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Blue had a sudden, remarkably dirty vision of her lounging around with a cake and nothing else on, giving him access to all kinds of dessert—
And he shut that down, too. Because he wasn’t an animal.
Or anyway, was trying his hardest not to be where she was concerned.
“I want you to pay attention to this, if nothing else,” he told her, very seriously. Because he couldn’t let himself get distracted by cake. Or that sweet, soft belly of hers, with freckles like the sprinkles on top. “If someone chokes you, you have six seconds. Tops. It takes about three seconds for you to start seeing stars, and once you hit five or six seconds? Lights out. What do you think happens then?”
“You appear in a flash of sound and fury and save the day?”
“That’s the plan. But plans have a tendency to go awry. A better plan is not to pass out in the first place.”
She swallowed. Audibly. “I just want to clarify. You honestly think there’s a possibility of me getting choked out?”
Blue shrugged as if that very scenario wasn’t high on his list of personal nightmares. “It would be the mostefficient way to move you from point A to point B, if that’s on the agenda.”
He didn’t mention that there was something worse. That being no need to move her somewhere, because whoever was after her planned to finish the job right here.
“I would rather that hurting me not be an agenda item,” Everly said.
“I hear you.” He refused to let himself get swayed by that look that was still all over her pretty face, as if the various ways she could be hurt had only just occurred to her. “But it would take six seconds to choke you so you pass out, another second or two to toss you in the backseat of a waiting car. If I’m more than seven seconds away? If I’m handling one of their friends, for example? It’s game over.”
“That... would not be ideal.”
“No,” he agreed, aware he sounded a lot more abrupt than necessary. He didn’t like the picture he’d painted any more than she did. Blue shifted, sliding one foot behind the other and then bringing his hands up in front of him, palms facing outward. “This is lesson one. Get your hands up.”
And for an hour, that was what she did. Blue taught her a fighting stance. Palm strikes that could inflict a whole lot of damage without requiring great skill on her part. Where to kick to incapacitate an attacker. How to operate within her fear rather than run scared because of it.
They both worked up a sweat. Blue found he was a lot more patient than he usually was when he was teaching things like this. He told himself it was because shewasn’t some guy hopped up on his own testosterone and fantasies of epic butt-kicking. But he thought it was actually just... her.
Everly made him want to slow down and take his time. She made him want to be certain she not only understood each move that he taught her but could execute it. Because when she did, her green eyes lit up and she laughed.
As if learning how to use her own body to protect herself was a deep, abiding joy, and one she’d never experienced before.
He couldn’t remember ever wanting another woman. He could barely remember what other women looked like.
His whole world was that smile of hers, wide and delighted. Especially when she landed a good strike or managed to evade an attack.
Blue wasn’t sure his battered old heart, black and cold for years now, could take it.
“Will this really work?” she asked him after he taught her a particularly vicious move that would leave an attacker reeling, possibly blind, and definitely on the floor at her feet.
“Absolutely. All you have to do is commit.”
“Even if it’s someone five times my size?”
“I’m five times your size and you just threw me,” he said calmly, already rolling to his feet. “Why not someone else?”
And he didn’t know, later, how he’d managed to let her wander off with that thrilled, amped-up look on her face. How he hadn’t suggested a way to work off all that adrenaline. How he’d sat out in the living room, listeningto the shower run, and contented himself with blistering sets of angry push-ups instead.
That night he dreamed about fighting. Feats of bravery and daring with Everly at his side as she kicked and punched and took down all the shadowy creatures that dared come at her. Until it all shifted, somehow, and the attackers weren’t shadows any longer. They fused into Blue, and he wasn’t attacking her. It was a different kind of struggle.
Hotter. Sweeter.
Dangerous in an entirely different way—
And when he woke up, his heart was pounding, he’d broken out in a sweat, and he had to take an ice-cold shower at three forty-five in the morning to get his heart rate under control.
The other part of him that needed controlling required his hand.