After a few minutes, Adam stepped out of the shower. He swiped at his wet hair and wrapped a white cotton towel around his hips. Water dripped down his body as he came toward me, now smelling like my flowery soap.
I was still glued to the same position as before, my hands making permanent imprints in the plush comforter at my sides as I waited for him to make the next move. I didn’t want to press.
He sat down next to me and his hand slipped down and covered mine. The gentle touch was so different from what I had witnessed tonight in the fighting ring.
“I’m so sorry. After everything you went through with your ex, you shouldn’t have been caught up in this shit situation.”
“It’s not your fault. Well, not really.” I peeled my eyes from our hands to meet Adam’s intense, soulful eyes. “Am I in danger, though? Those guys who showed up at Leslie’s . . .” I never had told Adam about that guy at the pub.
Adam blew out a breath. “You’re not in danger. No.”
“So, when you texted me the next day that you handled it—it was because you gave into those jerks? You agreed to fight?”
“Aye.” His attention shifted to the inside of his forearm, to the black markings there.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
He pulled his hand from mine and traced the tattoo with his fingers. “It’s nothing terribly poetic.” His lips curved into a half smile as if he were trying to shrug off the inconvenience of emotion that might have bruised his insides. “This,” he said, while pointing to a line that had dashes going through it, “means family. And the other . . . means fight.”
“Family and fight? They don’t seem to go too well together.” My gaze flickered up his chest and to his face.
There was a darkness there. A pain. “That’s the point. It’s a reminder to myself so I’ll never forget. If I fight, I can’t have my family.”
The back of Adam’s hand slipped up to my cheek. “I don’t . . . I don’t want to be this guy. I don’t want to be a fighter anymore.” His voice was low, gravelly, pure—like a confession.
“Then don’t,” I whispered, our eyes locking, my body tight with a sudden need that seemed out of place. Of course, both my body and mind always reacted when I was around Adam. He did something unexplainable to me—made every inch of me electrified. Alive.
Maybe it wasn’t fair to compare him to Jax. Adam was fighting to help, not to hurt. But what the hell had possessed him to fight in the first place?
“It’s not so simple, Anna.” His hand fell from my cheek down to the bed between us. “Until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t stepped foot inside a gym that had a fighting ring in it. For five years I stayed away . . . but not because I wanted to, but because I had to.”
He was on his feet, his hands fisting at his sides, and I could tell he was angry at himself, although I wasn’t sure why. “When I step into a ring, it’s like fire in my veins, lighting me up. Charging me. The adrenaline and excitement.” He shook his head, tearing his fingers across his short dark hair. “There’s something feckin’ wrong with me. It’s like a drug.” He paused, his words slowing as if it pained him to speak the truth. “And as much as I don’t want to be that man—the fighter—I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop until I’ve lost everyone important in my life and it’s too damn late.”
“I’m here.” I was on my feet, and I reached for both his forearms, bracing myself as I found his eyes.
His chest moved up and down as my fingertips pushed harder into the flesh of his arms, worried I’d fall under the weight of my feelings.
“Anna . . .”
Maybe he was saying my name as a warning, and maybe I should heed it, but I couldn’t.
I let go of his arms and reached for the strap of my robe. I untied it, and then pushed the robe off. I looked up to meet Adam’s eyes, craving his touch. I wanted to feel his skin against mine, to have the pressure of his pain lifted, to let him know he had me, even if was only for two more months.
His arms were at his sides, the muscles in his jaw tight. He was trying to refrain from touching me, but why? Did he think he couldn’t, because of what I’d seen tonight?
“Touch me, Adam.” I reached down for his closed fist and brought it between us, unfolding each of his fingers, one by one. I traced my finger down his palm and then brought my eyes flickering up to meet his. “There’s more power in an open hand,” I whispered as I brought his hand to my chest.
“Anna, I’m not good for you.” His eyes flashed closed. The warmth from his palm and the awareness of my naked body made my skin tingle. “After a win—all of the energy—it can make me . . .” He opened his eyes. “I don’t want to be—”
“I won’t flinch when you touch me, Adam.” My other hand slipped to the towel on his hips, and I yanked it off. He tilted his head back as his hard length sprang free. “Be with me. Make whatever pain that’s hurting you go away.”
“Anna,” he cried, and then his lips slanted over mine. He hooked an arm around my waist and pulled our bodies flush against each other until my breasts smashed to his chest. A low growl escaped his lips as his hand parted my thighs and slipped to my center.
My head fell back, and our lips broke at his touch. With closed eyes, I savored every moment. The palm of his hand shifted up my chest, while the other delivered incredible sensations to my groin.
I was hanging on the edge. Maybe it was a dangerous edge, but I didn’t care. When Adam shifted me to my back, I knew that I was safe in his arms.
***
“Do you trust me?”
Adam was sitting on his black sports bike, the powerful machine between his legs. He was holding his arm out, a helmet in hand. I stared dumbly at his outstretched arm. Nervousness spiraled through me.
“Trust me, Anna, I would never let anything happen to you. I want you to experience the city the way I see it when I ride.” He pushed the helmet a little closer to me, and I unclasped my arms and reached out for it.
“What about you? Don’t you need a helmet?”
“Not if we don’t crash.” He smiled. “And I have no intention of doing that,” he said with a wink. He had ducked out earlier this morning to get clothes from his place, and when he came back, he had the bright idea to take out his bike.
After everything that had happened last night, was I crazy to be doing this? He still owed me a deeper explanation of how he became a fighter, and why he quit. I had let the truth of his past fall through the cracks last night because I needed him. And after our bodies had connected beneath the sheets, we’d both passed out hard.
“Okay,” I begrudgingly agreed. He helped me onto the bike and slipped on a pair of sunglasses. I secured the helmet and wrapped my arms around his body.
The day was beautiful. The morning sun splattered the horizon with soft shades of orange and pink. The temperature was cool, but not ice cold.
Still, we had been acting like last night didn’t happen. Was our cocoon still intact, or were we pretending?
No, the walls were flimsy and peeling. We had to talk about his fighting eventually.
“You ready, love?” He looked over his shoulder. I slipped the visor of the helmet down and nodded.
The engine purred, and I could feel its vibrations between my thighs.
Adam pulled away from the hotel and out onto the road. This was completely against my plan to keep hidden from public view. But my job was a whole other issue—one that I’d rather save for another day.
I realized we were heading out of Dublin after ten or so minutes, but where to? Adam, of course, hadn’t told me anything.
The bike hugged the curves of the road, angling to the side a little too much for my comfort whenever we turned. The water was off to the right and, as we came closer to it, the breeze picked up, imbuing the air with bitter coldness.
We drove past a blustery green sea coast, inland meadows with pops of wild fuchsia, seabirds whirling through the sky . . . it was stunning. And the fresh air was just what I need
ed. After the wide open spaces of the farm back home, living in a hotel room for three weeks had made me want to claw at my skin.
The craggy cliffs dropped down to the sea where the water roared up into foam on the rocks. God, I was so alive at the moment. Part of me wanted to peel my arms free of Adam and open them wide, to allow freedom to wash over me, to cleanse me of my past . . .
But I wasn’t an idiot, so I clung to Adam, noticing a red lighthouse in the distance.
I wanted to speak, to tell him how incredible it all was, but I doubted he could hear me.
We passed crumbling ruins of an old building, and then Adam began to slow down. He parked, and I lifted the helmet from my head, shaking my mass of hair free. He turned off the engine and reached for my hand, steadying me as I hoisted my leg over. I combed my fingers through my hair and smiled at Adam’s reddened face.
My fingers graced his cheek, which was like ice, even though the temperature was in the upper forties.
Over his shoulder, I could see colorful boats dotting the waters.
“This place is spectacular.” He secured the helmet to his bike, and I guessed he trusted that no one would steal it. He grabbed hold of my hand and our fingers laced together.
“I thought this would be a better place to talk. A heavy conversation inside a hotel room didn’t seem fitting, ya know?”
“Agreed.” We began walking down a path alongside the boats. The water softly lapped against the concrete to my left. “So. How are you feeling this morning?” We’d barely spoken at the hotel before he’d whisked me away.
“I’m not sore at all if that’s what you mean.”
“I’m a little sore,” I said, trying to keep the conversation light. “You wore me out last night.”
He tightened his grasp on my hand. “And I’d be happy to wear you out again tonight.”
“Why wait so long?” I teased, raising a brow.
“You drive me mad, woman.” His free hand shifted to his jeans, and he adjusted himself. Had I made him hard with just a few words? I tried not to laugh.
Adam stopped walking and faced the railing, looking out onto the sea of boats. “It seems crazy that I’d never seen the sea before I came here. Hell, I’d never been to a beach.” The thought made me claustrophobic, now. “How can I ever go back to a life where I live in the middle of nowhere and never experience the world?”
Our hands unlocked as he gripped the railing. “Don’t.”
“I don’t think working at your company is going to happen for me when this is all over.” I knew well enough by now that I wasn’t meant for the corporate world. All that student loan debt had been for nothing.
What would I do? Work on my parents’ farm for the rest of my life?
“Because of me?” he asked, looking over his shoulder.
I copied his move and wrapped my fingers around the black metal, which had grown warm from the clear sun hanging unobstructed in the soft blue sky. “No, because I don’t get any satisfaction from it. And I know a lot of people work for a paycheck, and that’s the way life is, but—”
He faced me, his hand touching my hip as he looked into my eyes. “You’re not going to be one of those people. I don’t want you to be.” His brows were pulled together, and he released a lungful of the crisp air. “I want you to do something that makes you happy.”
“The only thing that I have really enjoyed so far is working at the center. Well, that and riding horses, but—”
“So do that.”
“Do what?” I shifted back away from him and looked out at the water.
“Do something that involves working with kids and working with horses.”
He made it sound easy, but was there such a job? “I don’t know. Do you enjoy what you do?”
“Yeah, I guess, but I never had a choice. I was raised to run the company. Besides, if the company doesn’t turn a profit, then we wouldn’t have the foundation.”
“How do you fight?” I hadn’t meant to verbalize my thought, but I needed to know, eventually. “I mean, you’re such a good guy—it’s hard for me to understand why you would ever hit people . . . on purpose.”
I stole a glimpse of him as he scratched his chin, his eyes on the ground. “It started at the end of high school. My friend and I decided to join a gym in the city, and we spotted two guys sparring in a ring while we were working out. We were standing there watching when one of the guys called out to us—he told us to come up. He showed me how to throw my first punch.” Adam’s hands turned to fists in front of him as if he were reliving his memories.
I kept quiet, not sure what to say.
“The next time I went to the gym I saw the same guy there again. Donovan Hannigan.”
Hannigan? That was the name of the bar I’d gone to on Friday. Coincidence?
“Donovan taught my friend and me to fight. I didn’t tell my parents because I knew they wouldn’t like it. At first, it was for fun. I’d spar with some of the guys at the gym. Donovan told me he’d never seen someone with such natural talent.”
I reached for Adam’s arms and grabbed hold of his wrists, holding them between us.
“Donovan kind of took me under his wing. Da was always out of town, but Donovan was there. The day of my nineteenth birthday, he said he had a surprise for me—it was a fight. A real one. There were crowds of people, and I was almost too afraid to go through with it. But Donovan convinced me to do it, and I won. It had been so easy, too. I wasn’t sure if it’d been dumb luck, at first. But after that fight, I won every other one.”
“Did your parents ever find out?”
“Of course. The bruises, cuts, a few fractures . . .”
“What’d they say?”
“Da threatened to disown me, to kick me out of the business. When I told Donovan about it, he was more than eager for me to move into one of the flats he owned. When I told my parents I was going to move out, they were terrified I’d go through with it, so they basically dropped their threats. I went to college, worked at the company . . . and at night, I trained. I fought.”
Oh God.
“It became addicting, the winning. I was always chasing after the feeling it gave me, wanting more and more. I loved having so many people chanting my name, supporting me. But the deeper I got into it all, the more I learned who Donovan really was.” He dropped his hands from mine as if he were too ashamed to touch me. “But once Donovan gets his grip on you, it’s hard to get out.”
“Did you try to quit?”
“I want to say yes . . .” His eyes darkened, a pain there.
“But you didn’t?”
“Da tried to offer Donovan money to get him away from me. A lot of money. But as I mentioned, Donovan cares more about his reputation than a check. He liked making the money off my fights.”
I struggled to comprehend what he was saying. It felt like there were two Adams. But which one was standing before me now—the fighter or the businessman?
Spine-tingling chills skated down my back as Adam’s eyes caged me in his gaze. His story was going to get worse.
He bent his head forward . . . and I lost him. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I finally crossed my arms, almost hugging myself to maintain composure.
“Five years ago, I quit. And I didn’t step near a bloody ring since—well, until two weeks ago.”
“Why?” I whispered, the breeze carrying the word from my lips.
“Owen.” He stiffened and looked back up at me. “I should never have been in the ring with him. He was nowhere near qualified enough to fight me. I should have refused to fight him.” He swallowed, the lump of emotion evident. “It only took one left hook—and the way he fell.” His eyes flashed shut. “Something happened to his spine.”
I cupped a hand to my mouth.
“I visited him in the hospital after the fight, worried about him, and they said he’d probably never walk again. The cops were there . . . I spent the night in jail.” He touched his wrists. “And I wish Da never
bailed me out. I wish he’d let me feckin’ rot there. I deserved it.”
“But it was an accident! This guy chose to get in that ring with you.” I couldn’t help but come to his defense, despite how I felt about the fighting.
“The Garda—the police—tried to turn me against Donovan. I knew a lot about his business dealings, but I also knew that I couldn’t rat on him. I knew he wasn’t past hurting the people I cared about . . .”
“Jesus, Adam.”
“Since I wasn’t allowed back at the hospital to see Owen, my folks went—they told me that Owen was paralyzed. He’d be in a wheelchair forever. And it was my fault. My parents gave him a big settlement, and then I talked to Donovan. I threatened him—demanding that he leave me be.”
“Wow.”
“Donovan hated me for walking out on him. He had a few of his guys hold me down and beat the shit out of me. And I let them. I deserved it after what happened to Owen.”
“And now you’re back?” My shoulders shrank as sadness overwhelmed me.
“I’m not sure if there will be a way out this time.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “My family might have money, but Donovan has power. He owns half the city. And I’m honestly not sure how I managed to escape him for so long.”
“That’s why you created the center? To try and keep the kids out of his clutches?”
He nodded. “Redemption.”
“You can’t blame yourself—”
“I can, and I do. I remember what I did to Owen every day. And it has kept me from fighting, until now.” He shook his head, and a flash of anger lit his eyes. “You see, Anna, we all make choices. I made mine a long time ago. Now I must suffer the consequences. Now you understand why I’m dangerous for you, why you can’t be with me.”
Adam started to walk away, and I stood there, watching him leave.
“No,” the word escaped from my lips in a whisper. “No,” I said louder and finally moved to catch up with him. “No, Adam.” I touched his shoulder.
He spun to face me, his hands locked at his sides.
“I refuse to accept that,” I cried.
He shook his head, his eyes hard as steel. “Last night was it for us, Anna. We can’t—”
Forever Dublin (Forever #2) Page 20