His brow raises. “Axillary artery, the armpit is sometimes your easiest target because it’s not a place most opponents think to protect.” He kicks my feet out from under me and I land on my back. His thick thighs are straddling me and he yanks my arm up.
There’s a little shriek from someone in the crowd and we freeze, his knife lightly tapping my armpit, and my blade at his chest, perfectly positioned to slide through the ribcage and into his heart. I’m heaving for breath and my breasts are pressing into his chest. There’s silence and we realize not a single student is making a sound, utterly still as they stare at us.
“Get off me!” I hiss under my breath. When he doesn’t move, I press the tip of my blade into his ribs. He looks down, one brow lifted and nods in respect.
“Well done.”
He’s on his feet in seconds and hauls me off the floor like a bag of flour. “As you can see, this match ended in a stalemate, with a skilled move on Miss Chandler’s part. If you saw how she positioned the dirk, she could slide the blade through…”
Cormac is lecturing and I’m staring at his shirt. The dark color is masking it somewhat, but I poked him hard enough to draw blood and he’s talking casually and he flips his blade a couple of times, catching it by the handle without looking at it.
“Class dismissed.”
Students leave the practice room slowly, his little fans looking longingly over their shoulders and Marco blurts, “That was so fucking hot!”
“I am so truly sorry,” I put my hand over my mouth, “I didn’t mean to hurt you, that is completely unacceptable.”
“Hmm?” He looks down at his wet shirt, “Ah, well yeah, ya did, ferocious little thing.”
He pulls his shirt over his head and my knees nearly buckle.
I knew the man had a beautiful body, I’d run my hands and mouth over a lot of it that night. Seeing Cormac MacTavish’s chest in broad daylight is next level. The winged dagger that starts on his neck goes down to the bottom of his sculpted pectoral, and there’s another vividly colored one across his six-pack that looks like a family crest with a dragon curled around the center.
Sweet baby Jesus, at the hem of his cargo pants, just above his prominent hip bone, a tattoo of some kind of vine with thorns disappears into his pants leading to that perfectly defined V which points right to his generously sized…
For fuck’s sake stop it, Mala!
Oh, and then there’s the slice on his ribs that’s bleeding.
He absently presses his bloody shirt against it as he moves casually over to the door. “I’ll patch this up, head off to your next class.”
“No, wait!” My hands are waving in a ridiculous, appeasing sort of way. “I can stitch you. It’s my fault. Truly, I’m so sorry, I didn’t intend-”
“Sionnach beag, you little fox,” he says, cutting me off. “And so fierce. Go on to class, now. I have this.”
“I feel terrible,” I say helplessly.
Cormac’s expression turns chilly. “Don’t be a child. You’re going to have to be tougher than this if you want to succeed here. There will be injuries. You’re going to hurt people. Now go to class.”
Sucking in a deep breath, I hold it for a second. “You would know all about hurting people, Professor. Pick someone else for your next knife playdate.”
I turn on my heel and walk out of the room, refusing to look back. Would he still be watching me? Or focused on the slice I just made to his ribs? What the hell is wrong with me?
Chapter Eight
In which we meet The Dick.
Mala….
“There she is! The knife-wielding she-devil who nearly decapitated Professor MacTavish!”
That damn Konstantin is giving me a standing ovation at the dinner table, our friends joining in as I slink into a chair.
“Could you shut up now?” I hiss, “And I didn’t nearlydecapitatehim. We were just doing… a knife… uh… exercise for the rest of the class.”
Athena laughs loudly, gathering attention from anyone left in the dining room who might not have heard Kon. “Oh, I was there, my friend. It reminded me of some classic Greco-Roman wrestling at the end. If they had been nude and all oiled up, it would have looked like one of those ancient sculptures.”
Such a friend.
