Between Commitment and Betrayal (Hardy Billionaire Brothers, #1)(96)

Damn, Dom was trying to show me today that my head wasn’t in it.

How could it be after seeing him?

Even with the wind knocked out of me, though, I held tight as he lifted his body and dropped it again, letting his weight crush me. My grip slipped just enough that he took it as an opportunity. Within seconds, he was back on top of me, hand on my neck, body between my legs, me struggling like I wanted no girl to ever struggle.

I knew how to get out of this. I knew what to do and how to prove I’d gotten faster and stronger, that I could take care of myself.

I’d done it before.

Yet, I wasn’t given the chance.

Suddenly, Dom was ripped off of me, his grip slipping from my neck so fast, I’d probably get rug burn.

“What the fuck are you doing?” The voice was deep with fury and laced with menace. I could place that voice anywhere. My body instantly reacted to it every time I heard it and even as I wheezed for oxygen.

I wheezed only because it was a body’s initial reaction to gaining oxygen after being choked, not because I couldn’t handle it. I was fine.

Just fine.

“We’re sparing, Dec.” Dom threw his hands, but he was smiling and shaking his head like Declan was insane.

The smile died when Declan charged him and threw him on his back. They must have done this before because Dom put up an extremely good fight. They flipped one another over again and again before Declan pinned him down and had his fist cocked to punch his brother square in the face.

“Declan!” I screamed and grabbed his arm before he could. “Are you crazy? We’re in the ring. There’s a bunch of people around. It’s a standard self-defense practice and—”

“No more!” he bellowed at me, releasing his brother to come to standing. “You’re done with the self-defense instruction.”

“Declan, I’ve been—”

“Everyone hear me?” He walked around the ring and eyed every man in the gym. “You touch my wife you answer to me. And I’ll break every bone in your body before I let you leave my gym. Do you understand?”

No one answered directly. I think they were all as shocked as I was. Before I could say anything, he bent under the rope and hopped out of the ring. “Everly Hardy, get your ass in my office, now.”

Shit.





36




DECLAN





“ARE you out of your fucking mind letting a man touch you that way?” I fumed when I slammed the door to my office upstairs.

“Are you out of your mind calling me a Hardy when I’m not and acting the way you just did over a standard sparring in the ring?” she threw back, and her chastising tone could have brought a weaker man to his death. Truly. She wanted me in hell, and I felt like I was. The fact that I had to tell Anastasia to stop following me on the way to grab my brother off my wife was enough in and of itself to piss me right the fuck off.

Anastasia and her mother were pushing me way too far for the damn studio. They knew they were getting something that held a value to me above all else because they knew I loved Everly. Anastasia and Melinda had both sneered at me, asking if I really would do all this for a woman, if she was really worth it. I’d answered yes without hesitation, and Anastasia smiled like she had me by the balls. They agreed to me buying the studio that Everly held dear for an extravagant amount as long as Anastasia was seen a few times with the cameras following us around. She wanted to go to dinner a few times to discuss it. She wanted this, she wanted that.

I wanted to rage, though, seeing Everly’s face.

I couldn’t tell her what I was doing. She’d fight me on it, say she’d help figure out a way to do it herself. She didn’t want anything given to her for free, didn’t want anyone to struggle for her. I saw it in how she’d never driven my cars, how she never took money from Carl, how she didn’t ever ask me to get that yoga studio for her.

Yet, it’s the one thing I would do. I didn’t care about the shares of the empire. I’d figure that out later. First, I was appeasing Anastasia so that Everly could have the one thing that meant something to her from the very beginning. I was getting rid of the inheritance hanging over our head, and then I was going to ask her on a damn date for real. I was going to make sure she knew I loved her for real.

We were going to start completely over.

I hated that I had to make her think I didn’t love her, but it was the only way we’d get through it. I couldn’t make her have a baby with me now, not when she’d wanted one in a completely different way.

Seeing her think we wouldn’t be together, that we wouldn’t be trying after this inheritance went through probate, though, was driving me insane, driving me to madness.

Then, I’d actually come to blows with my brother over him wrestling her to the ground like she was a damn rag doll. Hadn’t he read the papers? “Men shouldn’t be putting their hands on you that way.”

“You used to put your hands on me like that all the time, Declan. We sparred in the ring before and, well, we’ve sparred while we screwed too,” she shot back and then proceeded to pace back and forth in front of the window overlooking the oceanside. “Just because we aren’t doing that anymore, doesn’t mean I can’t do it with someone else.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”