by Nhys Glover
“How do you feel?” Daphne asked, popping in at my side as I headed down for breakfast.
“Better than last night. That was awful. I wish I could believe it was the worst I’d be facing. But I doubt it is.”
Daphne nodded, before bucking up a little to tease me. “At least Jake has seen you naked now. And he obviously likes what he saw last night. There was a decided lump in his pants on his way to the door.”
My cheeks began to burn yet again. “Daphne, please. Virginal innocent here!” I grumbled, pointing at myself.
“Not for much longer, if last night was any indication. I’ve never heard a man say some women look better without clothes. As if most women look better with clothes. I always thought men preferred all women without clothing. But I suppose those anorexic model types look better clothed. I wonder... I wonder if I do. I was never skinny. But I didn’t have a lot of curves, either. What do you think?”
Before she stripped, to get my feedback, I threw out the first thing that entered my head. “I’m sure you were quite the beauty without clothes. Surely the many men in your bed showed you that?”
Daphne sighed airily and flicked her fingers out in a gesture of dismissal. “Yes, yes, they were always very complimentary. But they were thinking with their small heads by then. No man ever looked at me objectively and said I looked more beautiful without my clothes on.”
“Jake didn’t say that,” I argued, even though it was the last thing I wanted to discuss. “There’s a big difference between looking better without clothes, especially the clothes I wear, and being beautiful without them.”
“Oh posh!” she dismissed. “Mark my words, that man has it bad. With a little encouragement...”
“Grrhh! I don’t want to talk about this anymore. There are far more important matters at hand,” I exploded, reaching the bottom of the stairs and walking right into Mason.
From his expression, I could tell he thought he’d caught me talking to myself again. How much of the one-sided conversation had he heard?
“Yes, far more important matters. Jake told me what happened last night. Are you all right?” he demanded in concern.
I nodded, walking with him towards the kitchen. “Better this morning, after a good night’s rest. I just don’t know what’s happening... It’s clear someone... no, more than just someone... has been trying to get me to sell for several years. I just don’t know why they’d go to all this trouble. I mean, this is a fine piece of architecture, but it’s not rare. The realtors in the area regularly have places like mine for sale.”
“I hate to say it,” Mason said. “But it’s probably because of the standing stone and what it guards. If there had to be a continuous line of pagans living on the property, and you weren’t considered one of them, then it stands to reason they would want the house to become the property of one of them.”
“Why not just do as they always seemed to have done, marry into the family? Marry me!” I announced dramatically, imagining myself as a regency heroine being seduced by a blackguard only interested in my inheritance.
Mason lifted a brow, and I immediately saw where he was going. “Jake? You think Jake is a pagan? I thought he was a gold-digger?” I knew my tone was flippant, but I didn’t care. The idea was ludicrous.
“He may be both. What do you really know about him?” Mason continued undaunted.
“As much as she knows about you,” Jake answered for me, coming down the servants’ stairs on silent feet. “Who’s more likely to be a pagan? The enforcer of a crime boss or a lecturer in Celtic history?”
It was a fair argument, especially as Mason had kissed me yesterday, despite thinking me crazy. Maybe he’d been sent to win me over, and that was why he was so furious to find Jake here, getting in his way.
But that would mean Mason believed in the magic and what it guarded. And from everything he’d said, the belittling way he spoke about the beliefs of the people he studied, I doubted that could be true.
“There’s breakfast in the warmer for you,” Jake went on, as if he’d made his point. “Afterwards, I want you to come out to the shed. We can’t put off your training any longer. Last night proved that.”
I felt my heart sink. He wanted to train me to fight. It was the very last thing I wanted.
“Go on, Alfie. You need to do this or you’ll end up like me,” Daphne encouraged.
“Why would Jake want to be sat on by an elephant?” Squib contributed from the doorway to the mudroom. “Maybe he has even less brains than I thought.”
I turned to Squib and smiled sweetly. “Are you still determined to die for good rather than move on? And who knows what the creature from the underworld could do to you if you’re still hanging around with us when we face him.”
If a ghost could pale, Squib did it. With a sniff of feigned disinterest, he disappeared.
“That was almost as satisfying as doing it the hard way,” Jake praised me with a chuckle.
“Oh, for God’s sake stop encouraging her. Don’t you have even a modicum of conscience?” Mason cried.
“If I knew what modicum meant I might answer you. Instead, I’ll do like I do with Squib: ignore you.”
“There is no Squib! Or any Daphne, either. This has to stop! Alfie’s in danger!”
Jake was in Mason’s face in an instant, standing over the slightly smaller man, fury rippling off him in waves. “Don’t you think I know that? I was the one with her when she saw the bloody corpse, remember? I know exactly how high the stakes are.”
The fact he barely growled above a whisper made every word more lethal. I shook in terror for Mason. Poking this bear could get him killed.
“I’ll do it!” I cried, trying to shift the focus back to the fight training.
Jake’s head swivelled to take me in. “Doing it again, Princess? Willing to take a beating for this moron?”
“At least she isn’t afraid I’ll hurt her,” Mason snarled, still not having the sense to back down.
Jake’s roar of rage seemed to shake the house on its foundations. He turned away to slam his fist into the wall, instead of Mason’s head. As the wall was plastered rock, it suffered little damage. Jake, on the other hand...
I rushed to his side, to see what the punch had done to his fist. His knuckles, already swollen and misshapen from years of bare-knuckle fighting, were now bloody and raw. I cringed at the sight of them. He’d done this once before, that first day, but the damage hadn’t been as great.
“Run them under cold water,” I ordered, dragging him over to the sink. He was panting like a dog, still wild with fury.
“Get away from him, Alfie. You’ll be next. Can’t you see how out of control he is?”
I spun to face Mason, my fury almost as intense as Jake’s had been. “He’s only out of control because you keep pushing him. And if he was really, really out of control he would have punched you, rather than the wall, and done himself a lot less damage. That says a lot!”
With an exasperated grunt, Mason stormed out of the room. I didn’t bother watching him go. I was too busy finding ice for Jake’s swelling fingers.
As I wrapped the ice cubes in a tea towel, I tried to still my racing heart. I didn’t need this kind of violence. There was already more of it in my life than I could stomach. But Mason was responsible for this, not Jake.
“I’m awright,” the injured man grumbled, taking the wrapped ice from me and holding it in place with a hiss of pain. Then it was as if the pain was gone at the flick a switch.
“Are they broken?” I asked, unwilling to back off.
He flexed his fingers. “No.”
“Good then. Okay. That’s good. Then the ice should be enough, right?”
“Stop fussing, woman!” Jake snapped at me.
“So you’re allowed to look after me, but when I do it to you, it’s fussing?” I growled.
“Yes!” he yelled. “Because I don’t need it and you do!”
“Why do you men think I’m a useless idio
t? Haven’t you been paying attention? Women are capable of looking after themselves. They don’t need men to do it for them anymore.”
“I’ll believe that when you can beat me in a fight. Unless you’re backing down, now your precious Mason is safe.”
“He’s not my precious anything! You are impossible. And I said I’d do it, and I will. What good are you now, though, with your hurt hand?”
“What I’m teaching you won’t require me to use my fists.”
“Good then,” I fumed. “I’ll just eat my breakfast, and then I’m all yours.”
The flare of something in his eyes made me realize there was another way to take what I’d just said. For several breathless moments we simply stared at each other.
“You shouldn’t say things like that to men like me, Princess.”
I lifted my chin so I could meet his hooded gaze, even as my legs turned to jelly beneath me.
“But I make you soft, Jake. And you don’t want to be soft. So I’m safe from you,” I answered through gritted teeth.
Jake spun and stomped out the back door, swearing loudly as he went. I had won this round. Who knew what would happen in the next?
Chapter Five
“The first thing you need to learn is how to fall, because if you don’t know how to do that you won’t be able to get up to continue the fight,” Jake told me half an hour later as we stood alone in the large tool shed beside the garage.
At some time, the shed was probably the stable’s tack room, but when the coach-house had been converted, along with the stables, into a garage, the smaller, rougher section was turned into a tool shed of about twenty square feet. I assumed this was where Jake had found the kero lamps and extension cords.
I glanced at the freshly tilled ground. Packed dirt could be as hard as stone, so Jake had obviously worked hard to loosen the soil so it was softer. Yet again, I appreciated the little extra things he did for me.
“But if I can fight well enough, surely I won’t be falling on the ground,” I argued, swiping a loose tendril of hair back from my face. I hadn’t even started yet, and already I was an untidy mess.
“Everyone falls. It’s not how many times you fall down that makes you the winner, it’s how often you get back up.”
That seemed to apply to life as much as physical altercations. Lately, I seemed to have been metaphorically knocked down more times than I could count, and yet I kept getting right back up. It had to mean something, didn’t it?
For ten minutes, Jake explained how to tuck my body in so I could roll out of any fall. He showed me by example, and it surprised me how agile he was for such a big man.
The first time he knocked me to the ground, I couldn’t believe how much it hurt. For several seconds I just lay there, trying to get air back into my lungs.
“That was like a belly flop instead of a dive,” Jake criticised unfeelingly. “It hurt didn’t it?”
I nodded, feeling tears pricking my eyelids. He held out his hand to help me up.
“What hits the ground harder, a brick or a ball?” he demanded.
“A brick of course,” I answered, annoyed.
“Because it can’t distribute the downward pressure over more than its base. A ball rolls, spreading the force over a wider area.”
“But a ball is lighter,” I argued.
“A cannonball,” he fired back, annoyed and impatient.
For a moment I considered this. He was right. Distributing the weight over a wider expanse would make the ball of equal weight seem to hit with less force.
The next time he knocked me to the ground I rolled with the fall, immediately feeling the difference. I was probably still getting bruised, but it didn’t hurt as much. What was even better was that I was ready to come to my feet again, rather than just lying flat on my back like an upturned tortoise.
Luckily, I didn’t have to practice falling too many more times before Jake swapped to holds I could practise breaking. When he came up behind me, wrapping his arm around my neck, I was caught between terror and arousal. He was so big and solid and, up close like this, he smelled so good.
But he wasn’t being distracted by me the way I was by him. His directions came at me in gruff dispassionate tones, explaining what to do to break the hold and free myself.
“Your best defence is to run. So, when you break a hold like this, don’t hang around to see what happens next. Get out of there, screaming all the way. But if that’s impossible, there are a few other things you can try.”
And so it went. By the time Jake called the lesson to a close, I was sweating and covered in dust. My hair had fallen out of its knot and was hanging in a messy clump of brown curls around my shoulders. Every muscle in my body ached. Yet I felt alive, in a way I could never remember feeling before.
While I wiped the sweat from my brow off on my arm, I grinned at Jake.
He stood, arms crossed, examining me as if I was a painting. “For someone who just took a beating, you seem pretty chipper.”
My grin broadened. “Crazy, isn’t it? I feel elated.”
He grinned at me, the tutor’s stern demeanour suddenly gone. God he was sexy when he smiled like that!
“I’ll make a fighter out of you yet,” he said proudly.
I pulled a funny face. “Just don’t put me in a cage to do it.”
He laughed, striding the short distance between us so he could brush my messy hair back from my hot, sweaty face. “No cages for you, sweet girl. What about mud-wrestling?”
Before I knew what he was about, his head came down and his lips closed over mine. The suddenness of the move had my mouth dropping open a little, and Jake took advantage of it, sending his tongue exploring. He hadn’t done this the last time we kissed, and it felt like an invasion. I must have recoiled a little, because Jake withdrew to continue his exploration with lips alone.
When he broke the kiss, I could barely stand on my own two feet. With a gentle finger, he outlined my bottom lip, his eyes glued to my mouth, an odd perplexed expression on his craggy face.
“I keep trying to make this... whatever this is.... about business. Because it can’t go anywhere. I don’t want it to go anywhere. Then you grin at me like some cheeky kid, face red, hair wild, streaks of dirt all over you, and... and all I want to do is touch you. Kiss you. Feel your soft curves against me.”
A breath had been arrested half way to my lungs, and I knew my eyes widened in surprise. I licked my dry lips and tried to swallow.
Jake lowered his head to kiss me again. The longing I felt had me melting against him. But I wasn’t sure it was my longing. It might have been his. It was such a confusing melding of feelings. Instead of trying to analyse what was happening, I gave myself up to sensation, kissing him back feverishly. Yes, that was my feeling, at least. I was feverish with desire. Wanting more.
His arms suddenly scooped me up off my feet. While I gasped in shock, he strode over to the bench. I wanted to tell him to put me down because I was too heavy, but before I could form the words, he’d seated me on the bench. Now our heads were at the same level. Or mine was slightly higher. He stepped in between my open legs and began kissing me again, coaxing me to open so he could slip inside my mouth.
This time I didn’t jerk back. This time I let him taste the inside of my lips. It felt strange and far too intimate, yet the need building inside me didn’t care.
“Oh, for feck sake!” The disgusted comment jerked us apart so suddenly I almost toppled off the bench.
Squib, stood a few yards away, staring at us as if the sight made him sick. “What’s wrong with you? She’s as ugly as they come! Are you that desperate to get laid?”
With a feral growl, Jake spun and dived to my left where Squib had been standing. For once the ghost was faster. He disappeared, reappearing with a laugh, just off to my right. While he was smugly gloating at Jake, who had rolled and come to his feet in an instant, I jumped off the bench and dived at him, using the roll Jake had taught me.
&nbs
p; Squib’s yelp of surprise was more than worth the nausea that instantly overtook me. But instead of letting the bile get the better of me, I focused on the triumph I felt. When Jake came to my side to help me up, I’d almost managed to get it under control.
“He’s wrong, you know,” he told me, brushing me off without meeting my gaze. “You’re beautiful. And I may be desperate, but it’s not the kind of desperate he means.”
The deep wound to my vanity Squib had inflicted, healed over in an instant. Jake thought I was beautiful. It was the most unexpected and wonderful thing I’d ever heard.
“Thanks. He’s so... mean. Like the girls at school. I never understood why anyone needed to be mean like that. What do they get from it?”
He drew me into his arms and resting his chin easily on the top of my head. “Power. A sense of power. And when you’re weak like Squib, you have to take what power you can where you can. Like men who beat up women. They do it because they feel powerless in the world. Although I also think people learn from their parents how to act... I don’t know. Like you, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what makes people cruel.”
I pulled away and tipped my head to the side to study him, trying to understand. This was a man who beat people up for a living, and yet he spent time trying to work out what made people cruel? Maybe he didn’t think he was being cruel. And maybe he wasn’t. I didn’t know.
“What? I can see your brain turning over. Are you wondering why I don’t think I’m cruel?” he demanded.
The fact he’d guessed so precisely what I was thinking embarrassed me.
“I’m not a good man, Alfie. I’ve made no secret of that. But I take no pleasure in what I do. Either as a debt-collector or in the cage. I fight because it’s how I make my living. But I don’t hurt women or children. And I don’t hurt people for fun.”
I pulled gently out of his arms so I could meet his gaze. “I think you’re a good man. The part beneath the surface is a good man.”