As I step out of my bedroom dressed in my workout clothes, I’m met with the sound of heavy footsteps. My gaze lands on a pair of brown work boots thudding down the hardwood floor.
“Where were you yesterday?” Polo asks as he stops in front of me, his white shirt half-tucked inside a pair of well-worn jeans. “Bored of the work already?”
I give him a smile. “I was busy with something.”
“Doubt it.” His gaze skims over my shoulder before sliding back to me. To my surprise, he lifts his fingers up to my face and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “There really isn’t much to be busy with around here.”
“She was with me.”
Giorgio’s voice is like a distant roll of thunder, low and ominous. I whip my head around in time to see him step out of his room. He stops by my side, his biceps brushing against my shoulder.
Polo tips his chin up to look at Giorgio, his gaze sharpening and his lips curving into a smirk. “Ah. My apologies. I see you’ve taken responsibility for our guest’s entertainment on yourself.”
“He’s not entertaining me,” I clarify. “He’s teaching me.”
“Is he?”
“Yes. Self-defense.”
Sarcasm soaks his voice as he says, “Oh, right. A critical skill to know while you’re vacationing in a remote castello.” He shifts his weight between his feet, linking his palms behind him. “I hope he’s thoroughly hands-on with you, Martina. An engaged instructor is the best way to learn.”
Embarrassment creeps up my chest. Is he insinuating there’s something inappropriate about our lessons?
During the night, I managed to thoroughly convince myself that brush of his thumb along my wrist was a figment of my overactive imagination. At most, it might have been an absentminded twitch. If we’re going to keep doing these lessons, I have to stop reading into things like that.
Giorgio takes a step forward, annoyance rolling off him in waves. “Indeed. The program I’m putting Martina through is intense, so she’s unlikely to have the energy to help you in the garden. I know you’re more than capable of handling it on your own.”
Polo’s jaw hardens. “Of course.”
“Good.”
They stare at each other for a long moment. Then, a palm wraps around my elbow and applies light pressure. “Come on, Mari. I have a hard stop at twelve.”
Mari.
I somehow manage to mutter a goodbye to Polo despite all of my mental faculties zooming in on that one word.
Giorgio just called me Mari.
When did we get so familiar with each other?
My pulse pounds inside my ears even as the rational part of my brain says it’s no big deal. But when I glance at Giorgio from under my lashes, his expression is tense, and he won’t meet my eye, like he knows that nickname shouldn’t have just slipped out like that.
He lets go off my elbow when my feet touch the padded mat, and he walks over to the box to dump his keys.
“We need to work on your strength and conditioning.”
“Why—”
“Ten push-ups, twenty squats, thirty sit-ups. Five rounds. Go.”
My brows scrunch up. “But why—”
His eyes flash with irritation. “Let’s go, Martina! While you’re with me, you do as I say, got it?”
The frustration in his tone snaps my spine straight. Jesus. What is his deal?
“Okay,” I say, getting to the ground. “No need to shout.”
He scowls. “I’ll count it out.”
What follows is twenty-five minutes of pure torture. Giorgio skips counting the reps I do with poor form, which is most of them, and after he demonstrates how to do it correctly, he forces me to do it all over again.
By the time I’m done with the five rounds, my body feels like jelly, and I can barely breathe. I fold over at my waist and anchor my palms on my knees. We haven’t even started the actual lesson.
“What are we learning today?” I pant, peeking at him through the loose strands of hair hanging over my face.
He motions for me to come over to the center of the mat. “We’re going to go over the same moves as yesterday.”
Straightening back up, I walk over to him. “Really? I think I got it. Can we try something new?”
He considers me for a moment. “If you can break my hold on first try, we’ll do something new.”
A fire lights inside of me at the hint of skepticism in his voice. After the wringer he just put me through, I want to prove him wrong. “Fine.”
Firm stance. His hands on my wrists. His grip tightens.
I don’t waste a second before I execute the technique.
“Ha!” Hopping away, I raise my freed wrists above my head. “Told you.”
The line between his brows softens. “Good work. You’re a quick learner.”
A smile tugs at my lips. “You’re a good teacher—when you’re not trying to kill me with drills, that is. Yesterday, you were much more patient.”
He glances at me, his lips curving at the corners a tiny bit. “Patient? I must’ve finally acquired that quality in my old age.”
My cheeks heat at the teasing tone of his voice. Is that a dig at me for calling him old on our way to the castello? “You know, I don’t actually think you’re old.”
His gaze flickers with something dark. “Compared to you, I am.”
I tilt my head to the side. “Let me guess. Thirty?”
“Thirty-three.”
I suppose I can see it, but I have to admit I never thought thirty-three could look this damn good on a man. My eyes drag down his body, and something sparks in the air around us, like a current gone awry.
Giorgio clears his throat and casts a look at the wall. “Is there something particular you’d like to learn today?”
I rake through my brain, looking for an idea. I’m sure if I asked, he’d take the lead, but it feels like I earned this chance to direct the rest of the lesson. Might as well choose something that’s interesting to me.
The obvious thing would be to try and reenact one of the situations with Lazaro, but the thought of attempting that makes my stomach hollow out. I’m nowhere close to ready.
Then it comes to me. A memory from before my life went to shit.
At my private school, there were rarely any fights, but in my third year, there was one fight that everyone talked about for weeks afterward. It broke out in the cafeteria—two guys discovered they were dating the same girl. One of them was the captain of the swim team. The other, an amateur boxer. They threw punches for a little bit, but then the bigger swim captain pinned the boxer to the wall, his hands around his throat. The size difference worked in his favor because the boxer couldn’t reach him in that position. He was turning blue by the time security broke it up. Both of them ended up expelled.
I glance at Giorgio. “How would I get away if someone bigger than me pinned me to a wall?”
His eyes narrow, and his jaw hardens. “Has someone done that to you?” he asks, his voice razor edged.
I shake my head. “No. I just watched a fight once, and the guy who was pinned couldn’t get away.”
His shoulders lower. “That’s what you want to learn?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Go stand by the wall.”
When my back is pressed against the cold plaster and he stops a step away from me, my pulse picks up speed. Suddenly, I’m not so sure this is a good idea. With the wall behind me, there’s nowhere for me to go. My insides flutter with nerves and vulnerability.
“In this fight, how was the guy held?”
“The other one put both hands around his neck.”
Giorgio’s expression grows very serious. Slowly, he brings up his big palms and wraps them lightly around my neck. “Like this?”
My eyes widen as the flutters travel downwards and settle in the place between my legs. An unexpected wave of arousal slams into me, soaking me through with heat, and leaving me hyperaware of how close we are.
I blink. Am I seriously turned on right now? Jesus. So that’s what does it for me—the sensation of a gorgeous Camorrista’s hands wrapped around my neck. No wonder I’ve never felt this way before. No one else in my life would dare touch me like this.
“Yes,” I whisper.
Something licks at the edges of Giorgio’s gaze. His grip tightens around my throat by a minuscule amount, and my skin begins to burn from the inside out. My nipples harden. Thank God, I wore my thickest work-out bra today.
“Grab my right wrist with your right hand,” he instructs, his voice low. “Then use your left hand to grab one of my fingers.”
I take his wrist and reach over my shoulder to slide one of his thick fingers, pressed against the side of my neck, into my palm.
“Now pull, as if you’re trying to break it.”
I swallow, making my throat roll against his palms. “Like this?” Gently, I bend his finger backward.
“Harder.”
The thought of moving the appendage to an unnatural angle makes me wince. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’ll let go of you before you can.”
I’m not sure I want you to let go of me.
“Okay.” I do as he says, and he drops his hands, but he brings them right back up.
“Good. Again.”
His big palms land on my exposed collarbones and then travel up until his thumb and index finger form a collar around my flesh. His forearms flex, making the tendons and the thick veins beneath his skin ripple. His hold on me is light, but if he wanted to, he’d have no problem crushing my windpipe in a second.
The implicit trust between us right now sends my stomach soaring. It’s a cocktail of nerves, fear, anxiety, and something far more tender.
Our eyes clash, his dark and stormy, mine wide and aroused. Shit. Can he tell? Does he know?
His gaze falls to my lips. “Let’s go, Martina.”
We practice a few times. Each time he puts his hands back on my throat, my clit pulsates. Nervous sweat rolls down my back despite the fact we’re hardly moving. I’m afraid he’ll notice and wonder why, but then I realize his own forehead has a sheen to it. He’s sweating too.
As if he’s able to see that observation in my eyes, the next time I do the move, he steps back and lifts the hem of his shirt to wipe at his damp brow.
My eyes blow wide, and I think I stop breathing. His flat, chiseled abs move with each breath, their shape even more defined after the earlier crunches he did beside me. I let out a slow breath through my lips.
My God.
I shake my head, trying to focus on the task at hand. I’m supposed to be training, not ogling his body, but it’s hard to ignore the way his abs glisten with sweat in the light of the gym. My gaze catches on a thin scar just above his belly button, a line of slightly raised skin that’s a shade lighter than the rest.
“Where did you get that?” I ask before I think better of it.
He lets his shirt fall back down his body and looks at me. “What?”
“That scar above your belly button.”
The moment the words leave my mouth, I realize I just admitted I was checking him out. I wonder if that’s what injects that extra dose of intensity in his gaze, or if it’s the memory of how he got the scar.
He drags an absentminded hand over his abdomen and saves me from marinating in my embarrassment by answering.
“I got it the year I got made.”
Curiosity stirs beneath my skin. “How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
Wow. He’s been made for as long as I’ve been alive. “Did you know how to fight back then?”
A hint of amusement flickers inside his eyes. “No. I got my ass kicked a lot in the beginning because I never had to deal on the streets. The others resented the fact that I got to sit behind computer screens all day. The first year was the worst. One night, I was coming back to my apartment, and three guys ambushed me. It was payday, so they wanted my envelope of cash, but they also wanted to prove a point. I fought them, badly. They had the upper hand within seconds. Things could have ended up way worse if it wasn’t for my old boss putting a tail on me.”
“Sal?”
“No, this was when I was still part of the Secondigliano Alliance. The area capo valued me, and he knew I had a target on my back, so he got one of his guys to keep an eye out. That’s what saved me that night. I started learning martial arts soon after.”
It amazes me that Giorgio knows what it’s like to be overpowered. These days, I can’t imagine him on the losing side of a fight.
“Let’s go again,” he says, but I shake my head.
“It’s too easy. A bit contrived, don’t you think? In a real attack, the person wouldn’t patiently wait while I try to do all the steps.”
He crosses his arms over his chest. “What are you saying?”
I blink a few times as I try to gather the courage to say my next sentence. “Do it like it’s real. Move faster. Use more force.”
I can tell the moment he decides it’s a bad idea. There’s a shuttering in his gaze. “This is only our second class.”
“I just want to try it once. If you really want this to be helpful to me, the intensity needs to be on par with a real attack. Otherwise, I’ll freeze.”
A puff of air escapes past his lips, but he doesn’t refuse once more like I’m half-expecting. He considers it, and then he drops his arms back to his sides and says, “Just once.”
A shiver runs up my spine. I don’t know why I want this, or what I’m hoping to get out of it, but this is the first time since New York that I’ve felt something that might qualify as real excitement.
Giorgio moves into position before me. “I’ll count until three. Do whatever you need to get away, all right? Remember what I taught you.”
“Got it.”
He counts down, and when he reaches “three,” he lunges at me, grabbing me by the neck, and pressing the length of his body against mine.
All air is pushed out of my lungs.
My adrenaline spikes, and for a moment, I’m just flailing blindly against him. All of my training is forgotten, and instinct takes over. I try to tear his hands off me, try to kick at his legs. When I land a kick to his shin, he grunts and slides a rock-hard thigh between my legs.
“Are you going to fight me or just annoy me?” he hisses in my ear.
What the— Is he taunting me?
It’s enough to screw a few bolts back into place. I take his right wrist with my right hand. Grab one of his fingers.
Approval flashes in the depths of his eyes. “Good girl.”
Those two words have an unexpected effect on me, but I don’t let it distract me. I pull. Hard.
He drops one hand, but he doesn’t back away like before. Instead, he moves his other palm to cover more of my neck, his body still pinning me to the wall.
Our eyes clash together.
The inches of space between us seem to shrink.
His gaze falls to my lips.
I’ve caught him doing that before a few times, and every time he does it, a steady pulse appears between my legs.
I wonder if he thinks about kissing me.
Probably not. I’d put the chance of that at 0.01%.
But even that tiny, tiny chance that he might be thinking about it makes me feel unbearably alive.
I use the same move on the remaining hand, and it works.
Yes.
He releases me and I hop away. “I did it!”
Giorgio smiles. Dear God, he smiles.
“Really good work.” His warm hands land on the tops of my shoulders.
My heart pounds out an unsteady rhythm as I gape at him. How dare he just toss that smile at me like it’s no big deal? Legally, it needs to come with a warning.
“Thank you,” I manage to mutter.
He nods but keeps his hands on me. One second. Two seconds. Three.
He’s…lingering. Isn’t he?
“That’s enough for today,” he says finally, his voice low.
“O-okay,” I stutter.
At last, he lets go.
I return to my room with my heart still pounding in my chest and the ghost of his touch still burning through my clothes.
