Nix. (Den of Mercenaries Book 3)(33)

Anyone could shoot a gun.

He gave her manuals inches thick that taught her the intricate details of the various weaponry he had stored in his home.

There were days when she wasn’t actually handling a weapon, but reciting facts when he quizzed her until she could remember it all with ease.

From guns, they moved on to knives, and even that was an in depth lesson, but she found herself rather fascinated by the knives than wielding a gun.

She couldn’t help but recall the precision he used when he cut Benjamin to pieces, wanting to be able to do that.

The first time he set a throwing knife into her hand, she familiarized herself with the weight of it. If it was possible to love something before she even knew what to do with it—she loved that knife.

“They’re harder to kill with,” Kit had told her that day, seeing the way she looked at it.

“Then I’ll learn to make it easy.”

No matter how she nicked her hand, or how the blade clattered to the floor when it missed its target, she never gave up.

Not her first attempt, or the 105th.

She practiced, and practiced more, until the moment when she let that blade fly out of her hand, shooting like an arrow through the air, and watched it sink into the very center of her target.

But she soon found that the weapons were easy—it was learning hand-to-hand combat that was hard.

She had thought that it, too, would be easy to learn, but it took work—and a hell of a lot of pain.

It wasn’t Kit that worked with her on this, but Aidra. Luna wasn’t sure where Kit had disappeared to, but she wasn’t given much time to think about it when Aidra stepped foot in that gym.

She was relentless, and whereas Kit seemed a bit more patient when it came to the mistakes she made, Aidra was no-nonsense.

“Your own body is your biggest weapon,” Aidra had said from day one. “Your gun can jam, a blade can be struck from your hand, so your last line of defense comes down to you, understand?”

Luna couldn’t count the number of times her back had hit the mat over the weeks she trained with Aidra, but each time she got back up, it was harder to get her back down again.

Her confidence had grown to the point that now that she was entering the gym where Kit was already waiting, she didn’t feel that same level of trepidation she had before she’d begun sparring with Aidra.

Luna wasn’t sure where he had disappeared to over the last few weeks, but she was a little glad he was back.

There were a set of bars bolted just above him, his taped hands wrapped tight around them as he both lifted and dropped his weight, the muscles in his arms and back straining with the movement. It took careful control, she knew, the way he measured out the seconds, twisting his torso from left to right before he finally dropped to his feet, turning back to face her.

She shouldn’t have noticed the sweat dripping from his torso, or even the way those muscles flexed as he pushed his hair back out of his face.

She shouldn’t have noticed anything about him, but that didn’t stop her from drinking him in.

Kit wasn’t shy about his own perusal, his gaze trailing over her in that languid way of his that felt quite blatant.

What did he see when he looked at her?

Grabbing a towel from a stack of them, he wiped it over his face before tossing it aside. “Are you ready?”

Were they going to spar? And if they were, was he going to remain like … that? He was almost naked, and the second that realization hit her, she was picturing what he might look like completely free of his clothes.

Mouth suddenly dry, Luna nodded, forcing bare feet one after the other until she was on the floor opposite him.

“Sometimes, weapons aren’t readily available, and in the likely chance that you have to get out of a situation by yourself, you’ll need to know how to handle yourself accordingly.”

“That’s what Aidra told me.”

And that was what they’d been working on for weeks now.

“Yes, but the likelihood of you going up against a man is far greater, and training with one will prepare you for what to expect.”

“So I’m going to be fighting you?” she asked.

“Unless you would prefer Fang,” he said dryly, pulling a roll of tape from his pockets.

“Not really,” she muttered even as she extended her hands for him to apply the tape how he’d done his own.

“This once, I’ll go easy on you. Your goal is to strike me at least once.”

“Only once?” she asked, not thinking that it would be too difficult to accomplish that. Even if by accident, she figured she could hit him one time.

A corner of his mouth curled up, his expression amused. “Let’s see if you can manage that.”

When he finished, Kit tossed the tape off to the side. He crossed to the middle of the floor, crooking his fingers at her as if to say, ‘come on.’

Her first instinct as she flexed her hands was to strike immediately, to catch him unaware, but she could tell from the slight tension in his shoulders that he was expecting just that.

Instead, she remained where she was, trying to guess her best method of attack.

But she had never seen Kit fight, so the likelihood of her knowing how he would strike was low—the only way she could learn was to study his movements.

“The clock is ticking, Luna.”