AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For years I had been wondering what it would be like to tell August about the horrible things that had happened to me. I wondered how he would respond, how he would treat me afterward. Nothing could have prepared me for the pity in his gaze or the tenacious way he declared kind promises that felt hollow to me. I wanted to believe that this wouldn’t change how he viewed me, but we didn’t even have a baseline for normalcy anymore. I was once the girl that loved him, then I became the girl that ran away.
Now I was the murderer determined to flee again.
“You aren’t even trying,” Leo said. He hovered over me, his hands pressing into the mat beside my head as he looked me in the eye. “I know you’re more than capable of taking me down, so why are you just letting me kick your ass?”
I rolled my eyes and shoved him off of me before standing up. “I’m not in the mood to train today,” I said before walking over to a water bottle and taking a sip.
When I spun around to look at him, he had a scowl on his perfect face. Strands of blond hair had fallen out of the messy bun he’d tied up on top of his head, and beads of sweat rolled down his exposed chest. “You’re not in the mood?” he asked incredulously. “Well, then get in the fucking mood. You need to keep your body conditioned.”
He lunged for me and I let out a sigh before thrusting my water bottle at the ground and widening my stance. Just moments before he punched me in the ribs, I lifted my hands to block him. His blow landed on my forearm, and I grew cold. “You’re pissing me off, Leo!”
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand before crouching. “Good.”
He kicked me in the stomach, knocking the air out of me for a brief moment. I wrapped my hands around his shin and jerked him forward, forcing him to lose his balance and fall on the ground. He let out a choked moan when he hit the mat. He looked up at me with his striking green eyes and smirked. “You’re quick.”
“I’m lethal,” I snarled. “I spent three years training, Leo.”
“How did your other coach teach you?” he asked before rolling onto his back. I thought he was about to get up, but instead, he whipped his legs around and knocked them into my ankle, sending me to the ground with a grunt. He scooted closer and locked his arms around me.
“He beat the shit out of me. Over and over again. Till it stopped hurting,” I answered him. “He taught me how to fight by breaking me—” My words were cut off with a grunt when he locked his thighs around my lower body. I could feel his hard cock digging into my ass. I arched my back, making him hiss. “—breaking me down and building me back up.”
Leo brushed his lips over the shell of my ear, sending a shiver down my spine. “Looks like I have you pinned,” he said. His cocky tone made me grin.
“It would appear that way,” I agreed. I jerked my head back, but instead of hitting him in the nose, I clipped his jaw, making my skull throb.
“I saw that one coming,” he preened.
I licked my lips and stretched my neck. “Bet you won’t see this.” I chomped down on the top of his hand, sinking my teeth into his tender flesh until blood poured into my mouth. I spit it out as he let me go with a yelp.
“What the fuck, Christine?” he roared before sitting up and holding his bleeding hand to his chest.
I whirled around and slammed my fist into his jaw. The whiplash from my hit sent his head back. I laughed as he recovered, blinking a few times while his brain rattled. “Want to keep going, or are you done?” I asked, polishing my nails on my tank.
He groaned and rubbed his jaw with the one hand that wasn’t bleeding everywhere while staring incredulously at me. “What the fuck was that for? We were just practicing!”
“You fight how you practice, Leo. Can’t hold back.”
He stood up and grabbed my discarded water bottle on the floor. Pouring it onto his hand, he cleaned the bite wound and inspected the deep teeth marks there. “I might need stitches!” He glared at me and I shrugged. “You’ve got some blood on your chin.”
I lifted up the hem of my tank top and wiped my mouth. “Better?” He gulped at my toned stomach, and I casually lifted my tank a little higher, showing him the bottom of my bra. “Like what you see?” I asked.
“Don’t tease me. It’s not right,” he croaked.
“I’m not teasing.”
Leo looked exasperated, his wide eyes staring at me like he wasn’t sure what to do. “Augustus made it clear that I need to stay away from you. He’s a brat that doesn’t like when others look at his toys. The only reason I’m here is because his mother is determined for you to keep up with your training and conditioning.”
I matched his frown with an equal look of annoyance. “Don’t look at me like that. I had a long day yesterday, and you pulled me out of bed before sunrise. The queen wants me to meet with a wedding planner this morning, a journalist wants an exclusive interview, and don’t get me started on all the damn staged public appearances.”
Leo sat down on the mat, his legs bent and planted on the floor as he rested his forearms on his knees, his jaw already blooming with a bruise. “I figured after yesterday, maybe you needed an outlet. Thought sparring would help, but obviously I was wrong.”
I chewed on my lip before walking over to him. “It was never an outlet for me,” I admitted.
A look of surprise crossed his features. “Then what was it?”
“Survival,” I said, my voice curt. “I knew I needed to be the strongest person in the room. If King Frederick ever came looking for me, I wasn’t going to die without a fight.”
Leo looked up at me, his intense green gaze absorbing every aspect of my expression. “Why did you come back when the queen summoned you for the funeral? It would have been easy for you to stay behind.”
