“Show me,” I urged.

Six looked over at me from the sink. “I usually do this sort of thing in a studio.”

“Where the floors and walls are padded?” I snorted. “Yeah, because I'm sure an attacker will wait to grab me until I have somewhere soft to fall.” I held my hands up in mock surrender. “Please, Mr. Bad Guy, I’d prefer to do this on a mat.”

Six dumped some food in Henry's tank and then moved closer to me, wiping his hands on the towel he'd used to dry our dinner dishes. “Clear a space then.” He reached over to the stereo on the counter and turned up the rock music.

I pushed my rinky-dink arm chair against the wall, pushed the table and chairs to the same area, and then moved all my paint supplies away from the center of the room. “That was easy,” I muttered.

Before I could turn, Six's arms wrapped around me in a bear hug from behind, lifting me up off my feet. My head fell back a little, resting on his shoulder. I buried my face into his neck and inhaled his cologne.

“Fight me,” he murmured against my ear.

I knew I should have been doing that, but the way he murmured it made me squirm a little.

His arms tightened. “If you're serious about me teaching you self-defense, try to forget about your hormones for a minute here.”

I struggled a little in his arms, trying to break free from the hold he had on me. Admittedly, I didn't know what the hell I was doing, so I was sure I looked like a weak little worm trying to wiggle its way off a hook.

“You call that a fight?” he said against my ear again.

I shrugged. “I don't know what to do.”

“Use whatever you have to your advantage.”

I raised an eyebrow but looked around me nonetheless. I tried again, this time bringing my head back to knock against his.

“Fuck,” he muttered, letting go of me.

I turned around and saw him holding his nose and looking at me with a gleam in his eye.

“That was adequate.” He held his hand away from his face and looked.

“Did I break it?” I bit my lip.

“No, you didn't. But you came close.”

“So, I win?”

He scoffed. “No. How does your head feel?”

I reached a hand back to my hair, felt the little ache on my skull. “It hurt a little.”

“Imagine if you had hit me hard enough with your head to break my nose. Imagine how much your head would hurt then.”

I could imagine it and could easily see how an aching head could cause me a bigger problem if I hadn't subdued my attacker. “Okay, then what do I do?”

“A couple things.” He curled his fingers for me to come toward him.

Without provocation, my hands found his shoulders and I rubbed. “Sorry for hitting you in the nose.” I leaned up and pressed my lips against his. It was an apologetic kiss that quickly became needy with the stroke of my hands down his arms.

“Mira,” he said against my lips.

“Yes?” I sighed into his mouth.

He captured my bottom lip between his teeth and bit lightly before letting go. “We can continue this after I've taught you a few things.”

I ran my tongue over my teeth. “I don't mind you teaching me something right now,” I murmured, my hands finding his waistband. “Or maybe I could teach you something.”

“Christ.” He exhaled the word and reached down, grabbing the backs of my thighs and lifting me so my legs wrapped around his waist. He turned and practically dropped me on the table, reaching a hand to the back of my head and twisting his fingers in my hair.

My hands traced paths from his jaw to his chest, my nails biting into the muscle as we took turns sighing into each other's mouths. His fingers twisted harder in my hair and my nails bit deeper into his skin. My lips were hungry; my soul was parched. He ground his hips into mine, pressing me harder against the table and I hissed his name as my head fell back.

Abruptly, he backed away and ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck, Mira.”

“I think that's what I was going for.” I heaved several breaths while still on the table, my hands braced behind me since he'd backed up.

His eyes bored in me, darker than usual. “Let me train you to fight.”

“Fine.” I hopped off the table. As I stalked toward him, he stared at me with caution. I threw up my hands and gave him a smile before I shifted so my back was to him. “This time, tell me what I'm supposed to do.”

When he picked me up, it was hard to resist letting my head fall back onto him.

“Try to hook your leg around or behind my knee. From the inside or outside.”

My legs grappled in the air behind me, trying to reach back between his legs.

“Be careful,” he hissed, as my legs swung near the juncture of his thighs. “Try your right foot—hook it around my knee.”

Once my foot had hooked behind his knee, he waggled his fingers. “Grab a finger, any finger, and pull back.”

I did as he instructed, pulling his middle finger back a little more forcefully than I'd intended. It caused him to lighten his hold on me.

“Twist your body to the left since your right foot is hooked behind my knee. And bring your left elbow up to hit me in the face.”

Doing as he instructed, he eventually completely let me go.

“Let's do it again.”

We ran through it slowly, Six instructing me every step of the way. I seemed to be getting the hang of it by the time Six said, “Let's try it real time now.”

“Real time?”

“Yes. I'm not going to talk you through it. It's going to be much faster and much tighter. You still need to try to fight me, but harder.”

He threw his arms around my waist and I struggled to get a hold behind his knee, my legs flailing beneath me. Frustration made me bite on my lower lip as we ran through the real-time practice a few more times.

He abruptly stopped. “Mira!” Six grabbed both sides of my head and made me look at him. “I'm not your boyfriend right now. I'm someone who wants to hurt you. Fight. Me,” he barked, his lips inches from mine. There was nothing sexy about this closeness, however, and as I tried to pull back, he held me tighter. “Fight me,” he repeated, his eyes completely empty of any emotion. There was nothing in him that resembled the Six I was kissing moments before. I took a deep breath and turned around.

This time, when his arms wrapped around me, I swung my legs with all the power I had in my body, hooking behind his knee while I simultaneously yanked fingers back on both hands. I grunted and ground my teeth together. As his hold on me lifted, I brought my elbow up and quickly swung around, hitting him square on the nose.

He didn't blurt out an expletive this time, but he didn't need to. Blood poured from his nose, over his hands and down his face into his shirt.

“Shit!” I exclaimed and stared for a moment too long. He held a hand from his face, and I rushed into the kitchen for a towel and an ice pack. I settled for a pack of frozen corn and returned to him, pushing him into a chair. “Hold that to your nose,” I said, shoving the corn in his hand.

Prying his fingers from his nose, I pressed the towel to just under his nostrils, soaking up the blood I could.

“I'm sorry,” I mumbled, wiping up the mess on his neck and jaw with the bottom of my t-shirt.

“You broke it that time,” was all he said as his eyes began to water.

“I really got into the moment.” I didn't know what else to say, didn't know how to explain my excessive force.

“I wanted you to. That's why I yelled at you.”

I blinked. “So what you're saying is that this is your fault?”

His hand came up, long fingers wrapping around my wrist as I held the towel to his nose. He pulled me away from his face and said, “I'm happy you hit me. I knew you were a fighter. But I wanted you to believe it, too.” He let go, clasping his hands between us.

I didn't know what to say to that, so with a wet washcloth, I cleaned his neck, over his veins and Adam's apple, up across his jaw and over his lips. When his face was clean of blood and dried with a fresh towel, I leaned down and pressed an apology kiss to his lips.

He kept his hands clasped and his lips shut as I delivered the kiss. When I pulled back, he looked at me with an eyebrow raised. “Ready for more?”

“Don't you need that to be reset?”

He shrugged. “It can wait. Ready?”

I nodded and backed up when he moved to standing.

He showed me a half dozen other ways to defend myself, and I did my best to keep my hands from inflicting further damage to him. His pager lit up a few times, but he made no move to check it while we sparred. Not that he’d be able to call anyone from my home anyway. My mom hadn’t paid my home phone bill, and I had made Six promise not to—if only to avoid her calling me.

“Do you have a hair tie?” he asked abruptly.

Nodding, I grabbed one from the bathroom and held it out for him to take.

“Turn around,” he ordered, putting his hands on my shoulders and angling me toward the front door. His hands came up to my crown and pulled my hair back into a ponytail, securing it with the elastic and tightening it once it was in place. “Walk forward.”

Before I could make it ten steps, he yanked me backwards by my hair.

“Fuck!” I yelped, my hands coming up to my head. I tried to pull away, tried to pull my hair from his hands, but he didn't budge.

“Your first instinct is to pull away. But it needs to be to face me.” He let go of my hair and turned me around while holding my shoulders. When we were eye to eye, he grabbed my chin. “Always try to face your attacker. Pulling away from him only delays the inevitable. He won't expect you to go after him.”

I nodded and put my hands to my hair. Several pieces had come free from the elastic, so I secured them again before leveling eyes with him and turning around.

“Ready?” he asked, a half a second before he yanked on my hair again. This time I nearly fell.

“You didn't give me a chance to brace myself!” I growled, whipping around.

“Do you honestly think an attacker is going to wait until it's convenient for you?” His eyes were bright, his eyebrows drawn together.

“Of course not. But you asked if I was ready.” I crossed my arms across my chest. “What was the point of asking me if I was ready when you were going to do it anyway?”

“That was my point. You didn't have a chance to get ready. You said yourself that an attacker isn't going to wait until you're in a room with padded floors and padded walls.” He came closer and placed his hands on my upper arms. “Don't get comfortable. Be aware, always.”

I thought of when he'd found me in the middle of the night, when he'd brought me home. The faint scars sprinkled across the deeply tanned skin of his knuckles were still fairly visible. I nodded. “Okay. Let's go again.”

This time, I tried to spin when I felt his hand brush through my hair but tripped over my own feet to my knees.

Muttering swear words under my breath, I took the hand he offered as he pulled me to standing. I gave him what I hoped was an evil eye before I turned around and began the walk across the room again.

When he grasped my ponytail this time, I whipped around and pounded on his shoulders with angry fists.

“Good. Let's do it again.”

Six didn't let up until I completed it successfully five times. After four successful attempts, he wrenched my hair hard enough to pull me to the ground, to my back.

My head slammed on the wood, the air whooshed from my lungs, and my eyes instantly watered from the pain. This time, I didn't bother to mutter the swears under my breath.

“You mother fucker!” I screamed, flipping myself back to standing. Advancing on him with fire in my eyes, I glared him down. “Asshole!” I yelled while pushing his chest. “That hurt!”

Anger burned sharply in my chest, like a fire left unattended. And Six just laughed.

Lips spread, white teeth flashing in the dark of the room. Rock music pulsed loudly, but his laugh was loud, and long.

“What is so damn funny?”

He ran a hand down his face while his laughs subsided. “You. You're so small, but so mean.” He gestured toward my body, as if I was unaware of how slender I was.

I pushed on his chest again. “You didn't need to pull so hard.”

Sighing, he put his hands on either side of my neck. “Actually, I did.” I felt his fingers massaging small circles into my muscles and took one step closer. “I wanted to see you get up. And you did.”

I looked down to the floor and realized he was right. I hadn't lain there, waiting to be hit again. I'd gotten up immediately.

“And you came after me,” he added. “You didn't run away. That was a test. You passed.”

I was secretly pleased that he had complimented me, but my eyes were still watery from the sharp pain in my scalp. “I was pissed at you. Still am.”

“Good. Be angry. Fear makes you fumble. Anger revives you.” He slid his hands from my neck to my jaw and ran his thumbs over the line, pressing lightly into the bone. “I have to walk down to the payphone to make a call.”

He flicked through the numbers on his pager as I resisted grabbing my face where he'd held it, to replace the warmth he'd given me. “I'm going to come with you.”

Looking up from his hand a moment, he raised a brow. “Are you?”

“Yes.” I tore the elastic from my hair and shook the strands out, black silk brushing my shoulders. “I want some candy.”

He clipped the pager and brushed his hand down the side of my hair, seemingly brushing out the tangles.

“Just for future reference,” I said, my hands wrapping around his. “I happen to love hair pulling in foreplay. Just not that hard.”

His lips lifted in a small smile. “Good to know.”

* * *

Six handed me a fifty-dollar bill when he stopped at the payphone near the store. “Can you get me a pack of smokes?”

I looked down at the cash and then back up at him, a question in my eyes.

He glanced at me in between punching numbers into the payphone. “You wanted candy.”

“Right.” I nodded and turned toward the store, feeling the weight of the fifty dollars as if they were made of lead. Six didn't give me money usually, instead paying my bills himself and buying groceries for me. I knew he thought if he gave me cash, I'd snort it all in one go.

He was right. Running had helped with the voices, had kept me from the harder stuff. But I still had that desire sometimes, almost as if I needed to prove to myself that I was still me.

I shoved my hand into my pocket, fingering the money as I contemplated what to do. Waving to the cashier—who knew me by name but didn't particularly like me—I walked to the candy aisle, viewing all my options.

I wanted to be bad, to pocket some of the money and save it, get a pill from Jerry/Jeremy/Jared or whatever the hell his name was.

But I wanted to be good, too, to prove to Six that I was better than he expected.

In the end, the bad side won out.

I chose everything very carefully, tallying up the total myself in my head so everything would total just over twenty.

I dropped nineteen candy bars onto the counter and pointed to the pack of cigarettes Six normally bought. I pocketed twenty of the change right away, holding the rest in my hand.

“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Six asked upon seeing my bag of sugar.

I shrugged and handed him his smokes. When I reached toward him with the change I hadn't pocketed, Six took my hand and flipped it over, eyeing the money carefully. I wondered if he was mentally calculating how much the candy must have cost.

His eyes whipped up to mine and he stared at me for several full beats of my heart, searching for something. And just as quick as he'd grabbed my hand, he let go.

“Keep it,” he said. He hit the pack of cigarettes against his hand several times before pulling out one and lighting it up. “You never know when you might need it.”

We walked back to my apartment in silence, but it felt heavy, weighed by my equal guilt and relief that I could maybe get a hit sometime soon.

Six said nothing to me and I couldn't help but feel like this too was a test. A test he wanted me to pass, but I was bound to fail.

When we reached the apartment, Six stayed just outside the door.

“You're not staying?” I asked, feeling a little anxious.

He shook his head but looked down at the cigarette in his hands. “I have a job I need to do.”

I knew two things by his body language:

He was lying to me.

And he knew I had lied to him.