Punching and Kissing (12 page)

My body started to change—and fast. It wasn’t magic; it was the sheer brute force of the training. My midsection lost its pudginess and became taut and toned. My arms started to develop shape. My legs became leaner, from the endless squats and footwork.

I wasn’t ready for a fight, yet, but Aedan had me try light sparring, both of us in gloves and head protectors. He let me go at him again and again: he fended off my attacks with casual ease, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to find my style.

“You’re an out-boxer,” he told me. “Fast. Good on your feet. You hit from a distance. You don’t have much power, but you can wear the other girl down, wait until she makes a mistake.”

I thought about that for a second. I quite liked the idea of not having to get too close. Hopefully, that meant I’d get hit less. “What are you?”

“A brawler.” He smiled. He did that more often, these days, and when he did all that darkness just dropped away. “Slow and stupid. I just hit them—hard.” He crossed his arms and regarded me. “It’s like rock-paper-scissors. Each style’s got an advantage over another, and each one’s beaten by another.”

“So who do I have to watch out for?”

“A swarmer. They’ll get right up in your face and hit you with flurries of punches—they’ll overwhelm you. A swarmer’ll be beaten by a brawler, like me.”

“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 work. 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 drug 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.