Archangel's Enigma
Page 13

She wasn’t his partner. She was just someone he had to work with, but she was right: Raphael would not be happy if he killed their expert. “More reason for us not to spar.” He shifted back toward the wall he intended to scale.
“Scared?”
Naasir froze, sheer incredulity holding him in place. When he turned, it was to prowl over to her until they stood toe-to-toe, both of them in bare feet. “What did you say?”
4
A smile of challenge from the small, soft scholar who was taunting him. “I asked if you were scared,” she said, not backing off, though he could see the pulse thudding hard in her neck.
“Do you want me to bite you?” he asked seriously.
Scowling, she stepped back. “Fine, if you don’t want to spar, I’ll find someone else.”
He barely held back his growl. She wanted him to act civilized? He’d wear the skin so well she’d never see the real Naasir again. “Rules for the session?” he asked. “Other than my not killing you.”
“I get to have a sword as a weapon. You get bare hands.”
He shrugged. “That’s fair.” What it was, was suicidal on her part. She could have ten swords and he’d still be inside her guard in a heartbeat. “Is that your sword in the corner?”
“How did you see that?” she asked. “It’s in the shadows.”
He didn’t say anything, just watched her until she broke eye contact and walked to pick up the sword she’d propped up neatly against a wall. It was in its scabbard and when she drew it out, he saw it gleamed. Either Galen had drummed it into her to clean her weapons, or this weapon had never actually been used in any kind of serious combat. She probably just used it as part of her routine with the flowing, patient stretches.
He snorted under his breath.
“Ready?” she asked, taking a wide-legged stance across from him, enough distance between them that she probably thought herself safe.
“Yes.”
“In that case, three, two, one!”
Naasir lunged, not holding back his speed or agility. All he had to do was put her on the ground and this ridiculous exercise would be done and he could leave and his mouth would stop watering at the intoxicating scent of her. The air whistled past his eyes, the world so slow in comparison to his speed, the stars blurring together—
“Grr!”
He snarled as he came down on his feet, looking in disbelief at his upper arm. There was a thin line of red across his biceps. Shaking his head, he looked again but it was still there. It healed before his eyes, the wound superficial, but the blood remained behind to mark the spot. “You cut me,” he said to Andromeda.
*   *   *
Heart a racehorse and breath coming hard and fast, Andromeda wondered if she knew what the hell she was doing. She hadn’t meant to challenge him, but he’d been so horribly, unnervingly polite that her mouth had opened and the words had tumbled out. He’d clearly decided he didn’t like her, and for some reason that infuriated her.
Now he was looking at her through narrowed eyes of glowing silver, his hair hanging over his face before he shoved it back. “How did you cut me?” A demand.
She was the one who shrugged this time. “I cheated.”
A long, slow blink. “Cheating’s not allowed.”
“Yes, it is. You’re bigger, faster, and far better trained than I am. If I don’t cheat, we’ll have no fun.”
Another slow blink . . . and she realized he was moving, and she was moving instinctively in response, the two of them circling one another. Going into that space inside her head where she was one with the blade, she reacted on instinct again when he moved, and scored him across the hard ridges of his abdomen. Only he didn’t stop in surprise this time but kept going.
She’d never worked harder with the blade in her life.
He still pinned her to the ground in under three minutes, his body heat on her front a stark intimacy. Knees on either side of her hips and hands gripping her wrists above her head, rendering her sword useless, he leaned down until his breath kissed hers and she could look into those astonishing eyes at a proximity she’d never expected.
They were clear, so clear, and utterly beautiful. The silver glowed in the night, the striations within the irises a darker silver. “You cut me seven-and-a-half times,” he said, his voice holding a gritty, growly undertone.
Chest heaving, she tried to shrug again, as if she wasn’t trapped under an unfriendly predator. “Pretty good for a scholar.”
He moved even closer, until his nose was a bare whisper above hers. “You have secrets,” he said slowly. “You wear another skin, too.”
Andromeda went motionless, the game suddenly dangerous. “No,” she said through a hoarse throat. “I don’t have secrets. I’m exactly what I seem.” At least for her final fifteen days of freedom, fifteen days where the people she respected still believed in her, still trusted her.
“A scholar who wields a sword?”
“Have you never heard of a warrior-scholar?”
He continued to watch her with those clear silver eyes that made her imagine she could see galaxies within. “You have spots on your face.”
“What? It must be dirt from when you took me down.”
Shifting her wrists to one strong hand, he touched the rough-skinned pad of a finger to her nose and her cheeks on either side. “Spots.”
She glared past the shiver that wanted to ripple through her. “Those are freckles!” A sprinkling of them across the bridge of her nose and on the tops of her cheeks that had only become more entrenched with time, until she’d given up all hope of ever pulling off cool elegance.