Page 21 of Howl Lotta Love

“I’m trusting it fine.”

“You’re not. Your shoulders are doing your hips’ job.” He stepped in, hands settling at her waist to angle her properly, and every coherent thought in her skull evacuated the building at once. His voice dropped, low and steady, the practiced calm of an instructor fighting hard to stay exactly that. “There. Feel it?”

She registered plenty. None of it had anything to do with combat technique.

“Very educational,” she managed.

His mouth curved, and for one unguarded second the instructor dropped away—replaced by a man who knew exactly what his hands on her waist were doing to her focus and wasn’t about to make it easier. Then he let go like the contact had started costing more than he could afford, and put the length of the mat between them before he trusted himself not to close it again.

“Again,” he said, rougher than before.

Four more reps. He touched her exactly as much as the drill demanded and not once more, which she was almost certain cost him real effort, given the deliberate way he stepped back every single time he let go.

“Enough basics. Come at me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Come at me. Anything you’ve got. I want to see what your body does under pressure, not what it does when you’re thinking about it.” He dropped into a loose ready stance, hands open, relaxed. “I’ll go easy.”

“Don’t.”

His eyes sharpened at that, approval mixed with a hunger underneath it, and he didn’t go easy. She lunged, he redirected her momentum with barely any effort at all, and she found herself spun and pinned lightly against his chest, his arm banded loose but immovable across her collarbone, before she’d even finished the motion.

“Again,” she said, breathless, and didn’t bother hiding how much she meant it.

They ran it six more times. She got faster. He got less careful about hiding how much he liked watching her get faster, until the sixth attempt ended with her twisting free on her own, no help from him, and turning around to find him looking at her like she’d done a thing far more impressive than escape a basic hold.

“New drill.” He started to circle behind her, caught himself halfway, rerouted to face her instead—automatic by now. “Front grab. Two hands on your shoulders.”

“Show me.”

His hands landed on her shoulders, warm through thin fabric, and his hands stalled there a beat too long before he continued, his own train of thought visibly derailed as badly as hers. “Step through. Drop your weight. Use the angle.”

She stepped through, dropped her weight wrong, overcorrected—and ended up half a step closer than the drill required, palm flat against his chest to catch her balance. His heart hammered under her hand, fast and uneven, a world away from the calm instructor’s voice of thirty seconds ago.

“That wasn’t the drill,” he said, low.

“No.” She didn’t move her hand. “It wasn’t.”

Nobody reset the drill. He stood there with her palm still flat against his chest, jaw working like he was doing math he didn’t like the answer to, and when he finally stepped back it cost him visibly more than it had the first four times.

Her phone rang mid-rep. Gerri’s name lit the screen.

“Venue,” Gerri said, no preamble. “I’ve narrowed it to three, and one of them has a koi pond, which I consider a deciding factor.”

“We’re not⁠—”

“I need an answer, darling, my calendar closes at six, and I have opinions about all three that I’m choosing not to share unless forced.”

“Gerri, we haven’t even⁠—”

The line went dead. Emma stared at the phone, then at Jace, gone very still in the doorway, the look of a man recalculating an escape route that no longer existed.

Roman’s voice carried up the stairwell, gleeful and far too loud. “Odds shifted, boss! Koi pond’s pulling ahead three to one!”

“There is no bet,” Jace called back, weary. He’d said that exact sentence a hundred times now and been believed exactly zero of them.

“There’s absolutely a bet,” Roman shouted, and Emma, watching Jace close his eyes and pray silently for patience he clearly wasn’t getting, decided she was going to enjoy this fake engagement a great deal more than planned.