by Zoe Chant
He brought his left hand around her body and met the swing with it. His hand knocked the stick askew, almost out of her grip.
Of course, that could also have been because he had his arms around her, and was murmuring in her ear, and it was making it hard for her to concentrate. She tried to focus and keep her breathing steady.
He’s not interested, she reminded herself. He’s just being nice. He’s teaching you something, pay attention!
But oh, he smelled so good.
“Instead,” he said, his breath tickling her cheek, “you want to swing it like a knife. Pretend you’re trying to hit something with the sharp end of the blade, not the flat side of it.”
He brought her hand gently back to her shoulder and started another swing, this time straight out forward towards an invisible target.
His fingers held hers in a warm grip, and this time he followed through on the swing, brought the stick up to her left shoulder—now literally holding her wrapped in his arms, just for a second—and then guided her through the backhand swing. His muscled chest was pressed up against her back.
Sam was considering nominating herself for sainthood, because the fact that she was still facing forward, that she hadn’t turned around in his arms and pulled him down for a kiss, was definitely a miracle.
“Do you have it, or do you want me to run you through it one more time?” he said into her ear, his voice a low, warm rumble.
“…One more time,” Sam said faintly. She wasn’t kidding; she didn’t know how much she’d picked up from that at all.
“No problem,” he said, and she couldn’t see him, but she thought he was smiling.
* * *
It was incredibly hard to make himself let go of Sam and get her to practice on her own, but Dale managed it.
Mostly, he managed it by telling himself that he wasn’t going to be the creepy instructor. He kept a careful eye on any new instructors at the studio, even members of the pride, to make sure that no one was taking advantage of any of the female students. He’d never once been tempted to do so himself.
But Sam…it was hard to stop touching her. It wasn’t only that she was gorgeous, that her curves and her soft skin felt so amazing, it was that touching her felt right.
And he was sure she’d leaned back into him a little when he had his arms around her. She’d turned her face toward him when he’d been speaking into her ear, and he’d wanted to kiss her temple, nuzzle down her ear to her neck, where her scent was stronger, and just inhale her.
He hadn’t, obviously. He had some self-control. But he’d wanted to.
“Good,” he said, as he watched Sam practicing her swing. “That looks really good.” Sometimes women were hesitant to put their full strength into exercises, but Sam didn’t have that problem.
Of course, she knew that she might have to use her full strength to defend herself.
“Okay, stop for a second,” he said, jogging over to the corner to get a practice pad.
He came back and set himself up in front of Sam. She waited, the stick up on her right shoulder, at the ready.
“I want you to try and hit me, right here.” He slapped the pad over his forearm.
She eyed him dubiously. “What if I miss?”
“You won’t miss. Come on.” Judging by Sam’s precision so far, there was no way she wouldn’t hit the big target the practice pad presented.
“Okay,” she said, and swung, no hesitation.
The stick thwacked against the pad with a solid impact, and without having to be told, she followed through up to her left shoulder and came right back with a backhand. Thwack.
Dale grinned. She was such a fast learner. “That’s great. If you hit an attacker like that, he’s not going to be using that arm to attack you anymore.”
“What if there’s more of them?” she asked. He could see the fear peeking through her eyes.
She’d probably been worrying about this all night, that if she successfully used any of the techniques she was learning on one man, she might still be vulnerable if there were more.
“They’re likely going to be surprised that you know how to defend yourself,” he said. “It’s a stereotype, and it’s a dumb one, but most guys don’t think that a woman could hold her own against them. If some guys are after you and you break one of their arms, well, that guy’s going to be pretty loud about it, and everyone’s going to be taken aback. Take advantage of that moment and run.”
She nodded seriously.
He hated that she had to ask these questions. It was heartbreaking that any woman would have to be worried about four men coming after her on the street, but that it was Sam…
He wanted to offer her the administrative position they were hiring for at the studio on the spot, but Lynn would crucify him. The job was really Lynn’s assistant, so she was the one overseeing the applications.
Maybe now that she’d met Sam, she’d consider it, though.
“Come at me again,” he said, to distract himself from thinking about things that probably wouldn’t even happen. “Harder this time.”
She didn’t hesitate at all this time, and the stick thwacked solidly against the pad, right in the center of his forearm.
“You’re a natural,” he said. “Again.”
She was so beautiful like this—determined and focused, coming right at him with purpose and force. She was stronger than she looked, and comfortable enough in her body to use every ounce of that strength against him.
“You’ll be a hell of a fighter if you stick with this,” he said quietly, after she’d hit him again and come back to the ready position.
“Don’t just say that,” she said, breathing hard.
“I don’t lie,” Dale said, a little offended. “I wouldn’t just say something like that unless I meant it.”
“But I’m not—” Now she looked uncomfortable, shifting a little from foot to foot. “In shape.”
She probably meant that she was curvier than the current fashion for stick-thin models. Dale wanted to tell her she was gorgeous, but that wasn’t what she was asking about. “You’re more in shape than you think you are,” he said instead. “You’re not weak by any means. And that’s not what I meant, anyway.”
“What did you mean?” She relaxed a little.
“You have a good sense of where you are in space,” Dale said. “You’re precise in your strikes, and you hardly ever put a foot wrong. It’s much harder to learn that than it is to build up arm muscles.”
Her cheeks turned pink. “Thanks,” she said, and immediately changed the subject to, “Should I keep practicing the strike?”
“I think you have it down,” Dale said, “although you should definitely keep practicing on your own, until it’s second nature. Maybe next week we can work on trying it on a moving target. For now, maybe we could practice a little of what Lynn taught you to do? She’s a great teacher, but one thing she’s not is a tall man.” Lynn usually had him come into a few of her class sessions to play the attacker, anyway.
“Sure,” Sam said. “We mostly worked on what to do if a guy comes at you from the front.”
“Let’s do that, then.” Dale set himself up in a stance opposite her again. “Ready?”
“Ready,” she said, and he came up to her, moving in to grab her shoulder.
She had a hand up and going for his eye almost faster than he would’ve been able to block. “Good!” he said, stepping back. “Try again.”
This time, he was prepared, and when she went for his eye, he grabbed her wrist.
She twisted it around like Lynn would’ve shown her—but at the same time, her heel came gently down on his foot.
He let her go. “That’s impressive,” he said. “The hardest part of all this isn’t learning the moves, it’s putting them into practice at speed and with a real opponent. I wouldn’t have expected a new student to be able to use two moves at once like that.”
She nodded. “That’s what Lynn said. That we have to practi
ce these over and over again, because otherwise we won’t remember how to do them in a real fight situation. I’m sure if you were a real attacker I would’ve had a harder time.”
“Even in a practice situation, that was better than most people would’ve done,” he said. “Good job, honestly.”
“Thank you.” She was blushing again.
“Let’s try some more,” he said, trying to avoid making her uncomfortable.
The problem was, the moves that Lynn went over in the very beginning classes involved him getting up close into Sam’s space, trying to grab her or push her against a wall or knock her to the ground.
And Sam was flushed with exercise, her hair curling around her forehead and her chest heaving as she breathed, and Dale had to keep getting in close to her, touching her wrist, her shoulder, her hip, her neck…
It was good he was used to maintaining control over his body, was all.
Finally, he put her down onto the mat and had her try to get away. He’d thought about skipping this move, because it involved them getting very close, but he wasn’t going to be so irresponsible as to neglect Sam’s self-defense readiness just because he was turned on.
But having her spread out beneath him, pinning her shoulders, feeling her chest heave instead of just looking at it—
“Okay,” he said, and he knew his voice was coming out more like a growl, but he couldn’t help it. “Fight me off.”
Sam started to squirm and twist her arms, and he was about to remind her that tugging at his grip like that wasn’t going to do anything—when he felt her knee right between his legs.
“I’m going to assume that if I followed through, I’d be successfully fighting you off,” she said, with a smile curving her lips.
She was teasing him. She was normally so quietly serious, with most of her humor being wry or self-deprecating. Seeing that sparkle in her eye as she pressed her leg right up against his hardening cock—it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
He bent down and kissed that teasing smile, and the moment he tasted her, he knew there was no going back.
Sam kissed him back immediately, her mouth opening under his. She deftly twisted a hand free and wrapped her arm around his shoulders, pulling his body down to hers.
He could feel her breasts, her hips, her thigh still pressing against his erection…he growled into her mouth and kissed her harder.
She moaned underneath him and reached up to tug his hair elastic away, sliding her hand into his hair and cupping his head as they kissed. He pulled back just enough to breathe, “You like my mane?”
“I love it.” She leaned up for another kiss. “Men with long hair are a—” one more kiss, “—a weakness.”
“Well, brave,” kiss, “beautiful,” kiss, “smart,” kiss, kiss, kiss, why did she taste so good? “honest women are a weakness of mine.”
“Oh,” she said, but he stopped any objections with his mouth, and she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back.
Eventually, though, he had to either come up for air or start taking her clothes off. “Hey,” he said softly into her mouth.
“Hmm?” she responded, lifting her chin to ghost little kisses over his lips.
“We can’t do anything in the classroom,” he said, and then heard what had come out of his mouth and backpedaled. “Not that you have to—or that I’m implying we’re going to—we can do whatever you’re comfortable with.”
Now it was his turn to blush, which he hardly ever did. Sam seemed to bring it out in him, though.
And she was laughing at him. He pushed himself up a little more so he could see it better. “It’s okay,” she said. “I want to keep going. But Lynn probably wouldn’t like it if we did it in here.”
That was a bucket of cold water. “No,” he said. “No, she would not. In fact,” he scrambled up off of her, “sometimes she comes in to clear up the mats before she goes home.”
“Oh, boy,” and now Sam was laughing harder, with an edge of embarrassment. “I can’t even imagine—if she came in—”
“We would both definitely get a lecture about respecting the practice space,” Dale agreed. He held out a hand and pulled Sam to her feet. “Let’s see, there’s—” He stopped.
He’d been about to say that there were a few things he needed to take care of before leaving the studio, but he was struck by the idiocy of the statement. There were a few things he would have done if he didn’t have a gorgeous woman waiting for him to finish up and leave.
But none of them were so urgent they couldn’t wait until tomorrow. And it would be incredibly rude, not to mention stupid, to keep Sam waiting so he could finish up paperwork.
“There’s nothing keeping me here any longer,” he said instead. “Your place or mine?”
“Whichever’s closest,” she said. “Do you live nearby?”
“Right nearby,” he confirmed. “Get your coat and we can go. Oh, wait,” he said as she turned to go.
“What?” she asked, turning back.
He kissed her gorgeous mouth one more time. “Okay, now you can go.”
She broke into a grin. “Okay.” She turned for the door, glancing over her shoulder as she went.
Dale held the classroom door for her, and tried not to think about how he was acting like a dumb lovesick hero in a romantic comedy.
He just—he genuinely didn’t want to let Sam go without another kiss. Surely anyone would want to kiss that mouth as many times as possible.
Anyone didn’t get to, though. Only him.
That thought struck him, and he paused with his hand on his coat. If he was doing this, if he was ignoring any obstacles the pack might bring to bear and going for it, he wanted that to be true. He wasn’t the sort of jerk who led women on and then abandoned them. He wanted a relationship.
He just hoped Sam was on the same page.
* * *
Sam put on her coat with a sense of unreality. She’d been so sure Dale was just being nice, that he didn’t want her to get hurt. That he couldn’t possibly be interested in someone in her situation.
Well, he was nice, and he didn’t want her to get hurt, but she’d been dead wrong about the last one, apparently.
And he kissed like a god. And she couldn’t wait to get his clothes off to see all those muscles she’d been able to feel back in the classroom.
She went to go find him, and ran into Dawn at the desk. “Hi!” Dawn said.
“Oh—hi,” she said, trying to collect herself. “Still working?”
“Just finishing up a few things,” Dawn said. “The staff tend to stick around after the place closes. Dale and Lynn are always here late. Especially Dale. He practically lives here.”
“Really?” She wondered what it would be like to date a man who was already married to his job. Maybe not so great.
If Dale even wanted to date her. She still couldn’t quite believe that.
Well, if he just wanted a fun time, that was…that was okay, she thought firmly. She’d be happy to have a fun time with someone as gorgeous and nice as Dale, and it would be a good memory in the middle of a crappy time of her life.
She’d just have to be satisfied with that.
She was distracted from her thoughts when Dale himself appeared from the hallway. “Hey,” he said, giving her the real, full-on version of his smile.
She smiled helplessly back. “Hey.”
“Hey,” said Dawn, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Dale, are you sticking around, or should I—”
“You close up.” Dale didn’t look away from Sam. “Unless Lynn’s still here and she wants to.”
“You got it,” Dawn said. “Have a—uh, have a nice night, you guys.”
“Thank you,” Sam said faintly, and took Dale’s offered arm—he offered his arm—and went out the studio doors with him.
Dale’s apartment really wasn’t far at all; she suspected that made it easier for him to mostly live at his job.
But it wasn’t
just his job, was it? It was the pride. She still knew hardly anything about them, but Dale was clearly devoted to them, and he wouldn’t want to be far if anyone needed help. And the studio seemed to be a kind of center for them, if Dale and (she was pretty sure) Lynn, and maybe even Dawn, were all lions.
It made sense. And it was the sign of a good man.
“Here we are,” said Dale, stopping at an apartment building. He let them in, and they went up creaky wooden stairs and into a warmly-lit, spacious apartment.
“This is beautiful,” Sam said, a little startled. In her experience, single guys were not the best at decorating.
“It’s mostly family stuff.” Dale gestured at the carved wooden furnishings and the pictures on the walls. “I got the plant myself.”
“Oh?” she asked, sensing a story.
“Lynn said I needed a friend,” he said seriously.
Sam burst out laughing. She had a feeling that most people thought Dale was always serious and responsible, but there was a wonderful sense of humor hiding under the responsibility.
“It looks friendly,” she said when she’d recovered. It did, kind of, with pointed green leaves and a sort of a jaunty tilt to the stem.
“It’s very friendly,” he said. “Hasn’t bitten me once.”
She laughed again, and reached up to pull him down into a kiss.
And she forgot about laughing right away, because his hands slid down her sides to cup her hips and pull her in to him, and his mouth was insistent against hers, and warmth flushed her cheeks and burned in the pit of her stomach.
God, she wanted him.
“Come on,” he whispered into her mouth, and tugged her along through a short hallway into his bedroom.
He laid her easily down on the bed, and pulled off her shoes, one by one. And then they were back in the same position they’d been at the studio, with him looking down at her.
“Can you turn on a light?” she murmured. “I want to see you.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” He flipped on a bedside lamp.
His eyes immediately took on the golden glow of the light. Lion’s eyes.