Bitten (Once Bitten, Twice Shy #1)(80)
As soon as he mentioned the moon gathering, his smile drooped, disappearing entirely until nothing of it remained but the hard, somber line of lips that Katherine was too used to seeing on Bastian’s face.
Wanting to bring that smile back, Katherine acted impulsively. She bent down low and gathered a wad of snow between her hands. She hastily packed it into a ball before letting loose and chucking it right at the distracted man’s head.
Her aim was true and the ball of wet snow smacked into Bastian’s cheek with a splat. The look of shock on his face was so hilarious to Katherine that she couldn’t stop an undignified bark of laughter from escaping.
And then she got her wish. Bastian smiled the biggest smile she’d ever seen – from him at least. His eyes sparkled and the white of his teeth gleamed in the sun shining overhead.
Katherine’s only coherent thought was that the beauty of the frozen waterfall had nothing on his smile.
“Oh, so that’s how you want to play it, huh?” he asked, wiping the remains of the snowball from his face. “You know what this means, right?” He paused. “War.”
Katherine knew he was going to lunge at her only a moment before he actually did. She tried to dodge him, but was too late and could only shriek in surprise as he wrapped his arms around her waist and tackled her to the ground. She retaliated the only way she could, grabbing a fistful of snow and smashing it into Bastian’s face. In no time, however, he had her arms pinned and was demanding that she apologize for her dastardly deed. “Come on, say you’re sorry.”
Eventually, between peals of laughter, she did. “Okay, okay! I’m sorry… I’m sorry I didn’t think of doing that sooner.”
Bastian’s grin sharpened into something positively diabolical. “Hm, not exactly the apology I was looking for,” he said, using his free hand to gather a large snowball and hold it threateningly over Katherine’s form. “Don’t make me do it,” he warned.
“I’m sorry,” Katherine squealed. “I’m sorry!”
“I’m not sure if I believe you” he teased, bringing the snowball back behind his head as if to throw it down.
Katherine had resigned herself to a face full of snow when at the last second he changed his trajectory, hurling the sludge at a nearby tree. Chuckling at her slack-jawed expression, Bastian released her arms.
Unfortunately, it was at this time – as they were smiling at each other, both of their faces tinged red from the cold – that Bastian seemed to realize the rather compromising position they were in and quickly pulled himself off of her. He helped her up, but refused to meet her eyes as she patted the snow from her coat and pants. He jerked his head in the direction they’d come from. “We should head back to the house.”
Katherine sighed, knowing that Bastian was planning on forgetting that their brief snowball fight had ever happened. “Okay.”
“Oomph.”
Katherine was literally knocked out of her thoughts as she was thrown to the floor. Again.
“I wasn’t ready!” she cried, winching as a sharp spark of pain, originating from her tail bone, once again shot up her lower back.
Markus didn’t seem at all apologetic. “Oh yeah? And what’s the first rule of fighting that I taught you?”
Katherine rolled her eyes, but begrudgingly answered. “Always be aware of your surroundings.”
“Exactly,” he agreed condescendingly. “You should constantly be prepared for an attac – Ow!”
Zane guffawed and Katherine couldn’t have stopped the haughty smirk from emerging if she’d tried. “You were saying?” she asked.
The glare she received in return to her question was enough to make her immediately regret the hasty decision she’d made to test Markus on his own rule. She supposed she shouldn’t have kicked the man in the knee cap as hard she could from her place on the floor. But he’d been the one preaching about vigilance!
“You’re lucky I don’t throttle you,” he muttered, yanking his pant leg up to examine his knee. It looked fine to Katherine.
“It’s not my fault that you weren’t prepared for an attack,” she pointed out, finishing his earlier sentence. “If I have to follow your rules, shouldn’t you be following them too?”
He must have come to the same conclusion as Katherine – that his knee, while obviously hurting a bit, wasn’t seriously wounded – because he allowed his pant leg to fall back down. “I suppose I should just be thankful you actually remembered one of the body’s five weak spots.”
“Eyes, nose, throat, groin, and knees,” Katherine obediently reiterated what Markus had told her many times by then. He’d made it clear their very first lesson that her small size would be a disadvantage in any fight she partook in and thus, she was to immediately go for her opponent’s weak spots – areas where he or she would be most susceptible to injury.
Markus had shown her how to straighten her thumbs to jab them into an attacker’s eye sockets as well as the proper way to butt her head to smash into the nose of anyone who might grab her from behind. Katherine had drawn the line at practicing groin grabs, however. Neither Markus nor Zane had protested.
One armed shoulder throws, however, was something they’d both insisted she learn. Markus had been trying to teach her the move for the better part of the afternoon, but every time she’d try to execute it on him she ended up on the floor.