She let out a sigh and shook off her coat, as he had, shivering. For once, her hair wasn’t pinned back. It lay loose around her collar.
She looked painfully beautiful this way: pink-nosed, curls wild, her borrowed blouse too big for her, slipping down slightly over one shoulder. She pushed the sleeve up.
“Widen your stance,” Patrick said. “One foot in front, one behind.”
She lifted her skirt to see her boots, then planted her feet.
“Dukes up, in front of your chin.”
She held limp fists close to her face, elbows tucked tightly into her body.
“Lord almighty,” he said, and he took one of her fists in his grasp and pried the fingers back. He pulled her thumb free, touched each delicate knuckle. “Never tuck your thumb, Nina. No wonder you broke it.”
“Hurt like hell,” she recalled, looking at his fingers too long. Swallowing. Without exception, being this close to her invaded his senses, tripped his self-control. He backed away. “Did you leave a bruise, at least?”
“Not even a shadow.”
Patrick groaned. “It’s a miracle you made it out alive.”
“I can land a fair kick,” she grinned. “Kick a boy in the groin and you don’t need fists.” Her eyes traveled south, below his belt.
He resisted the urge to wince. “Can’t argue with that,” he said. “Though I’ll warn you. Try and sneak one in, and I’ll pin you down.”
Her eyes flared.
Damn it. Where was that line he’d drawn?
Patrick held his hands up, swallowing the rush of desire that had pooled in his mouth. “Give it all you’ve got.”
She breathed, then reeled back and threw a fist into his waiting palm. It wasn’t so terrible. But he was a man of very little discipline, apparently, so he rolled his eyes and said, “A wet fish would slap harder.”
She gasped, huffing into the cold air, and lifted her fists again. The next blow was a little heavier. Enough to rattle teeth if it landed on someone’s jaw. But she was too easy to rile up. And it was too easy for Patrick to fall back into this temptation. “Would it help to picture Arlo instead of me?” he said.
She punched again, grunting. “Keep talkin’, and it’ll be inspiration enough.”
And there was the slip, back into that tongue she’d had when he’d met her. He hid a grin.
Another punch. This time, he caught her hand and threw it away. “Ah,come on, Scurry girl. I know you got some of that Eastern blood in you somewhere.”
This time, she advanced before he put his hand up, and he had to lean away to avoid her fist. She advanced again, this time aiming for his jaw. He had to block it. “Whoa.”
Her leg kicked out, her boot aiming for his groin. He hit it away, smiling, and had her wrapped up in the next second, colliding against the inner walls of the smoker’s hole, one of her wrists trapped in his hand and pinned beside her head. The other caught between his chest and hers. His arm all the way around her waist.
The tin walls rattled threateningly, and all the breath punched out of her. Her eyes were wide with surprise, then unshrouded humor.
“The last rule is to not tell the man you’re fighting that you’ll kick him in the groin. Otherwise, he’ll know to anticipate it.”
He watched the planes of her face, the flakes of snow stuck in her hair, lips turned upward in a smile that couldn’t last. After a few moments, it descended again. A sinking raft. Nothing, not even he, could hold her afloat for long.
She let her forehead fall to his chest, giving in to gravity. She gasped in and out, her whole body slackening. She was all around him, and he all around her.
Patrick made himself retract. He dropped her waist, let her hand fall from his grasp. He stepped away from her and cleared his throat.
His mind churned with indecent images of all the things he could do to her here. Now. He turned his back to scrub his face.
His heart hammered, blood washed his veins, and he almost turned back. Almost.
“You were wrong before,” she said from behind him.
