This requires repositioning. I circle her, examining angles, fighting the urge to touch more than necessary.
"Hips here." My hands grip her waist, rotating her torso slightly.
She presses back against me. Her breath hitches. A slow exhale against my back.
She's testing me.
Pushing.
A goddamn kitten playing with a wolf, with no idea the kind of fire she's stoking.
"Focus." The command comes out as a growl.
"I am." Breathy response, double meaning clear as crystal.
Heat floods through me. My hands tighten on her hips before I force them to relax.
Professional. Fucking. Distance.
"Throw from your core, not your arm." I demonstrate with my own knife, the blade sinking into the target twenty feet away. "Power comes from rotation."
She nods, adjusting her stance without prompting. Smart. She watches everything, cataloging movements and corrections.
"Breathe in, rotate, release on the exhale."
The first throw goes wide. The second bounces off the target. The third?—
The blade sinks deep, just left of center.
"I did it." She spins in my arms, face bright with triumph, young and alive and so fucking beautiful it steals my breath. "Did you see?—"
We're too close. Her face tilts up toward mine, lips parted in celebration. My hands still rest on her hips. One inch forward and I could taste that joy, could swallow her surprise, could?—
Footsteps echo in the hallway.
I step back so fast she stumbles, catching herself on the weapons rack.
"Again." The single word scrapes my throat raw. "Until you can do it without thinking."
She retrieves the knife, jaw set with determination now.
Ten more throws. Each one better than the last. She's a natural, or maybe she just needs this. The control, the power, the ability to fight back against a world trying to cage her. I understand that need. I've built my entire life around it.
"Getting cozy in here?"
Nico leans against the doorframe. His casual posture doesn't hide the calculation in his eyes as they track between Sophia and me, measuring distance, reading body language.
"Training." One word, clipped and final.
"So I see." Nico's mouth smiles, but his eyes are dissecting the space between me and Sophia, calculating.
"We'll continue tomorrow." I don't look at her as I say it.
CHAPTER TEN
Sophia
Steam clings to the bathroom mirror as I wrap the towel tighter around myself. The shower helped wash away the tension, or at least the sweat from training. The other tension, the kind that coiled tight in my belly when Lorenzo's hands gripped my hips, that's still there. Burning under my skin like a fever I can't shake.
