Shadowboxer (Tapped Out 1)

“Open up, Fox,” she said through gritted teeth. “Tray.”

I did as she asked, and the pieces of glass I’d advertently driven farther into my hand fell to the floor. Along with a few more drops of red.

“God, what did you do?” She grabbed the nearest decanter on the bar and doused my hand in scotch before I could protest. Loudly. While sort of howling.

Holy mother of fucking hell, that hurt.

“Jesus, Mia, you ever hear of pouring scotch in the wound?”

Her brief look of horror morphed into a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-lip-twitch. “Thought that was salt?”

“Turns out scotch hurts worse. File that away in your book of torture tricks.”

I lifted my hand to my mouth, intent on lessening the sting, but she gripped my palm and carefully drew it away. She shocked me into silence by dragging my fingers between her lips. She sucked gently, lapping up the scotch and the blood trickling from the nearest cut. Erasing one pain and creating a whole new one that couldn’t be soothed with scotch or wet kisses delivered by a girl with eyes darker than the woods at twilight.

Woods at twilight? A couple days without sex—without Mia—had driven me stark raving mad.

“So the pale skin isn’t just incidental?” I tried futilely to swallow the cotton wool that had somehow embedded itself in my throat. I was pretty sure it had happened right about when Mia’s pale pink lips had slipped over the tips of my fingers and pulled. Each minute movement of her mouth throbbed through my cock.

I barely felt any wounds now. Blood? What blood? The fleeting pain had morphed into pleasure, drugging and sweet, making me lightheaded.

Could’ve been the platelet loss. Or it could’ve been the sense of impending doom because I was about to fall to my knees and beg for her to let me take her to bed. My bed.

“You’re a vampire.” The words tumbled out of me as her tongue snaked between my fingers and dipped over my knuckles. There wasn’t any blood in that particular spot, and she was taking little testing licks rather than sucking now at any rate. But a glow had stolen over her cheeks, lighting her up from within. That my blood had that effect on her was more reasonable than assuming she was enjoying…feasting on me.

Enjoying me, period.

While I stood there gawking, she released me to unzip her hoodie and rip off the bottom strip of her T-shirt. Despite the fact that the fabric had nearly worn through, her easy strength made my mouth go dry. That cotton wool feeling migrated to my head as she pressed the fabric against my hand, applying just the right amount of pressure to slow the already lessening bleeding. She still didn’t speak.

If she was trying to break me with her silence, she wouldn’t have to work too hard. The rational part of my brain—assuming I still had one—was lying in shards on the floor with that glass.

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.”