Make him bleed, girl. Her wolf loosed a vicious howl as Mireille plucked the dagger from Ronin’s proffered hand. “Deal.”
They took to the center of the ring, prowling in a circle, daggers raised. Her adrenaline spiked. Though blows from the practice swords always smarted, there was no real danger. Perhapsthatwas what had been missing from her sessionswith Cassandra—a true threat. She made a mental note to begin training with real weapons to add some stakes.
Ronin rushed forward and she knocked away his blow before darting under his arm. “Aim’s a little off today,” she taunted.
“One good shot,” he grumbled. “That’s all I need. It’s allyouneeded when you gave me this—” he gestured to his eye patch “—wasn’t it?”
Guilt stilled Mireille’s feet, and Ronin rushed her again. She barely got her dagger up in time to stop him from nicking her shoulder. “Creator save me, are you still harping on that? It was two-hundred years ago! Let itgo.”
“And my own crime was even further back than that.” Regret quieted his voice. “Haveyoulet it go?”
Mireille snarled, thrusting her dagger toward Ronin’s oblique. He caught her wrist and spun her, holding her against his chest and forcing her dagger down to her hip.
He brought his mouth to the shell of her ear, his warm breath inspiring unwanted shivers. She didn’t want him to be gentle. Didn’t want him to be kind. She wanted hisanger, his brutality. Wanted to prod it and provoke it. Wanted him to punish her for the harm she’d caused him.
She’d been punishing herself for centuries.
“It kills me that I was the cause of your father’s death.” His grip tightened. “I have no excuses. And it matters little that I hadn’t even met you yet, or that I didn’t know who he was at the time?—”
“Those sound an awful lot likeexcuses.” She wriggled within his arms, trying to pry herself loose. His words were too soft, too intimate. And though she’d ached to hear them for years, she couldn’t bear them. Not now, not here. Not when the only reason they were even fighting in the first place was because he refused to put her in any more danger.
“I am sorry for the pain I caused you,” he sighed. “I would take it back if I could. I’m sorry, Mireille. I’m so sorry.”
Mireille’s eyes burned and her throat closed.
A genuine apology.
His arms loosened. “I think we should?—”
She hooked a leg around his calf and toppled him to the floor. She pounced, straddling him, and angled her blade up under his jaw.
His eye blazed with renewed anger—plus a healthy dose of lust—and he threw his arms above his head, dropping his dagger. “Yet again, I’m at your mercy, little she-wolf. What are you going to do about it this time?”
She wanted so much more than an apology. She wanted an admission that he felt the same as she did. Wanted him as raw and vulnerable as she’d been when he’d forced her to admit her truth the other day.
It was the only way to regain some semblance of power. To level the lopsided playing field between them.
She kept her dagger at his jaw while she scooted back to sit on his thighs.
He tried to lift his chin. “What are you?—”
“Shutup,” she snarled, pressing the blade in harder. Not hard enough to break skin. Not yet.
She trailed her other hand down his torso, running her fingers down those perfectly symmetrical muscles, across his swirling ice-blue tattoos. She reached his pants and his stomach quivered.
“M-Mireille.”
“Hold still,” she whispered. “You said you were at my mercy, right?”
His cock was already half-hard when she dipped her hand below his waistband. And it stiffened further when she wrapped her fingers around it.
His eye snapped shut as he sucked in a breath through gritted teeth and kicked his head back.
She began to stroke, light grazes of her fingers over his warm, smooth length. But no pressure where she knew he needed it the most—the taut skin of his head.
His hands fisted in the dirt as he tried to still his hips. She squeezed him harder, savoring her power. He may still hate her, hate how turned on he was. But he didn’t stop her. And she knew it wasn’t just because of the dagger.
They’d had a safe word, once upon a time. Spiders. If he wanted to utter it, he could and she’d stop immediately.
