“Has it been a long day, Professor?” I asked innocently, arching my back as I lowered my belly to the floor. “You look haggard.”
His eyes followed my every movement, branding me with heat that I felt all the way down to my toes.
“You wound me, my lady. Not all of us were lucky enough to be born with a face like yours.”
Serenely I crossed my legs and swiveled around to face him. “A face like what? Do elaborate.”
“Hm. Perhaps later, once the sting of that ‘haggard’ comment has faded.”
“You fiend. You know very well you’ve got what Gemma’s romance novels might call dashing good looks.”
Unable to resist teasing him, I pushed myself to my feet, stretched up onto my toes with a contented sigh—offering him a splendid view of my body while doing so—and began collecting my equipment neatly in one corner of the room.
He laughed, a low, throaty sound that made me shiver. “You’re right, of course. And it’s unbecoming to pretend modesty.” Then he put his hands in his pockets and came toward me, suddenly more interested in looking at the floor than at me.
“Welma told me you were down here,” he said quietly. “She looked quite sour about it. Now I see why.”
Bristling, I lowered one of my practice staffs to the floor and turned to face him. “And here I thought you were just here to admire me and make me feel pretty.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, his gaze flicking up and down my body. “I can do that and scold you at the same time.”
“I know my body better than Welma does. If she had her way, I’d be convalescing until June.”
“I’ll accept that,” he said, stopping a few feet from me, “if you promise me that this isn’t your way of fighting a stone titan without actually fighting a stone titan.”
The implication was clear, and I couldn’t even blame him for it. “No, this isn’t that,” I said, walking past him toward the door. “We’re preparing for what promises to be a terrific battle, and I need to get in shape for it, and fast. And I can’t show up to Rosewarren looking ragged. The Warden will be furious enough as it is.”
“She won’t hurt you, will she?”
Not even my sweaty, humming body could ward off the chill that came over me. I turned back to him, hiding my shiver with a smirk. “If she tries, she’ll regret it.”
“I’m serious, Mara.”
“And so am I. If everyone could stop fussing over me, and acting like they know my mind and body better than I do, I’d be much happier. It’s extremely tiresome to be lectured at and hovered over.”
He came toward me, raising one sardonic eyebrow. “Oh yes, it’s truly awful, isn’t it, to have people who care about you?”
“You know that isn’t what I meant,” I snapped, glaring at him as he approached.
For a moment neither of us said another word. He was close now, looking down at me with his hands still in his pockets and a soft, adoring light in his eyes that I did everything in my power to resist.
“You look soppy and ridiculous,” I declared. “You can’t just make me angry and then pretend nothing has happened.”
“And would it be terribly trite of me to observe that you’re beautiful when you’re angry?”
“It most certainly would.”
He smiled, smoothing a damp tendril of hair back from my face. “Then trite I shall be, for you are magnificent, darling.”
His touch was too delicious; I couldn’t help but lean into it. When he bent to kiss my neck, running his hands lightly down the curve of my back, my eyes drifted closed, and I took a step toward him, into him. His body burned against mine.
“I assume,” he murmured against my skin, “that since you’ve been training so vigorously, you’re also well enough for all kinds of other activities?”
I tilted my head back, allowing him access to the hollow of my throat, my breastbone, the hem of my shirt. His lips brushed against the swell of my breasts, and my entire body broke out in goose bumps.
“What a brilliant deductive mind you have, Professor,” I said breathlessly.
“Is that a yes?”
