Page 26 of Her Mountain Man Protector

"Shoes off," he says. "You'll slip. Hoodie too."

I kick the boots under the table. The hoodie comes off over my head and leaves me in the Equinox shirt. His gaze snags on my throat and jumps to the far wall so fast I almost thank the timber.

"Come here."

I do as he says. The floor is cool under my socks. He's close enough that I have to tip my head back, close enough that the heat off his chest is a fact I can feel along my collarbones.

"First thing. You don't win a fight with your attacker. You make space and you run to a door. That's the whole assignment."

"Romantic."

"Effective. Wrist."

He takes my right wrist. His hand is huge and careful. My pulse kicks against his thumb. I hate that he can feel it. I hate more that I don't pull away.

"If somebody grabs you like this, you don't tug straight back. You go toward the thumb, turn, and drop your weight. Try."

I tug straight back first because I'm me. Nothing happens except my shoulder complains.

"I said toward the thumb."

"You said a lot of things. I'm prioritizing."

His mouth twitches. He resets the grip, slower this time, and the reset is worse than the grab. All that attention focused on one narrow band of skin. I turn into the thumb the way he showed me, drop, and my wrist slides free with a little shocked sound falling out of my mouth.

"Again," he says.

We do it again. Left wrist. Right. He changes the angle. I miss on purpose once to feel him correct me, which is a filthy little experiment, and he notices. Of course he notices.

"Don't perform it," he says, voice gone low. "Do it. If I were trying, you wouldn't get the second chance."

"If you were trying I'd already be on the floor."

"Yes."

The yes lands between us, heavy and unvarnished. I swallow. "Show me the part where I make space."

He steps behind me. One palm settles at my waist, the other loosely circling both of my wrists in front of us, and the entire long line of him warms my back from shoulder blades to hips. I stop thinking in complete sentences. The room narrows to cotton and breath and the scrape of his jaw when he tips his head to speak near my ear.

"Stamp a foot if you have to. Elbow back into the body. Then you run. You don't stay to see if it worked."

"Stamp. Elbow. Run."

"Do it."

I stamp. I throw the elbow with more sincerity than grace. He absorbs it with a grunt that vibrates through my spine, and his hold loosens enough that I can twist out and put two steps of floor between us. My hair has come down. I'm breathing too fast for a room this small. He's breathing like he didn't, which is infuriating.

"Again," I say.

"You got out."

"Again, Hawthorne. I want to become muscle memory."

He comes in from the front this time. Both hands up, showing me, then his right closes around my upper arm. I go for the thumb and miss because he's ready. He turns me without effort, and suddenly my back hits his chest again and both my wrists are crossed in front of me and his mouth is right there at my temple.

"This is what happens when you expect it," he says.

"Then stop enjoying the demonstration."