Chapter nineteen #2
His other hand closes lightly around my arm.
"Here," he says, quieter now, close enough that I feel the word against the side of my neck. He shifts my shoulder back, nudges my elbow higher. "You're protecting your face but opening your ribs."
I'm supposed to be listening. I am listening.
I'm also extremely aware that Ander Ardent is standing directly behind me with one hand on my shoulder and the other wrapped around my arm.
Which seems unnecessary information for my body to be cataloging this thoroughly.
"There," he says.
But he doesn't move.
Not immediately.
There's one strange suspended second where neither of us does anything. His thumb is resting against my bare skin just below my sleeve. My back is maybe an inch from his chest.
And every cell in my body seems extremely interested in closing that inch.
What the hell?
I turn my head.
Ander's already looking at me.
Up this close, his eyes aren't simply blue. They're darker around the edges, startlingly bright toward the center, and whatever I expect to find in them — annoyance, probably — isn't there.
He looks as startled as I feel. For one strange second, neither of us moves. Then I feel it. His thumb. One slow, absent stroke against my arm. Like he doesn't even realize he's doing it.
Ander's eyes sharpen. He looks down at his own hand.
Then he steps away so abruptly the warmth disappears from my back.
"Again," he says.
His voice is perfectly controlled. The tips of his ears are not.
Well. That's interesting.
I turn before he can see me smile and reset my stance. I try it again.
Better.
Luke, off to the side, gives a short nod. Ander returns to the bleachers like nothing happened at all.
I watch him go. Huh. Maybe I've been wrong about him. Not completely wrong. Let's not get carried away.
But possibly... ten percent wrong.
Soren joins in after that — but not to touch me. To argue with me.
"You telegraph," he says flatly, from where he's drifted to the edge of the mat. "When you're frustrated. Your whole intention arrives a half-second before your hands do."
"I do not."
"You do."
His pale eyes stay on mine.
"You decide what you're going to do, and then your face announces it to everyone in the room."
I stare at him. "My face does not announce things."
"It rarely shuts up."
There's a beat.
Did Soren just make a joke?
"Attack me," he says.
So I do — and he steps out of it before I've finished thinking it, reads me so completely it's like he watched a replay first, and I pull up, scowling.
"Okay," I admit. "That's annoying."
And Soren smiles.
It's the first real one I've gotten out of him — it changes his entire face, cracks all that ice wide open, and it hits me like an actual physical event.
Oh.
That's unfortunate.
Because it turns out Soren smiling makes him roughly forty percent more attractive, which is a statistic the world was not ready for.
I point at him. "That's misleading."
The smile fades. "What is?"
I wave vaguely at his face. "You've been walking around looking like an angry glacier this entire time. You can't suddenly do that."
His eyebrows draw together.
Behind me, Luke laughs.
Soren looks at him. "What is she talking about?"
"No idea," Luke says, entirely too quickly.
I grab my water before my mouth can make this situation worse.
The session has gone on way longer than it's supposed to.
I'm exhausted. Sweaty. Every muscle I own is complaining. And I'm having the time of my life, because somehow my quiet daily combat lesson has turned into all four of them, and I can't remember the last time I laughed this hard while getting thrown around.
"One more round," Luke says.
I groan from the middle of the mat. "You're trying to kill me."
"You've got this," Torres offers, unhelpfully cheerful.
"Watch his hips," Soren adds.
"Keep your right shoulder up," says Ander.
I look around at the four of them — four ridiculous, gorgeous, opinionated men, all of them apparently now invested in my footwork. "Anybody else want to tell me what to do?"
Luke's mouth curves. "Ready?"
I drag myself upright, grinning despite the exhaustion. "Come get me."
We spar.
And I don't flinch. Not once. Not when he comes at my head, not when the combinations stack, not when I'm tired and everything in me wants to brace. I just move — read, react, counter — and when it's over I'm breathing like I ran up a mountain and I feel incredible.
Training ends, and I drop straight onto the mat like my strings got cut.
"I'm dead," I announce to the ceiling. "Tell my lizard I loved him."
There's a beat of silence.
"She has a lizard?" Soren mutters.
Torres drops onto the mat beside me. "I'll let everyone know you fought bravely."
I lean into him, just naturally, my shoulder against his, and he lifts an arm and settles it around me, also just naturally, and I let myself relax into the warmth of him. It's easy. It's comfortable. I don't have to think about it — Torres is the person I don't have to perform anything with.
I tip my head up — and Luke is watching us.
Again.
I raise an eyebrow at him. "What?"
He crouches, picks up his bag, and slings it over his shoulder. "Nothing."
"Sure," I say.
He doesn't answer. He just turns toward the doors, Soren and Ander falling in on either side of him, and I watch the three of them go.
Luke, who somehow makes getting punched every afternoon feel like a good idea.
Soren, who apparently has jokes and a smile he's been hiding from the general population.
And Ander, whose thumb stroked my arm like his body forgot for one second that he doesn't like me.
Huh.
Torres nudges me. "What?"
I shake my head. "Nothing."
"Liar," he says cheerfully.
I look at the equally distracting man sitting beside me with his arm around my shoulders, still catching his breath, grinning like he can read every thought in my head and finds all of them funny.
I let my head drop back against his shoulder and blow out a long breath.
Three princes. One tattooed smartass. Daily combat training. Close quarters every single afternoon.
This place is becoming genuinely hazardous to my psyche.