Knockout: The Doyles A Boston Irish Mafia Romance Read online

  “It’s not true,” I say. “Well, about the girls.”

  She quirks a dark red eyebrow. “Women,” she corrects me without pausing.

  Right. Women.

  At the thought of the word women, everything south of the order gets even harder as if this was possible. Damn it. I’m suffering and she knows it, and I’m still going to walk right into whatever this is. Because this is what I do with Molly.

  Actually, I might do anything for this girl. But at what cost?

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve really been out with anyone, and there’s nobody.” Nobody else, I was going to say. Thank God I stop myself.

  She nods, looking me over again, ready to say something. Her eyes linger on my chest, and it’s taking everything I’ve got not to flex. Idiot.

  But her eyes move down further and she stiffens.

  Fuck.

  She just regards me for a while, and I get even harder, and more turned on under her frank stare. She reaches over and extinguishes the one light. Very softly, her voice comes next to my ear.

  “Sweet dreams, Owen.”

  Woman, you have no damned idea.

  “Good night, Molly. Thank you.”

  From the darkness, I hear her sliding down, adjusting her pillows, and going to sleep. I presume I’m supposed to do the same.

  But as I lie in the Molly trap, a few inches from her body – which throws heat like a damned furnace – the last thing I can think of is sleep.

  7

  Owen

  It’s about 3:00 a.m. My hand lingers above Molly’s curls, which are spread out on the pillow. She looks like the Madonna, angelic. Not being able to touch her might be my hardest fight yet, but I’d catch the devil if I woke her. It’s tempting, but I haven’t been hit in the head enough yet to be that stupid, so I ease out of bed and walk into the living room.

  Scanning the books on her shelves, I see she has books on everything. Medical stuff. The history of scurvy. Astronomy. Fiction. Biographies. Myths of Ireland. I always knew that she was smart, but apparently she’s insatiable. Curiosity is an appealing trait in a woman, that kind of desire to drink in the world.

  Molly has it in spades.

  The door to the bedroom clicks opens behind me, and Molly’s footsteps move fast in my direction. “Owen, are you feeling all right?”

  She’s in my face, probing, and before I can stop her, blazing a flashlight into my eyes.

  Shielding my eyes, I’m quick to reply. “Jesus, yeah, I’m fine, buttercup. I just couldn’t sleep. Sorry I woke you.”

  Fighting to keep my eyes off the curves that the faint glow from the window throw into stark relief, I run my finger up the spine of one of her books.

  “I’ve always wanted to go to Ireland.”

  Despite my best efforts, I can’t keep my eyes off her, her red hair wild and mussed, like the banshees in her Irish folktale books. Her eyes look dreamy with sleep, another button on her top undone. She’s a wild sleeper, mumbling and kicking, just as feisty in her dreams as she is during the day. And the arousal I tamped down to normal levels is ready to send a rocket to space.

  Fantastic. Now a restless sleeper is a turn-on. What’s next?

  “I woke up and you weren’t there,” she says, rushing on to add, “I worried the concussion…”

  “I’m fine.” Suddenly, more than anything, I just want to reassure her. Calm whatever anxiety she’s feeling.

  She looks at me hard, so I turn back around to stare out the bay window. There’s a surprising expanse of stars visible and the sky is clear for a city night. “Do you ever just sit here and look at the stars?”

  I expect her to say no, to act like it’s weird. But she just moves in next to me, and says, “Help me drag the couch forward like three inches. Now turn it this way.”

  When it’s repositioned, she curls up into a little ball and pats the worn cushion next to her. I sit, and then she motions to the skyscape which is suddenly three times brighter.

  “There’s Ursa Major, and Minor’s over there.” Her voice is lazy, like she does this all the time.

  But I’m captivated. Nights are always so busy. Fighting, training, marketing. My head’s so focused on the next thing and the thing after that that I’ve missed a lot. Not just with Molly. With life.

  “What’s that?” I ask, pointing to a cluster of stars. Leaning back into the couch, I marvel with my eyes half on the sky and half on Molly, as she takes me on a quick, competent tour of the galaxy. If anyone could do it, it’s this multilayered firebrand. My arm crosses the back of the couch, and I could pull her in close with just a tug.

  Would that be a good idea, or the worst one ever?

  I know I shouldn’t. Shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be thinking about her the way that I am. But that magnetic pull toward her seems even stronger.

  “I didn’t know you were interested in astronomy, Doyle.”

  Her face is a challenge, and I recognize it. She’s trying to extract information to fit some picture she’s making in her head. She’s been like that since we were kids – demanding, persistent, too clever.

  Part of me wants to resist it. But a bigger part of me wants to get swept up into whatever she’s thinking, feeling, wanting.

  I look at her, a sideways visual connection because head-on feels too intimate.

  “I’m interested in a lot of things. But most of my time – it’s fighting, training, marketing for that. And my family stuff. Sometimes I just want to go take a kayak and a tent and go hike a mountain. Or take a week and go to a whole new country. There’s so much out there, Molly.”

  Her eyes have gone impossibly wide. “You want to do more than fight?”

  “Well, yeah. It’s my job. Do you want to EMT all the time?”

  She snorts. “Hell, no, but you have to pay the bills.”

  “Exactly.”

  I wait, my heart beginning to pound. Our conversations about fighting in general, and me in particular, don’t go well. But she’s regarding me with open interest.

  “What would you do if you didn’t fight?”

  Running a hand across my hair, I duck my head and then glance up at her sideways. She’s watching me with intensity. I haven’t told many people about this, and suddenly I feel vulnerable. I don’t want to talk about myself. No, I want her to talk about something so I can just listen. But she’s not relenting.

  “Look, I’m a Doyle.”

  “Owen, you fought hard – literally – to keep out of that life.”

  How obvious is that to everyone around me? Then again, maybe Molly just sees me more clearly than others do.

  “Yeah, exactly. Look, I can fight and that’s a skill. It took a lot to convince my family that I could do this on my own.”

  She nods, and I get the feeling that she understands that struggle all too well. The particulars might be different, but the fight to stand on her own two feet? Very much the same.

  “But you can’t fight forever, Molly, and I wouldn’t want to. I’ve been saving up, saving everything.” I clear my throat.

  It’s not like I had a lot growing up. But don’t think it doesn’t hit the pride when people wonder where all your money is going when you’re winning big purses and don’t seem to have much to show. Old house, old car. I’d fixed up the house a little, but not enough.

  Every dollar going into a savings account, and then an investment account when it wasn’t growing fast enough. My chest swells a little when I remember how shocked my brother Seamus looked when I brought him my bank statements.

  He’s a lawyer and has all the connections to handle financial stuff. How he’d called the private wealth guy at the bank and gone down with me that day to set up new accounts, and how deeply relieved I’d secretly been when the balances grew faster. How many fewer punches I had to take or throw that those numbers had suddenly looked like.

  “What’s your endgame?”

  Her voice has that lightness that I know is bullshit, that lets me know how
much my answer matters.

  I brace myself. Last time I’d told someone, they’d been quick to tell me that a big dumb thug couldn’t run a business.

  Even my brothers gave me a hard time, so I’d just kept thinking about it. Stopped talking about it.

  “I want to open a gym.” My voice is very quiet.

  The seconds of silence seem to stretch into an eternity. Surprise sparks through me when she reaches out and grabs my hand. “I always knew you’d do that. Run your own business, I mean. You’ll be great at it.”

  She sounds so fucking sincere and excited that it’s suddenly like I can’t breathe.

  “Yeah?”

  “Absolutely. You could train fighters and stuff. Host people touring. And everyone loves that CrossFit stuff.”

  That is exactly it. She nailed my whole dream, my whole plan for the future. I clear my throat.

  “What about you? I always thought you’d go to college. More college, I mean?”

  She lets go of my hand and leans back. “Me too. But by the time my parents had sent four of my brothers to college, there just wasn’t much left. I didn’t want to send them further into debt, Owen.”

  Her eyes meet mine through the darkness and she shrugs. “They’re almost sixty-five and they haven’t even paid off their house yet. I don’t know how they’re going to retire, and I didn’t want the debt. Being an EMT sounded like a good way to get in the door.”

  Molly. Always managing to get what she wants, to follow her ambitions, while thinking about what other people need.

  “What do you want to do?”

  Asking that question – thinking about the wine and the chopsticks and the books – I’m suddenly terrified that she’s going to say leave Boston. See the world or some out-of-reach thing like that. I’m anchored here: to my brothers, my father, to being a Boston Doyle.

  At least, that’s what I’ve always assumed. Tonight has me questioning certain things I’ve taken for granted. Could one conversation really shift that much?

  “I want to become a doctor,” she says simply.

  Damn. I look at her in surprise. Of course this girl’s ambitions would outstrip anything I could imagine.

  “I’m working on a promotion at work, which I’ll have in a couple of months. I’ve been taking classes toward my nursing degree, but that’s going to take a couple more years. I’m taking the prerequisites for pre-med. Who knows.”

  I know. There’s absolutely nothing that could stop this woman.

  “Sounds like you’ve got a plan.” The awe is plain in my own voice.

  She snorts, that laugh she has when she finds something funny and when she’s about to be self-deprecating. “Well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans.”

  I do, and it’s clear that my plans for getting out of this night unscathed? Right down the fucking drain.

  8

  Molly

  My heart pounds so loudly I wonder if Owen hears it. I pull in short, quick breaths, and my tiny couch feels smaller than ever, compressing our bodies into an ever-shrinking space. He takes up almost the whole thing, and with these admissions, it feels like we’re practically sitting on top of each other.

  Sparks fly where my bare toes touch his muscled thigh.

  He suddenly looks almost shy, like he opened up too much and doesn’t know where to go from here. But all I can think about is what he said about the gym. How he won’t always be fighting.

  That there’s a safer future for Owen. A future that might hold more possibilities than I’d ever really dared to hope.

  Shifting, he pivots his body to face me. The hot skin of his leg rubs against mine and my breath hitches.

  “There’s literally nothing you can’t do, Molly. You’ll be Dr. O’Brien before we know it.”

  He sounds so positive. Christ. It reminds me what I always admired about Owen: a bright sense of possibility that can be hard to find in a loud, Irish Catholic, down-on-your-luck place like the neighborhood we grew up in.

  “Everything you’ve ever wanted, I’ve seen you go after and get.”

  I can’t stop myself and raise my eyes to meet his. “Not everything.”

  He stares into my eyes for a long minute, emotions warring across his face, and then his big hand comes up to caress my face. His fingers trace a line down my cheek, and then slide around to tangle in my hair. Instinctively, I tilt my face down into his hand.

  So much restrained power in that touch. And so little restraint left in my response.

  My heart thunders, heat rushing to my face. Hot tension coils in my center. I know this is not a good idea. Let me count the reasons. One is my brother, who was here not even five hours ago. Another is the very reason that brought Owen Doyle to my door tonight.

  I’m just a few seconds from making a decision that I can’t take back.

  Owen leans into my space, so slowly that it’s almost like I’m imagining it, and brushes his lips on mine. An invitation, a different side to Owen. Not the rough, hurried, frantic kisses of our previous encounter, and not the flashes of hot desire that run between us when we’re in the same room.

  I don’t expect the surprising tenderness there. It sends a stab through me, feelings and desires and an almost wanton response to his touch all clashing. It’s never just physical with him, even though that would be so much less complicated. Owen pulls back, his eyes search mine as though sensing my disquiet. He clears his throat and his voice comes out gruff.

  “Molly.”

  But I’m done talking.

  In a flash, my mouth is back on Owen’s, demanding. Yes. His stubble scrapes almost painfully against my cheek, but I want more, pressing against him harder. Maybe I’ll regret the burn in the morning. But right now I just want to feel everything.

  What if he regrets this? But I push that thought out of my mind as I slide my tongue further into his mouth. He groans, a primal sound deep in the back of his throat, and a spike of pleasure shoots straight to my core.

  Every time I imagine his hands on my body, unleashing my desire, it was fireworks. But no, this was gravity, pulling us together hard and fast. My head spins as I let go, falling into the smell, taste, and feel of this man. Gasping for breath as he meets the fervor of my kisses, I whisper yes, yes, yes against his lips.

  Gravity always wins in the end.

  Power and restraint, push and pull. I want him so badly it feels like it’s coming from my DNA. Frantically, my hands move up his arms, stroking the corded muscles and hot skin before coming to rest on his broad shoulders. His desire presses against me and his kisses become more urgent.

  In one swift move, he pulls me over into his lap and I straddle him. Shivering with anticipation, my thighs part wider just to accommodate him.

  His rock-hard cock twitches at the almost skin-on-skin contact through his boxers and my silk shorts. Groaning, he lowers his head, kissing the sensitive spot between my neck and shoulders. A spiral of desires works through me, my hips grinding down against him in an instinctive demand for more.

  Please,

  My breasts ache with desire and it’s as though he knows exactly what I need. He cups my breast almost reverently, stroking at my nipple with a featherlight touch. A small cry escapes my lips as he buries his face in my neck again.

  His fingers work over one nipple, his other hand buried in my hair. Hips rocking again, I feel his body tightly respond. This damned couch won’t work. We need more room.

  “Bedroom,” I manage breathlessly.

  Our eyes lock and there’s a question in those blue depths. Still, a question, after all this. But every fiber of my being, every inch of my body, is clear in its desire. He’s the north star and my body is the compass. But it’s not just about me waiting for him to see the pathway there.

  “Owen.” His name is a whispered invitation, an entreaty, a demand. A prayer.

  His eyes narrow and his nostrils flare, as something in him shifts and he answers my call. Fully answers it. In one graceful movement of
his hard, huge body, he’s on his feet. He takes me with him, and my legs wrap around his waist as a strong hand slides under my ass to support me. I won’t let him go.

  Not now. Maybe not ever.

  Then we’re in the bedroom and he lowers me down gently on the edge of the bed before kneeling in front of me. Something almost worshipful shapes the line of his face, and as he lifts his eyes to mine there’s something more intimate, more full of possibility, something almost holy in this moment.

  As I slide out of my clothes, his hands come up to my waist, to slide them down over my hips, my thighs, finally to the floor. Now there’s nothing left to hide.

  “Jesus, you’re beautiful,” he says in a ragged whisper.

  Owen’s mouth is hot on my breast, as he lays me back down on the bed. I arch into him as his tongue darts over my breast, right where I want it, his hand sliding down the skin of my stomach and teasing lower.

  Yes. Please, yes.

  “Molly,” the edges of his voice are rough with desire. “I’ve wanted you for so damned long.”

  A feather-light touch slides over my pussy, not pushing inside but gently caressing the outer contours. His eyes fall closed, like he’s committing my body to memory.

  When I arch into his hand, he lets out an almost primal sound. He makes a concerted attack to worship my nipples with his tongue, and I realize with a start of pleasure that Owen Doyle is a breast man. His stubble rasps against my skin, the friction a stark contrast to his smooth tongue.

  God.

  My hands get caught up in his hair and when I pull him up, he doesn’t resist. His mouth claims mine now, kisses demanding and intense. I’m so completely lost in this man that everything else recedes.

  The need that’s building, the hot coil wound tight at my center, aches for release.

  Sliding my hand down in response, I caress the length of his cock through his silk boxers. Fuck, yes. It’s big and hard and throbbing with restrained desire, and at my touch his whole body bucks. This kind of power could go to my head.