Chapter 12 #2
Jade was ready. She’d utilized his pause to strategize her next movements.
He raised an arm, but Jade moved underneath it to come only a finger’s breadth away from him.
Heat radiated from his body. She glanced up at him, his familiar woodsy scent washing over her.
The momentary distraction was enough to blind her to the knife he held backward in his other hand, crossing his body and digging into her side.
She yelped and jumped away, her eyebrows pinching together in a grimace. Lifting her gaze up to Theo, Jade rubbed the sore spot with the side of her hand. A flicker of concern passed over Theo’s face before he stood straight, his posture relaxing.
“Tapping out?”
An unusual quiet settled in the room, and Jade cast a glance over her shoulder to find the other three occupants no longer moving, watching them.
She grunted as she brought her gaze ahead again.
Those two little contacts weren’t nearly enough for her to give up, especially not with an audience.
She shook her head, stepping to her original starting point on the mat and taking her stance again.
“You wish.”
Theo tossed his head to one side, cracking his neck, and a mischievous grin crept along his lips. He ran his tongue over the bottom edge of his teeth. “A glutton for punishment, then?”
Jade didn’t wait for him this time. Before he was ready, she lunged and drove a knife toward his abdomen, but Theo caught it with ease and sent her hand straight up.
She barely maintained her hold on the weapon.
As she recovered, she brought her other hand toward him in an uppercut.
Theo dodged, and Jade spun under his arm, the long braid down her back whipping around with her.
As she circled, she slashed the knife in her first hand across his chest.
Metal clanged as Theo stopped the blade with his own, sending it flying out of Jade’s hand.
Now she was at a true disadvantage. She swapped the other knife to her dominant hand as Theo moved again.
Jade parried the first knife that came at her, but she had nothing to stop the second.
She tightened her abdominal muscles, bracing for the impact of the blade there, but instead, Theo pushed back on the arm that held her knife, sending her sideways.
His free arm wrapped around her middle, pulling her back flush against his chest, and he rested the knife in his left hand gently against the hollow of her throat.
Jade squirmed for only a moment under his arm, the cool metal of the knife at her neck holding her back. The knife in his other hand pressed into her waist.
“I’ll admit. You keep me on my toes more now than you used to.” The breath of his words tickled her ear, sending the stray hairs there flying. Goosebumps rose on her neck and down her arms, and her heart fluttered as it tried and failed to slow down.
He would see just how much she’d “keep him on his toes,” but first, she had to get free. There wasn’t an easy way out of his hold, so she would take advantage of the time he gave her to figure out her next move. If the way he pressed her body into his didn’t thoroughly derail her focus.
The tightness of his arm around her waist and the contact of his chest along her back warmed her blood even more than the exertion of sparring had.
His forearm muscles rippled as he rotated his wrist, nudging her slightly closer.
Jade shot her eyes up, forcing her mind off their closeness and onto a plan for escape.
She still clutched a knife in her right hand. Theo likely didn’t consider it a threat with the warning of both his blades against Jade’s body and the fact that her right arm was pinned against her side. Her left arm was weaponless but freer, so that was the place to start.
Jade tipped back her head, exposing her neck to the knife even more, and murmured so only he could hear, “I think you’ll find I can do much more than just keep you on your toes.”
Without giving him time to process what she’d said, she threw her left elbow back in a jab that connected with his stomach.
The force of the blow knocked Theo back a step, and the wind left his lungs in a whoosh.
Then she hooked her right ankle around his and pulled, sending him collapsing to his back on the mat.
Jade spun in a flash and was down on the mat on top of him, her knee between his legs and her left boot immobilizing his right wrist. With her knife-wielding right hand, she flicked the blade out of his other hand and pressed down into his wrist, the point of her knife grazing the skin just below his jawline.
Jade stared down at Theo underneath her as she held herself up by one arm. Beads of sweat had formed along his hairline, but the real change was in his eyes. There was a fire in them that she didn’t think appeared because of the fight, his pupils edging out his sea blue irises.
A slow smile curled on Theo’s lips. “I’m impressed.”
Jade cocked her head, their eyes locked. “Didn’t believe I could take you down? Or have you lost that deadly edge?”
Theo chuckled once, his words quiet enough for no one else to hear. “No, I think I’m only weak when it comes to you.”
Her heart should have been slowing down as the fight came to a halt and her body stilled, but it only pounded harder and faster against her ribcage.
Jade’s eyes flicked down to Theo’s parted lips almost involuntarily before meeting his gaze again.
Her breathing deepened, and she hoped he hadn’t noticed her wandering glance, but the slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes told her otherwise.
Jade pressed her lips together and swallowed hard, trying to return her being to normalcy, barely able to ignore the things her heart was screaming at her.
“You win,” Theo said, and for a split second, Jade didn’t know what he was referring to.
Then she was brought back to the mat, their position, the arena, the people watching them.
She cleared her throat and pushed back before hopping to her feet.
Theo collected both his knives in his left hand as Jade offered her arm to help him up.
He took it, grasping her bare forearm for a moment longer and drawing infinitesimally closer to her.
Theo’s eyes latched onto hers, and he searched her gaze for a moment.
His lips parted as if to speak, but something in his face changed as though he reconsidered before he spoke.
Something held him back, but what? The other troopers? Uncertainty about how Jade might respond?
“Well, I guess you don’t have to polish boots for a month, Ni’ihm.” He flashed a grin before holding out his hand for her weapon and then collecting the last one from the mat.
Jade sucked in a deep breath after he turned away from her to return the weapons to the racks. She’d managed to win their spar, but barely. Theo’s grip around her waist as he had pinned her against his chest had thrown her for a loop.
He appeared beside her at the bench where they’d left their jackets, and Jade jumped. She’d been so lost in her swirling thoughts she hadn’t noticed his approach. In a swift movement, she slung her jacket onto her arms and started to button it.
“That really was an excellent maneuver you used to break my hold. But, to be fair, I had you. If it were a real fight, you wouldn’t have walked away.”
Theo’s head barely tilted in her direction as he also donned his jacket, but Jade didn’t miss the redness to his cheeks. Was it from the exertion of the spar? Or something else . . .
“Good thing it wasn’t a real fight.” Jade finished with the buttons and tugged the hem of her jacket.
Theo craned his neck to face her fully, and she grinned with closed lips.
He laughed once, dropping his head to focus on his buttons.
“And don’t worry,” she continued, “I’ll get loads of satisfaction handing my boots over to you every time they need a polish. ”
Theo scoffed, but Jade simply kept her cheeky grin plastered to her face. “Try not to enjoy it too much.” He fitted his cap back atop his head, homing in her stare to his sea blue eyes.
She shrugged. “Get some rest, Captain Redman. I think you need it.” Jade strode past him without another word, needing to get in the fresh air and clear her head.
Maybe she should have said something to Theo then and there. Surely he noticed the same energy between them that she did. But she hadn’t want to confess any private feelings to Theo when other soldiers were present. It could wait.
Jade had nothing until hour seventeen, when she was scheduled to have a logistics meeting before dinner at eighteen half. She needed a shower, having collapsed in bed following the ball and then immediately heading to base for the debrief with Matherson when she woke up.
Jade closed the door to her bedroom and unlaced her boots, kicking them off without a care and then stripping the socks from her feet. She undid the band from the bottom of her braid as she padded to the bathroom and turned the shower on, and a knock sounded at her door.
Her heart leaped to her throat. Had Theo followed her? Had he come to say to her the things she hoped to hear, the same things she wanted to say to him?
The knock came again. Jade inhaled slowly through her nose, hoping to calm her anxious heart.
“Captain Ni’ihm? I have a message for you.”
Not Theo. Disappointment rushed through her as she turned the door handle.
A trooper in her company stood on the other side with an envelope in his hand.
“This just came for you. It was marked urgent.”
Thanking the trooper, Jade accepted the envelope and shut the door. She took slow steps back toward the bathroom where the shower still ran, the water warming, as she examined the envelope.
It was, indeed, stamped URGENT in blocky red letters beside her title, name, and base. Jade slipped her finger under the corner of the flap and tore at the seal. She gripped the paper inside, tugged it out, and flipped it over.
Her heart stopped.
Three interlocked triangles over a line in black, handwritten ink stared back at her.
Adrenaline poured through her system as she unfolded the paper. She had never received a letter on base from her informant. She’d always found them in strategic locations while on assignment, clearly meant for her. But this . . . this filled her with a sickly sense of dread.
It’s time for us to formally meet.
Come to the abandoned farmhouse at 6 Seviere Drive in Brithswaite.
Tomorrow, hour twenty-two.