Shadowboxer (19 page)

Too bad I hadn’t broken the scotch decanter instead.

“Don’t want you to bleed all over the hardwood floor.” Her voice sounded distant, tinny. “Let’s get you in the bathroom so I can make sure there’s no glass embedded in the cuts.”

I let her lead me down the hall to the bathroom
. I sat on the toilet, watching with dull eyes as she sorted through the medicine cabinet and pulled out supplies. Dealing with injuries was part of my business, so I had the full array of gauze and wraps and antiseptic. Finding tweezers was harder, so she eventually settled on a toothpick and lots of rubbing alcohol.

I only screamed five, maybe six, times.

Once she finished, she bandaged me up then leaned against the sink and gazed at me with those eyes that had seen so much yet still managed to look unflinchingly at whatever they faced. If only I could be that honest. That brave.

“My father thinks I’m a loser.”

She didn’t laugh at me for my rich boy trauma. Just waited. And watched.

“He never wanted me to fight. I was supposed to stay in pre-law at Cornell and then go into the family firm. When I dropped out, he wanted to disown me, but he wasn’t about to let his cronies see his son not doing well financially. Reflects badly on him, you see. So he dropped money in my bank account, offered me this apartment
, and basically shut me out of his life other than the monthly visits my mother still insists on.”

“They were here tonight.” She pursed her mouth at my nod. “Explains the scotch. I thought you were a Harp kind of guy.”

For some reason, that made me laugh. “See, that’s the thing. They don’t care what I am. They gave me a purebred dog—a great fucking dog—and named him after a sports car. I wasn’t going to change his name after they’d called him that for a few days, but it’s not me. I’d get a mutt at the pound and name him Fred.”

She gripped the sink behind her and looked up at the ceiling as if it contained the answers to all the world’s questions. “And fighting is you?”

I had no reason to tell her the truth. It wasn’t her business. “No.” Another laugh racked my chest, jarring my hand and making it throb. “Fighting is so far from me that it’s in another zip code.”

“So why do you do it?”

“When you want respect, sometimes you pick dumb ways to get it. I wanted to be my own man.” I shrugged, feeling like the biggest tool who’d ever lived. Oh yeah, so I got paid to bloody other guys’ faces. That made me awesome. “And I knew he’d hate it.”

“That’s not the only reason.” Her quiet certainty cut through the noise in my head. “You enjoyed it once.”

“Yeah,” I admitted reluctantly. “I did. It felt like vindication for a kid who’d been called pretty for way too long. The first time I broke my nose I deliberately waited to get it looked at, hoping it wouldn’t set right.” I shook my head. “I was fucked up back then. Still am.”

“You could’ve just phoned it in and whaled on guys however you could. But you
studied the martial arts. You trained. It mattered.”

“Yeah, so what? It mattered then. It doesn’t anymore. I did what I set out to do
, and my father still looks at me like the shit on the bottom of his shoe. I still—”

When I tightened my jaw and glanced away, she knelt between my knees and gripped my thighs. Her hands weren’t delicate. Hers could break things and did so with glee.
And as it turned out, they could heal too. Her touch melted through denim and through skin and bone, easing the tension I’d become so used to carrying that I didn’t notice it anymore.

“Tray. Look at me.”

I looked. Something drew me to her in a way I didn’t understand. Before, I’d reassured myself by thinking that she aroused my rarely used protective instinct. Now she was trying to offer me comfort, though I knew she’d come over to my place to hand me my balls. Again.

“You don’t want the gloves,” I said dismissively, eager for a change of topic
. I wasn’t going to confession for anyone—especially not Mia, who only saw me as a means to an end. “I’ll return them.”

An emotion I couldn’t name flashed over her face, dulling the brief flare of hope in her eyes. For a moment, she’d been out of her head and in mine. With two careless statements meant to shove her away, I’d snuffed out that light.

Oh yeah, I was a prince, all right. And I was about to prove it.

I lurched to my feet, my unexpected action nearly sending her back on her butt on the rug. Her super-quick reflexes kicked in and she rose, watching me warily.

My mood had shifted right back into anger after that temporary detour into self-pity. I wasn’t about to dwell on all that woe-is-me shit. Not when she was staring at me with wet lips and eyes like vats of dark chocolate surrounded by thick, tangled lashes. She made me into a poet and a heathen at the same time. I wanted to write goddamn sonnets to her fragile beauty and frightening strength and at the same time drag her to the floor and fuck her senseless.

It didn’t make sense. None of this did.

I stepped forward, deliberately getting in her face. She held her ground. Not shying away in any shape or form. Making me harder than I’d ever been.

“I want you. If you’re not prepared to deal with that, you need to leave.” In case she didn’t get the urgency of the situation, I shifted until she directed her attention beneath my waist. Something was throbbing again, and it wasn’t my hand. “Now.”

“You’re the one who said we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

Her defiant tone coupled with her defensive pose worked as a one-two punch to my libido. Not that I needed much help.
“You’ve said the same thing since day one. And you showed up at
my
door, not the other way around.” I cocked a brow, relying on machismo to cover up the fact that my muscles were quaking from the possibility she might walk. Again. “So which is it? In or out?”

She took my measure—actually, she stared at the outline of my cock through my jeans, and my cock didn’t mind—before lifting her shoulder. Clearly saying
then do something about it
.

Message received.

I bent and slid my arm under her butt, lifting her up and carting her toward the living room. My hand twinged more than a little at being called into service so soon, and I didn’t doubt I’d probably bleed right through her neat little bandage, but I wasn’t about to let a little pain and gore slow me down. I had a very clear image in my head of where I wanted to take Mia. Weren’t therapists always recommending replacing bad memories with good?

I was about to test that theory.

Expecting her to complain at my mode of transportation, I stopped moving down the hall when she made no sound at all. She’d retreated into that silent, observant space that made me ten times more desperate to earn her reaction.

Leaning in, I caught her lower lip between her teeth in the way I already knew she liked.
“Since you like to watch so much, you’re going to watch my mouth move between your thighs.”

Just like that, she sparked back to life and shoved at my chest. “No.”

“Yes.” My voice was patient and calm, belying the storm of emotions brewing inside me. I wasn’t the kind of guy who pushed a woman into doing something she didn’t want to.
Ever
. Treading gently in this case was a smart tactic, especially considering Mia’s background. I hated the idea of scaring or hurting her for even a moment.

But God, I needed to taste her. To help her enjoy it. To love her without words.

“No.”

But her vehemence had weakened, and I could hear the curiosity bleeding through. She’d never voice it, never admit she was unsure.

I nuzzled that exquisitely soft patch of skin between her ear and her shoulder, drowning in the scent of her utilitarian soap. I blinked as I picked up a trace of something else, so faint that probably a bloodhound wouldn’t have detected it. But I did.

I reared back. “You’re wearing
perfume
?”

She flushed straight to her hairline and turned her face away. She hadn’t blushed when I’d mentioned going down on her, but
mention the mere possibility that she’d done something girly on purpose and she turned magenta. Holy shit, I could totally fall for this girl.

I barely smothered a snort.
Could
fall. Right. Like I still had some choice in the matter. I’d lost my choices where Mia Anderson was concerned the day I’d heard her tossing around obscenities in Carmine’s back room. Even before that, when she’d swallowed me with her eyes on a crowded street.

“It’s
Carly’s fault.” She blushed even redder and glanced down at herself. “Look, maybe I should go.”

“That is an option. The other is that I lay you out on that bar over there and taste every part of you until I’ve had my fill.”

“Put me down, Tray.”

Her using my real name acted as erotic fuel. As if I needed any more. “Okay.”

Momentarily fooled by my affable tone, she didn’t react as I carried her closer to the bar. But when I swept it of the bottles and glasses?  Oh yeah, silent, watchful Mia gave quite the shriek, almost drowning out the sound of glass shattering on the hardwood floor. I might’ve laughed—actually, I’m pretty sure I did—but I was too busy setting her down and tugging on the zipper of her jeans with my good hand while I seized her hair with my bandaged one and yanked her mouth to mine.

Any protests she had vanished with the first thrust of my tongue between her parted lips. She didn’t respond at first, just stayed still and absorbed my kisses with that eerie detachment I hated. Then her lips began to warm, and her tongue started flicking against mine with growing boldness. I crushed my chest to hers and consumed her mouth without hesitation, daring her to keep up while my hand slipped past the barrier of denim to something silky and slick.

“What the hell?”

“It’s n-nothing.” She tried to grab my wrist. Not happening. I needed to see what she had going on under those jeans. “We should clean up. Where’s your puppy?” Her gaze darted in all directions. “He could step in the glass.”

“Vey’s probably asleep in his bed in the dining room. He’s not a fan of domestic disputes.” I tapped her bare belly, revealed by the frayed edge of her T-shirt. “Whatcha wearing under these clothes, fighter girl? A superhero costume?” My hand crept into the vee of her jeans again. “Feels like satin. Definite costume material.”

She shut her eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with wearing…lingerie.”

It was a miracle that my eyebrow didn’t shoot right across my forehead, it climbed so high. Unfortunately, she didn’t see. “No. Of course not. I’m wearing some right now too.”

Her eyes f
lew open and a laugh escaped her parted lips, ending abruptly as I bent to undress her. I untied her sneakers and removed her socks and jeans, then tossed them on the nearest armchair. The usual bruises in varying stages of healing dotted her pale skin, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. Nope, the object of my attention were the unforgivably tiny shorts that hugged the tops of her thighs in black satin with a fringe of lace. A tiny zipper hovered over her center, hiding her pouty lips from my gaze.

“I know it’s not me.” Annoyance veiled her words.
“I don’t wear stuff like this.”

She obviously
didn’t get that I was about to die from imminent cock strangulation and wiggled across the bar in obvious embarrassment. That was ending here and now.

For the millionth time since I read about Mia’
s past, I questioned my instincts. Maybe I wasn’t handling this correctly. She’d had…trauma in her past. Should I be so aggressive? Just because I had been before I’d learned what she had gone through didn’t mean I’d made the right move. I could’ve fucked up royally over and over and not even known it.

Then her eyes flickered, lust
clearly warming their depths, and I went with my gut.

“
Stand up and bend over.”

Shock was too mild a word for her reaction. “W-what?”

“Stand up and bend over so I can see your ass in those shorts.” Though her stutter made me want to gentle my voice, I hoped she’d appreciate my firm hand later. She always had in the past. Well, the couple of times we’d had sex anyway. “Now, Mia.”

S
he slipped down and turned, bracing an unsteady hand on the bar. Then she bent from the waist, holding the position as I gripped her hips—damn useless left hand—and pressed my erection against her. “Feel that? That’s what you do to me. In your clothes, in these tiny shorts, and especially naked.” I tugged off her hoodie and threw it toward her jeans before I rolled up her T-shirt, driven onward by the shadowy dark outline under the thin fabric. “What’re you wearing, baby? A pretty bra to go with the shorts? Did you think I’d be peeling them off you after you yelled at me and told me to stay away?”

“No. It’s Carly’s fault. She made me buy these. I didn’t—I wouldn’t.” She huffed out a breath. “I don’t know how to seduce anyone.”

I leaned forward and laughed against her hair, grinding into her tight little ass while I banded an arm around her torso and hauled her close. “You’re so fucking wrong. You seduced me the first time you spoke to me. I saw your mouth and I wanted to be inside it. I wanted your thighs around my hips. And I wanted what I’m about to take between your legs, but not if you don’t give it to me.” I spoke close to her ear. “Tell me you want my mouth on you, Mia. Tell me you’re wet for me.”