But right now, I realize that there’s an entirely different reason I need to stay guarded against him. And it has everything to do with the way warmth is spreading through my chest, with the way chills have scattered over my skin from the purr of his voice.
Warning bells peal through my head, but they sound like the best sort of song.
He dips his chin. “Did you know, the color of your cheeks grows darker when you blush? Like warm umber,” Rip says, words pitched low, a sound that seems to dig beneath my skin and burrow in the deepest parts of me.
I shiver, as if a phantom drew a finger down my back. I can’t even hear the others fighting anymore. It’s just him and me, me and him.
“Why do they really call you Rip?” I ask. I barely recognize the whisper as mine.
He shakes his head once. “You remember the rules, Auren. Keep a lie for a lie, or tell a truth for a truth. That’s the only way I’ll play.”
I swallow thickly. “Then I don’t want to know the answer.”
“You will.” He lets a lazy smile crawl up his face. He takes a step back, arms hanging loosely at his sides. “Now, we fight.”
Just like that, the moment between us is doused, old fire beneath a toss of water. I blink quickly and shake my head, as if I’m waking up from a dream.
“If you want to see your guards, this is the only way,” he reminds me.
All of those confusing emotions roiling through me get shoved beneath the mask of his smug arrogance. I’m a puppet being made to jump through hoops. I just need to get this over with.
“Fine,” I say. “What do you want me to do?”
“For one, we’ll start with your stance. It’s all wrong.”
I look down at my body. “What’s wrong with it?”
“You’re too tense. If I were to come at you right now, you’d be too locked up to react smoothly,” he explains, circling me again. “You need to be ready to move, not have such a stranglehold on your muscles.”
I have to force myself to let out a steadying breath, and only then does my body relax a fraction.
“Better,” he says.
And then he comes at me.
No warning, no change of expression,nothing.
He flashes forward quicker than I can blink, and then I’m on my back, staring up at the sky in shock, while the air is knocked out of my lungs and puffed out in a cloud that hovers above my lips.
Rip stands over me with his arms crossed, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
I manage to get up, choking on breath, shoving snow off my ass as I stand. “You prick!”
He grins. Actuallygrinsat me, teeth and all. I forget all about his otherworldly beauty, about the strange moment that was just between us. Right now, I just want to smack him.
“What the hell was that?” My words spark with anger, a fire wanting to catch.
“We’re fighting,” he reminds me, still amused as hell.
“I wasn’t ready!”
“Your opponent isn’t going to do a countdown, Auren,” he explains, like I’m an idiot.
“I can’t fight you,” I snap. He’s too strong, too experienced, and I don’t want to turn into that little girl grappling in the street, getting my ass handed to me every time I’m shoved forward.
“No? That’s unfortunate for you,” Rip replies.
He spins—I don’t even know how he does it so fast—and then he’s suddenly behind me. He hooks one arm beneath both mine and pulls them against my back, wrenching a grunt of pain from my lips. His other hand presses between my shoulder blades as he tips me forward, completely at his mercy with my ass jutting into his thigh.
