Henrik laughed again, and even Tiernan’s lips twitched, but he still stared at me as if he could burn a hole through my skull.
“You shouldn’t fight in front of a seven-year-old,” I admonished. “You’ll give him the wrong idea.”
Tiernan gave me one last lingering look, then sprung up from the ground, tore off his right glove with his teeth, and then offered his hand to help Ezra up.
“Violence is a natural part of life,” he lectured me, his tone bored and condescending. “It is better to be armed for war than to be naïve enough to think adversity will never reach you.”
“We’ve done nothing to warrant adversity,” I argued.
A short, gruff bark of laughter. “No one is wholly innocent, little thing. Least of all you.”
“Tiernan’s going to teach me how to fight like Iron Man,” Brando told me, tugging on my hand so I’d watch him put his little fists up. “No one will make fun of me for peeing my pants sometimes, ever again.”
“We don’t fight people with violence,” I reminded him, furious that Tiernan’s influence was already corrupting my sweet little guy. “We fight them with grace. We condemn them by rising above their primitive behavior.”
“Violence is considerably more fun,” Tiernan told Brando with a wink that made him laugh. “And lasting.”
“Aggression is a dumb man’s way of expressing the words he wishes he could say,” I countered, feeling my own aggression mount. “Of course, someone like you wouldn’t understand that.”
Something dark moved across Tiernan’s face, something black and vicious that made me shiver with regret. I wished fervently I could take the words back but he was already moving toward me, lifting the rope to create a gap.
“Get in here,” he ordered.
I glared at him, lifting my chin in stubborn reaction. “What? Taking my locket wasn’t enough, you’re going to beat me up, now?”
“Get. In. Here,” he ground out between his teeth, a muscle jumping in the square cut of his jaw. “Now.”
Fear clutched at my heart, but I shook it off, deciding Tiernan wouldn’t hurt me in front of witnesses and my little brother. I ducked beneath the rope and stepped over the bottom one, entering the ring in my baggy old Picasso tee and sleep shorts. Ezra moved to the corner, giving us space without questioning Tiernan’s motives.
“You worked at a diner in Texas,” Tiernan began to speak as he bullied me with his proximity into the middle of the floor, then began to slowly circle me. “Did you ever get hit on by the patrons?”
“Yes,” I said, because of course, I did. That was par for the course with serving as a relatively attractive young woman.
“Did anyone touch you?” he asked, his voice hissing, flicking with venom like a snake’s.
I gasped as one of his hands lashed out to pinch at my bottom. The sharp sting made me gasp. Reflexively, I swatted my hand behind me to knock him away, but he’d already circled in front of me again.
“Did any of them try to steal a kiss?” he growled, lunging forward so quickly I stumbled back in shock.
He caught me with a fierce hand in my hair, yanking it back to expose my neck. I thought—wickedly, wildly, heart pounding with fear and something far darker—that he might land a kiss there.
He didn’t.
Instead, his teeth sunk into the junction of my neck and shoulder, biting down hard, then pulling at the skin so his teeth raked over my flesh. The bright pain mellowed into a tingly burn at the site of impact. Farther down my body, that burn echoed between my legs. A shameful blush seeped through my cheeks down to my chest as Tiernan danced away on light feet.
“Fuck off!” I lashed out, slashing my hand through the air.
“Did they?” he demanded, voice ringing out through the cavernous gym.
No one else existed outside the ring as he stalked toward me, ferocity stamped in every inch of his beautifully carved face.
“Did they take what they wanted uninvited?” he continued to snarl. “Did they make you feel like the scared, silly little girl that you are? Defenseless and alone?”
He’d cornered me against the ropes, his weaponized body looming over me, a dead end I was desperate to escape from. I watched in horror as his right arm reared back as if to hit me.
Despite everything, I’d never believed Tiernan would hurt me and the idea of it felt like a colossal betrayal.
“Violence isn’t the answer,” he agreed, throwing his cocked arm toward my face. I closed my eyes and braced for impact, terror in every atom of my body. When the pain didn’t land, I opened my eyes to stare at his dark face, at the open palm that hovered briefly over my cheek before softly, light as a whisper of breath, tracing the curve of my cheek down to my chin which he curled his fingers around. He held me still while those sun-bleached jade eyes burned into mine. “But sometimes, it’s the only response someone is able to understand.”