You Bit Me #2
She faked a kick for his head that he dodged, then settled into a crouch and pounced—one leg over his shoulder, the other crossed behind his neck. The weight of her body wrapped around him sent him toppling back.
Esme’s thighs were wrapped around Bal’s throat. When she flexed, his body hardened at just the threat.
“I underestimated myself. Two moves,” Esme panted down at the man between her legs and found him smirking.
One second, she’d won. The next, he’d grabbed her hips and flipped their bodies. Her legs were still coiled around his neck, but now his heavy body pressed her in half against the dirt.
Bal wore her legs like his favorite necklace. They were touching all over, with his heavy hands squeezing her hips. He must have lost his shirt a few fights ago, so it was his bare chest warming the backs of her thighs. She struggled, and Bal pinned her wrists above her head.
“I could still snap your neck,” she said. She was breathing heavily, but not because of the fight.
Bal leaned up a little higher to put more weight on her wrists. “With what hands?”
Her legs clamped tighter on his throat. Bal’s breath tripped out, but he dropped more of his weight down on her.
Esme liked how heavy he felt—nearly overwhelming, nearly subdued, but not quite.
He made sure to push his hips against her, even with his grip on her wrists almost bruising.
All of this, half a threat. There was so much he could do, braced above her, shoulders wide enough to block out the light.
Balthazar was dangerous. He was massive and strong and coiled like a beast waiting to strike, but Esme knew he wouldn’t hurt her.
That beast could settle its jaws on her throat as much as it liked, scrape its teeth across her skin, and still she trusted him not to bite.
“If you moved your hands, you might be able to pry my legs off. But if my hands were free, I’d just strangle you,” she said between heaving breaths.
Bal licked his lips at the thought of the many ways she could kill him. “Now why would I move your legs?” he asked, voice strangled by the press of her thighs.
“Don’t you want to breathe?”
“I like this view more than breathing,” he rasped, inching down despite the strength of Esme’s hips. He turned to the side and—
—and he bit her.
His teeth sank into the soft flesh of her thigh and Esme yelped, too stunned to keep her muscles tight.
Bal took the split second of shock to flip her face-down in the dirt, his hips pinning hers.
When she thrashed, he laid down the rest of his delicious weight on top of her and she was lucky her brain didn’t flat-out give up.
“The cheater here is you,” Esme said as she tried to wrench her face back to look at him.
Bal wrapped one of his warm hands around her neck.
He didn’t squeeze, just tipped her chin back so he could keep looking at her.
“Teeth are weapons, too,” he said, showing off.
“Does this mean I beat a Wraith? Think I tasted a little blood.” His breath scalded the shell of her ear as he stroked the column of her throat.
“You’d be lucky to taste my blood,” Esme growled. She backed her hips into his, grinding against the hardness there, then kicked her head back into his nose.
Bal cursed, his blood confused on where to rush to, and Esme shoved herself out from under him and climbed onto his back, wrapping her legs around his middle. Her feet hooked inside his thighs and she locked his better arm under one of hers.
She flipped them, and Bal was completely subdued.
One of her arms was braced over his neck and shoulders, the other folding his dominant arm behind his back.
Her legs wrapped around his waist with her feet hooked between his thighs to wrench them open.
When Esme eased them back, a terribly pitchy sound broke from between his lips that she would hear in her dreams tonight.
Bal wheezed, his breaths cut up by laughter. “Am I destined to be trapped between your thighs?” he asked, leaning back on her shoulder.
“It is where most men meet their fate,” Esme said.
“Lucky men.”
When Bal tried to break out, Esme pried his legs open a little more. “Our fight’s done, General,” she breathed into his ear.
“I didn’t tap out.”
“No, but your nose did.” Esme’s fingers tickled across his upper lip.
Blood.
Bal gaped down at the red staining her fingers before tapping her thigh to give up. Esme released him, and he groaned when his legs returned to their normal positions. Trapped under him, Esme flopped down on the dirt.
“How are you pretty even like this?” Bal asked, twisting around and leaning on his arm above her. “You should be sweaty and exhausted like me.”
“I’m sorry.” Esme bit her lip to keep from smiling too hard. “Would you like me to fake it?”
He gave her a wicked grin. “That’s even worse.” He opened his mouth to say something even more salacious but was cut off by a boom of cheering.
Oh, yes. Public. They were in public.
The crowd’s glee sent a deluge of Magic into the pit.
Above her, Bal’s pupils swallowed his eyes.
He licked his lips, fingers finding the sliver of her skin peeking out between her shirt and pants.
His fingers felt like fire, and Esme was dangerously close to letting him thaw her right there in front of the audience.
“The Viper has won!” Quail howled, punching the air, and the crowd shrieked, startling Bal out of his spell.
He pushed up from the dirt with heat in his face, seemingly bothered more by their lack of privacy than his loss.
He yanked Esme up, making sure to pull a little too hard so she fell into him.
“One day, I’ll best you,” he said, unserious and soft. “We’ll have to keep training like this until I do.”
“Training?”
“For the next trial. The Valosia. I’ll need some special instruction,” he drawled, pulling her into his side as they walked to the ladder at the other side of the pit. “You’ll help your favorite pathetic human, won’t you?”
“Who said you were my favorite?” She pushed him off, but he was back in a second.
“Before you leave, I have one more challenge for you!” Quail called out, holding a hand up over them. Esme recognized the look in those crow eyes.
“We’ve got a rematch planned, so we should be going, Quail love,” she said, voice steely. “Put down the ladder.”
“But dear Wraith, this is a gift from Her Highness,” he said. “And I do owe her a debt.”
Shit—
Quail stepped aside.
Shit shit shit!