*-*-*-*
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he demanded, once he caught up with the insane woman just as she lost her footing again and went sliding, but just like the last few times, she somehow managed to catch her balance before she fell on her ass and continued walking.
“Just go away, Duncan,” she said on a long-suffering sigh, acting as though he was annoying.
He knew that tone by heart, had used it on pretty much everyone in his family and he really didn’t appreciate the little jinx using it on him. He wasn’t annoying. He was far from being annoying. He was the helpful fucking one. Everyone fucking loved him, he told himself as he glared as the small woman continued to ignore him and march off towards God only knew where at this time of night.
“We need to talk,” he said, daring her to give him that look that he used when people pissed him off.
“No, we really don’t,” she said, shaking her head as she doubled her steps to get away from him when she should have been jumping at the chance to spend time with him.
He chuckled without humor as he reached over and gently grabbed her arm, wanting to get this over with so that they could move on and forget that this ever happened, but something strange happened the moment that he pulled her towards him so that he could apologize.
He realized that he wasn’t sorry.
It didn’t matter that he knew what he did made him an asshole, that he should be muttering an apology, turn around and walk away, doing his best to make sure that their paths never crossed again, but the moment that he looked into her beautiful gray eyes, he was lost.
Before he could stop himself, and he knew that he should have stopped himself, he found himself pulling her into his arms, leaning down and-
Gasping in pain as her knee made contact with his balls.
*-*-*-*
“Oh…fuck,” Duncan gasped in pain as he cupped himself and dropped to his knees, immediately falling onto his side and curling up on the salted sidewalk while she stood there in shock.
Oh, crap…
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She tried to apologize, but she really had absolutely no idea how to apologize for slamming a man’s balls back up inside his body. She considered telling him that it was a natural response that her grandfather had drilled this into her head since that incident on the playground.
“If a boy lays his hands on you, you take that little pointy knee of yours and ram it into his balls and then when he’s down, you kick him in the balls again for me.”
Her foot twitched with the need to finish the job, but thankfully she was able to overcome years of conditioning. When he started coughing and muttering, “Someone fucking kill me,” she decided that maybe it would be a good idea to help him.
Not really sure what to do, she looked around, trying not to panic, but of course she couldn’t help it. She’d kicked the man that she’d been infatuated with, and yes, she realized now that it had only been an infatuation, in the balls less than a day after she’d given him her virginity. Besides giving her a less than pleasing response to her declaration of love, and had she seriously told him that she loved him? he really hadn’t done anything wrong.
Okay, so the condescending glares were really annoying and she was done with those, but he hadn’t deserved a kick to the balls for-
Wait, why exactly was he following her at this time of night after a major storm? Was the man insane?
Then again, she was going for a walk late at night in the freezing code so perhaps she shouldn’t be judging? she mused as she looked around desperately for something to help him. When her eyes landed on all the snow and ice around her, she had a “duh,” moment, grabbed a big chunk of hard snow and somehow managed to slip on the ice and slam her knees into the hard, salted sidewalk.
Fortunately for her, she was able to stop herself from slamming face first into the sidewalk. Unfortunately for him, she was only able to accomplish this because that large chunk of ice that she’d been holding managed to slam down at just the right angle and hit poor Duncan in the previously affected area. Well, more accurately, the large chunk of ice slammed into Duncan’s hands, which caused a chain reaction, a new and much louder curse and terrified her into trying to make it better.
Which probably wasn’t a good idea, she realized as she grabbed another chunk of ice, desperate to make this right and-
“Fucking hell!”
Yeah, she probably should have thought this one through, she decided with a wince and a cringe as she watched Duncan’s handsome face turn an unhealthy dark purple as he closed his eyes and tried to breathe through the pain, and there was no doubt that the poor guy was in a lot of pain.
Nervously, she chewed on her bottom lip as she glanced around the empty street and decided that perhaps it was probably for the best if she stopped trying to “help,” him.
Chapter 19
“Fucking pathetic.”
“No, shit,” Trevor said in agreement with Jason as Duncan laid there, curled up on his cousin’s couch, terrified that his balls were about to explode and take his poor dick along with it.
He tried to open his eyes to glare at his cousins, tried to tell them to go fuck off, but at that moment he couldn’t do much but-
“I think he’s going to be sick again,” the abusive woman that had probably robbed him of the ability to have children said nervously as he rolled over and vomited into the small wastebasket that the woman from hell was holding.
Once he was done vomiting, the pressure in his balls eased up enough so that he could open his eyes and glare at the woman that he should have stayed away from, but for some seriously fucked up reason, hadn’t been able to. When he spotted her outside his window, navigating the poorly shoveled walkways he should have just closed his blinds and gone back to bed, but he just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do the right thing and apologize to her.
Okay, so he wasn’t a fucking saint.
He might have told himself that he was going after her to talk to her and make sure that she was okay, but the truth was, for the first time since they’d met and she’d broken two of his toes, he’d wanted to see her. The idea of being next to her, talking to her and touching her had been too tempting to ignore so he’d grabbed his jacket, yanked on his hiking boots and ran after her, ignoring his brother Danny, whom he may have accidentally thrown out of his way when the bastard tried to stop him in the foyer so that he could show Duncan all the pictures he’d taken of the twins over the past few days.
At the time he hadn’t cared that his brother was going to get him back or that Jodi would probably give him the silent treatment for a week for being mean to his brother. All he’d cared about was seeing her. He’d run after her, not really giving a damn if he slipped on the ice and broke his neck. The only thing he’d cared about was seeing her.
He couldn’t explain the desperation that he’d felt at the time, but he’d been helpless to fight it and now, thanks to his own stupidity and pathetic excuses, she’d probably turned him into a eunuch.
“I’m so sorry,” she said for the thousandth time since she’d unmanned him as she fidgeted over him, trying to help him.
Normally he would have just sucked it up, told her that he was okay and got the hell away from her as fast as humanly possible or called up one of his brothers for a ride to the hospital, but things had changed between them over the last couple of days and he found that he couldn’t slip back into the old ways. She’d fucking kicked him in the balls like some mad woman, because he’d wanted to kiss her.
So, instead of telling her that everything was okay, which his balls told him was definitely a lie, he settled for glaring at her.
*-*-*-*
Okay, the glaring was really starting to freak her out, she had to admit as she paced the large living room, well aware that the glare followed her every move.
“It was an accident,” she muttered again, because she honestly had no idea what to say to the man.
It also
didn’t help that his cousins, regulars at the bakery, apparently found this whole thing amusing.
“Should we continue calling him Duncan or should we just start calling him Dannilyn?” Jason teased from the safety of the other side of the room where he held a sleeping baby in his arms.
When Duncan’s glare didn’t shift to his cousin, but simply narrowed on her, she knew that he was not going to forgive her like all those other times. She was in deep trouble here and that glare let her know it.
“I-I just reacted,” she said defensively with a self-conscious shrug, which didn’t seem to mean anything to the man curled up in the fetal position with a large ice bag pressed between his legs, glowering at her like she was Satan himself.
When his cousins and their wives glanced her way, she swallowed nervously and gestured awkwardly in the direction that she thought her house might be in and said, “Grandpa showed me what to do,” she said with another one of those awkward shrugs, hoping that they understood.
By the winces and nods, they understood without making her explain, which was understandable since her grandfather did have a bit of a reputation…
Still, the man glaring at her didn’t seem all that understanding or forgiving, which unfortunately had the unfortunate side effect of ramping up her nerves to a dangerous degree.
“Umm,” she mumbled, clearing her throat awkwardly as she pointed towards the kitchen, “do you mind if I grab a glass of water?”
“Sure,” Trevor said, shooting Duncan an amused look that seemed to piss Duncan off more. Not at his cousin of course since he was still glaring at her.
Swallowing nervously, she turned around and walked towards the kitchen, the only place in the world where she felt at peace.
*-*-*-*
“Go check on her,” Duncan snapped, groaning in discomfort as he forced himself to sit up and take a deep breath, closing his eyes when his world started to spin.
Jason and Trevor both snorted at that while Zoe and Haley shot the kitchen door a nervous look. “There’s no way that I’m going in there to deal with your girlfriend after you made her cry,” Jason said, shaking his head in refusal as he sat back and folded his arms over his chest, clearly letting Duncan know that he was on his own.
“I didn’t make her cry,” he bit out simply because telling them that she wasn’t his girlfriend felt…wrong.
He had no idea why and at the moment he really didn’t fucking care, because his balls felt like they were the size of mellons, his cousins were assholes and he felt like the biggest piece of shit for making Necie cry.
It hadn’t been her fault. He’d taken her by surprise and he should have known better. For Christ’s sake, she’d been raised by old man Dixon! He was lucky that the woman hadn’t slit his throat with a piece of ice.
“She’s been in there for a while. Someone should go check on her,” Zoe said, nervously working her bottom lip between her teeth as she sent a look to her husband only to find the man shaking his head.
“Leave the poor woman alone,” Trevor said, which of course was followed by Jason, “God only knows how badly this sick bastard scarred her for life.”
“I didn’t fucking scar her for life!” he snapped, which only earned pitying looks from the annoying bastards.
He considered pointing out that he’d been the one injured, but that would only remind them that he’d gotten his ass kicked by a woman who was half his size so he kept his mouth shut.
“That’s not what it looked like to me,” Jason said with a pitying shake of his head that had Haley rolling her eyes in disgust and mumbling something that Jason simply ignored as he continued to enjoy fucking with him.
“Definitely looked like she was going to need a strong shoulder to cry on and help her push past this tragedy,” the asshole added.
“What tragedy?” Duncan demanded, wondering what the hell the