“And who do you have to watch out for?”
“You.”
I blinked at him.
“Out-boxers can beat brawlers. I’m only dangerous if I can get in close—like this.” He stepped right up close, so close that I had to look up to look into his eyes. He took my hand in both of his and used it tap himself on the jaw, pushing himself back. “So what you need to do is keep me at arm’s length. Where I can’t hurt you.” He was still holding my wrist, his fingers hot on my skin. I felt his hand tighten.
“Understand?” he asked, his voice strained.
I nodded.
He let out a long, slow breath and we went back to it.
And I focused on keeping him at a distance.
***
I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the huge, high-protein boxer’s breakfasts. But after a week, I could shovel down my steak and eggs and be hungry for chicken and vegetables a few hours later. My weight went up, but the mirror showed I was leaner. The fat was burning off and being replaced by muscle.
Each morning, Aedan would have me shadow box so that I could see how I looked to someone else. At first, it was comical: my tiny, weak shadow throwing punches while his muscular bulk stood watching next to it. But after a few weeks, I began to see changes. I moved faster. I was leaner...meaner.
It still didn’t feel right, though—hitting something. It didn’t feel natural, in the way I suspected it felt natural to Aedan. Maybe it comes naturally to men.
During one of the long bag sessions—I don’t know how many punches I’d thrown, but it felt like infinity plus three—I mumbled something about this to Aedan. Who shook his head.
“You think you’re weak because you’re a woman,” he told me. “You’re not.”
“We are. Physically, we are.”
“Not mentally, though, and that’s what it’s all about.” He looked at me seriously. “What you did, volunteering to take Alec’s place...you are strong, Sylvie. Stronger than anyone I’ve ever met.”
I gave him a look, my cheeks flushing, and hit the bag again.
He grabbed my elbows and held my arms back so I couldn’t punch again. “Say it with me,” he ordered. “I am strong.”
“I am strong,” I mumbled, embarrassed.
“Like you mean it.”
I twisted around to look at him. I was all ready to say something snarky but something in his expression stopped me. I’d never seen him looking so solemn, so….
Jesus, he almost looked impressed with me.
I looked back at the bag. “I am strong,” I said. It didn’t sound so stupid, this time.
“Again.”
“I am strong.”
He let my arms go and I hit the bag as hard as I could.
***
Keeping my mind on the training wasn’t easy with Aedan around. I knew he was trying to keep things professional and I was, too. But that didn’t stop things happening—little moments that would stay with me the rest of the day. Like he’d pass me the water bottle to drink out of and it would still be warm from his touch. Or he’d really lay into the punch bag to show me a technique and emerge all sweaty and perfect, his shoulders gleaming, and I’d have to drag my eyes off of him.
The training was working—I could feel it. But every day, the attraction between us was growing tighter, pulling us together. Little things. Like we’d walk to the diner, and we’d walk closer together. Closer than trainer and pupil should walk. I told myself that it was just because we were friends. Or we’d share a joke, despite—or maybe because—of how serious things were. We’d blow off steam by doing something stupid, like emptying a water bottle over the other one’s head and...I found myself laughing more easily and more genuinely than I ever had. And he was definitely smiling more...but each time, he’d catch himself and get serious again, pushing me away.
Once, on a really scorching day, the air conditioning in the gym went on the fritz and the place became unbearable. Aedan took me out into the disused lot behind the building and had me hit pads in the open air, with the sun beating down on us. After a half hour, he stripped off his tank top and I saw him topless for the first time. Jesus. I’d known he was in good shape, but he was ripped. His pecs looked like they were carved from stone. His abs had deliciously hard ridges on them that I immediately wanted to run my fingers over and there was a centerline running all the way up, from just where I’d kiss the base of his neck, to just where I’d finish kissing his top half, before I proceeded down below….
Ahem.
It was only when he turned around that I spotted the tattoo. He only had one, a small shamrock right in the middle of his upper back, over his spine—it must have been painful as hell to get.
“Ireland?” I asked when I saw it.
He turned around to face me, looking a little surprised that I’d noticed it. Did he not know I was drinking in every inch of his body? “Brotherhood,” he said at last.
Things came to a head near the end of the second week. I was standing with him in the ring when I realized I’d left my gloves down on the floor. I bent over the ropes to get them, bending almost double with my ass high in the air and my hands down near my feet.
When I turned around, Aedan was standing there watching me. It hit me that he’d been staring right at my ass, upthrust and presented to him. And when I happened to glance down, I could see it—a long, thick bulge along his thigh, standing out through the thin material of his shorts. Jesus, he was big. And hard. For me.
When I finally got my gloves on, my fists kept slipping off the bag because I couldn’t get the image of his hard-on out of my mind. It soaked down through me again and again, lighting me up and pooling as liquid heat at my groin.
That night, I ran a hot bath to soak the aches away. I lay there and soaped everywhere, studiously avoiding the area below my waist and above my knees. I wasn’t even going to get close. I wasn’t going to tempt myself. I was absolutely not going to start jilling off to memories of Aedan and the bulge in his pants and how he’d been watching me, bent over the ropes, and what might have happened if the gym had been empty and he’d suddenly stepped up behind me and ripped my sweatpants down my thighs and pushed my legs apart and oh God—
I came, back arched, hips jerking, foam and water splashing. When I finished, I lay there, sated but guilty. He was managing to keep things under control. Why couldn’t I?
Aedan
We trained for two weeks solid.
Sylvie was working her ass off, slamming the bag and really improving her footwork. In fact, I was starting to see that she had real potential—fate had thrown me a bone. This scared, sweet angel, who’d never hit anything her entire life, had the agility and speed to really go places. In some other life, if she’d started young and been paired with a proper trainer instead of a dumb fighter like me, maybe she would have wound up doing women’s boxing professionally. Here and now, though, I just had to pray that her potential and my experience were enough to see her through this one fight.
And me?
I watched Sylvie.
I heard myself speaking, saying things like, “Keep your hands up,” and “Watch your balance.” But the training was almost automatic, happening in some far off part of my brain, because every last scrap of my conscious mind was filled with her.
Her hair, long dark strands of it whipping around as she ducked and weaved.
Her breasts: soft, perfect mounds I couldn’t drag my eyes from. When she was hitting the speedball and they were bouncing in their sports bra, it was bloody hypnotic.
Her smile, not easily given but a glorious prize every time I won it.
I was becoming obsessed and I knew it.
I had two more weeks to get Sylvie ready for her fight and I honestly didn’t know if I could control myself that long. Every day was worse. Every day we got cruelly closer, while knowing we couldn’t take the final step. It was torture.
Every time I hit a bag or a pad to demonstrate something, it was like a d
rug had been released into my system. Using my fists again felt so good I wanted to weep. Every impact was a reminder of what I really was: a monster.
And then came the day I’d been dreading. The day I had to hit her.
Sylvie
“Fight?” I asked nervously.
“Gotta do it eventually,” said Aedan. He sounded as reluctant as I did. Why? It wasn’t like I had any chance of hurting him. “It’s like driving a car. You can practice the pedals and changing gears as much as you like, but eventually you’ve gotta get on the road.”
Up until now, we’d only tried very light sparring with me pulling my punches, or he’d come at me gently and I’d tried to block. Not actual fighting. I swallowed and looked up at him, scared, as he slipped a helmet on me. It was oddly claustrophobic, even though my whole face was exposed. I couldn’t hear properly. My head felt heavy. “I’m not sure about this,” I said.
He nodded somberly and pulled on his gloves. In the real fight, of course, I’d be bare knuckle. But I couldn’t train like that without messing up my hands, so gloves it was. I still hadn’t mastered getting the second glove on so I did what I always did and used my teeth to pull its strap into tight. I caught him looking at me. “What?” I mumbled, the strap clamped between my teeth.
He shook his head as if to say, nothing.
We squared up to one another. “We’ll go for three minutes,” he said, looking at the clock. “Just like the real thing. Remember: keep me away, okay? That’s where your advantage is—at arm’s length.”
I nodded.
And it began.
He let me warm up a little to start with, letting me circle him and get into my rhythm. Fighting, I was learning, was a lot like dancing. It’s okay as long as you’re in the flow, but once you lose it, you’ve lost it and it’s hard to get it back again. As the seconds ticked by, I felt myself loosening up, darting in and out of range. I was starting to really see the differences between us. He was all solid, hard power, his powerful shoulders and biceps hinting at the damage he’d do if I dared to get within range of him. I was faster than him—there was just no way he could dance around like I could. But I didn’t wield anything like the same power. My only hope was to whittle him down slowly. It was like being a bee, buzzing around a grunting, pawing bull. I had to land a hundred good hits; he only had to land one.
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 to
p 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.
Saving Liberty (Kissing #6) Page 33
