The Darkness in Dreams (Enforcer's Legacy, #1)(46)
“Maybe you should ask Robbie,” said a pissed off voice from the doorway. Lexi stood in tight flowered leggings and a blue tank top. Her hair was twisted into a blond knot at the top of her head. Her face was startlingly beautiful, eyes full of defiance. Christan’s gaze narrowed on the defensive set of her shoulders, the slim curve of her hips, and he remembered everything she’d ever done to annoy him. Everything he had ever done to annoy her. Everything they’d ever done together. Hostility vibrated in the air.
Arsen disappeared. Neither of them noticed.
She walked toward him with a slow, feminine roll, sleek and powerful, reminding Christan of a stalking cat. Oh, yeah, she was pissed about last night and so was he. There was too much between them and he couldn’t think straight until he excised it. Demolished it. Obliterated her. From the look in her eyes she wanted the same, needed it more than he did. This would go down as all train wrecks did. He widened his stance, reaching for the coming battle with eager need.
“I think I taught you how to fight… once,” he said, and immediately regretted it when memory flashed in his mind.
“I think I forgot,” she replied, stopping within two feet of him, no fear visible in those amber eyes. “No, wait—I didn’t forget the fighting. We’ve got the whole fighting thing down pat.”
She smelled of sunshine, fresh clover crushed in a field, but she was no innocent. Wicked emotion flared, lacking in all compassion.
Lexi circled with him, each of them tracking the other’s movements. Christan read the expression in her eyes and matched it with his own. She had issues about what he did to her last night—well, so did he, because she’d done a hell of a lot to him, too. He didn’t like the way she slid beneath his skin, the questions she raised and refused to answer. He wanted her back in the box where he’d kept her all those centuries, a neat explanation in his mind.
“You play a risky game,” Christan said, his voice a rough purr.
“I live in a risky world,” she answered just as seductively.
“You don’t have what it takes.”
“Come up with something new.”
Christan paid attention to the way she moved, alert and fluid with a dancer’s stance, balanced on the balls of her feet so she could move in any direction. He remembered Arsen mentioning it, recalled the way he’d watched her walking through the rain and thought the same thing. She’d obviously been paying attention during her training. She kept her eyes on his face, but she was reading his body language, the flex of muscle or shift of balance that would warn of an attack. Trying to identify his tells. He faked an arm movement but she’d been looking at his feet, knew he hadn’t shifted his weight. She was more intuitive than he expected.
“What has Arsen been teaching you?” he demanded, irritated.
“You’d like to know,” she taunted. “I’ve had other training besides what I do with Arsen.”
“Pretend martial arts?”
Her bark of laughter excited him. “Yeah, they have a new kind, a mix of yoga and Brazilian kick boxing, but it hasn’t caught on.”
“I can’t understand why.” Christan faked another attack. She slid easily in the opposite direction, and when he reached for her, she was two feet away.
“Street fighting against a human is one thing,” he challenged, suddenly curious. “In our world, your opponent won’t always be human.”
“Yeah, I got that one too,” she said, staring at him and letting her gaze say what needed to be said about who and what he was. “Anything else?”
“If I’m going to teach you, I need to know what you can do, not what you think you can do.” He hadn’t liked the way she looked at him. “That way you won’t kill yourself.” Or he wouldn’t kill her. Accidentally, of course.
Lexi pushed at an imaginary strand of hair. Christan couldn’t decide if the gesture was defensive, or nervous.
“Arsen has been teaching me Krav Maga,” she said. “I can fight off most attack holds I’m likely to encounter.”
That pricked him, imagining Arsen teaching her close-quarter fighting. Imagining his second’s body bending over hers, pressing into her back while she was on her hands and knees resisting him. He would need a friendly talk with Arsen about the techniques he could teach.
Lexi continued to move, never keeping to one place, and Christan thought about attack holds, putting her on her back with her knees spread. Close, very close quarters. “Shall we put that to a little test?”
He flashed a deadly smile, saw her blush as he moved in, his body hard against her. She pushed his arm up and away, using the force of his momentum. With lightning speed, she kicked his knee from behind, bent over and threw her hip into him, used it to rebound out of his way. He almost went down and a laugh of pure enjoyment rose in his throat.
When she turned to face him, her breathing had elevated. Christan stared at the way her breasts lifted, the nipples hard. He moved again, feinting to the left before he snaked an arm around her waist and lifted her. She pretended compliance and threw her weight backward. She wasn’t strong enough to put him on the ground, but he wanted her there, so he let her follow through.
They hit the mat. She rolled in a quick move to one side, was up on her hands and knees, pushing to her feet. For a moment he enjoyed the way her bottom moved in the blue leggings. Her bare feet gripped the mat for traction and he grabbed both ankles, then jerked. She fell flat on her stomach. He spread her legs wide, held her vulnerable and exposed. Rationalized it, told himself she should learn how to deal with raw male aggression.