Was shitty bedside manner a thing for self-defense teachers?Because Cole had it if it was.
But rude as he was, he wasn’t lying about her having more to learn.He taught her elbow strikes, arm bars, how to escape a bear hug from behind…she was starting to feel like a supreme badass.It wasn’t until he was teaching her about knee strikes that everything went a little sideways.
“Good,” Cole said after she’d broken out of a bear hug a few times.“Now, if someone is here—” He grabbed her waist, thumbs spreading down along the curve of her hip, pulling her in a fraction closer.“I want you to drive your knee up, hard, toward anything on my body you can hit.”
The move seemed simple enough.Probably would’ve been, too.If not for her sweaty feet on the mat.
As soon as she pulled her knee up, her toes betrayed her and she lost her balance.She braced herself for the hit she knew was coming when her shoulder met the mat.
Except it didn’t.
Cole banded his arms around her way faster than she ever could’ve reacted, one hand at the small of her back, the other behind her shoulders, and twisted.The room spun as he rolled with her, taking the impact against the mat with his shoulder and back, before rolling her neatly under him.The air rushed out of his lungs from the impact he’d just absorbed in a rough exhale right by her ear.
Hadley went still.She could feel every inch of his body against hers.Every.Inch.All those muscles, all that heat, the way his heart pounded against her own…theunbelievablyhard cock that was now pressed against her thigh.
She lifted her hips.Sweet merciful crap.“Cole…”
“Fuck,” he muttered, lips against her temple.“Ignore it.It’ll go away.Eventually.”
“What if…I don’t want it to?”
He lifted his head enough to look down into her eyes.“What do you mean?”
Shit.Was she going to do this?
Yep.She was definitely going to do this.“I mean…look…we’re both here, there’s clearly some attraction between us—”oh, Lord, help me, he looks horrified, “—so, why wouldn’t we just…roll with it?”
His gaze dropped to her mouth.“Rollwith it?”
She didn’t know if he was being intentionally obtuse, or if he genuinely had no clue what she was trying to say.Was he deaf to innuendo?So, totally flustered, totally turned on, andtotallyready to ride this man like Seabiscuit, she blurted, “I’m saying I think we should fuck.Like,now.”
Chapter23
Cole wasn’t normally this slow on the uptake.
He’d taken every assessment test known to man and was assured he possessed a well-above average intellect.But Hadley’s words (and the feel of her beneath him), had clearly dropped his IQ by several points.“You think we should…”
She hissed in exasperation.“I said I think we should just go ahead and fuck.I’m so tired of dancing around how much I want you and how much youclearlywant me.”To demonstrate her point, she shoved a hand between them and laid her hot little palm right over his straining erection.
Well, shit.There went the rest of his IQ.
“Hadley,” he rasped.
“I know what you’re going to say.”
That was impressive.Especially sincehehad no idea what he was going to say.
“You’re going to say we shouldn’t mix business with pleasure…”
He frowned.Nope.He was pretty sure he wasn’t capable of saying that when her hand was on his cock.
“…And you’re going to say you don’t do relationships, and I’m a relationship kind of girl…”
That much was true.She deserved a fairytale, happily ever after kind of relationship with a man who’d never murdered anyone or done horrible things in the name of patriotism.
“…Then you’re going to say I’m a hopeless romantic who probably isn’t capable of not romanticizing sex…”
He didn’t really see anything wrong with romanticizing sex.Especially not sex as hot as what he’d surely have with Hadley.With chemistry like theirs, how could it not be spectacular?
