She couldn’t have avoided them if she tried—especially not when he just decided to strip off his leather jacket, five minutes into their next“class”.They were in the middle of a conversation about nothing, and suddenly, he was unzipping and unbuttoning everything. He was sliding the jacket off his shoulders, to reveal a bizarrely thin jersey underneath.
Or maybe it wasn’t bizarrely thin at all.
Maybe it just seemed that way, because now she could see a lot more of him. She could make out the curves of his biceps, quite clearly, beneath those soft sleeves. And then there were the planes of his pectoral muscles—harder and flatter somehow than she was expecting. She was used to football players, who ate steaks for breakfasts and burst out of everything they wore.
But he wasn’t like that.He conjured up images of men fighting up mountains in the dark.Of being attacked by wolves, then having to kill them with your bare hands.
In fact, that was probably why she was staring.
Instead of paying attention to what he was saying.
“Hello? Lydia? You want to get started?”
“Oh god, yeah. Yeah, sorry. I was just—”
“I can put the jacket back on if you want.”
She flushed when he said it, though he didn’t seem to mean it any particular way.
He was just thinking of her feelings towards powerful looking men, she thought.
Yet somehow that didn’t comfort her. In fact, it just made her sound more defensive when she finally answered him. “What? No. No, it had nothing to do with the jacket.”
“Are you sure? Because it’s not a big deal for me to wear it.”
“Honestly, I don’t need you to do that. In fact, I’ll take off mine, too.”
“Sure. Go for it, if it makes you more comfortable,” he said.
And she did. She shucked her own leather, in the hopes of restoring some kind of equilibrium. He had done a perfectly normal thing, and then she had done a normal thing in response, she told herself.
Only, it didn’t quite seem that way, once she was standing there in her sweater.
It seemed like she had stared while he point blank refused to.She had goggled at him like a total dipshit, when he had taken off his coat. Yet, he in no way behaved as intrusively. His eyes went everywherebuther body, truth be told—as if to look at her would cross some kind of line.
And his tone when he spoke was just as cool as always.
“So, what were you hoping to learn today?”
How to be a fucking gentleman like you, she thought.
Then did her best to be just that. To be restrained and indifferent, like him.
To focus on what they were doing and not on anything else.
“I don’t know. Maybe the best way to incapacitate someone?”
“Simple blow to the windpipe. Will drop anybody, fast.”
“That sounds good. Show me how you would do that.”
“Sure. Make this shape with your hand.”
He held up his own as an example—palm leading, fingers folded over.
Then waited, patiently, for her to do the same.
“How’s that?”
