I reached behind me and pressed my foot to the small of my back. “I want Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to train.Alone. I think you’re right. We shouldn’t share.”
Not with him looking all muscley, handsome, and sweaty.
Smelling like pure sin.
Not with my libido stomping all over my common sense like a vat of grapes.
The corner of his mouth tugged. “Barefoot.” His voice was rough, like gravel. “My little barefoot wife, so cocky after her first feed. Feel like you can take on the world, do you?”
“I feel like I can toss your ancient, decrepit ass to the ground,” I taunted in a sweet voice. “What do you say, you old buzzard? Want to give this a go?”
He laughed, throwing his head back until the sound bounced off the worn beams. “Good gods, you are something else. Fuck yes, I want to give this a go, and as far as me being old…” Dante ran a scarred hand down his rippling torso, over that perfect chest and those abs.
My gaze followed that trail of dark hair while my mouth watered. I hadn’t gotten a clear look at Dante before, but those tattoos… I’d never seen anything like them. One pectoral and one arm were completely covered in a strange pattern I didn’t recognize but made my hair stand on end, as though they were somehow filled with power.
Pagan symbols of some kind, etched deep into his skin.
“I’ll take that bet. You win, you get your days, but I win… and we train together.Every fucking day.”
His gaze dragged down my body, the line of my throat, the dark fall of my dress. When it lifted again, his eyes were the color of clear skies and a mind made up.
“You really think you can take me?” He rolled those mighty shoulders, pure power shifting beneath scarred, battered skin. “You really think a belly full of blood and an attitude is any match for what I’ve been through?”
A jolt of pity went through me, a brief, weak hesitation as I imagined what it must have been like for him. Alone. Cut off. Forced to fight day after day, just to survive.
“I want you,” I challenged, “to stop assuming you’re the only person in this room who’s suffered. The only one who knows how to fight. The only one who has something to prove.”
Something shifted in his expression, interest maybe.
Respect, if I was being optimistic.
He tilted his head. “You want to spar, we’ll spar. But I won’t hold back.”
“Well…” I tipped my head to the side, measuring the distance between us, those enormous rubber-soled boots on his feet, that four-foot reach. “I wasn’t planning to talk you to death, buzzard.”
“Such a mouth on you, wife.” Dante moved closer until he was within arm’s reach. I didn’t back up. I’d learned a long time ago that retreat was as bad as losing outright, and today, I didn’t intend to lose.
His eyes flicked down my body again—this time stopping on my bare feet on the mats.
“If you break a toe,” he tipped his head, “I’m not carrying you back down those stairs.”
“Have no fear, I’ll never let you carry me anywhere again,” I waved my hand in the air between us, stirring up a cloud of dust motes. “You’d probably drop me on my ass out of pure spite.”
“I’d only drop you because you called me old.”
“Bet you’re slow, too. Slow and old and…”
Dante moved. Faster than anyone alive should be able to move.
Faster than Gabriel or Nico… or me.
He came at me with a feint—left shoulder dipping, righthand half-lifting as if to grab—but I didn’t bite. I pivoted, slipping past his reach, my dress sweeping around my ankles. My palm snapped up toward his throat in a perfect jab?—
He caught my wrist.
Not hard, just enough to trap me in place.
I twisted, turning into his grip instead of away, using the momentum to drive my elbow up toward his ribs. Dante shifted just enough that I clipped muscle instead of bone. The impact jolted down my arm until the vibration numbed the ends of my fingers, as if he was made out of iron or something.
