He looked . . . scary.
Muscles coiled beneath smooth skin as he prowled forward and she was overcome by the memory of him above her—skin to skin, his cheeks flushed and his brow slick with sweat, his mouth slightly parted—and it sent her stomach fluttering.
How did he affect her like this with just one look?
Stacy turned toward her, “Are you alright?”
“Fine.” She nodded. “I have a hard time watching this stuff.”
Stacy’s sigh fluttered the bangs above her dark eyes as the corner of her lips plucked up. “Boys are such animals.”
That did not help, Allie thought—only intensified her memories of just how animalistic Matthew could truly be.
As the fight began, Matthew was on the war path in an instant, his intelligent green eyes patiently assessing while his opponent, a massive fighter, chorded with thick bands of muscle, tested him with kicks and jabs. They rounded the cage in a deadly dance Allie was becoming more familiar with, last time she’d seen him fight he’d destroyed his opponent in mere seconds.
The fighters made a few circuits around the mat and the crowd grew bloodthirsty. Boos and hisses filled the arena with hostility. The other fighter, who was obviously nervous of Matthew’s reputation, kept his distance except for the occasional swipe of a glove or foot.
“Come on, Lynch! Kick his ass!” Jon’s deep voice made Allie jump. When she glanced back at him he was all white teeth. He shrugged at her and let out a long, “Yeeee-haw!”
What was Matthew waiting for?
When she turned back, bile rose to her throat as she watched Matthew lower his gloves.
Oh, no!
The other fighter blinked, stupefied, back at him. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for him to react to the gifted opening, however. He launched himself onto Matthew, driving him to the ground with an onslaught of bone-shattering punches.
Stacy gasped beside Allie, while she felt her own heart rate spike with fear.
“What is he doing?” Stacy’s voice was left behind as Allie rushed through the crowd, unaware she’d even moved until both Stacy and Jon were lost from view. Ignoring the jabs of hard elbows and surprised curses, her eyes were blind to all but Matthew.
He lay beneath the other fighter, whose massive arms pumped into his head like two merciless pistons. The wet splatter of Matthew’s blood coated both of them while his skull bounced up and down off the blue mat. His nose was split open, as was the skin over his cheekbone. Matthew protected himself just enough to keep the ref from interfering and calling the fight.
Damn it! How long could this go on without it being called! Her eyes bored into the ref who stood over the two fighters, begging him to end the fight.
Matthew! You asshole!
He was punishing himself! His eyes were empty, yellow, and nearly swollen shut. His face was tight and grim, braced for hit after hit that rained down over him.
“Matthew!” she shouted until her lungs burned and her voice was nearly hoarse. “Fight, damn you!” She was all panic now, imagining the damage his body was taking, each heavy, sickening hit reverberating through her as she cried out for him. Tears streamed down her cheeks, hot and angry. Why was he doing this? She wanted to scream her frustration, tear this whole damn building down.
“Matthew!” his name choked in her throat.
Suddenly, bloodshot eyes found hers and widened with fury and disbelief. With a roar, he fought back at last. Matthew bucked his hips up and swiveled, curling his chest up into his surprised opponent. His arm snaked around the fighter’s head, and when he rocked back again, the fighter’s neck was stretched to its limit in a brutal guillotine and he was forced to tap out or be internally decapitated.
The fighter was left to slam fists into the mat in frustration at having come so close to beating the invincible merc. Matthew, however, didn’t even wait for the ref to announce his win. He stalked out of the cage with murder in his eyes, jumped into the scrambling crowd of fans, and grabbed Allie roughly by the elbow. He didn’t say a word to her, or even so much as look at her as he hauled her back into the locker room. His hard face was sending a whole lot of back-the-hell-off to anyone in his way.
Only when they were alone did Matthew spin around to meet Allie with a glare that could have turned the polar ice caps to a puddle in seconds while blood flowed down his forehead, and dripped off his chin.
And that was just fine with Allie.
All of the frustration. All of the fear. The anger at him for shutting her out and shoving her away. Her love for this messed up man before her. It all came out now. Tears coursed down her face as her overheated body shook with rage. In this moment she wanted to destroy, to lash back at him, to tear at him and all his monstrous history that was keeping them apart.
“What the fuck are you doing here,” he shouted.
“Don’t you dare!” she sobbed.
She ran at him, fists slamming over his blood-slick chest. She didn’t care if she got it on her. It was Matthew’s blood. Sacred. She’d gladly bathe in it. Homage to her love for him.
“Damn you!” She shoved at him as hard as she could. “Why are you doing this to yourself? Why? What’s wrong with you!”
“Allie. Stop!” His voice was harsh gravel in her ears. His hands linked around her wrists, crossed her arms over her chest so she couldn’t hit him anymore, and pulled her against him. He was sticky with blood and sweat, smelled of man and aggression, but all Allie could focus on was the way his heart pounded against her cheek. For some reason, that just broke her up even more. Great shudders wracked through her and knocked the strength right out of her legs. She clawed at his waist and back, desperate to keep him close. She couldn’t stand to see him go back into that cage again. She just couldn’t bare it.
“Allie, stop. I hate it that you’re crying.” His voice was helpless, his hands all over her, still wrapped in tape and filling out their gloves. They ran over her shoulders and around her back; pushed the hair away from her wet face.
“Why,” she sobbed. “Why did you shut me out? And why would you do that to yourself? Why can’t you just let me love you?” Her words, filled with blinding honesty, were shoved from her mouth by all the frustration and terror she’d felt over the last few days. She could give a rat’s ass at the way his body stiffened when she admitted she loved him. It was the truth, so he could just get over it.
“Baby, don’t,” his voice cracked. “You don’t mean that.” He pulled back and she looked up into his broken, bleeding face. It was such a perfect mirror to the mess inside him.
“You don’t get to choose how I feel, Matthew. Only I get to. And”— she paused, her chin jutting out —“I mean it. I love you. And so do so many others. Why is that wrong?” She held onto him, unwilling to let him pull away. Not again.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught the flash of Stacy’s pale face and red-rimmed eyes. Jon stood behind her, lumbering in the doorway, uncomfortable and fidgeting, looking anywhere but at the two of them.
When Matthew saw them his face turned an ashen grey. He swallowed. Stacy met his gaze, her eyes hard and her expression unreadable as she nodded to him. Then she and Jon disappeared from view.
“I . . .” He was shaken up by Stacy’s presence. “You can’t love me, Allie. It’s not right. How could you after the other night?”
“I don’t care about that, Matthew. It wasn’t you. I know that!”
He jerked away like he’d taken a few volts from a Taser. “Are you insane? Have you completely lost your fucking mind, Allie?” His chest was seething, his hands shaking at his sides. “Do you have no fucking regard for your safety?”
“Of course I do, you ass!” She balled her hands at her sides to keep from unleashing them on him again as a fresh wave of anger washed over her. “You think I enjoyed what happened?” She tore her turtle neck to the side so that the black and yellow imprint of where his fingers had been glared back at him.
Matthew recoiled from th
e sight, horror stretching his face into an expression of pure agony.
“You need help, damn it! You can’t just run from your problems. From me. From your family!”
He stalked forward and shoved a finger in her face. “You don’t know a goddamned thing about me!”
She slapped his hand away. “I know enough to know you’re worth sticking around for. I’ve seen you, Matthew! I’ve seen you with Stacy. With her kids. I’ve seen the way your crazy neighbors look at you. Everyone sees your goodness. There’s so much! You’re not some rabid dog to be put down. You can be helped, if you would just try!”
“I tried already!” he shouted, his big body looming over her. “It didn’t fucking work!”
“Then you try something else, damn you! You keep trying!” She launched herself at him and crushed her mouth to his, all teeth and claws, daring him to shove her away. She bit his swollen bottom lip; tasted the metallic tint of blood on her tongue.
And he just held on. Strong arms, slick with sweat and blood, wrapped her up in a granite embrace. His hands were everywhere, over her arms, throat, and hair. When they settled gently over the sides of her face he was trembling. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I’m so sorry,” over and over into her hair, slumping to his knees, dragging Allie down with him to the hard, concrete floor.
“Matthew, it’s okay. I’m not going anywhere. We’ll figure it out. It’ll be okay.”
“How, Allie? I don’t know how to fix me!” He met her gaze with the haunted eyes of a doomed man. “How do I get this shit out of my head? All this death. It’s in my skin and I can’t get the stink off.”
Inside the warm cocoon of his arms, she slipped her hands around his waist. “I don’t know. But . . . we’ll figure it out. Together, Matthew; there’s always hope in that.”
“There’s got to be rules, baby. I’ll die if I hurt you again. I can’t look at myself for what I did.” His voice was broken—destroyed. His despair choked the air around them, smothered Allie beneath its crush.
“We’ll make rules. Anything you want. We’ll get through it.”
“Damn it”— A fresh tremor tore up his spine —“How can you want me?”
His words sliced into her heart. How could he not see himself? His radiance had glared out of his closed down and ornery-as-hell façade as easily as light through a glass window the moment they’d shared that first dinner. Scratch that—from the very beginning, when he’d pulled her out of that alleyway. He would always be her shining knight. She wasn’t romanticizing things; putting him on some idealized pedestal. He had given his life selflessly in the defense of those he’d cared for. Of his nation. He’d given all he was and paid the price. It was damn near time he was paid back for some of what he’d given. And Allie wouldn’t rest until he was healed.
“I’ll always want you, Matthew. Only you. Forever.”
Chapter twenty-one
“I need to change and shower.” Matthew’s voice rumbled over the back of Allie’s neck, causing the tiny hairs there to prickle beneath his breath.
He stood, pulling Allie up with him. When he bent to drop his gloves into his duffle bag, he groaned.
“Do you need a doctor?” Allie eyed his poor, beat up face.
“No. I’m good. Lactic acid can be a bitch, though.” Hands ran down his back and thighs.
Allie looked around at the empty room, the stacks of dented and chipped lockers lined the rows like abandoned houses. “Doesn’t anyone else use this place?”
As his eyes dropped to the floor, his lips cracked through the lines of drying blood with a half-smile. “Usually not if they know I’m here.”
“Don’t play well with others, Matthew?” She smirked up at him.
His mouth twitched. “Yeah”—he rubbed the back of his neck—“For some reason the other guys think I’m a crazy asshole with a short fuse.”
She shook her head, taking in his two swollen eyes. “I can’t imagine why?”
“Yeah, well . . .” He shrugged and walked down to his locker like he was too embarrassed to look at her. When he pulled out a couple towels and the same jar of medicated salve he’d used on her before, Allie jumped to her feet.
“Can I clean you up?” she blurted before she could stop herself.
His eyebrows knitted together and gave her a slow blink of surprise. “Why would you want to?”
“Because, I love you.” The words were beginning to fall much easier from her lips now that she’d tried them out a few times.
And he still looked just as uncomfortable at having her say them to him.
When she walked toward him the muscles in his chest tightened like he was bracing to climb the walls. “I . . .”—he swallowed—“I don’t understand you, Allison.”
“What’s not to understand?” she whispered.
“Why you want me.”
Oh, Matthew.
He broke her heart; he really did.
“Sit down. Here.”
He dropped onto the bench she’d pointed to and looked up at her with fathomless, green eyes; hands clutching at his thighs like he was holding on to all his self-control.
She smiled. “You’d think I was a death sentence looming over you.” She took a washcloth over to a small sink; got it good, wet, and soapy. Rang it out. Then she was back, standing over him. “Tell me if this hurts,” she murmured.
“It won’t.” His head tipped up to hers as his eyes closed, the powerful, stretched muscles in his neck cradling his throat.
Her fingers slipped into his damp hair and pushed the errant, blood-encrusted locks out of her way. Starting up at his hairline, she began gently wiping the gore and sweat from his forehead. At her touch, he sighed and the ridged muscles in his shoulders and jaw softened a tiny bit.
Allie took advantage of his eyes being shut to look at him. His lashes were a shade darker than his hair, more brown than bronze, and lay in two thick crescents over the swollen skin beneath his eyes. His full lips parted as she stroked the cloth down his face, his chest rising and falling with his even breathing. As she moved to the side of his cheek, the muscles between his brows twitched, like he was fighting to relax and stay sitting. Had no one ever taken care of him before? If that were so, it would most likely have been because of his incorrigible stubbornness, rather than a result of anyone’s neglect. She suddenly wondered what he was like as a child. Hard to picture him as small and innocent. She had a feeling he’d always been tough. She wished she could meet more of his family.
As she finished cleaning the last of his wounds, she frowned at his split lip. The gash was deep, the subcutaneous layer showing yellow and beady. It just kept trickling blood no matter how much she dabbed at it.
“This may need stitches.” She brushed a light index finger over one tender ridge.
“Nah. Just use some of this.” Matthew placed a small bottle in her hand.
“Super glue?”
His lips twisted with a crooked grin, making the cut gap farther.
Oh, don’t do that! It hurt her to look at it.
“Only a pussy gets stitches for a busted lip,” a gruff reply.
She rolled her eyes—men—and pressed a kiss at the corner of his mouth that wasn’t hurt. “Hold still, Humpty Dumpty. I’m going try to put you back together again.”
She dabbed away the fresh well of blood and then ran a line of clear liquid down the center of the cut, trying not to think of all the possible bacteria that may have accumulated in the non-sterile glue bottle. Pressing the edges together, she hoped to heck they stuck. After a few minutes of holding it in place, though, she felt sure it wouldn’t pull apart and stood back to scrutinize her ministrations.
“Do you have something for the swelling?” she asked him.
He stood. “I’m good. I’ll grab an ice pack after I change.”
Right. She nodded. He’d probably want to shower now.
Allie looked around, figuring she should find Stacy, but not wanting to leave him alone.
&nbs
p; Matthew’s gaze settled on her mouth. When she realized she was chewing her bottom lip she stopped.
“Thank you,” he said. “For the help with my face. And, for . . . the other stuff.”
She felt awkward; standing in front of him after seeing him cracked open to her in such an intimate and painful way. It made her shy. “I’m here for you.” She smiled, pressed a soft kiss to the back of his knuckles. “We’re going to make this work, okay?”
***
Figuring Matthew could use some time to muddle through whatever emotions were warring inside him, Allie left to go in search of Stacy and Jon. Heaven knew Allie was on the verge of being drowned beneath her own torrent of thoughts at the moment. Unsteady legs carried her out toward the main arena. As she pushed through the locker room door, the roar of the crowd washed over her. She tucked her hands under her arms to steady their shaking.
She didn’t have far to look before she found Stacy wedged into the corner of a hallway a few yards ahead. Stacy’s face was tight with worry, looking as stressed as Allie felt. Jon stood off to the side, towering over Stacy, his blue eyes having cooled to the color of frosted ocean water as he scanned the room. Guess Matthew’s self-inflicted beating had taken the fun out of the night for Jon, too.
Stacy’s dark eyes met Allie’s and she clipped over while Jon trailed behind. “Are you okay?” She put her hands on Allie’s shoulders. “When we saw you two fighting we thought we should give you some privacy.” Stacy’s eyes swept up to the dark haired, bulging wall of muscle behind her. “Jon kept everyone out.”
“How is he?” Stacy whispered.
Allie shook her head, trying to break herself free of her shellshock. “He’s pretty messed up”—when Stacy’s face crumpled, she added—“but he agreed to therapy. That’s, at the least, something.” Matthew needed some kind of step into recovery at this stage; if not, he was on the road to being flat on his back, on a metal slab, within a year.
The sight of him on that mat, letting the other man ruthlessly beat on him was going to be burned into her skull forever.
Captured at Nightfall (Capture My Heart Love Story) Page 16