regret. Which just went to show how much pheromones messed with a person’s IQ. She didn’t want anything to happen with Beau. An ill-advised romance doomed to failure was the last thing she needed right now.
Deliberately clearing her mind, she shook out her arms and legs. “What torture do you have in store for me now, Drill Sergeant Bennett?”
He stood in front her. “Let’s talk about target points. If someone gets close, you’re not going to be able to kick or punch them effectively. You might get an elbow in, if you’re lucky. If that happens, you want to go for soft tissue. You want to smash the nose, use your fingers in the eyes, chop at the throat, try to get a knee into the groin.”
She winced, and he shook his head, his expression very serious.
“You can’t hold back, Lily. If someone is coming at you like that, they want to hurt you. You have to fight for your life.”
“I know. I guess I’ve just never thought about inflicting the maximum amount of pain on someone before.”
“You sure about that?” His mouth quirked up at the corner, and she knew he was thinking about all the times they’d sniped at each other.
“Oh, sure, I wanted to hurt you sometimes, but only enough to make a point,” she said. “I didn’t want to blind you or turn you into a soprano.”
“I’m going to feel so much safer around you now.”
They smiled at each other, and just like that, the awareness was back, making her heart thump against her ribcage, stealing the air from her lungs. He was standing a few feet away, his big body loose and warm. She could smell his deodorant, see the outline of the powerful muscles of his chest beneath his tank top. All she could think about was how good it would feel to be pressed up against all that male hardness. There would be nothing forgiving about him, nothing soft or malleable. He would be pure demand and need and want.
A decadent throb started up between her thighs, and the knowledge she was wet for him sent heat into her face. The man hadn’t even kissed her and she was so turned on it was ridiculous.
“We should, um, you know,” she said, taking a step backward and waving a hand vaguely in the air between them.
Beau’s gaze broke with hers, and he half turned away from her, a frown on his face. “Yeah.”
Even though she knew she shouldn’t, her gaze stole down his body to his crotch. The fabric of his workout shorts was baggy enough that it concealed whatever might be going on there. She wondered if he was as hard for her as she was wet for him. Then she wondered what he’d do if she simply closed the distance between them and slid her hand beneath the waistband of his shorts and grabbed his cock.
Her sex tightened as the idea took hold in her mind. She could almost feel him in her hand, thick and hard and long –
“You want more water?” Beau asked, striding away from her.
She closed her eyes, trying to regain control of her runaway imagination. “Yes, please.”
She’d like a whole bucket of the stuff, icy cold, thrown in her face.
She used the short reprieve to suck some much needed air into her lungs and get a grip on her disorderly thoughts. When he returned, she took the bottle he offered her and pressed it to her forehead before cracking the seal and gulping big mouthfuls.
“We’ll call it quits soon, but there’s one last thing I wanted to do before you go,” he said, all business. “If someone comes at you, the most likely scenario is that they’re going to grab you from behind or simply punch you, then grab you.”
She made an incoherent choking sound. “Um… then why I have you just put me through Navy Seal Training 101?”
“Because you know what you’re capable of now. What it feels like to hit hard. How to put your weight behind a kick. If you get a chance to use it, great. If you don’t, you’re still not out of options.” He gestured to the mat. “Get down on your back for me.”
A dozen bawdy, smart-assy
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