Fuck me. I’d never met a man with such a dirty mouth. His words sank past my callous walls and hooked into me, replaying over and over until I almost crawled to his room to see if he could back them up. I should have let him prove it right there on the couch, but it was all too intense, and I chickened out. Look what that got me.
“Get those knees higher!” Ezra shouted as I made yet another lap around the house.
I’d show him a high knee. One good one landing right on his dick.
I finished his ridiculous warm-up and fell onto the cool grass, arms and legs splayed like a starfish. I gulped down the already humid morning air as a pair of shoes stopped next to my head and blocked out the sun. Ezra peered down at me, his critical frown a little too judgmental for my liking.
“If you’re done taking a nap, we have some strikes to go over.”
He offered me a hand, and I seriously considered breaking it. My less-than-enthusiastic reaction to finding out he was my bond must have hit a deeper nerve than I thought because I would classify the last fifteen minutes as absolute torture.
“I didn’t take you for a sadist,” I groaned, batting his hand away. Every muscle in my legs ached as I stood, but I managed to do it on my own.
“And I didn’t take you for a coward,” he countered.
My head whipped back on a snarl, but he was close enough that I still had to look up for him to see the threat in my glare.
“Take it back.” I tended to hit before thinking these days, and when he flashed me that smug smile, my hands swung before I gave them the order to. “I said, take it back!”
His lips curled in that signature smirk when I missed. “I call it like I see it, babe.”
Again and again, he dodged my punches; it was like he knew which side they were going to come from before I did. Like he knew how fast, how hard, and just where to move his head so that I overreached and my fist sailed past his ear.
He seized my hips in both hands, stopping my momentum and pulling me close.
“You want to hide behind mock outrage rather than face the pleasure I’m offering you? Then we’ll put it to good use.” Hislips brushed against my ear as he spoke, sending an involuntary shiver down my spine.
That molten thread stretching between us—what I now recognized as our bond—woke and took notice. It burned in such a good way as Ezra’s warm breath ghosted across my neck, as he leaned back and I caught a hint of winter snow on the summer breeze.
Thighs trembling with need, his damn words from last night came back to haunt me. My inner siren was a horny bitch.
“I already know you can punch,” he said, drawing my attention back to the matter at hand. “So, let’s work on that move you tried to pull last night, instead.”
Fine with me. My knee came up, powered by all that pent-up force, but Ezra turned slightly and caught my leg. Pinning it to his side, he kept his other hand on the small of my back. I bet he felt my nails scraping his chest with how hard I clutched his shirt.
“You need to tighten your core when you strike and push your hips forward,” he explained, then pressed to angle my waist where it should be.
Faces only inches apart, his muscular body holding my legs open wide… every inch of my control was being tested. The glint in his eye told me he knew it, too. Smug bastard. The urge to roll my hips against the growing bulge between us was so strong, I shook with the effort to deny it.
His hand squeezed my leg. “Imagine your knee in this exact position every time you hit. Don’t just aim for the surface of your enemy. Go through them.”
How could he talk about fighting when all I wanted to do was climb him like a damn tree? I knew he wanted me just as badly. The clenched jaw, the hard dick pressing against the seam of my leggings… They were dead giveaways. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to give in. Just a little. See if he could back-up all that talk.
Before I could test it out, he lowered my leg and nodded for me to try again. Fine. I could multitask, too. Ezra struck at my shoulders with his palms; more of a light push than a true attack. I knew what he wanted me to do without needing to be told. My forearm came up to block my right side, then I gripped his shirt and brought my knee up.
I hit nothing but air as he dodged.
“Follow up with something; anything,” he said, turning to face me head-on once more. “Even if you miss, your next strike might not, so don’t stop.”
I was getting a bit frustrated. At least when I practiced punches, I got to hit the bag. Swinging my leg through the air didn’t have near the same amount of satisfaction. It was also exhausting. Over and over I tried, until my thighs felt like rocks and my leg got heavier and harder to lift.
Ezra resorted to pinching to try and get a reaction out of me. All it did was piss me off.
“Come on, my cranky cucumber,” he taunted, tweaking the small piece of my skin between his fingers. “Hit me just once and I’ll stop.”
Even holding onto him, I couldn’t get it right. He was like water, slipping through the cracks of my fingers; there one minute and only a hairsbreadth away the next.
“You’re not going to let me, are you?” I panted. Only my stubborn pride kept me from giving in.
