CHAPTER 18
“You look like shit.”
Christan ignored Arsen’s comment as he attacked the training bag with one well-placed kick. Two hours of physical exertion and the pressure was still in his spine, splintering in his brain. Christan summoned a burst of power that exploded the canvas bag into a pile of sifted sand and fiber.
“That bag was expensive,” Arsen said.
“I’ll buy you a new one.”
“Rough night?”
Christan reached down, snatched a black shirt from the floor and shrugged it on over loose black pants. “Nothing I haven’t handled before.”
He prowled around the workout area in the basement of the Wallowa compound. Arsen had everything, from machines and free weights, to a rock climbing wall and the padded training square large enough for warriors fighting in their animal forms. Benches lined one wall. It was an improvement over the training facilities of past centuries.
Arsen was still watching, and Christan turned with an aggressive stance. “What—am I taking your spot?”
“Nope. Just wondered if there was something I ought to know.”
Christan looked at him. He wasn’t sure he liked his second’s tone. “You questioning me now?”
“You’ve been away a long time. Things change. Not saying they didn’t change back the moment you returned, but I still feel the obligation.”
“For what?” Christan’s eyes narrowed. Arsen, he noticed, didn’t flinch.
“You know we’re like brothers, right? I’ve got your back.”
“And?”
“I’ve got Lexi’s back, too. So, like I asked earlier, is there something I ought to know?”
“Are you her champion now?” Christan walked away. It wasn’t like Arsen didn’t have enough problems with his own girl, hadn’t made some upside-down decisions throughout the centuries. And it went without saying that Christan didn’t like being questioned. Which Arsen was actually doing. Respectfully, but still questioning an enforcer.
Arsen stood his ground. Braced his feet, just in case. Christan was starting to get a bad feeling about what happened last night and he didn’t like it.
Arsen said, “I talked to Marge this morning. She went by Lexi’s cabin to see why she hadn’t shown up for breakfast.”
Christan braced his hands on his hips. Waited.
“Whatever you did, we don’t do that kind of shit anymore. Not in this century.”
“You forget yourself.”
“No, Enforcer, I don’t, and with all due respect, I’m your second-in-command. I would follow you anywhere. I would fucking die for you if you asked. And I am standing here telling you that you stepped over a line last night and it can’t happen again. She didn’t deserve that.”
A muscle jerked in Christan’s jaw. He shifted his gaze to a point above Arsen’s shoulder where there was a thick gouge in the wall. Like where someone had thrown something very hard. Very recently, as in maybe not more than twenty minutes ago. Christan didn’t need Arsen to tell him he’d stepped over the line. He’d known it the moment he’d done it.
Arsen continued to wait.
Christan blew out a deep breath. He was disgusted by what he did. Yes, he’d wanted her. Was burning. Dying inside, and then everything came back and he could have done so much more. He was out of control and that could not be allowed to happen. “Reprimand noted and accepted. I was an ass.”
“The apology isn’t owed to me. And she’s due here in five minutes for training. Since I have a meeting I can’t avoid, I thought you could take over the lesson. But that was before I talked to Marge. If you don’t want to do it I’ll ask Robbie.”
“Maybe you should ask Robbie,” said a pissed off voice from the doorway. Lexi stood in tight flowered leggings and a blue tank top. Her hair was twisted into a blond knot at the top of her head. Her face was startlingly beautiful, eyes full of defiance. Christan’s gaze narrowed on the defensive set of her shoulders, the slim curve of her hips, and he remembered everything she’d ever done to annoy him. Everything he had ever done to annoy her. Everything they’d ever done together. Hostility vibrated in the air.
Arsen disappeared. Neither of them noticed.
She walked toward him with a slow, feminine roll, sleek and powerful, reminding Christan of a stalking cat. Oh, yeah, she was pissed about last night and so was he. There was too much between them and he couldn’t think straight until he excised it. Demolished it. Obliterated her. From the look in her eyes she wanted the same, needed it more than he did. This would go down as all train wrecks did. He widened his stance, reaching for the coming battle with eager need.
“I think I taught you how to fight… once,” he said, and immediately regretted it when memory flashed in his mind.
“I think I forgot,” she replied, stopping within two feet of him, no fear visible in those amber eyes. “No, wait—I didn’t forget the fighting. We’ve got the whole fighting thing down pat.”
She smelled of sunshine, fresh clover crushed in a field, but she was no innocent. Wicked emotion flared, lacking in all compassion.
Lexi circled with him, each of them tracking the other’s movements. Christan read the expression in her eyes and matched it with his own. She had issues about what he did to her last night—well, so did he, because she’d done a hell of a lot to him, too. He didn’t like the way she slid beneath his skin, the questions she raised and refused to answer. He wanted her back in the box where he’d kept her all those centuries, a neat explanation in his mind.
“You play a risky game,” Christan said, his voice a rough purr.
“I live in a risky world,” she answered just as seductively.
“You don’t have what it takes.”
“Come up with something new.”
Christan paid attention to the way she moved, alert and fluid with a dancer’s stance, balanced on the balls of her feet so she could move in any direction. He remembered Arsen mentioning it, recalled the way he’d watched her walking through the rain and thought the same thing. She’d obviously been paying attention during her training. She kept her eyes on his face, but she was reading his body language, the flex of muscle or shift of balance that would warn of an attack. Trying to identify his tells. He faked an arm movement but she’d been looking at his feet, knew he hadn’t shifted his weight. She was more intuitive than he expected.
“What has Arsen been teaching you?” he demanded, irritated.
“You’d like to know,” she taunted. “I’ve had other training besides what I do with Arsen.”
“Pretend martial arts?”
Her bark of laughter excited him. “Yeah, they have a new kind, a mix of yoga and Brazilian kick boxing, but it hasn’t caught on.”
“I can’t understand why.” Christan faked another attack. She slid easily in the opposite direction, and when he reached for her, she was two feet away.
“Street fighting against a human is one thing,” he challenged, suddenly curious. “In our world, your opponent won’t always be human.”
“Yeah, I got that one too,” she said, staring at him and letting her gaze say what needed to be said about who and what he was. “Anything else?”
“If I’m going to teach you, I need to know what you can do, not what you think you can do.” He hadn’t liked the way she looked at him. “That way you won’t kill yourself.” Or he wouldn’t kill her. Accidentally, of course.
Lexi pushed at an imaginary strand of hair. Christan couldn’t decide if the gesture was defensive, or nervous.
“Arsen has been teaching me Krav Maga,” she said. “I can fight off most attack holds I’m likely to encounter.”
That pricked him, imagining Arsen teaching her close-quarter fighting. Imagining his second’s body bending over hers, pressing into her back while she was on her hands and knees resisting him. He would need a friendly talk with Arsen about the techniques he could teach.
Lexi continued to move, never keeping to one place, and Christan thought about attack holds, putting her on her back with her knees spread. Close, very close quarters. “Shall we put that to a little test?”
He flashed a deadly smile, saw her blush as he moved in, his body hard against her. She pushed his arm up and away, using the force of his momentum. With lightning speed, she kicked his knee from behind, bent over and threw her hip into him, used it to rebound out of his way. He almost went down and a laugh of pure enjoyment rose in his throat.
When she turned to face him, her breathing had elevated. Christan stared at the way her breasts lifted, the nipples hard. He moved again, feinting to the left before he snaked an arm around her waist and lifted her. She pretended compliance and threw her weight backward. She wasn’t strong enough to put him on the ground, but he wanted her there, so he let her follow through.
They hit the mat. She rolled in a quick move to one side, was up on her hands and knees, pushing to her feet. For a moment he enjoyed the way her bottom moved in the blue leggings. Her bare feet gripped the mat for traction and he grabbed both ankles, then jerked. She fell flat on her stomach. He spread her legs wide, held her vulnerable and exposed. Rationalized it, told himself she should learn how to deal with raw male aggression.
But his attention drifted to her body and he relaxed his grip. She was away from him. He recovered quickly, caged her with his arm. His heavy body levered over hers, pressing hard into her back as she tried to scoot away.
“Going somewhere?”
“Cheat much?”
He crouched above her, and it was almost too much after the way he spread her with such carnal need. For both of them. He wanted to slide his hands beneath her stomach, lift her hips against his, got hard just at the thought and it pissed him off. All that earlier talk about control, even to himself and in his mind? Right out the window. He was an Enforcer. He was used to discipline. He required it. For himself and for those under his command. And she was demolishing it.
Lexi slammed her elbow back against his head, then rolled, grabbed his shirt and twisted it around his neck. With a quick move, she was out from beneath him and running wildly for the door. Christan closed the distance. She turned to the right and dropped to her knees, rolling when he lunged. Christan grunted in surprise, remembered how he’d taught her the maneuver. The image of another place and time flashed so bright and clean it overwhelmed him with anger. She was racing in another direction, trying to escape. He crashed into her from behind. Lexi fell onto the mat, crushed by an enormous predator.
“You shifted on me?”
Christan loomed over her, the soft fur standing up, the overhead lights silvering the amber-gold pelt. He made the mistake of letting her roll to her back and she hit him again, right on his grinning lion snout.
“You bastard,” she gritted, while he tipped his head to the side and studied her. His lips pulled back. Wicked canines gleamed while he pressed the weight of his broad chest and powerfully muscled legs, knowing he could crush her with the slightest effort. The absolute necessity to move was so strong he could feel her vibrating with it. His eyes drifted partially closed. A rumble moved roughly in his chest.
“Let me up,” she said between her teeth.
With a violent, rolling pressure, Christan shifted back into his human form. His head lifted. He still caged her, the tattoos on his bicep writhing as they came into contact with her skin. Those tattoos had always been a barbaric mystery to her, beyond comprehension, and Christan’s rage mixed with memory. Blond hair was loose and spread around her shoulders in a silken wave. Christan fisted his hand deep, twisting her head around until she couldn’t avoid looking at him, feeling a heavy, pounding need until her eyes filled with shards of ice, or something ice-like, maybe ice melting. She blinked to remove the evidence.
“Dammit, Christan.”
It was Gemma’s voice he heard, Gemma’s tears he remembered now, when he’d entered her body despite the lies on his lips. The emptiness when he finished and she rolled away, leaving him lying there with his arm over his eyes. He remembered the soft sobs in the dark. The answers he wouldn’t give, the divided loyalties. He would be gone for weeks, often for months, fighting the pointless wars. Once he’d been gone for a year, and when he returned, he let her deepest fear fester because it was easier that way. Easier than explaining why he put another woman first—because he always put Three first. He belonged to the immortal Calata member. First. Last. And Three believed she owned him as only the Calata could believe.
His expression was implacable.
Any question in her eyes was not answered in his.
“Children.” Marge stood in the doorway. “I need to break up playtime. Arsen wants you in the conference room in five minutes.” Marge paused, and her expression was sober. “It’s important. Leave whatever that was here where it belongs.”