Chapter 15 Lucian #2
A figure of a man, tall, with an exaggerated scowl. And she was scratching horns onto his head with aggressive strokes of the pen, muttering under her breath.
“I’m a lycan, not a bull.” I kept my voice flat. “We don’t have horns.”
Her head snapped up. Then she smiled, all teeth.
“Good thing this isn’t a bull horn, then.” She returned to her scribbling with renewed vengeance.
I watched her add what appeared to be a forked tail and flames around the feet. She’d given up on persuasion and moved to artistic revenge.
I sighed.
This woman will be the death of me.
“Fine. You can go to the Founder’s Day celebration.”
Her eyes went wide. Her head whipped toward me so fast her hair flew. She opened her mouth to grin and I raised a finger.
“But.” I held her gaze. “You have to learn self-defense first. And carry a weapon. I told you this before.”
She launched off the bed. The journal hit the mattress, the devil-drawing forgotten, and she was on her feet with a grin so wide.
“Teach me now then.”
***
The clearing behind the cabin served as a training ground. Late afternoon light filtered through the canopy. I’d used this space for solo drills when the wolf grew too restless.
“Feet wider,” I told her. “Weight in your hips, not your shoulders.”
She adjusted her stance. Shifted her weight back and bent her knees, and the movement pushed her hips out and pulled the leggings tight across her backside.
God. That ass.
The leggings left nothing to imagination, clinging to every curve. The tank top exposed the line of her arms, the curve of her shoulders, the bare skin of her collarbone that I’d been deliberately not looking at all day.
I bit my cheek inside hard enough to taste copper.
“My father tried teaching me some of this.” She threw a jab at the air with a poor form, bringing me back to the present. “When I was younger. Before he...”
She trailed off. The sentence dissolved into the space between us, and her jaw tightened.
“Before he left?” I kept my voice neutral.
“Abandoned is more accurate.” She threw another jab. Better. “He was around until I was six. Taught me basic stuff. How to hold a stance, how to read an opponent.” Her mouth twisted. “Then he vanished and I forgot most of it.”
It was a new detail of her life that I was glad to know. I could listen to her stories the whole day.
But we have other things on our plate right now.
“Your stance is good,” I said. “Instinct is still there. We just need to sharpen it.”
I crossed to the storage bench at the edge of the clearing, stocked with training equipment and a few weapons I’d brought from Veyndral. I unlatched the lid and laid three options on the bench.
“Pick one.”
Mira came up beside me and studied them. A short staff, a set of weighted training batons and a dagger. Veyndral-forged, the blade no longer than her forearm, balanced for a smaller hand.
Her fingers bypassed the staff and the batons without hesitation and closed around the dagger’s handle.
“This one. I like this.”
I nodded and stepped behind her. “Grip is wrong.”
I wrapped my hand around hers on the handle. Her back pressed against my chest. I adjusted her fingers, repositioning each one along the grip. “Thumb here. Index finger anchors. The blade is an extension of your forearm, not your fist.”
She shifted the grip. My hand stayed over hers, guiding the angle. I could feel her pulse through her wrist, hammering faster than it had any right to.
“Slash across, never stab down. Stabbing gets the blade stuck.” I guided her arm through the motion, our arms moving together. “Horizontal. Controlled. Aim for the soft tissue. Throat, inner thigh, inside of the arm.”
“Throat seems aggressive for a first lesson.”
“If someone has you cornered, you don’t go for polite.” I adjusted her grip, tilting the blade angle. “But if you ever have to stab, twist on the way out. A clean wound closes. A twisted one doesn’t. Don’t stab without twisting unless you want your enemy to live.”
She glanced back at me over her shoulder. “What if I stab you?”
“You won’t.”
“Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically, I’d be very disappointed in your listening skills, because I just told you to slash, not stab.”
A grin tugged at her mouth. “And if I didn’t twist?”
“Then I’d know you wanted me alive.” I held her gaze over her shoulder.
“Got it.” She turned back to the target, set her stance, and slashed. The form was clumsy but the intent was clean. “I’ll remember that.”
I released her hand and stepped to face her. “Good. Now try it on me. On my throat.”
“Well, aren’t you kinky?” She teased with a smile.
My eyes flashed gold and I matched her tone. “You have no idea.”
The blush hit her so fast it reached her ears. Her eyes narrowed, shaking her head to focus. I smirk at her reaction.
Then Mira slashed. Too wide, I caught her wrist and redirected the blade away from my chest.
“Tighter arc. You’re not swinging a sword. This is close-quarters.”
She tried again. Better. The blade passed within inches of my ribs, and the focus in her eyes shifted from frustrated to predatory. She was a fast learner.
“Good.” I caught her wrist again on the third pass and held it. Our faces were close, our breath mingling, the dagger angled between us. “Now. What do you do if your attacker is bigger than you and takes your weapon?”
“Cry?”
I gave her a look of disbelief and she laughed.
“You let him take it.” I plucked the dagger from her grip and held it up. “Because while he’s focused on the blade, you’re focused on the body.” I pressed the handle back into her palm and closed her fingers around it.
“The dagger is a distraction.”
She stared at me. The late afternoon light caught the copper in her roots, and her lips parted, and I was close enough to count the flecks of blue in her brown eye.
I stepped back before I did anything I couldn’t take back.
“Now. Hand-to-hand.”
I moved behind her and adjusted her elbow. My fingers pressed against the inside of her arm, guiding the angle, and her skin was warm under my touch. She went still and I could smell the change in her scent.
“When someone grabs you.” I stepped into her space. Wrapped my hand around her wrist, loose enough that she could break free. “Don’t pull away. Pull into them. Use their momentum.”
She tried. Her body twisted, and for a second the move almost worked, but my weight was too much and she ended up pressed against my chest instead, breathing hard, her back to my front.
I didn’t step back immediately. Couldn’t. The curve of her ass pressed against my thighs in a way that made my vision blur.
“Again,” I managed.
We ran the drill six more times.
Each repetition brought more contact. Her hands gripping my forearms. My palm on her hip, correcting her pivot. The brush of her hair against my jaw when she ducked under my arm.
Every point of contact sent electricity racing through my nerve endings, and by the fifth round, my self-control existed in name only.
“Now the flip,” I said. “If someone pins you, this is how you get free.”
I showed her the leverage point. The hip rotation and the way to use an attacker’s weight against them.
She tried and failed. Tried again, failed harder. Her frustration mounted visibly, flushing her cheeks and making her jaw set.
On the fourth attempt, Mira changed tactics.
Instead of the technique, she leaned up on her toes. Her hand curled around my bicep, fingers digging into the muscle, and her mouth found my ear. Close enough that her lips grazed the skin.
“You know,” she breathed, “I’ve been thinking about dragging my tongue down your neck since you pinned me the first time.”
Every rational thought in my head caught fire.
Her lips brushed my earlobe, breath warm as her fingers traced the curve of my bicep with deliberate slowness. My blood rushed south and my grip on her wrist went slack. My brain produced a single coherent word.
Fuck.
Mira hooked her leg behind my knee, dropped her weight, and used the half-second of destruction to wrench me off balance. My back hit the ground and air punched out of my lungs.
Before I could process what had happened, she was on top of me, straddling my hips, palms planted on my chest.
“I win.”
She grinned down at me. Victorious, flushed. Her hair fell around her face in a curtain of dark brown and copper, and her weight settled across my hips in a position that obliterated any remaining blood flow to my brain.
Every ounce of it redirected to the place where her body pressed against mine, and there was no way she couldn’t feel what that position was doing to me.
My hands found her thighs on instinct, fingers pressing into the muscle through her leggings, and I pulled her down harder against me without thinking twice. The friction drew a sound from my chest that I barely swallowed in time.
She was warm and solid and her hips fit against mine, making my wolf claw at the surface, demanding more.
Demanding I flip her onto her back and find out what other sounds that mouth could make.
She’d cheated. Used her body as a weapon, my own desire against me with surgical accuracy, and the realization that she’d read my weakness, targeted it, and exploited it without hesitation made me want her so badly my hands shook.
Mira’s grin faltered. She felt it.
The shift between us, the way my fingers dug into her thighs, the way my breathing had gone rough and deliberate. My cock pressing against her that I couldn’t disguise and had stopped trying to.
I wanted to know how far she’d go.
Whether the bravado would hold if I rolled my hips up into hers. Or if that confident smirk would crack if I sat up and put my mouth on the throat she’d just threatened with her tongue. Find out if she’d run or whether she’d grind down and meet me halfway.
“Can I try next?”
Both our heads turned.
Percy stood in the doorway of the back porch, a bowl of popcorn tucked against his chest, chewing with the unhurried calm of a man watching his favorite show.
I glared at him.
Mira was still on my lap. Her face cycled through three colors in under a second.
“Since when were you there?” I kept my voice flat despite the fact that my body was screaming at the interruption.
Percy shrugged. “Since about an hour? I actually left and came back twice already. You two were in your own world.” His grin stretched, dimples deepening. “Training seems fun. You look like you’re enjoying that position.”
Mira bolted upright so fast she nearly kneed me in the ribs. I grabbed the nearest object, a fallen branch, and hurled it at Percy’s head. He caught it one-handed without spilling a single kernel. Reflexes wasted on a man with the maturity of a toddler.
“Sorry for interrupting.” He didn’t look sorry. He was teasing, delighted. “Solomon sent me to tell you dinner’s ready.” He laughed his way back inside, popcorn bowl bouncing against his chest.
Bastard.
The clearing went quiet. Mira stood three feet away, arms crossed, and glanced at me from beneath her lashes.
Shy. It was the first I’d seen her genuinely shy.
“I can go to the Founder’s Day celebration, right?”
I nodded because I didn’t trust my voice.
She turned and headed for the cabin.
Inside, the scene that greeted me was this: Mira winding up and driving her newly learned punch directly into Percy’s stomach. He doubled over laughing, barely fazed, and caught her fist on the second attempt to hold it against his abs.
“See? I told you I could take a hit. Your form needs work though. Solomon, rate that punch.”
“Four out of ten.” Solomon didn’t look up from the plates he was setting. “Wrist still needs correction.”
Mira yanked her fist back and pointed at them. “You’re all insufferable.”
“And yet you live with us voluntarily.” Percy dropped into his chair and reached for the bread.
She sat down between Solomon and Percy, stealing a roll before the basket finished its rotation, and a shift settled over the cabin.
The four of us around a table with food and bickering and the smell of whatever Solomon had managed to salvage after yesterday’s burnt pot disaster.
I stood in the kitchen doorway and watched them.
My chest stopped aching painfully.