Aedan
“You can have me.”
Her voice was sullen and desperate, close to tears. It took me a few seconds to really process what she’d said.
When I spun around, she was lifting the hem of her tank top.
A sleek, tan stomach came into view, then the purple cups of her bra.
The tank top pulled tight across her breasts and she hooked it over them.
Soft, sweet perfection, the flesh bouncing lightly as it was freed. Everything I’d dreamed of….
“You can have me,” she said again. “I’ll sleep with you.” She was staring right at me, her eyes brimming with tears. “Just—please—teach me how to fight.”
I broke out of the spell she’d cast on me and stepped quickly over to her. Grabbing her tank top, I rammed it down again, covering her. Trying not to think about how smooth her skin was, how good it felt as it grazed my fingers.
I stood there panting with the shock of it. I glanced around. No one else was nearby, thank God. “Jesus!” I snapped. “What are you doing?”
She looked up at me and blinked a couple of times. I could see the tears start to spill. Oh feck! Now she thought I didn’t want her.
She folded her arms protectively over her stomach, hugging the tank top to her. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “It’s all I have left. What do you want? What will it take?”
Oh Jesus! What have I done?! I felt as if Dwight had dropped the damn cargo container right on me, crushing me down into the dirt. I’d reduced her to this. I’d made this angel want to trade her body like a whore because I was too ashamed to go back to—
I can’t. I really can’t. She’s a girl! And I was a fighter, not a trainer. Even if I could train her, how much good could I do, in a month?
I stared at her hopelessly. Her face was upraised to me, the tears coursing down her cheeks. I’d never seen anyone look so vulnerable. A single word from me, now, and she’d crumble completely.
She has no one else to go to. If she did, she wouldn’t be here.
And what was the alternative? Turn her away and know that she was going into that fight without any preparation at all? I knew that I’d never be able to persuade her to run. She felt the same way about her brother as I did about—
I felt the tattoo on my back itch.
“Okay,” I said at last. “But you don’t need to...do that.”
She didn’t say anything. She was too busy trying to hold back the tears. She closed her eyes and nodded twice, sniffing.
I felt my stomach clench. She was going to feel grateful.
She’d want to reward me. Even if she didn’t really like me, she’d offer up the temptation.
That face. That body. Every feckin’ day.
And I’d have to keep pushing her away because the best way to hurt her would be to let her get involved with me.
She wasn’t like one of the women I’d picked up in bars. She deserved better than me.
It had to be all business. Just training.
I took a deep breath. “We start tomorrow.”