“Yes, okay.” Very big, very beautiful blue eyes stare up at me. The ones that held so much innocence when we met that I would’ve happily torn the world apart to keep them that way.
“You may hit the floor pretty hard. Are you sure you wanna do this?” With every fiber of muscle in me, I want her to say no.Iwill protect her from Casanova for as long as it takes.
“Yes, I want to.” Her voice sounds much less sure than it was upstairs.
“Baby?”
“Yes?”
“I asked you a question. Are. You. Sure?” I emphasize the last word in a loud voice, communicating that if we’re doing this, I need her to toughen up.
She blinks, grimaces, and then grabs the marker. Her voice is harder when she answers, “Yes, I’m sure.”
Fuck.
All right, you heard her.
I’ve told her over and over she can’t fail to follow through once she pulls a weapon. That means I can’t get her on the mat and then fail to pull the trigger on a real training session.
With that in mind, I put her through the paces.
And from start to finish, it’s not great.
Once, she stabs an innocent student mid-thigh. And every time I’m Casanova, she ends up flat on the mat or carried off it. I put a forearm over her throat twice to show her how it feels to have her breath and voice cut off. After the first couple of times, I stop doing chokeholds because they make her so upset and panicked I can’t stand to see it.
It’s brutal on both of us.
Twice, she starts to cry in frustration and has to walk away to pull herself together.
I wait with my hands on top of my head until she comes back for another round. I tell her several times we can stop any time she wants, until she yells at me to stop trying to get her to give up.
Fucking brutal.
“Wait for your moment,” I tell her repeatedly because she constantly telegraphs when she’s about to strike, and because when she does make her move, she’s always too wild and inaccurate.
She needs to be stealthy, precise, and committed. She also needs a longer reach. I’m too much bigger. That’s just a physical fact. And a goddamned brutal one.
When she finally calls an end to the session, I’m the one who lies down on the mat for a breather. Not because I’m physically worn out. I just feel like shit because she tried so hard and I made her cry, and she still didn’t kill me with the marker even once.
Avery surprises me by sitting down next to me, crosslegged like a kid. In her place, I would have gone straight upstairs to rethink my options.
“Shane.” She waits, licking her lips. “There’s one mark that might be on target.” Her voice is thoughtful as she touches my jeans. “I didn’t drag very far, but still…can we check how deep it goes?”
I rise up to examine my groin, and there is a red mark. I unzip my jeans and lower them and my boxer-briefs a few inches.
She leans over me, peering down. “There’s paint on your skin,” she says tentatively.
I look, and she’s right.
I put my fingers on my groin and feel for the pulsation from my left femoral artery. “Pulse is here.” Looking again, I move my fingertip. A dot of red paint is right next to my pulse. “Maybe.” I nod. “You might have nicked it with that one.”
For a moment, her face wears a small smile. It fades as she turns her right hand over. There’s a lot of paint on her fingers and palm. “I was sweating. Does a knife slip as much as a marker does?”
“Yeah, especially when it’s coated with blood. Good observation. It’s not unusual for the fingers holding the knife’s handle to slide down over the blade during an attack. The hilt becomes slippery when it’s wet.”
“Your knife had a handle the fingers went through. So they won’t slip?”
She’s so smart. That’s good at least.
