Punching and Kissing (17 page)

She suddenly snaked her hand out and I blocked instinctively. But she wasn’t trying to hit me. She grabbed my hand and
pulled,
using the full weight of her body to swing me around. My feet skittered under me and my stomach lurched. The wall came up to meet me, too fast—

I crashed into the concrete, feeling the gritty surface chew at my exposed arm and shoulder. My hip banged hard against it and my leg went numb.

The crowd cheered.

I tried to get away from her, but I was staggering, now, and didn’t have the speed to get any distance. All I could do was retreat, backing up along the curving wall, praying I didn’t trip over my own feet. If I went down, it was all over.

I didn’t dare take my eyes off Jacki’s cruelly grinning face. But then I saw the door to the side room behind her and, in it, Aedan. He was screaming at me.

Screaming
hit her.

Before I could take it in, she grabbed me again. This time, she pulled me towards her and—

Pain exploded in my face. I tasted and smelled blood. And suddenly it was fountaining out of me, splotching onto my top. I lifted my hands to my face and they instantly turned red. Jesus, what had she done to me?

The pain dulled a little, centering on my nose. I realized she’d head-butted me, and my nose was bleeding.

For the first time, I started to pick out voices in the crowd.

“
Get her on the ground!”

“Shove your foot up the bitch!”

“Fucking finish her!”

She was coming at me again, hands raised, leg drawn back.

Hit her.

She was going to grab me and kick me.

Hit her.

She was going to get me down on the ground and smash my face into the floor, just like she promised.

Hit her.
Behind Jacki, I saw Aedan screaming it.

I can’t!
And then Jacki shouted and came at me hard, hands grabbing for my waist—

I lashed out and two solid weeks of muscle memory snapped into place. There was a sickening crack as my fist hit Jacki’s jaw. Her head snapped to the side and she staggered. The crowd cheered even louder. Apparently, it didn’t matter who got hit, as long as someone did.

Jacki put her hand to her face and winced, then looked at me, her eyes narrowed. I was looking at my own fist in wonder. My knuckles were throbbing, my wrist aching.
Did I really just hit her?
I realized I’d dropped my guard and started to lift my hands again.

Too late.

Jacki shoulder-charged me and bore us both down to the floor. I landed under her, gasping as the air was knocked out of me. Jacki’s expression was vicious, now, her lips drawn back from her teeth in an animal snarl.

I lifted my head, only to have her punch me. It wasn’t as strong as one of my punches—it seemed like she was used to grabbing and throwing, not hitting. But it sent my head towards the concrete and I only just managed to hold it away, my neck muscles screaming. She hit me again, on the other side, and this time it hurt more.

“
Tear her clothes off!”
screamed someone in the crowd. There was a sudden roar of approval from all around the room.

Sickened, I looked up at Jacki. She looked equally appalled, her nose wrinkling in distaste. But then she glanced off to the side.

Towards Rick.

I couldn’t see him, but he must have nodded. Jacki punched me a third time and then grabbed my tank top at the base of one strap and jerked. The strap tore free and suddenly my bra and breasts were revealed to the crowd. The hoots and wails were deafening. Jacki’s hands reached for me again—

A shining aluminum cane shot between us, then pushed her back. She got off me, sullen-faced, holding her jaw. Already, the skin there was starting to discolor. The crowd howled their disapproval as they realized the fight was over.

“That’s all, folks!” yelled Rick. “That was just a taster. If you want to see Sylvie get hers, be here! Same place! Same time! Two weeks!” And he grabbed Jacki’s hand and raised it in the air in victory.

She grinned at the crowd and then scowled down at me. I clutched the rags of my tank top to my chest, humiliated and shaking. In those final few seconds, all of the crowd’s male rage had bubbled up to the surface and shown itself for what it really was. And it looked like Jacki and Rick were only too happy to go along with it, if it kept them happy.

Aedan ran over. For a second, he stood there glaring at Rick, his massive fists bunched, clearly ready to kill him. Al and Carl sidled up to protect their boss but, for a second, it looked as though Aedan was going to wade in regardless.

I reached up and grabbed Aedan’s hand. “Just get me out of here?” I pleaded.

With a last snarl at Rick, Aedan pulled me to my feet and helped me to the side room. My legs had turned to jelly and I had to lean on him the whole way. I felt slightly better once we were out of sight of all those male eyes.

“Let me look at you,” he said. He took my head between his hands, his eyes wide with fear. He probed gently at my nose and I squealed and thumped him on the arm. “Sorry,” he said. “But good news—it’s not broken. Just bleeding. Put pressure on it and it’ll stop.” He examined my cheeks and then my hip. “Nothing too bad here, either—just bruises.”

Just bruises?
I wanted to burst into tears. The adrenaline was receding and the pain was hitting me full force, now. My whole body throbbed and I wanted to crawl under a rock and die. “I’m sorry,” I blurted.

He stared at me. “
Sorry?
What have you got to be sorry about?”

I was breathing in big gulps now. It felt like I was about to start crying, but the hot explosion of tears didn’t arrive. I was stuck in the prickly-faced heaving stage that normally precedes it. “I—I couldn’t hit her. I didn’t know what to do. I messed up.”

“
Messed up?!”
He hugged me close. “You did
great.
Neither of us was ready for
that.
But now we can be. We know what she’s got. I can teach you how to deal with that, how to fight dirty. She can’t learn to fight like you—not in a couple of weeks.” He squeezed me tighter and stroked the back of my hair. “It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”

Now I
did
start to cry. I cuddled in tight against his chest, my face leaving blood on his t-shirt.

“And you
did
hit her. Christ, you nearly broke her jaw!”

I gave a nervous little laugh, but I didn’t feel like laughing. It had all been way too frightening: the brutal aggression; the speed at which it had all gone wrong, when she’d charged me; the cruel, male evil of the crowd at the end.

I pushed back from Aedan. “Take me home,” I begged.

He nodded and passed me the hooded top I’d brought with me. I pulled it on over my ruined tank top and we headed for the stairs.

Aedan

I pushed through the crowd, acting as a wedge to keep them clear of Sylvie. They weren’t so brave, now that they were face-to-face with her...and me. It was impossible to tell which of the men had yelled the worst things. But all of them were guilty. All of them had, at a minimum, come along and watched. None of them had left in disgust when Jacki had torn off Sylvie’s top.

I was ready to kill every single one of them.

I settled for battering them aside, using plenty of elbow and shoulder, and growling at any who resisted. Outside, I bundled Sylvie into a cab and told the cabbie to take us to my place.

I looked at Sylvie. “No arguments,” I said. “I don’t want you to be alone, tonight.”

She nodded.

At my apartment, I showed her to the shower. “Get in,” I said. “Take your time. I’ll get us something to eat.” What I really wanted was to do something nice for her—some big bath filled with bubbles and scented candles and all that girly shit. But I didn’t have any of those things. All I had to offer her was hot water and men’s shower gel. And yet she looked at me as if I’d done all that and more.

I left her alone to shower. The thought of her naked in there had me instantly hard in my pants but she’d been through too much—I didn’t want to do anything that would make her feel pressured into sex, not right now. So I retreated to the living room and ordered a massive pizza with everything on, and dug some cold beers out of the refrigerator.

When the bathroom door inched open, it was like a rerun of that time she’d fallen in the river...but so much had changed, since then. She stared at me around the edge of the door, steam billowing out around her, and I stared right back at her.

Her nose had stopped bleeding and she’d washed the blood away, but she was still red and tender there. Her left cheek had a dark bruise where Jacki’s fist had cracked across it and her right eye was turning purple, the lid swollen.

Her lip was trembling and her eyes were filled with tears. “How do I…” She swallowed. “How do I look?”

And I realized that she hadn’t seen herself, yet. The mirror in the bathroom broke a long time ago, after I—

Well. It broke.

The only mirror is in the living room, and she couldn’t see it from where she was. And I’d hustled her straight through to the bathroom when we arrived. She hadn’t seen the damage, yet.

“It’s not so bad,” I told her. I got up slowly and walked across to her, grabbing the best towel I had. She hesitantly released her grip on the door and I slowly opened it and wrapped the towel around her like a dress.

I guided her to the mirror, stepping behind her and wrapping my arms around her waist for support. Her steps got smaller and smaller as she approached. When she saw her face, I saw her go pale. I thought she was going to be sick.

“It’ll heal,” I told her as she touched her cheek.
She’s never been hurt before, you feckin’ idiot,
I told myself. I was used to coming home with a broken nose or a mashed-up lip, back in the day. But she’d always known the same face in the mirror. Now it had suddenly changed. She must not feel like
her
anymore.

I lifted my arms and wrapped them tighter around her, hugging her close to my chest. “You’re beautiful,” I told her.

She shook her head and I heard her breath catch. She was on the edge of tears.

“
Beautiful,”
I said. And she was. It broke my heart to see her hurt like this. But it didn’t for one second change the way I felt about her.

And for the first time, I felt that deep lurch inside, the one where you feel like the floor’s just been pulled out from under you. I’d been thinking about how much I wanted her, but I’d been skating around the other stuff: how much I liked talking to her; how she made me laugh like no one else did; how I’d wanted to protect her from the first moment I met her.

No. No way. Jesus, look at me—look at my shitty apartment. Look at what I am. She deserves a hell of a lot better than me.

She turned around, wincing as she moved her hip. “Thank you,” she whispered. And she drew me down into a soft, tender kiss. And for a little while, I let my doubts go and allowed myself to pretend we could actually be together, long term.

I could feel her naked body through the towel, cool and deliciously soft against me. But before things went any further, there was something I needed to do. I picked her up and lifted her onto the bed on her back. Then I unwrapped the towel, leaving her naked.

Her eyes widened.

I held up my hands in defense. “I’m not—Not
that.
I gotta check the rest of you.”

She looked chastened...and a little disappointed. “Oh.”

The way she said it made my cock twitch and strain against my thigh. Damn, but this girl turned me on. “Not that we can’t do that too,” I growled.

Her voice changed again, a nervous little laugh creeping in. “Oh!”

I looked down at her. The most gorgeous girl I’d ever seen, naked on my bed, and I had to be halfway professional, at least until I’d checked her over. I took a look at her hip, where she’d whacked it against the wall. There was one hell of an ugly bruise there, purple and green and spreading to cover an area the size of my hand.
Ouch.