Chapter Ninety-Eight Myla #2
I tighten my hold, her back becoming flush with my chest. Her breath stutters at the movement, heart fluttering fast beneath her ribs as I take in a deep lungful of air that is tainted with something sweet. Like honey, but not quite.
“Like that,” she rasps, bringing her arms down to her sides.
Our height difference makes it so that my chin ends where her forehead begins, and as I assess our positioning, my mind briefly makes note of the way she fits in my arms. With an internal growl, I push the thought away.
Someone had fucking attacked her like this.
My muscles flex as if meaning to tighten my hold on her, as if that will somehow protect her from what has already been done. “Now what do I do?”
“Normally, I would tell you to go limp in their arms. That alone would force them to try to regain control so that they don’t drop you.
But under water, that technique isn’t going to work.
” I narrow my eyes as I cycle through different poses in my head, each one tailored to fighting on land.
To counterattack, Aria will need to focus on different points of contact.
Elbows. Hands. Claws. I lift the arm crossing over her chest to grab at her wrist, my fingers splaying over the back of her hand.
“Instead of one fluid movement to take an opponent down, you will have to do a series of quick ones with the intention of not besting them but getting away.”
Her hand twitches in my hold. “What if I don’t want to just get away? What if I want to hurt them?”
The words are spoken softly, but the intention behind them—the gravitas—has my own throat working to swallow roughly. “So violent,” I murmur, my breath disturbing the strands of hair near her ear.
Aria huffs an unsteady laugh. “In the Siren Queendom, if someone is attacking you, more often than not, it is with the intention to kill.” She shakes her head, her soft curls brushing at my jaw.
“I can’t bet on simply escaping. I need to know what to do once I’m free to ensure that they can’t harm me—or anyone else. ”
The addition at the end of her statement reminds me of the reasoning she gave me weeks ago about why she wanted to learn how to fight.
It was to protect someone close to her. Someone she cares about deeply.
I lean back until inches separate us again.
“The first thing you need to do is think about how to create space with your attacker. You’ll start by arching your back and sending this elbow”—I mimic the movement slowly with her arm—“behind you, aiming for the space between their ribs.”
“How am I supposed to know where that is?”
“You’ll know when you hit bone because it will hurt, but you’ll be sure you’ve hit the space between when you hear the air squeeze out of their lungs.
” I position her arm back at her side, my hand sliding away before banding my arm around her front again.
“Try it.” Aria attempts to wiggle enough to give her arm some leeway.
It works, and she is able to send a relatively gentle hit into my ribs.
“Good.” I can’t see her face from my spot behind her, but I watch the top of her cheek lift in a smile at my praise.
“Next, you want to use your hands and those menacing little talons that decorate them.”
“Menacing?” she questions, growing them out from the tips of her fingers.
“To anyone attacking you? They should be.”
She hums, the vibration of it skating over my chest. Stars above, I am overdue for a kill. Or a fuck. Or some other carnal form of physical movement because I’ve never been so innately aware of someone else without being engaged in either of those two things.
“You need to force one of my arms away so that you can spin and face me. To do that, you’re going to drive the heel of your left palm into my right forearm.
” She does the move slowly, testing that she’s hitting the right spot.
“Now spin in the same direction.” Again, she follows my instructions until we’re face to face, my left arm now wrapped around her back.
She lifts her hands between us but hesitates laying them on my chest, her gaze lifting to search mine.
“Now what?”
“Now you’ll go in for the kill.” Using my right hand, I push her own forward until her talons are scraping along the skin at my neck.
Aria doesn’t breathe, and my own inhale is trapped in my chest as I draw the sharpened tips of her claws down the space beneath my ear, mimicking the motion she would use if she were truly attacking me.
“There is an artery here, at least for the fae,” I say, and Aria nods.
I search her neck for her gills, having only just barely seen them when we were hiding from one of the King’s Riders and his dragon.
In her mortal form, they are nothing but the faintest outline, only visible from just the right angle.
“I imagine shredding a siren’s gills would be just as devastating? ”
“Yes.” Her eyes bounce back and forth between mine.
“Then that’s what you go for. No hesitation. No remorse.” My fingers tighten around her hand. “It is your life versus theirs, and the person who is victorious is the one who is willing to do whatever it takes.”
“Who am I willing to become?” she whispers. I nod in acknowledgement, and her hand relaxes in my hold, talons retreating until her fingers close around mine.
Tension suspends between us, the heat of our bodies kindling that feels just an inch away from igniting.
Yet that thought does nothing to stop the way my eyes trace the outline of her face.
Of her round eyes and the dark freckles dotting the skin beneath them.
Her supple lips and how they are just barely parted.
I tilt my head down a fraction just as Aria angles hers, our lips perfectly in alignment.
All I’d have to do is weave my hand through her hair, draw her in half an inch and— My stomach pitches, a strange sensation taking root that knocks me from my stupor and forces me to release her and take a step back.
Aria’s hands remain in the air in front of her for another moment before she lowers them, her gaze dropping to the ground while her brows furrow.
Do you feel it too? I want to ask. That annoying draw?
Instead, I command us to run through the exercise again.