Damn, this bed was uncomfortable. Alaric shifted, trying to avoid the lumps, then realised his mistake. He wasn’t in his bed at all. No, he was still on the couch downstairs, and the lumps were partly Beth. She was lying half on top of him, her legs tangled in his, and when she shifted against his chest, burying her head tighter against his shoulder, her hair tickled his face.
The sensible thing to do—the gentlemanly thing—would have been to carry her upstairs and tuck her into her own bed. But despite his earlier words, Alaric was no gentleman.
He wrapped his arms around her, closed his eyes, and returned to his filthy dreams.
CHAPTER 14 - SKY
“LONG DAY?” HALLIE asked.
To hell with the vegetables. I needed comfort food tonight. Luckily, there was a dish of macaroni and cheese in the fridge, and I scooped half of it onto a plate before sticking it all back into the dish again and microwaving the entire thing.
“You could say that.”
“Did you meet Rafael?”
Did I meet him? I’d embarrassed myself totally in front of him. I stared at the food going round and round on the turntable as memories of this morning made an unwelcome reappearance.
Rafael hadn’t put me down when we got out of the gym. No, he’d carried on walking through the house and up the stairs to the next floor, where he’d dumped me onto a velvet sofa in the corner of what looked like a meeting room.
“Do you want me to get a doctor?” he asked.
“What? No!” I tried to force a laugh past the lump in my throat. “Why would I need a doctor?”
“Because you were having a panic attack.”
“A panic attack? Don’t be silly.”
I’d thought I was over them. A year had gone by since the last one, since Lenny hugged me and stroked my hair and told me everything would be okay. That time, it had been set off by a man’s cologne. He’d walked past us on the street, I’d caught a whiff, and bam! I was right back in the limo with my rapist again.
“I know what a panic attack looks like, Sky. A friend of my sister has them.”
“Well, you clearly don’t know that much, because that’s not what it was. And I’ve got no idea why you brought me up here. Alex is gonna be pissed.”
Rafael just pulled out his phone and tapped away at the screen for a few moments. What was he doing? Messaging Alex to tell him to go easy on me or something? Now I’d look like a wimp.
“Alex is booked onto a course this afternoon. He’ll have to go to headquarters.”
“What kind of a course?”
“‘Staff motivation: how to get the most out of your team.’ Now he’ll be pissed at me instead.”
Don’t laugh, Sky. There really wasn’t anything funny about the situation.
“Yeah, well, I’ll still get into trouble. I’m supposed to be on a schedule here. Boxes to tick and all that.”
“You’ll stay on schedule.”
“How? You just sent Joseph Stalin off for a lesson in bullshit, which, by the way, is a complete waste of time because Alex isn’t exactly a team player.”
“Because you’ll do your close-quarters combat training with me this afternoon.”
“With you?”
Rafael folded his arms, and his tanned biceps bulged under the flimsy sleeves of his T-shirt. I took in the rest of him. He was big, nearly as big as Alex, and his dark eyes were a whole lot more dangerous. Black hair, black clothes, black boots, black aura.
“What? You don’t think I’m capable?”
Oh, I thought he was capable of doing his job. I just wasn’t sure I was capable of doing mine.
“Yeah, but I thought you’d have better things to do. Like fighting orcs or eating kryptonite.”
“What’s an orc?”
“You haven’t watched Lord of the Rings?”
One of Lenny’s druggie pals had the whole set on DVD. I’d watched all three of the movies half a dozen times while the idiots went on their benders, in between checking for vital signs at regular intervals.
“I’m not big on TV.”
Preferred his violence in real life, did he?
“Well, whatever. Just get the punishment over with, will you?”
Rafael smiled for the first time, revealing a set of straight white teeth. Whose ass did he kiss in the gene pool?
“Take a half-hour break, then meet me in the gym. Sky Malone…” He gave his head a slow shake. “My uncle was right. You’re a real ray of sunshine.”
His uncle?
Oh, shit.
After the way Rafael flung Alex against the wall, I’d expected to finish the afternoon with broken bones or at least a full complement of bruises. But he surprised me again when he lay on the floor.
“Let’s do this differently. This time, you’re the aggressor. Choke me. You look as if you’ll enjoy that.”
Choke him? Presumably he meant the way Alex had tried to choke me earlier. Thanks to the break, I’d had time to steel myself for what was to come. To block out the memories of the past and focus on the here and now. Which basically meant lying on top of Gulliver here. When I knelt between his legs, I could barely reach his neck without sprawling on top of him.
“Do I need a crash mat?” I asked. He could toss me like a rag doll if he chose.
“Not today. But pick a safe word.”
“A safe word? What do you think this is? Fifty fucking shades of grey?”
“No, but I also don’t want it to be fifty shades of black and blue.” Rafael touched my forearm. “He bruised you.”
“Emmy said that the more I bleed in training, the less I’ll bleed in combat.”
“There’s more than one way to train. You’ll get bruises later, but you need to understand the tools you have before you can learn to use them
