Winning
Chapter twenty-eight
Hayes Rosewood
I pull one of my legs behind me in a quad stretch. Aurora watches me with an unreadable expression.
“You should probably stretch and warm up a little,” I instruct.
She arches a brow, then grabs her foot and lifts one long leg up beside her head in a straight line. Coherent thought becomes a thing of the past. I swallow hard. Stare even harder. She slowly lowers her leg back down with a kind of control that speaks of immense strength and training.
“Okay,” I rasp out. “So maybe not stretching, but warming up. The mat inside of the ring can feel a bit like quicksand if you’re not used to it.”
I model a little bit of footwork for her as an example. My blood is pumping just fine with this proximity to Aurora, but I always start training with a warm-up session.
She nods and shifts her weight from one foot to the next, testing the feel. Then I watch as she pulls her ankles together and splays her feet out in what I think is a ballet position. She pushes up onto her toes a few times and does a couple of adorable and impressive tiny jumps.
Her entire ensemble from her bun to her tights looks out of place, and it makes me appreciate her presence all the more. She didn’t have to come. It would have been easy to back out, but she didn’t. And now we’re in the ring together on a date.
“Okay, I think I’ve got it. Now what?”
I clear my throat, trying to focus on teaching her rather than how unbelievably gorgeous she looks.
“Now, I’m going to teach you to hit me.”
A grin spreads across her face, and if I didn’t think she liked me, I’d be really worried. I might still be.
“I’m going to choose to not be offended by how much you’re smiling,” I say, and close the distance between us.
She rolls her eyes. “This was your idea, Prince Charming.”
I grin. I don’t think I’ll ever get over hearing her say that nickname.
“It was, and after this, you can tell me what a great first date it was.”
One of her pink gloves swings toward me, and I let her hit my shoulder.
“I hope you committed that to memory, because it’s not happening again,” I tease, and she swings again. There’s no control or power or strategy. Just a reckless swing that I block easily, then tap her bicep with my opposite hand.
She lets out a frustrated huff.
“Put your hands up in front of your face,” I command gently.
Aurora listens, and I help her adjust into the correct position by nudging up her elbows. Then I take my foot and brush her left leg. She tenses a little at the touch, her eyes jumping up to meet mine.
“Move this behind you and lean back on it a little. Think of splitting your weight sixty-forty.”
She nods and follows my direction without a word.
“We’re sparring, so as tempting as it might be, no full-force punches today,” I say, and she lets out a soft laugh. “But if you are going to hit someone, you want to drive through that back leg and think of the power moving up through your core and out your arm.”
I turn away from her and do a few jabs, then a hook as demonstration. When I face her again, she’s watching me with an intensity I didn’t expect. It makes my heart pick up speed, adrenaline rushing like I’m in the ring with a real opponent.
“That was a combination,” I explain. “We can try that next. It’ll go like this. Jab.” I touch her gloves with my left one. “Jab.” Another tap. “Duck.” My head drops, then pops back up. “Hook.” I swing my right arm in an arc toward her head, shortening my reach so that I don’t touch her.
Aurora doesn’t flinch once, just watches me with her bright blue eyes, a slight smile on her lips.
“You love this, don’t you?” Her whispered question catches me off guard. I drop my hands to my side, and she does the same.
“What makes you say that?”
“You’re actually teaching me, for one.” She laughs a little, making me smile. “And there’s something … different about you when we’re in here. You’re obnoxiously confident everywhere you go, but you’re comfortable here, like this is your home.”
“In a way, it is, I guess,” I reply in a low voice.
It’s an odd feeling to have someone see the real me. A lot of people look at me, but very few actually see me. I shift on my feet, unused to the sensation and not sure if I like it or not.
As if Aurora can sense my discomfort, she puts her gloves up again.
“Jab, jab, duck, hook.” She echoes my instructions. “Is that right?”
I lift my hands and nod.
She pushes out her left glove once, then another time.
Much slower than me, but precise enough to make contact with my gloves.
I swing toward her and she ducks. My glove brushes the top of her bun when she doesn’t move fast enough.
Then she pops back up and swings, almost losing her balance in the process.
“You’re gonna have to be faster than that if you want to hit someone,” I say, and she scrunches her nose.
“It feels like when I train with wrist and ankle weights, but worse. I don’t know how you move so quickly.”
I shrug. “It takes a lot of practice. Here, let’s try another combination. Don’t duck this time. Jab, jab, hook, jab.”
I demonstrate, then she follows suit. Still too slow to have any hope of hitting me even if I was at half speed, but better than before. Her lips turn down in a frown.
“Come on, Princess, I know you can do better than that.” I tease her, trying to get some more fire in her movements.
I do a couple of quick jabs that would hit her if I didn’t hold back, because she’s doing a poor job of blocking. Her eyes flash with an emotion I can’t quite place. When I pause, she drops her gloves.
“Could you get us some water? I think I’m a little dehydrated after my technique class this morning.”
The question feels out of the blue, but I know she doesn’t like to ask anyone for anything, so I’m glad she did.
“Oh, yeah, of course,” I reply, and immediately turn to head out of the ring.
I get two steps before a weight hits my back. I stumble a little, barely keeping my balance. Aurora’s legs wrap around my waist, her arms around my neck.
“What are you doing?” I laugh.
“Winning,” she whispers against my ear, and warmth spreads from my abdomen outward.
I have maybe three seconds to enjoy her lips near my skin before she starts hitting me haphazardly with her gloves.
The punches are as weak as her other ones, if not weaker, and I can’t stop laughing.
I get my gloves off while she hits my shoulders and head, then with some work—her grip is much stronger than her punches—I shift her so she’s facing me instead of on my back.
“Now what?” I ask her through labored breaths.
She meets my gaze. Her arms are draped over my shoulders, thighs wrapped tightly around my waist. My hands are on her lower back, and I can feel the heat of her skin through the thin leotard she’s wearing.
Her lashes flutter as she looks down at my lips, then back up.
One of my hands slides between her shoulder blades, brushing her bare skin.
Aurora’s lips part.
Ask me, I beg her internally. Ask me to kiss you.
The sound of a barbell hitting the floor reverberates through the room. Aurora flinches and immediately drops her legs down, then pulls away from me. My hands tingle from where they touched her, held her.
Aurora glances to the right where the sound came from. One of the guys I’ve seen around but don’t know is deadlifting the weight of a small car, then dropping it after.
“I-I should go. I have a lot of school work and the recital to prepare for.” She stumbles over her words.
I let my gaze roll over her one last time, searing every detail into my memory so I don’t forget this.
Whether it’s all I have left when it’s over or I’m eighty reminiscing by her side, I want to remember the way she looked, felt, and sounded.
So I take my moment, not hiding it from her, then I nod.
“Okay, let’s go.”