A Bad Bit Nice (22 page)

Mick nudged her over on her stomach, gently raising her bottom to him so he could remain inside her. He placed a pillow under her hips to keep her close to him.

“I want to try something, sweetheart,” he breathed in her ear. He propped his upper body on his elbows to keep his full weight off of her, but pressed his lower body hard against her hips, rolling back and forth against her, his movements pressing Em’s nub into the pillow and eliciting some delicious friction that had her practically purring with pleasure.

Mick’s hard torso pressed against her, and Em could feel the hair on his chest rubbing along the smooth lines of her back. Mick hotly kissed her turned face. She groaned with pleasure as Mick increased the pressure of his grinding.

“God, you feel so good under me,” Mick breathed into her ear. “I can’t get enough of you, Em.”

He bit her shoulder, then ran his tongue over the mark to soothe it. He pulled out almost completely, making Em moan with the absence of his cock, then forcefully reseated himself in her, causing Em to gasp. She wiggled her hips against the bed, applying exquisite friction to her clitoris. The pleasure was almost too much for her to handle.

Mick pushed into her, his legs straining against the bed as he tried to get as close to her as he possibly could. His hips curved against her bottom, grinding into her and pressing her further down into the pillow.

“Michael, please. Please, Mick,” she begged. She felt his chest rumble with a chuckle at the shift in his name.

“Please what, Em?” he said, his voice right by her ear, his breath hot on the side of her cheek. “What do you want me to do?”

“Make me come, Michael. Own me. I’m yours.”

Mick’s breath caught at her last statement. He adjusted her hips, pulling her ass up so he could go even deeper. His chest was still tight against her back, her thighs in between his, making her beautifully tight around his cock. One hand held her wrists softly yet firmly, while the other gripped her hip against him. He pumped frenziedly, pounding into her. He felt the familiar tightening in his balls and pumped faster, determined to bring her over the edge with him.

“Come with me, Em.”

Em’s breath hitched and she let out a keening wail of pleasure, dragging Mick to the brink of oblivion with her. The sides of her core milked him, drawing out every ounce of his pleasure.

When the last reverberations ceased, Mick lay across Em’s back. He felt her body begin to quake, and he rolled to his side and pulled her into him. It was a few moments until he realized that her body was shaking with laughter.

“Em? What’s going on?” The look of confusion and worry on his face made her laugh even more, tears spilling down her face as she giggled. “Em?”

“Holy shit, Mick. I almost blacked out, I came so hard,” she laughed. “Now
that
was a proper fuck, right?”

Mick pulled Em tighter into his body, his hands smoothing her hair and softly touching her face. His eyes grew soft, even as hers twinkled with merriment. “I’ll give you a proper fuck for as long as you’ll let me, Em.”

Her mirth finally subsided, Em gently kissed Mick’s mouth. She pushed him over on his back and curled up to his side, her head on his chest, listening to the thumping of his heart. She threw her leg over his and murmured into his chest. “I’ll let you love me as long as you want to.”

Mick stroked Em’s hair as she fell into a sated sleep. He gazed at her, wondering how he was lucky enough to have this smart, sweet, beautiful woman in his life. He kissed her forehead and chuckled as she pursed her lips for a kiss even as she slumbered. He acquiesced and she sighed contentedly and settled back against his chest.

Mick held her tightly, not wanting to ever let her go. He realized she was becoming an integral part of his life, a companion and confidant, someone with whom he share his innermost thoughts and feelings. There were things he shared with Em that he hadn’t shared with anyone, even Rory.

He had opened his life to her, all the losses and sadness, and she didn’t make him feel pitied or pitiful, just cherished and, dare he say it, loved like he never had been before, not even with Grace. In return, he hoped he also provided some lessening of her burdens. He could barely stand that she had such huge disappointments in her past.

Overcome with emotion, Mick pulled Em tighter to his chest, kissing the top of her head and running his hands over her back.

“God, I don’t know what I’d do without you, Em,” he murmured quietly, almost too softly to be heard. “I’m falling in love with you.” He sighed and closed his eyes, falling into his own oblivion.

When Mick’s breathing deepened with slumber, Em whispered in response, “‘I’ve already fallen, Mick.”

“Maybe we should have told Mick what we were up to,” Em said as she sipped on a rapidly cooling cup of coffee. “I feel bad for fibbing to him all this time.”

Em had quickly figured out that she was searching for Mick’s brother after Rory had given her the dossier. When she asked Rory for confirmation, he admitted that, yes, she was indeed searching for the long-missing brother, but declined to tell her the whole story. Of course, she had recently discovered that for herself.

Now, Em found herself sitting outside the small gym in the one of the square states in the middle of the country, talking with Rory to bolster her courage enough to enter the building.

“You’re at the gym now, Em? Have you seen him?” Rory sounded as nervous as she felt.

“No, I haven’t, but I haven’t gotten up my nerve to go in yet. This gym looks very...gym-y. Much more so than the others. And besides, they’re not really open yet.”

Rory barked a laugh. “You’ll do fine. You really think that this guy’s Colin?”

Em exhaled with a huff. She didn’t know. What were the chances that the fighter she’d met back in the summer was actually Mick’s long-lost younger brother?

She had seen grainy YouTube videos of fights, but she needed to see this man in person again and talk to him to be sure he was indeed Mick’s brother. Twice before she’d been sure that she had found him, but both had been false alarms.

Em shifted in the seat of her rental car. She could never be a private investigator; the waiting around was making her crazy. She saw a man approach the door of the gym and unlock it. He opened the blinds and turned the lights on.

“It’s show time, Rory. I think he just opened the gym. The guy moves just like Mick, but he’s a hell of a lot bigger, like a
lot
bigger. Huge, even.”

“Okay, good luck, Em. I knew you were the best. Go see this guy.”

Em signed off and got out of the car. Her back was stiff from driving and stress. She stretched and took big gulps of the brisk air.
Holy shit, it’s cold
. Em shivered in her lightweight jacket and hurried into the gym.

She was immediately accosted by the smell of man and sweat, and she noted in the back of her mind that the strong odor didn’t really bother her. She looked at the photos on the wall, pictures of the fighters in various aggressive stances.

She found a poster of her man on the Wall of Champions. The name on it proclaimed the man to be Bren “Ice Cold” Carmichael, but looking at it, it just had to be Colin. This was a hairless version of Mick. The nose was different, but the similar jaw and those silvery blue eyes were what convinced her that she may have actually found Mick’s brother.

“Can I help you, miss?” a voice with an eerily familiar timbre asked. She heard a chuckle. “You look a little lost.”

Em turned around to face the voice, or rather, the voice’s chest.

“Holy shit, you’re big,” she blurted into the big man’s torso. “Like, huge.”

The large man chuckled. “Yep, I am. We’re all pretty big around here, though. Are you looking for someone in particular?”

Em looked at the man’s face and gasped. The fighter she’d met almost five months ago was clean shaven with a burr haircut and a shaved chest. The man in front of her had a stocking cap on, but she could see hair sticking out of the cap around his ears. A beard covered his handsome face as well, and she could see a pelt of chest hair under his open hoodie jacket.

He looked just like a chestnut-haired Mick.

“Lady, you’re kind of freaking me out. Are you okay?” Mick’s eyes peered from the man’s face, his brows drawn down in a frown, just like Mick’s did when he was concerned.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m all right. Hi,” Em chuckled nervously. “I’m looking for this guy,” she said as she pointed at the picture of Brennan Carmichael.

Jesus, this woman is completely nuts,
the man thought. W
hy do I encounter all the crazy women?

“Why do you want to know who this guy is?” he jerked his chin at the picture. “He something to you?”

Em licked her lips. “Maybe. The man I’m looking for, I’ve been looking for him for a few months, but others have been looking for him for years. I think Brennan Carmichael might be him, but his name is different from the man I’m looking for. He would be about 35 years old. His name is, or was, Colin Brennan.”
Good grief, Em. If the man didn’t think you were crazy earlier, he sure does now. Quit the babbling.

The man didn’t seem to be able to catch his breath. He sat down heavily on a nearby bench. “Colin Brennan.”

He hadn’t been Colin Brennan for a long, long time, not since his father had rescued him from his mother. Could this little woman be a relative of some sort?

“You’re Colin, aren’t you?” Em sat beside him and looked hopefully at the huge man. “You were born in Boston? Your mother’s name was Moira? You have a brother named Michael?”

“Mickey? You know where he is? He’s alive?”

“Oh thank God, I’ve found you.” Em threw her arms around a startled Colin. “Oh God, I finally found you.”

“Carmichael, you got another crazy bothering you?” barked another big man, whom Em recognized from the meet and greet in Las Vegas. “You need me to call the police again?”

“No, Junior, this one’s not nuts. Or she may be, but she’s found my brother.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

*****

Em and Colin Brennan Carmichael sat across from each other in a diner the fighters frequented. Colin held a Saint Rita medallion in his fingers, stroking the small pendant while he spoke.

“See this? Mickey put this and a Jerusalem cross around my neck the last time I saw him, before Ma took me away. For years, I waited for him to come to get me. Years. Even after Duke managed to get me away from her, I hoped Mickey would come and live with us. I know Duke looked for him, looked for fucking years.”

Em sat silently, tears burning in her eyes, waiting for Colin to continue.

“He stopped by the school and handed this to me through the fence. And then he just disappeared. Poof. No nothing. No letters, no phone calls. I thought he just left me. I didn’t know until years later that our lovely mother had basically shipped him off and never looked back.” At Em’s inquisitive look, Colin explained that Duke, his father, was an attorney and had managed to get a copy of the court records that had sent Mick to kiddie prison.

Every time I think that woman can’t get worse, she does,
Em thought.

“The woman was never meant to be a mother,” Colin spat. “Yes, I know she’s dead. I didn’t go to her funeral, but I’ve been back to confirm that she’s dead in the ground.” Colin’s jaw worked, clenching and relaxing almost imperceptibly, his eyes hot with emotion.

Em started. She didn’t think Mick knew for sure that his mother was dead.

“It seems she did the right thing by giving you up. I’m not sure she went about it the right way, but it just might have been for the best. I wish she could have kept all the boys together.”

“Wait, back up. ‘All the boys’? There are more?”

“You didn’t know there were two older brothers? Older than Mick? Finn and Sean?”

“Fuck no, I didn’t know. Where are they now?”

Em’s eyes softened. “They’re dead, Colin. Killed in a fishing accident.”

Colin vaguely remembered two rough men coming to the house every few months. After each visit, there’d been food for a while. Cod. God, he still couldn’t see or smell cod without puking.

Colin sat in the booth, hands clasped in front of him, and started laughing. It started as a chuckle, then grew into a guffaw, and continued to grow until he had tears running down his face.             

Em chuckled nervously. “Um, are
you
all right, Colin?”

“No, no, I’m not fucking all right. You come to my gym and tell me that not only have you found the brother I’ve been looking for my entire fucking life, but that there were two more that I didn’t know? No, I am not all right at all. I’m not angry at you, Em. I’m angry at Moira, but I can’t tell her because she’s dead.” Colin was breathing hard, his hands fisted on the table. “This is just...really overwhelming, totally and completely overwhelming.”

Colin wiped his hands over his face, pressing his fingers into his eyes as if doing so would help him see more clearly.

“So why now? Why is he looking now? Does he need money?” he asked.

“What? No, he doesn’t need money. Mick’s very successful. Why would you think he was approaching you because he needed money?” Em was offended for Mick.

“I’ve got a championship fight coming up. Pay-per-view, earning big money the moment I step in the ring and an even bigger payout when I win.” Colin shrugged. “I’m just saying the timing is a little suspect.”

“Look, Mick doesn’t even know I’ve found you. He doesn’t even know I was really looking for you. He thinks I’m up here scoping out potential business. He had absolutely no hope of finding you. He said that Rory has been searching for you for 20 years. Twenty years, Colin.”

“So how’d you find me, if someone else has been searching for so long?”

“I’m a better snoop than Rory is,” she said with a laugh.

“Wait, Rory? Red-headed? Bad temper?”

“You remember him?” Em was surprised. “I didn’t know how much you remembered about the Doyles.”

“I remember lots of pieces of things, but I was never sure if they were dreams or memories. I remember being really sick and Rory’s mom feeding me soup and putting a cool cloth on my head. I remember me and Rory and Mickey reading books in a giant bed, and them putting on the voices. I remember a girl, too. Rory’s sister. I remember the way Mickey would look at her; just staring like she was the most fascinating, beautiful thing in the world.”

“He married her.”

“Huh. But they’re not married anymore?”

“Mick can tell you all about it. It’s not my story to tell,” Em said.

“So where is he, if you’re here and he doesn’t know you’ve been looking for me?”

“He’s back in Atlanta. I didn’t want to get his hopes up.”

“Atlanta? How the hell did he end up there? And just who are you to him? Just someone he hired?”

“Again, Mick needs to tell you his story, but I can tell you who I am: I’m someone who loves him,” Em said, surprising herself with the admission.

Colin grinned at the myriad of emotions that played across Em’s features. “Ah. You just now admitting something to yourself?” he smirked.

Em chuckled. “Yes, that’s the first time I’ve really said that out loud. I
do
love him, though. I love him a lot. But this whole enterprise started with Rory. Rory started me looking in my spare time months ago.”

“You work with Rory?”

“Yeah, I work with Rory. He actually introduced me to Mick.” She waited a beat. “Would you want to meet with him? Sometime?”

“Only if he’ll meet with Duke, too. Duke may need to see him more than I do.”

“I’ll need to talk with Mick. Remember, he doesn’t know I’ve located you yet.”

“Yeah, okay.”

They sat in the booth in silence for a while, both processing things. Colin had to get back to the gym, but he hugged her fiercely before they parted ways.

Em sat in the parking lot and made a call. “Yes, it’s him. He’s open to getting together. There’s something else though.”