Dead Drop (The Guild #2)(65)
I couldn’t even be sufficiently mad at myself for ending up in this situation, because I felt more alive than I’d ever been in my whole fucking life. The emotions that both Kai and Leon stirred up in me, I didn’t know I was even capable of. I thought that part of me had been snuffed out a long, long time ago. Yet here I was, giddy and infatuated with two men who were both polar opposites and dangerously similar at the same time.
Tapping my nails on the marble counter, I watched the coffee beans grinding—praying they weren’t stale—then made myself a double espresso. It was a little bitter, but good enough for a caffeine hit. Just enough to kick start my brain as I made my way through to the gym.
The fact that it’d taken me twenty-two minutes to make that idiot sing was irritating me. I’d let myself slack off under the pressure of multiple hits on my name, and there was no time like the present to get back into shape.
I didn’t have any boxing gloves, so I couldn’t work out my issues on the bag unless I wanted to split my hand open again. But there was plenty of other equipment that I could use, so I got to work. It was a welcome distraction, pushing my muscles and testing my limits in a controlled environment rather than fighting for my life, and I quickly lost track of time.
By the time the gym door opened and Kai strode in, I was dripping with sweat and my limbs were like spaghetti noodles.
“What’s with the face, Big Man?” I asked, panting, as I placed the weight bar back in its cradle. I sat up and mopped my face with my towel. Kai looked mad as hell, his shoulders all bunched up with tension.
“You’ve been in here all morning?” His words were clipped, and I could hear the anger he was struggling to control.
I arched a brow in question. “Yeah. Why?”
His scowl dipped deeper, and he seemed slightly at a loss for words. Then he gave a quick shake of his head. “Never mind,” he muttered. Then he eyed my weights and gave me a sweeping once over with his eyes. “We working out, huh?”
Smiling, I peeled myself up from the bench. “I was. You’ve got a bit of catching up to do if you wanna keep this body.” I jabbed him playfully in the abs, which he tensed before my knuckles connected. Ouch.
A sly look crossed his face, and he took in my sweaty appearance. “Give me twenty minutes to warm up, then I wanna spar with you. Show me what you’re really capable of.”
A loud laugh escaped my mouth before I could stifle it. “Yeah alright, tough guy, you’re on.”
I gave him a condescending slap on the shoulder and headed over to the padded mats to stretch. For twenty minutes, Kai put himself through some impressively punishing sets of weights, and I pretended not to perve on him while limbering up my tight body on the mat.
When he was done, he stalked over and put out a hand to pull me back to my feet. First thing Kai needed to learn about fighting a mercenary, though, was that we never played fair. I threw a hard uppercut before he even released my hand, and he staggered back with a grunt of shock.
“It’s like that, huh?” he gritted out, glaring at me with an inferno of determination and lust.
I smirked. “You asked to spar, Ares. Show me what you’ve got.” But rather than waiting for him to gather his thoughts, I followed up with a couple of quick strikes to his kidney and a kick that would leave a solid bruise on his thigh.
“You don’t even have gloves on,” he snapped, enraged.
“You don’t get to stop and put gloves on in a real fight, Kai baby, toughen up.” A throaty laugh bubbled out of me, and I darted forward to swing a right hook. Kai dodged just in time to deflect the full force, my knuckles just barely kissing his cheekbone, then he shifted into a better fight stance.
“That’s better,” I purred. “Reckon you can get a hit in?”
I was waving a red flag at a bull, but he had no idea who he was messing with. His responding strikes were too slow, too restrained, and I barely even needed to try to avoid them connecting. After a few minutes, I started getting annoyed.
“You’re insulting me now, Big Man,” I snapped. “Either try or we can end this now.”
To drive my point home, I delivered a solid roundhouse kick to the side of his head. It was a move that required every fucking inch of my leg span because he was so freaking tall, and it unbalanced me for a second.
Kai took the opportunity, going for my supporting leg to try and knock me to the mat, and I just barely managed to tuck and roll back to my feet before he pinned me down. No joke, a guy his size would have an infinite advantage on the ground, so I tried to avoid it as long as possible.
Not to say I couldn’t still win from the floor, it was just harder.
“Shit, you’re slippery,” he muttered, and I gasped with laughter. I mean… yeah. Fighting with Kai did that to me, apparently.
That moment of distraction gave him the upper hand, and the next thing I knew, I was pinned beneath his bulk, his hands holding my wrists tight to the mat.
“Unfair advantage,” I complained. “You short-circuited my brain.”
His grin was pure victory, but as he leaned down to kiss me, I bucked and rolled with all my strength, knocking him off and reversing our positions so that it was me pinning him to the mat. Of course, now I was straddling him, and there was no mistaking the fact that he also got turned on by our brief sparring session.
“You win,” he grunted, rocking his hips so that his erection ground right against my core. “Now what?”