Read Online Under His Skin (For His Pleasure, Book 20) by Kelly Favor - Free Book Online Page B

of the cooking chicken breasts
started to filter over to where they were standing, and Kennedy’s mouth began
watering.   “That smells amazing,”
she told him.   “But I feel
guilty.   You didn’t have to do all
of this.”
    “I know,” he smiled gently, his eyes fixing
on her with a tenderness that caught her by surprise.   “But I wanted to.”
    About fifteen minutes later, they sat
down to eat at the table together.   The meal was as delicious as it smelled, and Kennedy found that she was
absolutely ravenous.   While they ate,
they chatted a little, avoiding the heavier subjects of the problems with Red or
Dean’s debts to Jimmy DeLuca.
    Eventually, she was starting to feel so
relaxed that it was almost as though they’d always been like this.   Spending time together in his home,
eating, cooking, laughing and making love.
    Because of her slowly calming nerves, she
finally decided to ask him a personal question.
    “Why did you take up kickboxing?” Kennedy
asked him, spearing some lettuce with her fork and waiting for him to tell her
it was none of her business.
    Easton raised his eyebrows and dabbed at
his lips with the linen napkin before answering.   “That’s a complicated question,” he
said.
    “I don’t mean to pry—“
    “It’s fine,” he said, flashing a
grin.   “I don’t mind telling
you.”   He glanced out the window
momentarily, as if looking into the past.   “My father was someone who believed in raising us with a lot of
discipline and fortitude.   He’d been
taught how to box by his father, and his grandfather had fought as well.   It’s in our blood, I suppose.   I didn’t take to it very naturally as a
child, and I think it disappointed my Dad.   Dean was always the one who liked a good scrap.   When we were younger, he appeared to
have the talent and drive and my father was fixated on turning him into a world
champion.”
    “I assume that didn’t quite work out as
planned,” Kennedy offered.
    Easton nodded.   “No, it didn’t.   Because Dean liked to fight but he
didn’t have the stomach for the discipline, the training, the work.   And as we got older, I started getting
resentful of the way my Dad favored him.   So I decided to become a fighter anyway, and trained on my own, at a
kickboxing gym.   Dad thought
kickboxing was for losers, and he let me know it at every turn.   Real boxers boxed—poseurs did
kickboxing.   Dean agreed with him,
and the two of them used to give me massive amounts of shit about it.”
    “Did you like kickboxing?” she asked him,
forgetting to eat, just happy that he was telling her about himself.   It felt special, like she’d been invited
to take part in a very private interview with her favorite celebrity.
    “I never liked fighting,” Easton
admitted, his eyes dull.   “I liked
proving them wrong.   That’s what
drove me.”
    “But you got quite good.”
    “I refused to be anything less than the
best,” he said.   “I still can
remember when I was seventeen and Dad kept needling me about my kickboxing,
continuing to make his digs about how it was a fake sport and so inferior to
real boxing.   I got so sick of it
that I told him to bring me the best boxing prospect he knew and I’d fight him
on the spot, sight unseen, using just my boxing, no kicking.   Part of me was serious about the
challenge, but mostly I was just mouthing off because I was so tired of Dad’s
constant criticism.”
    Kennedy was horrified.   “Your father didn’t really take you
seriously, did he?”
    Easton smiled grimly.   “He sure did.   Dad loved a good fight and he liked to
be right.   So the next day he took
me to the gym that he and Dean were training at, and he brought in a ringer to
fight me.   The guy was twenty-three
years old, a national Golden Gloves champion, Olympic alternate, and he was
going to turn pro in the next six months.   He was a beast, an absolute killer with knockout power in both