“I say go for it,” I told him. “It’s insane to sit here and do nothing. She needs our help, Knox, so let’s help her.”
He drew one more long drink of his whiskey and stood abruptly. I jumped up and followed his long, determined strides across the floor to where Katie was in the midst of the group of leering men doing her best to look flirtatious.
I felt a surge of protective instinct wash over me and suddenly I wanted to save her like she was my sister.
And in a way she already was. Knox and I weren’t married yet, but our hearts were already joined as one.
I touched her shoulder as Knox stood in front of her, legs spread defiantly and a cruel curl to his lips.
She turned and looked up at him and for a moment I saw the love she had for her big brother, the man who had come to rescue her.
It was gone in a flash though, and her mask came down to keep him away. She might not have remembered how stubborn her brother was, because it was going to take more than that to get rid of him now.
Chapter Forty Two
Knox
She was dead. Up until a few moments again, me sister was dead. As far as I’d known at least.
Back at the time Sabrina had told me the story, how Katie had jumped out of the way at a truck stop when they were exchanging drugs and weapons, but how a stray bullet had caught her in the neck and she’d bled out in Sabrina’s arms.
I’d even fekking comforted that viper.
She’d cried on me shoulder, snot running down her face, body shuddering as she’d sobbed over my wee sister’s death.
I clenched my fists just thinking about Sabrina taking advantage of me, making me a fool, using me for marriage after she’d sold my only family.
I wished I could let it all out in a torrent and tell Lennon everything I was feeling.
But I couldn’t get a fekking grip on what I was feeling. It was a hurricane twisting and rolling through me, rattling memories up from years past, shaking the foundations of the stories I’d been told.
I was so proud of me kitten when she’d joined me, diving right in to help rescue Katie. I grabbed Lennon’s hand when we crossed the crowded pub to the bar where me sis was chatting up a group of fat old blokes all picturing her naked and ready to fuck.
Rage rose up behind my eyes and bile nearly choked my throat closed. I wanted te tear them apart but I wanted to save Katie even more.
“How much?” I asked her as I walked up, Lennon still gripping my hand tightly.
“What the fek you on about?” Katie replied, her face reddening with a temper to match me own.
“How much fer the night?” I asked again.
“The night?” she repeated, not catching on.
“Hey there, back the fuck off, dude,” one of the fat old men said and stood up. He was about as tall as I was, but had maybe a hundred or one fifty on me. He was a giant, like an American football player gone to seed.
He sounded American too, and for some reason this pissed me off more than the simple fact that me sis was selling her body for Brendan’s benefit.
“Oy! Knox! Keep yer fekking face outta this!” Brendan bellowed and came roaring around the bar.
“This is too much crazy to deal with, you have her,” one of the American said and they all agreed as they picked up their drinks and walked away.
“How much for the night?” I repeated again like they were both fekking daft in the head.
“Yer gonna buy yer own sister?” Brendan exclaimed. “That’s low, even fer you Knox O’Connor.”
“I’m gonna buy her a night of freedom before I figure out what te fek to do te get her back safe with me forever,” I growled and stood over him.
“Three thousand,” he said, eyeing me up and down.
I pulled out my wallet and peeled off the bills, watched him count them and resisted the urge to smash his face in when he held out his hand and said, “She’s all yers tonight. Anal is extra, so is more than three blokes at a time. She’ll go bareback if ye like, but ye gotta get her drunk first.”
I couldn’t handle it. I watched him fold the stack of bills into his wallet, drew my fist back and punched him square in the jaw as he looked up at me with that fekking sneer on his lips.
“Foooock!” he blurted. “Ye fucking animal, ye haven’t changed a bit!”
“Let’s go,” I said, grabbing Lennon and Katie’s hand and dragging them both out of the pub.
Lennon of course was willing to follow, but Katie kept turning around and whining about Brendan punishing her for this the next day.
Little did she know, she was never going back. I was gonna buy her from Brendan or whoever was taking their cut off the back of my sister, and then I was dragging her back to the US with me and Lennon. She was family, and I couldn’t leave her here.
***
“There’s no fekking way this is all yers,” Katie said, wandering around the penthouse in loose fitting pajamas that Lennon had given her. Katie was tall but rail thin, she had a bad habit of twitching and scratching her forearms from time to time, which meant she was probably coming down off some nasty high.
“What have ye been takin,” I asked her, flipping an egg over in the frying pan. Lennon was seated at the kitchen island with her hands wrapped around a cup of hot cocoa. She was being incredible, really taking it all in stride and being my rock of sanity.
If it weren’t for her I swear I’d be tearing people apart in the streets of Belfast tonight.
“I ain’t been takin nothing,” Katie replied indignantly. I shook me head and sighed. She was lying.
“Have something te eat, I know eggs were always yer favorite,” I said and slid the food onto a plate with a piece of buttered toast. If she was coming down off an addiction, her stomach would be all over the place but she needed food.
“I’m not hungry,” Katie snapped back, but her eyes betrayed her as she stared at the plate I’d set in front of her.
“Stop fighting, just eat,” Lennon told her. “Sit, we won’t think any less of you if you have a meal.”
“I gotta get back te Brendan soon,” she said, sitting at the island next to Lennon. She started shoveling food into her mouth like there was no tomorrow. I smiled at Lennon and she smiled back, one full of reassurance and support. I loved her so fekking much right then.
“Yer not goin back,” I replied, waiting for the fight to start. “Yer staying here, and when we get the papers to go back to America, yer comin with us.”
Katie swallowed the last of her meal, sat back and sipped the cocoa I’d put in front of her. She gave me a little smug glance and said, “Fine. You win, big brother. I’ll do what ye want.”
I chuckled to myself and knew she would try to escape the first chance she got. I’d do what I could to keep her here, but if she wanted to go, she would go. Little did she know that I would keep coming after her. I would never let her keep doing what she’d been doing now that I knew she was alive.
Until then, Lennon and I were takin on a big project. Getting through the thick O’Connor skull to get her to drop her guard and let us all be family.
And I knew what a task that was gonna be, I had the thickest skull of all.
Chapter Forty Three
Lennon
I watched Katie with growing fascination. She was like a tall, thin, female version of her brother and it was amazing to watch.
The two of them were different sides of the same coin, they’d butt heads constantly and over the smallest things. How hot the cocoa should be, the name of their dog when they were children, what music we should listen to after Katie had eaten another serving of eggs and toast.
She drove Knox crazy, but the love pouring off him for her was crazy too. He’d always looked at me with love, but it was a smoldering passionate kind of love.
The love he gave to Katie was the same love he’d give a child. Pure and innocent…it just was.
“You know,” I said when we were sitting in the elegantly furnished living room aro
und two in the morning, “you’ve already changed him.”
“How do ye mean?” she asked, looking over at her brother with an almost guilty expression.
“Knox always carried a darkness around with him, I assumed it was from some of the bad deeds he’d done in his younger years but now I realize it was you. You were too great a pain for him to even share with me, he kept it to himself. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of you for what he’d done, it was that his hurt was still too raw and he was afraid it would hurt me too if he tried to unburden himself of it.”
Katie looked at Knox right in the eyes finally. She looked him up and down, over to me, and back to him. “Is she right, yeah?” she asked.
“Aye, she’s correct,” Knox replied slowly. “It’s been almost too much te think about, Katie. Sabrina told me ye were dead and I left the IRA after she married me.”
“You married that whore?” Katie blurted, then pulled her hand up to cover her mouth as if shocked. “Don’t tell her I said that.”
“Ah, now I know Sabrina must be pulling yer string now,” Knox said. “Who else?”
“Her fella, Duncan,” Katie replied, looking down filled with shame. “Nobody else, they’re the two biggest players in Belfast now.”
“Duncan’s dead,” Knox growled, “And Sabrina’s been shot. I only wish Lennon had hit her in the heart so she was dead too.”
“You shot her?” Katie asked incredulously.
“I did,” I said, “I’m not proud of it though.”
We talked like that for hours, I learned more about Knox’s time in the IRA and found out he’d killed men but had never blown up schools or nuns or anything as horrific as Sabrina had hinted at.
Not that killing was acceptable at all, but I could see a different side to Know after he and Katie talked about their home life. Their parents had been killed in a car accident early on and that’s how they’d ended up in the system.
The sun came up and we all looked at each other as Katie’s phone began to rumble, indicating that Brendan wanted his property back. Katie would have stood with us had she not been an addict, I was certain of it.
As it was, she twitched and jumped every time the phone went off, and in spite of our insistence that she stay behind with us, when we woke in the later afternoon from a restless sleep, she was gone.
“I’ll get her back,” Knox said, smashing his fist into the wall by the head of her bed. He left a knuckle shaped indentation in the plaster and I clung to him, dragging him away to calm him down.
“We will get her back,” I told him and kissed his face as he slowed his breathing and pulled me into his strong arms.
I didn’t know where to start looking, but as it turned out they found us.
Around midnight Knox received a text. He read it, ran his hand through his shaggy hair and tugged on his beard.
“What did it say?” I asked, standing by his side.
“It was Brendan. I can get my sister back,” he said with a grim look on his face.
“Excellent news, how? When?”
“Day after tomorrow. I hafta fight for her.”
“Fight?”
“A cage match against him. Winner takes Katie.”
“Are you going to do it?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. You couldn’t dangle a challenge like that in front of a man like Knox and not expect an answer.
“Fek, yes,” he told me and pulled me close. He held me in his arms in front of the big glass window overlooking the all of Belfast and kissed the top of my head gently.
“You’ll win, you’ll destroy him…he’s no fighter. Not like you,” I said, looking out into the night, past our reflections in the glass to the distant lights stretching out like stars on the velvet surface of the sky.
“Aye, I know,” he replied and kissed me again.
“It’s worth it,” I told him and felt his arms tighten around me and his love flow from his body to mine and back again.
Chapter Forty Four
Knox
The warehouse was packed from wall to wall and the buzzing energy leant a certain power to the vibrations in my feet.
When I was ready to fight, my feet vibrated. I couldna explain it, and had never tried.
All I knew was I fed off the energy of the crowd and tonight it was a feast of excitement, aggression and desperation as money changed hands and the odds were called out from bookie to bookie.
“You’re going to kill him,” Lennon said from behind me, rubbing me shoulder and sounding like a tough little lioness. “I mean not kill kill him, but win this fight.”
She added that hastily and I had to smile. She was such a good girl and torn between wanting to be my fierce little queen, feared by all and wanting to be a nice person.
In this case being fierce would be to our advantage, we needed to defeat these people in order to win me sister’s freedom.
I looked across the warehouse past the cage that was set up in the center and spotted Katie on Brendan’s side.
Her eyes looked glazed over and the smile she gave me was half hearted as if from a hundred miles away.
“She looks drugged,” Lennon said, slipping under my arm as we walked towards the cage.
“She’s high,” I replied. “We’ll fix that when we get this shite finished once and for all.”
The crowd settled down as the ring MC announced the fighter’s, I heard my name and put my fists up to the intermixed boos and cheers from people pushing towards the cage.
It was a good sign, this wasn’t an IRA loyal crowd, they were here for a fight more than anything else.
Lennon looked distressed, so I lifted her into my arms, kissed her, set her down in my corner and jumped up the steps to the cage.
I left her standing in front of the body guard I’d brought along to keep her safe. I didn’t trust anyone in Belfast, and I couldn’t leave my most precious love alone while I fought.
“Let the fight begin!” the MC yelled into the microphone after we shook hands.
I wasted no time, I wanted this fight to be quick and savage, no sense playing by the strict rules of the UFC, this was war.
I dodged Brendan’s slow punches and ran past him. He turned, tried to follow my trajectory, but I hit the side of the cage, ran up it, pushed myself off, twisted in mid flight and delivered a resounding kick to the side of his face.
The crowd went wild and I heard Lennon gasp from the side of the cage.
I sauntered towards her, blew her a kiss, whirled around and punched Brendan in the head five or six times in a row until he collapsed to the ground in front of me.
I turned and stuck my fists up, got the crowd riled and screaming in support and in anger, and blew Lennon another kiss.
“Knox!” she screamed and pointed towards me. I was one step ahead of her though, I’d noticed Brendan’s shadow coming at me on the floor of the cage. I whirled, jumped, spun and delivered a kick to his midsection.
I heard him grunt when he doubled over. I danced around him, taking pokes here and there, riling up his supporters and working mine up to a frothing frenzy of screaming.
I fekking loved this about fighting. The energy of the crowd, getting a thousand people worked up into screaming so hard they were hoarse, having them hang on yer every move.
It was addictive.
Brendan struggled to his feet and came at me, he swung his long arm with massive fist towards me head, but I was already six inches to the side and he connected with the air.
He lost his balance slightly, wobbled and took a step back to steady himself.
Time slowed down for me and I saw him flinch, expecting a blow from me. He put his hands up to block his face, but he wasn’t fast enough.
I swung my right, a wicked hook and connected on his cheek. I pushed all my weight through the blow and felt something break under my hand.
Blood gushed from his mouth, he spit out a couple teeth, stood stock still for half a heartbeat, then his eyelids fluttered and he fell backwards.
I roared in victory, wiped the bloody spittle off the front of me and strode around the cage screaming at the people on my side and against me. I felt a surge of power roll through me almost like sex and I was high on the feeling of decimating an enemy.
I stopped at my corner, opened the little door and jumped off the edge in front of Lennon.
She looked terrified and proud. “That was insane,” she exhaled. “I’ve seen you on TV but to be here…my god.”
I swept her up in me arms and kissed her, shared my victory with her, felt her body melt against mine and radiate a heat that made me certain she wanted me cock inside her the moment we were alone.
“I want you to fuck me like you fight,” she whispered in my ear and my cock swelled painfully pressing against my tight shorts.
“I’m gonna fek ye until I destroy ye,” I told her back, watched her eyes grow wide in surprise and added, “and then I’m gonna make love te ye, because I fekking love ye, kitten. I love ye more than I love to fight.”
“I love you too,” she replied and clung to me.
I picked her up over my shoulder, not giving a shit who saw or who was in front of me. I motioned to the body guard and said, “That’s me sister Katie, you remember her?” He looked across the ring and nodded. “Collect her and meet us at the front. I have business to attend.”
Lennon squealed and wiggled when I smacked her ass and pushed through the throngs of people, ignoring their pleas for autographs and photos.
Chapter Forty Five
Lennon
He dragged me through the people holding me over his shoulder like a caveman. I was so turned on I didn’t care, I just wanted him alone.
At first the fighting had disgusted me. I couldn’t handle the raw viciousness of the attacks.
Knox was the clear winner from the get go. Brendan didn’t even get a chance to hit him, it wasn’t a fair fight but it wasn’t one of Knox’s choosing so he couldn’t be blamed for the savagery.
He was like a glorious god when he fought though. My lover, my man, my husband…the longer I watched him, the hotter I got for him. The power behind his thrusts and pivots, the way he could jump and twist in mid air made him almost suspended in space and time.
IRISH: a Bad Boy Fighter Romance Page 14
