Punching and Kissing (3 page)

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.