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The benches erupted around us.

Jax held out a hand to help him up, but the blond slapped it away. Jax only laughed, turned toward the crowd, and gave an exaggerated bow.

His knuckles were split, which I noticed immediately because years in a clinic had trained me to notice injuries before almost anything else. What caught my attention was that the cuts were already scabbed over, dark at the edges and at least a day or two old. Whatever had happened to his hands, it had happened before this fight. I registered the detail automatically, filed it away, and then stopped thinking about it.

At the very top of the tiers, alone on the highest bench where the wind came over the wall, sat the huge man I had seen on the tower stairs. Silas. He had not cheered once during the fight.

When Jax reached the foot of the rope ladder, Silas stood, picked up a towel from the bench beside him, balled it in one hand, and threw it down over the twelve-foot drop without saying a word. Jax caught it one-handed without looking up, as if he had expected it, then lifted the towel toward Silas in acknowledgment.

Silas nodded once and sat down again.

It was more of an exchange than I had seen either of them have with anyone else.

Jax was climbing out of the Pit and shaking sand from his hair when his gaze moved across the benches and found me.

This time, he kept looking.

A grin spread slowly across his face as he started toward me. He walked along the bottom tier through a crowd of people trying to slap him on the back or call something after him, but he barely seemed to notice them. He stopped directly in front of me.

Up close, he smelled of sweat and sand, with something warm and faintly spiced beneath it.

“Mi reina,” he said.

His voice was lower than I had expected, rough around the edges in a way that suited him. “You look like you want to stab me.”

My queen. I knew enough Spanish to understand that much. What I did not understand was why he was calling a stranger that.

“I don’t know you,” I said. “Go away.”

He looked genuinely delighted.

“She speaks,” he said to Tamsin, who was staring at him with her mouth slightly open. “And she’s mean. I love it. Say something else mean.”

“No.”

“That was a good one.”

Before I could tell him to leave again, he dropped onto the bench beside me without asking. He sat close enough that the heat from his skin reached me through my jeans, and his bare, sandy thigh settled against mine. He made no attempt to move it.

Neither did I.

My nipples tightened for no sensible reason whatsoever. Apparently my body had decided that two inches of naked male thigh required an immediate response.

“I’ve been trying to catch you for days,” he said. “You keep disappearing up into that tower.”

“I like it there.”

“I noticed.” He tilted his head, studying me. “You also do this thing where you look at people over your glasses like you’ve already decided they’re annoying.”

“I probably have.”

“That one was good too.” I rolled my eyes. He leaned back slightly, considering me with exaggerated seriousness. “That was a nine. Solid nine.”

I tried not to smile.

“And you bite your lip when you’re trying not to laugh,” he added. “You’re doing it now.”

I immediately stopped.