Because of Kian (4 page)

“And?”
Sage asked softly.

“Nothing, really.
He just… he offered to show me some self-defense. To help me kick Evan’s ass.” I smiled jokingly.

“Now it makes a little more sense.”

“What does?” I asked, knitting my brow in confusion. “Sage, I’m not following you here.”

“
When he comes in to Hyper, he’s protecting you.”

“
What, like he feels responsible? He shouldn’t.” I shook my head. “I’m a big girl.”

“Brynn, I think it’s more than that,” Sage grinned. “Do you like him?”

“Ummm… What is this,” I laughed. “Junior high? Oh, yeah, he’s just dreamy.”

“Because I’ve seen him with some of the chicks in Hyper before, but I’ve never seen him as focused on someone as he is with you.”

I scoffed at her. “Sage, he’s never once even hinted. Not even in the slightest.”

She narrowed her eyes and shook her finger at me. “Well, mark my words… He sees something about you.”

• I Lived ~
  OneRepublic
  
• Up In the Air ~ Thirty Seconds to Mars
  
• Inertia Creeps ~ Massive Attack
  

Kian

Class was winding down, but I was gearing up. Looking at the clock, I knew it was time to get these kids out of here. Most of their mothers and fathers were waiting just outside the gym. Unfortunately, Holly McPherson tended to be one of those mothers that came inside the gym to wait.

She always looked immaculate
, but in a fabricated, big money way. She was the ex-wife of a local doctor and a society diva. Long auburn streaked hair, fake tan, fake tits. She would pose up against wall, one shapely leg out in front of the other. Or she would sit on near the gym entrance, crossing and uncrossing her legs. She’d become more and more forward with me in the time that I’d been teaching martial arts to her son, often stroking my biceps while she spoke to me.

Honestly, she was a bit over the top.

And I wanted her gone before Brynn showed up.

“Okay, kids,” I called out. “Wrap it up.
Time to go.”

The thunder of seventeen eight-year-old
kung fu wannabes barreling across the gym floor helped me pretend to not notice Holly subversively trying to catch my attention. I busied myself picking up mats and putting equipment away, working methodically with my back to the door until the crowd of mothers and children cleared out. Taking a deep breath, I welcomed the peaceful silence.

Not long now
.

I left
one of the mats down on the far side of the room and took a large swig of water. Brynn was likely already here, just waiting for all the parents to pull away before coming inside. Part of her quirk was that she didn’t really want people to know she was coming here, that I was showing her this. She said she didn’t want to draw any attention to herself, and, by keeping it off the tongues of gossiping mothers, she was hoping to fly under the radar.

Along the wall across from me, I noted a rogue belt, likely lost in the fray as the kids bolted from the room. I crossed over to it, examining it for a name to indicate the owner, only to find none. No huge worry. Someone was bound to show up at their next class without one
. I had just begun to fold it when I heard the clunk of the outside doors, then the loud click of her turning the lock. The gym had no windows, and locking the door essentially guaranteed nobody would walk in and find her here. I was pretty sure she even parked down the street… in an alley.

Turning towards the entrance to the gym, I
watched her walk in and drop her duffel bag on the floor by the doorway. Over the past few weeks, she’d been coming in every night after work. Every time she’d step through the door, she’d shoot a smile in my direction and shyly come closer. Tonight, her light blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she’d already changed into some knit athletic pants and some kind of little strappy shirt that was entirely too fucking hot to be real. For a beautician, she didn’t cake on the makeup, only highlighting the stunning features already there. The natural sparkle of her green eyes framed with thick lashes, the gentle contour of her cheeks, the full soft curve of her lips.

The more time I spent with her, the harder it was to ignore the pull
.

And, considering what she’d been through not so long ago, I really,
really
had to ignore the pull. Not only was she recovering from a horrendous breakup of a violent relationship, but I was probably about the worst rebound guy she could come up with. I glanced down at the belt in my hands and almost groaned aloud at the image that popped into my mind. If I ever told her what I really wanted to do with her – to her – she’d run screaming bloody murder.

So I had
to get my head out of my pants, push all those feeling aside, and stick to the friend zone.

“So,” she began as she walked closer and held out
her hand for some tape, “I ran into Sage at the store last night. You know, Sage from Hyper.”

Uh oh.
Jeff was always giving me shit about Brynn, egging me on. I fervently hoped that pussy-whipped son-of-a-bitch hadn’t opened his fucking mouth to Sage.

“Yeah, I know Sage,” I replied as I began to wind the protective white band around
Brynn’s knuckles. “She’s a sweetheart. She’s had kind of a rough time of it, but she’s bound and determined to make things better for her and her kid.”

She
watched my features closely as I wrapped her hand with a fierce concentration and precision. “She has a kinda crazy idea about you… you and me.”

My
eyes flicked up to meet her sea-green gaze momentarily. It was hard to read the expression there. “She’s decided she’s a matchmaker,” I grumbled with a light-hearted chuckle. “I suppose it’s about time she targeted me.”

I turned my focus back
down at her hand, smoothing the tape down before reaching for the other. This was one of my favorite parts about her coming here every day. Something about wrapping her tightly, even if it was just her knuckles, was almost breathtaking.

It made me want
so very much more. To wrap the tape around her wrists…
Damn
. I needed to stop thinking about that shit with her.

“Do you really come to Hyper to see me?”

The directness of the question stunned me. I froze momentarily, waiting a moment before answering, wondering how to phrase it so I didn’t come off like a total creep.

Except that it was a little
stalkerish. Even I could see that.

“There’s something about you that makes me want to take care of you,” I finally admitted
as I finished taping up her hand. “I’m not sure what it is. But it kicked into overdrive when I saw that fucker hit you. So, yeah. I suppose I do. I come to make sure you’re okay.”

I may have been a creep, but I was an honest one.

I looked back up at her face, noting a little confusion that passed over her bewitching sad sea-green eyes.

“Kicked into overdrive
? So you felt like this before we even met?”

Her voice sounded a little cautious, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to look her in the eye, once again focusing on wrapping the fine knuckles of her
other hand and nodding.

“Doesn’t that seem a little… odd?” she softly murmured.

“It would if it wasn’t you.”

“Do you do this sort of thing often?”

I immediately focused all my attention on her. As uncomfortable as it was disclosing this to her, she appeared equally confused by my reply. Holding her small, delicate hand in mine, I held her gaze with every ounce of seriousness. “I’ve never done anything remotely like this in my life… until you walked by me at Hyper one night.”

For a long awkward moment, she held my gaze.
“Is it weird that I feel the need to thank you?” she whispered.

“
Haha… no thanks necessary. I kinda like watching out for you,” I chuckled and dropped her hand, taking a step back. “We better get at it.”

“At it?”
Her lovely little mouth dropped open.

Oh
, sweet Jesus, to know what was running through her mind…

“Yeah… the lessons?”
I reminded her.

Her eyes and mouth both slammed shut for a moment. Then, with a small shake of her head, she inhaled deeply and said, “Lessons… right.
Yeah.”

Picking up from the night before, we started with some
stretches. T’ai chi to loosen up the muscles and strengthen, helping to center and soothe her nerves, allowing her to focus and learn.

This was always a tough for me.

The smooth movement that highlighted her exceptional ass and breasts. Every time her eyes drifted closed, she seemed to almost trance out.

I could barely
function thinking about how serene she could be…
if
…

Dammit
… focus.

We
moved on to feigning submission, pretending she’d totally been overcome to lower the guard of the attacker so that she could strike, stun, and get the fuck away.

This was even tougher.

Holding her down, pinning her to the floor below me. It took every bit of self-control I possessed as her fresh scent rose to tickle my nostrils. As her soft body, writhing and wiggling below me, began to still. Gradually, as though the fight was slowly leaving her. And when she went limp beneath me, her breasts pressed against my chest, and her soft exerted breath brushed against my skin, I had to constantly remind myself why I was doing this.

Stay in the game, Kian
.

This
was so not about me. This was all about her.

Fortunately,
Brynn would often land a good kick to my nuts to bring me back to the present.

Brynn

The time I spent with Kian had done some amazing things for my confidence, at least in the self-defense realm. He was strong and capable. He never seemed to overstep the role between teacher and student, all serious and professional. One hundred percent ethical. Sage’s comments from the night before had me thinking back, though, looking for any signs that she was right. Trying desperately to remember a time that he’d clearly flirted. But he’d never made a single move on me.

And it
was starting to drive me nuts.

Because he was
really fucking gorgeous
.

I nearly fainted the first time he grabbed hold of me to mimic an attack.
Every time he pulled my hand to his body to show me where to strike, I wanted to melt into a little gooey puddle. And these submission moves he’d been showing me lately had me squirming beneath him and dying to go home and bang myself silly to relieve the ache. Pressed below him, his firm grip on my wrists…

Fuck.

This was seriously killing me.

I needed to feed off that anger, to push down the maddening lust that wanted to take over
.

So, after letting my body go limp, giving my ‘
attacker
’ a sense of power, I aimed my knee for his groin. There were a lot of other things I wanted to do to that part of his anatomy, but just knowing that sort of pissed me off and had me totally unsettled.

His deflection left him open, so I pushed at him and
scrambled away, rolling up to my feet.

“Now you run,” Kian said as he
rose to stand across the mat from me.

“
Heck with that. I think I can take you,” I ground out and rushed at him.

I didn’t last long, though.

The next thing I knew, we were back on the floor. He was on top of me again. My breath left my body in a loud
Oomph
!

"Don't lose focus, baby," he smiled down at me.
“You were starting to think you were bigger than your britches. You can fight a guy off, but you were switching over to taking me on. There's a difference."

He was right. With his mass against mine,
I was powerless in a full on fight. I could bite and scratch and kick, but so could he, really. Lesson learned. If a bad dude was to attack me, do
not
try to take him on.

But this was Kian.
And, again,
he was on top of me
.

He was different.
Lying under him, I felt safer than ever. Even the way his weight was distributed over me, the way he angled his body, was protective.

“You okay?” he asked softly. “I didn’t hurt you when I took you down,
did I?” His hand lifted to my jaw, his fingers along my neck while his thumb brushed my cheek.

Sage’s words kept repeating through my mind as
I shook my head slowly at his question, my eyes locked with his. Then, I turned my head slightly and caught his thumb in my lips, sucking gently, my tongue smoothing over the tip as my eyes drifted closed. I felt him intake a sharp breath.