Page 118 of Legacy Elite

That stops me.

Because I was expecting this is training, or you're a second-year, or one of the flat deflections he's been handing me since September.

"Then what are you doing?"

He doesn't answer that either.

That's the whole answer, actually. He doesn't have one. Evren Soren, who has an answer for everything, who corrects people's stances in nine words, who has never once in his life been caught without a position — is standing on a mat in the cold with his hand on me and no idea what he's doing.

So I stop waiting.

I get my other hand into his collar and I pull him down.

He comes.

God, he comes fast — for about half a second there's a hesitation and then it's gone and his mouth is on mine and his hand slides from my waist to the small of my back and pulls me in hard against him. God, he is big everywhere.

He kisses like he does everything. Precisely. Absolutely no question about whether he knows what he's doing — and it's about four seconds before I understand that the precision is the restraint, that he is holding this together on purpose, and that there is a great deal underneath it.

So I bite his lip.

The control goes.

His hand comes up into my hair and he tilts my head how he wants me. Then he backs me into the equipment rack and it rattles against the fence, and his mouth opens over mine and he stops being careful.

I get both hands under the edge of his shirt.

His skin is burning.

"Jessica—"

"Don't stop."

"I'm not—" He's breathing like the course. His forehead comes down against mine. "I'm not stopping."

"You sound like a man who's stopping."

"I'm being slow."

"I hate slow—"

"I've noticed," Soren says, and kisses me again, and his hand slides down my back and over my hip and grips, and my whole body arches into him.

The pull is screaming.

That's the part I can't explain. It's not the kiss. I've kissed people. It's that everything under my ribs has caught fire and is pulling toward him like something being reeled in, and his hands have gone tight enough that I'll have marks, and I know — I know completely, I have never been more certain of anything — that if I said one more sentence right now he'd have me on the ground and neither of us would care who was watching.

I open my mouth to say it.

And Soren stops.

He pulls back about six inches. Both hands still on me. Breathing hard.

"No," he says.

"You have got to be kidding me."

"I'm not."