Punching and Kissing (8 page)

"Making friends?" Another Irish voice, behind me. One that sent an unexpected tremor of excitement down my spine. I spun again to see Aedan. He was in a blue tank top and black sweatpants and he looked...amazing. The other guy was ripped and good looking in a filthy sort of a way. But Aedan was powerful on a different level—raw and primal.
Dangerous.
If the other guy was a wolf, Aedan was a lion.
And he was staring at the other guy with a knowing glare and just a hint of...
something.

"Just saying hi," said the other guy, grinning. He looked between the two of us questioningly.

"I'm training her," said Aedan. And there was something in the way he said it, something that made me frown inside. As if there was an unspoken message alongside it.

"Oh," said the other guy, nodding as if
message received.
"Okay. No problem. Got it." And he gave Aedan an especially big grin.

Aedan put an arm around my waist and led me away. "Don't mind Connor," he muttered. "The fecker just...flirts."

"Was he? Did he?" For some reason, I was blushing. I was also trying not to react to the feel of Aedan's muscled arm caressing my waist with each step. I was re-running the conversation in my head. Had he just basically told Connor to back off?

Was Aedan
jealous?

Aedan must have caught my confused look because he cleared his throat and shrugged. "He's just some wanker," he muttered. "Plays the guitar and thinks women all worship the ground he walks on. Flirts even now that he's attached.”

I nodded to let him know I understood. But my mind was spinning. He
was
a little jealous. And, at the same time, I was trying to keep a straight face because I’d never heard anyone say
wanker
before.

He led me over to a thick gym mat and slipped off his sneakers. It hit me just how big the size difference was between us. It wasn’t just his height—it was the width of his muscled shoulders and the
presence
of him. He looked like a statue made out of granite. I felt as if I was made out of matchsticks.

This is ridiculous. I can’t learn how to fight. Look at me!

But it was the only chance I had.

I knelt to untie my sneakers. I'd settled, in the end, for gray sweatpants and a black Lycra top over a sports bra. As I knelt there, I became aware of something. A sort of hot, tingling wave lashing across the tops of my breasts. A feeling that soaked down into me and finished between my thighs.

I didn't have to look up to know he was staring down at me. It only lasted a second. When I glanced up, he was looking off towards the far end of the gym.
Maybe I imagined it.
Maybe I was just transferring all my feelings onto him.

I couldn't take my eyes off his shoulders. Under the hooded top, they'd looked big. Now, though, exposed by the tank top, they were huge—powerful and solid, and the way his arms narrowed and then flared again into thick biceps and sculpted forearms...
wow.
I'd been expecting him, somehow, to be covered in tattoos—a lot of fighters were. But I couldn't see one anywhere. The only mark on him was that jagged, twisting maze of scars down one side of his neck. I could see it better, in the daylight, and the viciousness of it made my chest ache. Someone had not just stabbed him but twisted and gouged and—
Jesus.
What would drive someone to do that to him?

It didn’t make him ugly—not in my eyes. It made me want to kiss him, there, press my lips along every hardened scar. If my kisses couldn’t heal him, they could at least show him that it didn’t matter.

That isn’t going to happen.
Going by his gruff manner, this was going to be all business, even if he
had
been a little jealous when he saw Connor talking to me.

That knowledge didn’t stop me looking, though. It couldn’t—his body was too damn addictive, harder and more solidly
real
than any guy I’d seen. His strong chest narrowed to a trim waist, giving him that gorgeous X shape between shoulder and thigh.
Big
thighs, too. Powerful. And between them—
I jerked my eyes upward and found myself looking right into his. He'd been staring down at me again, just as my eyes had strayed towards his cock. I didn't know which of us was more embarrassed.

I slipped off my sneakers and stood up. "Okay," I said. "Where do we start?"

He nodded, all business again. I was getting all kinds of mixed signals from this guy. Did he like me or not? And it didn’t help that, up close to him like this, he was freaking intimidating. That darkness, rolling off him in waves. The sense that, without even thinking about it, he could just crush your head or pound you into the ground.

Pound me into the ground.
The phrase echoed around my head a few times and then seeped mockingly down into my body, liquid-hot. I forced myself to focus, my face growing hot, and looked expectantly up at him.

"Hit me," he said. That strong accent again, each short word like an impact of stone on metal. Harsh and uncompromising. And sexy as hell.
Hit him?!

I blinked at him a couple of times. "Really?"

"Really."

I hesitantly made a fist and lifted it, then put it back down. "Just...hit you?"

"Just hit me."

I punched him lightly in the stomach, like I was miming it. My knuckles brushed his abs and I could feel the ridged hardness there, warm through the fabric.

"No...
actually
hit me. I have to see what you've got. Hit me like you mean it."

I swallowed and hit him as hard as I could, in the same spot. I expected him to do some lightning-fast block or maybe dodge out of the way. But he just stood there and my fist connected. I hit a wall of solid, warm muscle, like punching rubber. He rocked back maybe half an inch.

"Oh
shit!"
I said. "I'm so sorry!" I instinctively put my hand on his stomach where I'd hit him. "Are you okay?"

He looked down at my hand, then into my eyes. "Aye," he said softly.

I removed the hand.

He checked there was space behind him. "Come at me again," he said. "Try and hit me."

"Where?" I asked hopelessly.

"Anywhere."

He started to move backward in an easy, fast-footed shuffle. I swung at him and, this time, he moved. I missed completely. I tried again and he dodged the other way. He seemed to know where I was going to go before I did it. How was that possible?

He stopped suddenly and I pulled up short to avoid crashing into him. Then he lunged forward.

I yelped and staggered back, tripped over my own feet and went down. I landed with a
whump
on the mat, arms and legs everywhere. I instinctively glanced around the gym. Everyone else there looked like they belonged. Even Connor was slugging a punchbag. No one was actually laughing at me, but I could feel it in their looks.
What's
she
doing here?

"Don't mind them," said Aedan. He put out his hand for me to take. "You've got as much right to be here as them."

I took his hand and he pulled me to my feet. His warm grip felt amazing. As if he could have easily lifted me right up into the air one-handed.

I wound up standing very close to him, our toes almost touching. For just a second, everything seemed to stop. My breathing quickened. We were close enough that the tips of my breasts were almost brushing his chest—
He stepped back and ran a hand through his hair. "You can't hit," he said. "You've got no feckin’ power. You've got no idea how to stand or move or guard."

I stared at him, open-mouthed. "Well...
thanks."

But he hadn't finished. "You've got no balance," he said, shaking his head. "You've got no
presence
."

"What the hell does
that
mean?" I asked angrily.

"You intimidate too easily. I got in your face and you jumped back."

I felt like I should deny it, but I knew he was right. "Is there anything
good?"
I asked at last.

He stared at me for much longer than the question deserved. His eyes roamed down my body from head to toe and I felt it as a hot wave again, sluicing deep down into me and finishing with a tightening at my groin. The air seemed to thicken and crackle between us.

"You're small," he said at last, looking at the floor. "That makes you harder to hit."

He lifted his eyes and we stared at one another.

"Well, that's something," I whispered.

He stared at me for three more beats of my racing heart...and then he sighed and glanced away. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s start with your stance.”

He came around to stand behind me, so close that I could feel the heat of his breath on my neck. His big, warm hands landed on my shoulders and he started to guide me into the position he wanted me in.

The position he wanted me in.
A shudder went through me.
Oh, quit that you moron! He doesn’t even like you!
Or if he did, he was shying away from it for some reason.

None of which stopped his hands feeling absolutely amazing.

“You’re right-handed, yeah?” he asked. I nodded. “Okay. Turn sideways a little. Makes you a smaller target. Left hand up like this—no, other way around.” He gently turned my forearm. His big paws encircled it completely. “Other hand up like
this.”
Then his hands were sweeping down my sides to my hips. “The power has to come from here—understand?
Twist.”

He left his hands there, the heat of him throbbing into me. I realized he was waiting for me to try it. I twisted, lashing out with my right hand, and felt my muscles move under his palms. Much like I was riding him and he was holding onto me as I writhed.

I nodded. “Got it,” I said shakily.

He released his hands. But he seemed to do it almost reluctantly.

We practiced the boxer’s shuffle, dancing back and forth with my weight over my back foot in case someone tried to kick the front one out from under me. I quickly learned how tiring just moving around the ring non-stop is—all those fast little movements add up. Then he put gloves on me for the very first time. I stared down at my hands with their huge, comedy padding. I felt like a mascot at Disneyland who’d forgotten the rest of her costume.

He showed me how to jab and cross and hook. After an hour, I felt like it was actually beginning to come together. I looked, if you squinted hard, kind of like a boxer. But he was looking at me with concern. It started to drive me crazy.

“What?” I demanded at last.

“You’re too mechanical. Like a puppet with someone yanking your strings. You’re just repeating what I’ve shown you.”

“Of course I am! That’s what you said to do!”

“But it’s too...
stilted.
You’re punching and moving. You’re not
fighting.”

I looked at the bag we were hitting. “That’s because I’m hitting a bag,” I said, a little defensively.

“But in your head, you’re not fighting. It’s not coming from the heart.”

I’d had enough. I was hot. I was exhausted. I was irrationally pissed off with him because I’d mistakenly thought I’d felt something between us. I remembered how I’d agonized over my clothes that morning and I wanted to shoot myself in the head. As if he’d even notice what I was wearing.

My hands were sweating in the gloves. I went to take one of them off so that I could hurl it down on the mat in frustration and discovered that it’s almost impossible to un-velcro one glove while the other one’s still on. “Goddamnit!” I yelled. “I’m trying! How about some positivity?”

His foot suddenly hooked under my ankle—I’d forgotten to keep my weight off of it. I fell backwards onto the mat for the second time that day, landing with a surprised grunt. Then he was on top of me, his hands pinning my shoulders to the mat.

“
Do you think
she’s
going to go easy on you?”
he yelled. “Do you think she’s going to care that you’re a girl and a rookie? She’s going to treat you like any other fighter!”

I looked up at him with huge eyes. It suddenly clicked that I hadn’t been the only one getting frustrated over the last hour. He’d just been hiding it better. And now I could see the worry in his eyes. That was where the frustration was coming from: concern.

Concern for
me.

“Sorry,” I said quietly.

We stared at each other for a moment longer, and then the reality of our situation sank in. His knee was between my legs, pushing up against my groin through a few layers of cotton. His palms were resting on my bare shoulders and my breasts were heaving from the shock of falling. The air seemed as thick as honey. I could feel the sweat on my skin, making it glossy and slick under his hands.

I saw his eyes flick down to...my lips?
God, is he about to—