The F King:A Bad Boy Romance(50)

His friends were doing their best to watch intently without looking like they were watching intently. They were failing.

I barely managed to restrain myself from rolling my eyes and tapped my wedding ring. "No. Look, I'm married."

The man smirked as if I'd played right into his hand. "I saw that, but …   uh …  I don't think you came up to the bar by my friends and me by  accident. So, mission accomplished, you got my attention."

"Hey …  um …  thanks, but no thanks. I'm here with my husband, I'm not interested, OK?"         

     



 

"Let me ask you this. Did your husband close a deal worth half a mill today?"

What does that have to do with anything?

"Uh …  maybe. You never know. Who cares?" I asked.

Behind him, his friends were showing signs of cracking up.

"Well, you know, you're young, maybe you married your high school  sweetheart, I dunno, but this is your chance to be with a real man."

I couldn't help it. With his friends snickering behind him, I laughed too. When I did that, his demeanor changed scarily fast.

"Hey, what the fuck you laughin' at?"

He took a step in my direction and I turned towards him, away from the  bar, holding my hands in front of my body. He looked pissed, and I  couldn't back away fast enough before he was standing right over me.

"Sor- oof!"

His fist struck my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. He'd been  standing close enough that I didn't think anybody else saw the punch,  and before I had half a chance to recover, he gave me a shove backwards  that sent me to the floor, smashing my elbow against a metal railing.

Pain flared from my funny bone, sending an electric sting all the way  down my arm. Some people who saw him push me looked like they were in  shock. Others, who didn't, simply thought that I fell, and I heard them  laughing at me.

Whoever this guy was fed off that laughter and seemed to puff back up as  I sat there with one arm folded over my stomach and the other hanging  uselessly at my side. My breath came in a painful rasp and my vision was  blurred with tears.

"Get the fuck offa me you drunk bitch," he said. "Don't you know who I am?"

"Hey, I know you!" said a voice I knew well.

Austin came from behind and passed me on my right. The guy in the suit  barely had time to turn in Austin's direction before my husband planted a  front push-kick on him that launched him clear off his feet, hitting  the corner of the bar in his ribs before landing awkwardly on his back.

The bigger of the guy's two friends stepped in front of Austin. "Whoa, man, stay out of this!"

Without any pause, Austin scored his second knockout of the night with a  right hook, and suit number two fell to the ground by his friend, who  was trying to struggle to his feet.

"Aren't you that cunt who can't fuck anymore?" Austin shouted, and  stomped him right in the nuts, hard enough that I wouldn't have been  surprised if a broken pelvis resulted.

The man's screams were blood-curdling, and the number of people who had  fallen victim to shock when I was first pushed to the ground  skyrocketed. Austin shot suit number three a look, and the guy's hands  went up as if Austin had pointed a gun at him, like they were on  strings.

I started to get my breath back as Austin bent down to lift one of the  guy's feet up off the ground. Before I could understand what he was  doing, I heard a sickening crunch and the screams were reinvigorated.

"Aren't you the shit-for-brains that can't walk anymore?"

Austin dived on top of him, grabbing a fistful of the guy's hair and  holding his head against the floor. Gripping suit number two's hair in  his other hand he started using the unconscious man's head as a blunt  weapon, pulping the guy's face.

"Aren't you that motherfucker who has to eat his food through a straw?" Austin frothed.

It was terrifying to watch. All that power and training Austin had, all  that rage and violence inside him, focused on men who had no chance  whatsoever. Teeth were flying and the guy who punched me wasn't even  moving anymore.

Bouncers swarmed in, and most were sent reeling backwards even though  Austin was on the ground. Some fell themselves, clutching their knees,  or broken fingers, but eventually enough of them got a good enough grip  that they were able to pull him away.

I sat on the floor, dumbfounded by how quickly things had turned from  perfect to …  whatever you called this chaos. The next thing I knew, Emily  and her boyfriend were pulling me to my feet and rushing me out of the  club.





Austin





When I pushed the door to my bedroom open, Skylar was there in front of  the mirror. She was holding up her shirt and having a look at her  stomach, where the bruise that had once been a perfect imprint of a set  of knuckles was now out of focus and faded to a sickly yellow color.

Just seeing that mark on her made me want to fucking maim somebody. I'd  told Ian, Ross and Robbie that if I ever saw that asshole out of his  wheelchair, I'd put him back in it.

I would have told the police too, if the NHBFC lawyers hadn't kept me  from making any statements. Skylar dropped her shirt and turned around  as I let myself fall backwards on to the bed.         

     



 

"Didn't hear you come in," she said. "So?"

I laced my fingers together over my forehead and closed my eyes as I  took a deep breath. The mattress shifted slightly as Skylar climbed on,  and a moment later I felt her hand gently tracing random patterns around  my chest and stomach.

With all the meetings with lawyers, NHBFC management, police bullshit,  the media and every other fucking thing, it felt like we hadn't had a  spare second to ourselves in a month. Skylar had been like a little rock  throughout the whole thing, her support was unwavering and went light  years beyond what Robbie and his team of writers had cobbled together  for her in this clusterfuck.

I could feel her there, right next to me. Lately, it felt like that all  the time, whether she was physically with me or not. The way she was  touching me now was like a fan blowing back the clouds of blinding rage  that threatened to creep in every time I thought about that motherfucker  in the club.

"So?" she asked again.

"The charges are being dropped."

From behind my closed eyelids I heard Skylar take a breath as deep as  mine and let it puff out. She flopped down, resting her head under my  arm and continuing those mesmerizing patterns on my torso. Relief all  around.

"Thank goodness."

"Yeah, NHBFC spares no expense on lawyers. The security footage from the  club and that bruise on your stomach gave them some serious pause."

"Lucky I bruise easily, huh?"

"Fuckin' …  anyway …  there's going to be some kind of under the table  settlement for some of the medical costs, and property damage to the  club that's coming out of my purse for the next fight, but after that  it's all basically being swept under the carpet. Robbie and his team are  spinning some White Knight Hero storyline bullshit about it, and it'll  roll into everything we've been doing anyway."

"It'll be so good to put this behind us," she said.

"Yeah."

"It's not such BS anyway."

"What isn't?" I asked.

"You may not have had a white horse and shining armor, but you did charge in and save me. My hero-"

"Don't."

"What?"

"Don't call me that," I said.

"Why not?"

How the fuck was I supposed to explain that? That the one time in my  life I actually thought I was going to run in and save the day that  things got even more fucked than this?

Skylar kept on prodding. She hadn't done much of that since the night in  Vegas, maybe now, with the charges dropped, she felt like the stress  was sufficiently lowered that she could finally get to the bottom of it.  "It was …  kind of brutal, Austin. What happened?"

"I saw. I saw that guy getting close, saw that mean look in his eye.  Then I saw the way he moved and you jerked forward. I fuckin' knew what  that meant. I had, like, a flashback … "

Skylar propped herself up on her elbow. "Of what?"

I didn't answer straight away. Nothing good could come of dredging up  the past. Not this past. If she thought what happened in that club was  brutal, she'd run for the fucking hills if I told her about this.

To tell her would be to lose her right now, instead of when her contract was up. I never talked about those days with anybody.

Of course, nobody had ever asked. I thought about it for a second. Maybe nobody ever cared as much as Skylar.

"You can tell me," Skylar said quietly.

I gulped and my mouth opened slowly like it was on rusty hinges. "Dear old Dad."

"He used to … ?"

"Oh man," I dragged the word out, still horrified by the memories after  all this time. "My mom's face was …  unrecognizable every weekend. My arm  had been broken twice by the time I was seven. The hospital reports said  I fell. I fucking didn't."