Under His Skin (For His Pleasure, Book 20) (5 page)

She looked over her shoulder at his ugly,
grinning face.

“Fuck you,” she said.

His grin faded.
 
“You won’t talk so big when you’re with
the boss, honey.”
 
He started to
walk her toward a van, dragging her as she resisted, and she was unable to stop
him.

“Let her go,” Easton said, but his voice
didn’t carry much conviction.

And Kennedy didn’t blame him.
 
There were four overly large, mean
mobsters and just one of him.

The three guys laughed and started to
follow the big man toward the white van.
 
She began fighting and struggling but it was hopeless.
 
This man was way too big and too strong
for her to challenge him.

“Hey!” someone shouted.
 

Kennedy turned her head and caught sight
of Easton springing into action.
 
At
first her mind couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing, because she’d given up
hope that he would do something as insane as try to fight four men at once.

Except that was exactly what Easton was
doing.

One man was already on his back, arms
outstretched, unconscious.
 
She
didn’t know how it had happened—it must’ve been quick.

Now there were two men converging on
Easton and Easton was standing in a fighting position, fists raised, legs bent,
relaxed, eyes intent as he watched the movements of the two men coming toward
him.

“We go at him at the same time, he can’t
fight both of us at once,” one of them said to the other.

The other started to nod his head in
agreement, but in that brief moment, Easton sprang forward and threw a powerful
kick to the stomach.
 
The man made
an awful howling noise and collapsed.

And then there was just one guy left
besides the one holding into Kennedy.
 

Easton was holding his fists up, bouncing
a little on his toes, looking strangely natural in his finely tailored suit.

The man standing before him was wearing a
tracksuit, and he looked rugged, with tattoos on his forearms and even his
neck.
 
His head was shaved bald and
he wore a goatee.
 
“So you know how
to fight a little, huh rich boy?” he said, grinning as they circled each other.

“Just a little,” Easton replied, grinning
back at him.

The two men Easton had pummeled were
still crumpled on the sidewalk, although one was beginning to dizzily sit up,
looking like he didn’t know quite how he’d gotten there.

And then Easton and the goateed man
engaged each other in a flurry that was blinding.
 
Each of them threw a barrage of punches
and Kennedy’s heart was in her throat.
 
The other man looked just as fast and powerful as Easton, and she
worried that Easton would be hurt badly.

But despite the frenzy of it all, Easton
seemed to dodge the man’s punches ever so slightly, and then Easton landed one
punch of his own and his opponent suddenly dropped like a sack of bricks.
 
His head ricocheted off the cement as he
fell unconscious on his face.

Now Easton advanced towards the last man,
who released Kennedy and raised his hands.
 
“Hey, buddy, relax.
 
This is
just our job,” he said.

“Your job is to try and beat up women?”
Easton said.

“We only do what our boss asks.
 
But you really better think about this,
because Jimmy DeLuca isn’t no joke.
 
He’ll come after you if you fuck with us.”

Easton slowed down, as he moved between
Kennedy and the man who’d tried to drag her off against her will.

She couldn’t believe the relief that
flowed through her as Easton came close, how protected and safe she felt.
 
He was like a superhero.
 
He glared at the mobster.

“You’re right,” Easton told the guy.
 
“DeLuca would probably come after me for
messing with you guys.”

“You made your point, man.”
 
The guy raised his hands and kept
retreating.
 

“Not quite,” Easton told him, and then he
moved forward once more.

The mobster turned and tried to run back
to the van but Easton caught him, threw him headfirst into the van.
 
The mobster’s head actually dented the
back door, and he fell to the ground, crying out.

Easton delivered three brutal kicks and
then restrained himself, as Kennedy screamed for him to stop.

Easton was breathing heavily, his eyes
wide with rage.
 
“Tell your boss if
he comes after me, he might get more than he bargained for.
 
Because I’m not a fucking coward like
his friends.”
 
And then Easton spit
on the man.

He turned and walked back to where
Kennedy was standing like a statue.

“Come on,” he told her.
 
“We need to get to work—we’re
late.”

***

On the ride to the office, Kennedy looked
over at Easton.
 
“You don’t look
like you were even in a fight,” she said.
 
“You don’t have a scratch on you, nothing.”

Easton gave an almost imperceptible shrug
of his powerful shoulders as he steered the car.
 
“That’s because I wasn’t in a fight.”

“There were four of them,” she said,
remembering how terrified Blake had been of a few teenage boys.
 
These guys that Easton had beaten up had
all been grown men, and they’d all looked built for such confrontations.

“There were four of them,” Easton agreed.

“So how did you know you could do that?”
she said.
 
“Is it because you used
to do kickboxing?”

“I was a professional fighter,
Kennedy.
 
Being a tough guy on the
street is easy.
 
Fighting
professionally is scary.
 
Those guys
I beat up just now were only dangerous if I slipped on a banana peel or one of
them pulled a gun on me.”

She glanced at his knuckles on his right
hand as it drifted to the gearshift, and she realized Easton wasn’t unmarked
after all.
 
His knuckles were red,
raw, and somewhat swollen.

“Are you all right?
 
Did you hurt your hand?” she asked.

Easton glanced at his hand, flexed his
fingers and grimaced.
 
“I might have
some swelling, but it’s no big deal.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize for that.”

“Don’t I?”

He looked over at her for a long moment,
before returning to watching the road ahead.
 
“Not right now you don’t.”

Kennedy sighed and put a hand to her
forehead, her fingers rubbing small circles against the skin just above the
bridge of her nose, where a dull ache began to radiate outwards.
 
“I screwed everything up,” Kennedy said.

“I’m not going to disagree with you
there,” Easton said.

Kennedy rubbed her forehead that much
harder.
 
“Jimmy DeLuca must’ve seen
my license plate and used it to find out where I live.
 
I wonder what else he knows about me.”

“Probably a lot, and he’ll soon figure
out the rest,” Easton said, matter-of-factly.
 

Kennedy’s headache intensified.
 
“I just don’t want to deal with this
anymore.
 
I know I’m going to be
fired, I know that I’ve destroyed everything with Nicole.
 
There’s no point in any of this.”

“If you want to quit, then quit.
 
Don’t expect me to try and talk you out
of anything.”

“Easton, you didn’t deserve any of
this.
 
I’m sorry I screwed up your
life.”

He shook his head.
 
“I’m not one for self-pity.
 
You didn’t screw up my life, Kennedy,
and I’m not giving up on myself.
 
It’s not my style.”

“Obviously not,” she agreed.

She looked at Easton out of the corner of
her eye, watching how he calmly drove through the streets of New York, toward
an uncertain destiny, and yet Easton didn’t show even an ounce of fear.

When those thugs had surrounded him,
Easton hadn’t flinched.
 
He’d
fought.
 
And he’d won.

Kennedy wanted to fight as hard as he
fought, but somehow she didn’t have that self-belief.
 
Maybe all the years of being sheltered
by her parents had robbed her of the ability to believe that she could handle
anything that came her way.

She’d been taught to fear first, run, and
then watch the fallout from a distance.

Only now she was in the thick of the fray
for the very first time in her life and Kennedy didn’t feel like a brave
warrior—she felt like an imposter, a clown posing as a queen.
 

How could she expect Easton to go into
battle on her behalf when she didn’t even have enough faith in herself to do
the same?

She just wanted to run away, go back to
Boston, back to MIT.
 
It would be
dull, but it would be safe and easy and manageable.
 
Kennedy knew the rules there, she knew
her own capabilities, and it suited her disposition.

Let’s
face it, Kennedy.
 
Maybe Mom and Dad
screwed you when they protected you from the outside world growing up, but the
damage has been done and you clearly don’t have the fortitude or skills to live
and thrive in the real world.

Go
back to the cloistered halls of academia, where the pen really is mightier than
the sword and people like Easton and Red and Jimmy The Muscle don’t even exist.

Before she knew it, the car had slowed
and Easton was parking.
 
As he
turned off the car, Easton looked over at Kennedy with a somber
expression.
 
“I know you’re afraid
right now,” he told her, “but there’s no way out of this.
 
You need to go into the office and deal
with the consequences of your actions.”

“What about you?” Kennedy asked him.
 
“Are you going to throw me under the
bus?”

“I need to do the same thing as you,” he
said.
 
“And then we’ll see how the
cookie crumbles, Kennedy.”

She sighed, accepting his logic.
 
“Thank you for risking your life for
me,” she told him.
 
“Regardless of
what happens with my job today.”

Easton didn’t react to her
gratitude.
 
It was as if the fight
had never even happened.
 
He was
focused on what came next.

But whatever else Easton did, she owed
him her life for fighting the men who’d tried to take her off the street in
front of her apartment.
 
She
couldn’t very well be disappointed in him for not entirely destroying his
career and life over her.
 
It wasn’t
right—it wasn’t fair to expect anything more from him.

She was the one who’d screwed up and she
needed to take the hit so that Easton didn’t wrongly pay the price for her
mistakes.

Kennedy would tell Red the truth and then
let the chips fall where they may.

She got out of the car and took a slow,
deep breath.
 
In just a few minutes
she would face the music and everything would change.

***

Red was already in the office suite when
they walked inside.

The moment he saw Kennedy, his eyes
hardened and he turned toward Easton.
 
“What is she doing here?” he asked.

“I told her to come,” Easton replied.

“You told her to come,” Red replied,
shaking his head in disbelief.
 
“Now, why would you do that?”

“I—I can go,” Kennedy said.
 
“I’m so, so sorry.
 
I’ll go right now.”
 
She started to turn, but Easton held up
a hand.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said to her.
 
He gave her a long look.
 
“Stay,” he murmured.
 

Red folded his arms.
 
His brow was low, his eyes thunderous as
he glared at Easton.
 
“She shouldn’t
be within a hundred feet of this building,” he said.
 
“Do you have any idea how much damage
she’s caused my wife, my family, and this company?”

“I think you should at least hear her
out,” Easton said.
 
“She should have
a chance to speak and tell you her side of the story.”