Marissa was right. He felt more uncomfortable with her being in a place like that than she did.
Damn it.
“Anyway,” V muttered, “you two need to talk now. And I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I thought I was helping. I just wanted to point out to her that she’s your type. She’s your girl. You don’t need anything more or less from her.”
“That is true.” He patted around for his cell phone. “She was going to work, yeah?”
“Yeah. That’s what she said when she left.”
“I’ll call her.” As V punched up out of the chair, Butch offered his palm. “We’re good, my man. It’s my own damn fault. I should have told her, I guess. It’s just anything that was before her doesn’t matter, you know?”
V slapped palms. “I feel like fucking shit about this. If you want a rythe, let me know.”
“Nah, but you may have to pick up my dry cleaning for a month.”
“Doesn’t Fritz do that already?”
“It’s a human joke.”
“Ah, which is why it wasn’t funny.” V walked over to the glass door. “When do you want that night off again so you can go to that club?”
“Might as well be tomorrow. What the hell.”
“Okay. I’m taking the class to spar in the gym. Then Z is going to talk about poisoning people—you sure I don’t need to get a food taster?”
“You’re good. But if Z needs someone to practice on, let’s get Lassiter to be the guinea pig.”
“Done. So fucking done.”
As Vishous walked off and the door shut silently, Butch called his mate and prayed she picked up. When things just went to voice mail, he cursed and hoped that it was because she was in a meeting and not because she was so pissed off she’d blocked him.
She wouldn’t do that. Surely, she wouldn’t.
Then again …
“Shit.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Talk about adding a layer of excitement to every single second.
As Paradise went through a sparring session in the gym, and then a truly eye-opening class on how to kill things with lotions and potions, she felt like she had the most amazing secret on the planet. With every punch and kick thrown, with each note taken, question asked, and answer given to her, she had to fight to keep a smile off her face.
And part of that was that she knew Craeg was exactly the same.
From time to time, she’d catch him looking over at her with hooded eyes that suggested whatever he was thinking of, it wasn’t the lesson at hand.
Instead, he was obviously back in the dark, on the phone. With her.
And gee, it was no surprise that her body wanted more of him again—so badly, in fact, that she squirmed and cracked her back and had to readjust stances and sitting positions pretty much constantly.
Nobody else seemed to know, however—although maybe that was self-delusion. And if it wasn’t? Screw it. Before she’d left her house to dematerialize to the bus, she’d reread the application forms and the disclosures—namely all the stuff she hadn’t shown her father because she hadn’t wanted to spook him—and there was no mention of a policy prohibiting relationships.
Or romantic attachments.
Or … whatever it was they were doing.
So they were legal as far as the regs went. They were also both of age, and yeah, sure, the idea of Peyton and Anslam finding out presented a potential complication with the glymera, but 1) she had so much dirt on Peyton that she could blackmail him into silence if she had to, and 2) Anslam was your typical, self-involved son of privilege who wasn’t going to notice a pink elephant in the room unless it in some way benefited him.
When the final leg of the evening arrived, she walked into the weight room with Craeg ahead of her, and she allowed herself a rare ogle, measuring the breadth of his shoulders, and his towering height, and the way he walked with such leashed power.
And yup, that spectacular ass of his.
Wow.
But then it was all business as the Brother Butch gave them their marching orders, assigning people to various machines and free weights.
“Paradise, you’re running tonight,” he said, pointing over to the treadmills. “One hour. Break at twenty and forty for water. No incline during warm-up.”
Heading across the mats, she hopped up on the nearest machine, put the stop key in, and programmed the computer for sixty minutes at a stiff clip. As the band started to whiz along, she jumped on and fell into a rhythm that was rougher than usual—then again, her thighs were tired from her having crouched in the defensive position earlier in the evening. That got better soon, though, the platform bouncing and whining to the beat of her Brooks Glycerin 12s, her breathing becoming deeper and deeper.
Craeg ended up at the squat station.
Talk about a show of shows.
The amount of weight he could handle was so great, Butch and Tohr ended up spotting him, one on each side, just in case he lost control of what had to be six hundred pounds. Positioning himself under the supported bar, he put both hands up with the wrists out, puffed some air, and grunted as he freed the load and accepted it with his body. Instantly, his face turned red and his neck muscles and veins popped as he backed up two feet to assume a stable stance.
Up …
… down.
Up …
… down.
In spite of the way he trembled on the surface of his skin, his large muscles and iron torso were rock-solid as he hefted the bar over and over again. Sweat began to run down his face, not that he appeared to notice, and there was no way she wasn’t trying to imagine what his massive thigh muscles looked like under the uniform’s supposedly loose pants: Those things went tight as a second skin as he dropped down because of how big his muscles got. In fact, he looked as if he were going to split them wide—