The Raider (Highland Guard #8)(104)

The rush of battle surged through him. The next time Seton attacked, Robbie was ready. He blocked the blow that came toward his head with his arm, turned, and using Seton’s momentum flipped him onto the ground. He inflicted a few more blows while trying to get a knee down on Seton’s chest. But Robbie had taught his partner well. Seton was able to angle his body away enough to avoid solid contact, while at the same time hooking his foot around Robbie’s leg to knock him to the side.

Robbie turned it into a roll and sprang back to his feet. Seton had done the same and came at him again. They exchanged jabs, punches, and hard strikes of the knee until they were both breathing hard, bloody, and bruised.

It was the longest fight Robbie had had in years. He tried to end it by leaving his injured side open, but Seton refused to take the bait. He was using his strengths—his quickness and youth—against Robbie, and for once, showing patience. Seton was proving a formidable opponent, and under different circumstances Robbie might have been proud of it. But right now all he wanted to do was shut him up.

The verbal jabs Seton was getting in in between those of his fists were landing just as hard. “What the hell did she do to deserve this? She helped us, and this is how you repay her?” Seton followed the question with a blow to Robbie’s ribs that would have broken a few more bones had he not twisted out of the way.

Hooking Seton’s feet, he tried to wrap his arm behind his back, but Seton dropped, turned, and jabbed the arm free with an elbow first to his stomach and then to his eye. In response, Robbie lifted his knee hard into Seton’s face, hearing an unmistakable crack.

“Was it worth it, Raider?” Seton taunted, blood pouring from his now broken nose. “Was your revenge against a woman part of your plan?”

Robbie’s muscles flared, guessing what he was about to say. “Don’t say it.”

Despite his battered face, broken nose, and bloody mouth, Seton smiled. “What? The truth is ugly, isn’t it? Did ruining this girl make up for what was done to your sister?”

Robbie snapped, rage turning to mad fury in an instant. He went from wanting to shut Seton up to wanting to kill him.

He lost control and went after Seton with everything he had, losing all patience in the effort to destroy his opponent. It was the very lesson he’d imparted on Seton hundreds of times not to do, but which he ignored, confident that his physical strength would win in the end like it always did.

No one could beat him. No one. He was proving it, too, pummeling Seton with blow after blow from every direction, hammering him to a bloody pulp.

But still his partner would not admit defeat.

Finally, whipping his leg around in a hard kick, he sent Seton to the ground on his knees. Robbie wrapped him in a chokehold with the crook of his right arm from behind. He moved his left hand into position at the back of his head. A few seconds of pushing and squeezing and Seton would lose consciousness.

It was one of Robbie’s most overpowering moves. No one could defend against it. He was too strong. Once his arms became locked and the other hand went into position, there was nothing an opponent could do.

Or so he thought. He had his left hand into position at the back of Seton’s head and was about to start pressing forward, when Seton reached up, grabbed Robbie’s two smallest fingers, and snapped them back hard. Hard enough to break them. Robbie let out a grunt of pain—there was a reason one of the most painful and effective means of torture was done with fingers. He released his left arm just enough for Seton to lever that arm down. With the added pressure of his other hand, Seton used the momentum to turn Robbie completely around and down on the ground with a hook to his leg. He pressed down on Robbie’s back with his knee, pulling his arm back with enough force to almost pop it out of the joint. The pain was indescribable. Pinned, Robbie’s arm was fully extended, and Seton had leveraged his body so that all his weight locked against it. If Robbie moved, his arm would break. “Concede.”

Robbie gritted his teeth until tears were in his eyes. Rage and disbelief converged in stubborn refusal.

Seton extended his legs to stretch the arm infinitesimally, but enough to make Robbie groan.

“Don’t make me break it.”

Seven years of Robbie’s trying to grind him into the dirt had given Seton’s words a biting edge. Robbie did not doubt that he would do it.

Still, he resisted until black spots appeared in his eyes, sweat poured down his face, and his teeth felt like they were going to shatter from clenching. But eventually he uttered the words he hadn’t spoken in over fifteen years. Since the man who’d taught him everything he knew about fighting, his father’s former henchman, Cormal, had bested him. “I concede.”

Seton let him go and Robbie felt the air surge back into this lungs. He rolled to his side, cradling his shoulder and arm until the pain receded to a bearable throb and burn.

He heard Seton struggling to his feet, but his partner’s equally battered state didn’t make Robbie feel any better. The rage that had given Seton the opening was still snapping around inside him dangerously. He’d lost. To Seton. He couldn’t bloody believe it.

By all rights, Seton should be gloating, but all Robbie could see when he stood and faced him was cold condemnation. “I’m done making excuses for you. I can’t do this anymore. Find yourself another partner.”

For seven years Robbie had longed to hear those words. Their pairing in the Highland Guard had been ill fated from the beginning. Still, he was surprised how much the words grated. “I made a mistake. Is that what you want me to say? I’ll f**king marry her, if that will assuage your knightly sensibilities. God knows that would be revenge enough on Clifford.”