20
Another week passed, and I was feeling much better. Liss’ healing had done the trick, and though I still had a scar on my shoulder, all residual pain was gone. I had full mobility in my arm again, and since Warrick had gone on a scouting mission with Puck, I was meeting Nik to train with my dagger.
Isaac had cleared out one of the rooms at the new safe house to lay down training mats, the far wall covered in weapons of all types. The windows were barricaded shut, allowing no natural light to pass through, despite the room being located on the third floor. Even if our wards did fail, nobody would be able to see us in here.
This safe house was much larger than the last, and also more hidden in plain sight. It was only a few blocks away from Eight Bells, and every time I walked here with Tess she begged to stop and grab a short stack at The Giddy Griddle. I could practically smell the savory flapjacks from the doorway as I pressed my hand to it, reciting the spell under my breath.
“Ego sum resistentia. Instrumentum sum in hoc bello.”
The door swung open beneath my touch, and I cast a glance left and right to make sure no one had followed before passing through. Stormslayer was strapped to my thigh, and I had worn my training leathers today. I knew Nik wouldn’t go easy on me, despite only recently recovering from my injury.
I scaled the stairs to the third floor and found that I had arrived first. I dragged one of the punching bags out to the center of the floor, the chains holding it to the ceiling jingling as it slid across the tracks. I might as well get warmed up while I waited for Nik.
Tess was spending the day with Puck, and it had been the first time I had made the walk from the townhouse to the safe house by myself.
Things had died down in the last week. There had been no more sightings of Fletcher or Donika’s other Nightshade guards, and for that I was thankful. I tiny voice inside my head said it was too good to be true. That there was no way they had stopped searching for us, and that this was the calm before the storm.
I took all my anxiety and uncertainty out on the bag, pounding it with my fists until my knuckles came away streaked with blood. I would have to ask Nik if he could wrap them for me before we returned to the townhouse.
Without being able to work with my magic, my current priority was becoming the strongest I possibly could, physically. I had been running with Liss and Saanvi every morning, and I had been lifting weights with Isaac and Warrick. Nik and I had been training with the sword and dagger, and I was beginning to feel confident in my fighting abilities.
I added a kick to the combination, the bag spinning away from me on the tracks as it gave way behind the force of my boot.
“Now what did that bag ever do to you?” Nik asked, shouldering the door open with a first aid box in his hands.
“How did you know I would need the wraps again?” I asked, my eyebrow raised. “Am I that predictable?”
“You are decidedly unpredictable,” Nik said, meeting my gaze as he set the box down on the bench by the doorway. “But I know why you train as hard as you do.”
If there was anyone who could understand my need to prove myself, it was Nik. He had spent his entire life trying to prove himself to his father, to earn his favor. In the end it had never been enough. Isaac had become a father figure to Nik, despite Nik’s actual father still being out there…somewhere.
“I wouldn’t have to if I could use my storm magic,” I told him, inclining my head in a knowing way.
“I don’t make the rules,” Nik replied, palms up. “If you want to go toe to toe with Isaac, be my guest. But I must warn you…you won’t win.”
“My magic is stronger than his,” I reminded him, pushing the punching bag back against the wall.
“But he has resolve of steel, trust me. Once he has made up his mind, there is no changing it,” Nik replied. He sheathed a dagger onto his thigh and strapped a few throwing knives to the sheaths at his ankles.
I turned back to Nik, waiting for him to join me on the mat. I hadn’t told Tess what I had overheard Nik and Isaac talking about in the infirmary…maybe because I wasn’t ready to even think about it myself.
Nik hadn’t known I was awake, and yet, he fought for me. He had told Isaac I was his only concern, and that thought sent a shiver down my spine. I had been keeping him at arm’s length, and that resolve was beginning to whither bit by bit. How could it not when he was one of the few people that cared more for me than they did for seeing an end to this war?
He was chipping away at my armor…and I was letting him. He had gotten under my skin…again. A part of me desperately wanted to forgive him, to give in to the feelings that had crept up on me. But a bigger part of me still stung with his betrayal.
I knew that he was not on Donika’s side. That everything he had said about his relationship with her had been true, but the fact that there had been a relationship at all still bothered me.
Things had changed for Nik somewhere between when he had met me in Silver Oaks, and when I had been captured at The Stone City. But I wasn’t ready to let him back in yet. To risk breaking my heart again. The worry in his eyes when he had seen me in that infirmary bed had undoubtedly softened me towards him, but I needed to keep my shields up around him.
As I told Tess, there was a war at hand, and the last thing I needed was to deal with boy problems. Tess’ boy problems had disappeared entirely, and I was sure she and Puck were destroying the townhouse in our absence today. I would stay here and train as long as I could to give them their privacy.
“You ready, Firecracker?” Nik joined me at the center of the mat, looking every bit the avenging angel. His blond hair was a stark contrast to his black training leathers, and when he smiled I could see the dimple on his cheek pop.
“I was born ready,” I replied, unsheathing Stormslayer.
“I’m not sure I’d say that…” he replied with a mischievous grin, moving into his fighting stance, feet apart.
“Now, Kolya, that’s not very nice.” I began to circle him, my feet light on the mat.
“I never claimed to be nice,” he responded, a wicked glint in his crystal blue eyes.
His shadows whirled out from behind him, fanning out to come at me from both sides.
“That’s cheating!” I moved towards him, bringing Stormslayer down in an arc towards him. “We agreed no magic.”
“Did we?” he asked innocently, deftly moving out of the way. “I thought that was only you who couldn’t use magic,” he teased.
I ducked under his arm and hit him hard in the back with my elbow, sending him to his knees on the mat. He whirled, his foot coming towards me too fast for me to get out of the way as he swept my feet out from underneath me. I caught myself on one knee, rolling into a somersault to escape his dagger as it swept towards me. I sliced out with Stormslayer as I passed him, leaving a cut in the side of his leathers.
“One point for you, firecracker.” He nodded, a smile on his lips as if he was proud I had drawn first blood.
He moved towards me first this time and I parried, my dagger smashing against his forcefully. I thrust my other fist up and hit his chin, his head snapping back, surprise in his eyes. He deflected my next blow with his forearm, pushing forwards to try to disarm me.
I sliced through the air to keep him back, dodging his next strike with ease. I could wield Stormslayer confidently now, all of those training sessions with Warrick had certainly paid off. Warrick kept things clean and straight forwards, but I learned the risky tricks and the real skill from my sessions with Nik. He wielded his weapon as if it were an extension of himself, as if he and the dagger were one.
He came towards me again, but I used my smaller stature and my speed to duck under his arm again, but this time he was expecting it. He caught my thigh as I passed and he tackled me to the ground, abandoning his own dagger to grapple with mine. He was the stronger of the two of us. With his knee still firmly planted on the mat and me flat on my back, it wasn’t long before he was able to wrestle Stormslayer away from me and pry it from my grip.
He threw my weapon to the mat, bending over me to grab me by the wrists.
“Do you yield?” he panted, his breath warm against my cheeks.
“No.” I struggled against his hold, trying my hardest to get my legs back up underneath me to shove him off. His knee was still firmly fixed to the mat between my legs. He pinned my wrists above my head and leaned over, a drop of his sweat beading down to fall against my throat.
“Well, isn’t this familiar,” he teased, his eyes darkening.
My arms were pinned above me on the mat, his hands around my wrists. His knee was pressed between my legs, and a blush so deep I was sure I would die from embarrassment flushed my cheeks.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I tried again to push him off, but he held me firmly beneath him. My core felt molten, and I struggled against him, trying not to let thoughts of that night at Eight Bells consume me.
His lips were only a breath away from my ear, the scent of coffee and cinnamon rolling off him.
“Do. You. Yield?” His voice was a soft caress in my ear, and it almost broke any and all fight I had left in me.
Almost.
I met his eyes with a wicked grin of my own. His face was so close to me, it would only take one small movement to close the distance between us. I remembered the feeling of his lips brushing against mine. The taste of him. The feel of his bare chest beneath my hands.
I bucked my hips hard enough that his knee slipped on the mat, and I pushed with all my strength, flipping us over. I knocked his arms away, using my hips to press him into the mat. I grabbed his wrists and pinned them above his head, mimicking his movements. A smirk crossed his lips as he fell against the mat, not fighting against my hold.
“Do you yield?” I asked, pressing him harder into the mat with my hips. His smile deepened. He was enjoying this far too much.
“Yes, Diana. I yield.” He lifted his head off the mat and our mouths were only inches apart, my grip still tight on his wrists.
He had yielded, so why was it that I couldn’t bring myself to let him go? To roll off him?
I could detect every place where our bodies were connected. My hips against his, my legs resting on the outside of his thighs. My ankles hooked behind his knees. My hands on his wrists.
My eyes traveled down to his mouth, and I couldn’t help the traitorous thoughts that filled my head.
I wanted his mouth on mine.
I wanted his lips to taste me, to trail along my skin. I wanted to feel his hands on me, exploring beneath my training leathers.
Between my thighs.
Nik must have guessed where my thoughts had led me, his gaze turning molten. “Diana?”
The sound of my name in his mouth threatened to break me, to shatter every ounce of resolve I had left in my body and turn me to dust. One movement from him and I would come undone.
Just once, I wanted to forget about everything and give in. To forget about Donika and her army. To forget about my storm magic turning against me and the resistance depending on me. I wanted to forget about everything pressing down on me and simply exist in this moment.
And in this moment, I wanted Nik.
His voice broke through my thoughts, my eyes meeting his. “I will not touch you unless you ask.”
I had been so adamant with him that I regretted everything, but here I was…wanting. I wanted him to touch me, to strip my leathers off and explore my skin. I wanted more, more, more.
I had told him he would never touch me again, but that had always been a lie, hadn’t it? He had been the only one who could ever make me feel this way, and right now, I wanted to feel strong and powerful. Beautiful.
“Touch me, Nikolai.”
I didn’t have to tell him twice. I uttered those three words, and his mouth was crashing against mine, his hands slipping free from my grip to grab hold of my hips. He pulled me down onto him, and I could feel the length of him against my thigh. A soft gasp escaped my lips as he nipped at my neck. He hadn’t even touched me, and yet he was already hard against me.
“Say it again.”
A gentle sigh escaped me as his lips moved to my ear, then back to my throat. “Touch me, Nikolai.”
He flipped us over so fast I could barely comprehend it, his hips pressing me down into the mat, his hands working the laces of my leather training vest as his lips found mine again.
“Diana.” He whispered my name as if it were a prayer, over and over against my skin. My mouth.
My vest came loose, and I pulled at the white shirt beneath, tugging it over my head and settling back beneath him. The bare skin of my back stuck to the mat as I pulled his shirt over his head, leaving him bare from the waist up.
The sensation of his warm skin against mine threatened to send me over the edge. His lips found mine once more, and I ran my hands along his back, up his shoulders, digging my nails into the skin and dragging them back down.
A hiss of pleasure escaped his lips as he pulled me closer, his hands on my hips, beneath my waist. I wanted to erase any distance between us, to feel him against my hips…my thighs…
“I want this.” My voice came out barely above a whisper as I dug my nails beneath the waistband of his pants. I pushed them down, using the friction of my legs to push them even further to pool around his ankles.
Nik let out a soft laugh. “I think about this every day. About you. How fucking gorgeous you look beneath me. How you sound when you say my name.”
One of his hands remained firmly behind my waist, pulling me against him, as the other traveled down over my pants and between my thighs.
A cry escaped me as he pressed against my core over my pants, the sensation so much but not nearly enough. He worked the spot between his two fingers and pressed harder, another cry escaping my lips as I pressed harder into him, chasing the sensation.
“You like that, firecracker?”
I bit my lip, my head thrown back against the mat, my auburn hair surrounding me, spilling outward in a halo.
“Yes,” I breathed.
His mouth found my throat again, kissing a trail over my collarbone, my bra, down my sternum, as he worked me with his fingers. This was pure ecstasy. I ran my fingers through his mess of blond hair as he glanced up at me through his eyelashes, his mouth still on my skin.
The sight of him like that…
We both startled as the door to the training room burst open, Nik falling to the side of me to cover me from view. Isaac stormed in, not noticing he had interrupted something at first.
“I-” he stuttered, casting his gaze down to his feet, his jaw tight. “Sorry to interrupt. The two of you need to get dressed, now. Warrick and Puck have returned. There has been a sighting of Donika in Prins.”