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He’d learned how to take a no and roll with it, but for some reason, he couldn’t seem to shake off the devastation that had settled over him the night before, and that pissed him off.
How dare Jeremiah touch his face so gently, tell him he didn’t think he was weak, and then kiss him, only to flee like the entire thing had been a horrifying mistake.
Remi had half a mind to get the man fired, but as the day had progressed, he’d realized he couldn’t do that no matter how upset he was. The idea of not seeing Jeremiah’s scowling face lurking around the palace he loved and feared in equal measure wasn’t something he could handle.
He knew it would happen eventually. He wasn’t delusional.
Jeremiah and his team were too good not to figure out who was after Remi and his family. And once they did and neutralized the threat, there wouldn’t be a need for Jeremiah to be there anymore. He and his team would go back to wherever it was they’d come from, Sadie and Percy would get to come home, and Remi… Well, he supposed he would go back to school and try to figure out how the hell he was supposed to be king one day.
But knowing that at some point in the future Jeremiah would leave wasn’t the same as forcing him to go. He couldn’t do it.
Just the idea made his heart race, his lungs struggling to draw full breaths.
Jeremiah might have run off after their last training session, but Remi was serious about wanting to learn to protect himself. To protect his brother and sister, if need be. He wanted to stop simply being a liability. He wanted to feel strong and powerful.
If Jeremiah no longer wanted to teach him, he’d find somebody else, but a not-small part of him wanted it to be his grumpy Hellhound. As hard as it had been the day before and as much as his muscles ached from the strain, he wanted to spend the extra time near him, having Jeremiah’s hot hands on his skin as he corrected his form or they sparred.
Was he a despicable person for wanting that with a man who had turned tail and run at the idea of kissing him? Maybe. But Remi was just enough of the selfish prince people saw him as to decide he was going to go after what he wanted anyway. It was so damn rare for him to actually get what he wanted he was going to hold on with both hands until Jeremiah told him to stop.
Straightening his shoulders, he took one more deep breath and then strode into the gym like his nerves weren’t on high alert and his skin prickling.
The second he entered the room, Jeremiah froze, his head twisting around, and bright, glowing blue eyes landed right on him. He wondered if Jeremiah felt it too, if he had sensed Remi come into the gym rather than hear or smell him.
But he was too afraid to ask.
Partially because he didn’t know what it meant, but mostly because he was afraid of the answer, afraid that Jeremiah would say no. He would rather go on thinking they had some undefinable connection than know for sure that it was completely one-sided.
“What is it, Remi?” Jeremiah growled at him, turning to face him head-on and swiping at his sweaty brow with his forearm.
Remi tried not to stare at what he was wearing. The thin gray sweatpants molded to every muscle in his thick thighs, and the big gaping holes down his sides where the sleeves had been torn off his old T-shirt. It felt scandalous to see so much of the bare skin of his torso, despite the fact that Jeremiah saw a lot more of Remi when he swam in the pool.
In fact, he’d seen all of Remi when he went for his dip in the fountain.
But up until that point, he’d never seen anything other than Jeremiah’s forearms.
He could see hints of his ridged abdomen when he moved, but what caught and held his attention when Jeremiah raised his arm was the large black-and-gray tattoo all down his side.
Remi had never seen a fully shifted Hellhound before the day of the shooting, but he recognized Jeremiah’s hound, shivering as he remembered the huge animal panting and growling as he’d stood between Remi and danger. The rolling heat from the flames dancing down his black-furred back had been intense.
Why would Jeremiah ink his shifted form into his skin? Was it a Hellhound thing, or had Jeremiah chosen to do it, to mark himself for some reason with the beast inside him so many feared?
The snarling face was terrifying, but it was also… beautiful. The details were amazingly captured—from the long, sharp claws to the wet-looking fangs bared in anger. The wisps of smoke rising from the beast’s back and ears looked delicate, belying the truth behind its fiery danger.
Gods, all Remi wanted to do was run his tongue over the ink.
Swallowing, he dragged his eyes away, forcing himself to look Jeremiah in the face. He ignored the frown that had somehow deepened in the moment it had taken Remi to answer and spit out the words he’d been practicing for an hour.
“You’re still going to teach me self-defense.”
Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed, and he took a step forward, his hands fisted at his sides. “It isn’t a good idea—”
Remi didn’t give him a chance to finish. Lifting his chin, he said clearly, “You’re going to teach me, or I’ll find somebody who will.”
“All of my men are too busy to—”
“Greg said he would.” Remi let the lie hang in the air between them, watching Jeremiah’s flushed cheeks darken with anger and his eyes start to glow with blue flames once more.
A thrilling shiver of awareness raced down his spine. Jeremiah truly seemed jealous of his relationship with his old bodyguard.
