direction.

He thought about how Colin chastised her in front of both the boys at dinner the first night in her new home. Snorting and sneering as he called for the server to remove her plate of filet and fingerling potatoes, ordering her on an immediate diet as her pale cheeks rushed with the blood of her embarrassment.

She’d traveled halfway around the world to stay with the man who would be her husband. He’d greeted her with a slap to the face when she turned from his kiss and now humiliated her and left the table without another word, leaving her sitting with two strangers who would someday soon be her stepsons.

Gideon laughed and cleaned his plate with a smile, then left Lilly and Flynn in silence.

She sat straight in her chair. Hands in her lap. Eyes forward. Her face set in a stare that made her look more like a Michaelangelo sculpture than flesh and bone.

Flynn could feel time stop; his entire being seemed to shift as they sat silently in that room. For twenty-seven years, he had known far down in his soul that love was an illusion for the weak, that life was not for pleasure but for duty and, at best, a tentative truce that allowed for times of jagged peace.

As he stared at the ivory angel across from him, a hurricane built within his chest as a low vibration buzzed inside his head and through every vein as his blood inexplicably warmed.
Fissures formed in his stoic facade—minute, microscopic questions that threatened to challenge everything he
knew
about life.

“What are you staring at?” Having finally had enough, Lilly turned her head to glare at Flynn, and the chambers in his heart lurched and skipped.

“You’re not going to eat?”

Lilly smiled, and Flynn’s face turned hot.

What the fuck is this? She’s a fucking girl, why the fuck you turning into a pussy all the sudden? This isn’t some Harlequin romance you fuck.

Flynn had to shake his head to get the voices to stop. Something was different about her. Something wrapped around his throat and squeezed when she looked at him, and an overwhelming urge to taste her cherry pink lips had him entranced.

“No, I’m not going to eat. Would you care for my delicious plate of broccoli and lettuce? It certainly looks decadent; I just can’t eat another bite. Maybe I’m just still overwhelmed by the warm welcome.” Her golden-green eyes dared him to challenge her.

“Come on. Let me show you something.” Flynn stood up, flicking his head toward the leaded glass French doors of the massive dining room that led to the terrace.

She glared at him.

Flynn leaned against the dark wood trim that decorated the door frame. Hands down in the pockets of his jeans as his gray T-shirt stretched across the flat of his chest.

Jesus, I can practically see my heart tapping on the front of my t-shirt. I need to get her out of here, give her some relief, some air. Let her fucking know I’m not the enemy. What the hell I am, I’m not sure. Fucking girl has my head screwed on like a crooked bottle cap.

Flynn gave her a minute, letting her take a breath and hopefully realize he would stand there and wait until she made the decision to follow.

With a sigh, she rose from her chair and pushed her curls behind her ears only to have them defiantly fall forward again.

The intense heat in Flynn’s chest rose to a point that he almost lost his balance as the caveman inside of him started making crazy ass demands. The way her top teetered beautifully on her waist, only to open up to the roundness below, sloping out to hips that filled her soft plaid skirt as she tugged at the waist hem of her sweater, had him warring with desires that went beyond any he'd ever known.

“So, what was your name again?” She stood next to Flynn as he lost himself in the peaches and cream of her face. “Hello?”

“Flynn.”

Get your shit together, bitch. She got some magic potion she slipped in your drink when you weren’t looking? You forgot your own fucking name?

The Dunleavy estate was built by the Fisher family back during the glory days of the automobile barons. It sat high on a hill, overlooking Lake Saint Clair, and the original boat house at the bottom of the hill held three antique, classic mahogany boats.

They walked, making stilted small talk as Flynn guided her down through the sides of the estate to a hidden path that ran through a border of trees and down until they could hear waves smacking and lapping against the break-wall.

Inside the boathouse, the moor lines pulled as the vessels moved with the motion of the water. Flynn looked over to see the Irish beauty’s face relax inside the cool darkness.

“This is beautiful.” Lilly stood staring out at the water, crossing her arms over her chest.

Flynn sat down on the long wooden bench against the back wall, tipping his head for Lilly to follow, and she dropped her arms and took a hitched step in his direction.

He could see how she tugged and played with her sweater, wrapping her fingers in the hem and pulling at it over and over, and the way she tried to minimize her limp. Her skin looked as soft as silk. His hand twitched, daring him to reach out and touch the rising pink on her cheeks.

“What happened to your face?” Her lack of filter made Flynn smile.

“It’s my job.”

“Really? What kind of job leaves you with that?”

“I fight. That’s my job.”

“Huh. That’s kind of a shitty job.”

“Not really. It’s the best part of my life. I love my job.” Flynn turned and gave her a smile. Her chirpy, slight Irish accent only made his blood run faster.

“I don’t have a best part of my life. I sort of thought coming here would change that. But, it’s not off to a great start.”

Flynn felt a primal urge to protect this ivory doll from across the ocean, a stranger that seemed to be more a part of him in less than one day than anyone he had known in his entire life.

The thought of his father marrying this girl boiled his blood.

That’s all you, bro. She’s here for you; she just doesn’t know it yet. You’re a bit more fucked than you thought, ‘cause I don’t think she’s going to go down easy, and she’s got enough baggage to bury you both.

The sound of the water slapping the hulls of the boats filled the boathouse as they sat in silence. She tapped her feet on the wooden boards of the dock, her flat canvas loafers worn in the toe.

“You never know what’s around the corner. Maybe the best part is on the way.” Flynn shifted his position; his other head was beginning to fill out his jeans as her perfume intertwined with the smell of the lake and the chill of the evening.