Page 122 of Devil Mine

She puts the ring on me voluntarily and that does something absolutely devastating to my insides.

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Chapter Forty-Seven

Thiago

“Come on. Outside,” I order, slapping her ass sharply when I walk past her.

Tess jolts forward and yelps, covering her backside with her hands and turning towards me with narrowed eyes.

“That stings.”

“Consider it a part of your self-defense training then.”

She groans, dropping her toast on her plate. “I’m eating breakfast.”

“And it’ll still be there when we’re done, right Diana?”

My housekeeper nods, a bemused look splashed across her face at our easy interaction. The household staff in general have all been giving me similar looks lately, almost like they don’t recognize me.

“Fine, but be careful what you teach me,” she warns, pointing at me as she follows me into our backyard. “I might turn around and use it against you.”

I chuckle, spreading my arms and walking backwards. “If you can defend yourself against me then I’ll consider myself an excellent teacher and my job will be done.”

“You say that now, but wait until I kick your ass.”

It’s been a week and a half since the attack at Tess’s office. She wouldn’t stand for it when I suggested that maybe she should wait a couple days before going back, reminding me that her job was hers and I wasn’t allowed to tell her what to do. She was right, so instead I’d ordered Arturo to accompany her as her bodyguard. There was no way I was letting her back in that building, or frankly anywhere else out of my sight, without an armed escort.

I don’t know which of the two had been more annoyed by the assignment, him or her, but when she realized I wasn’t going to change my mind, she acquiesced. They’d settled into a Cold War-like relationship that included a lot of bickering every night when they came back from her office. But she had the peace of mind she needed to focus on her work and she was being kept safe which is what I needed to let her leave my sight.

Still, the whole incident was hard for me to shake, especially with everything going on with the business. We’d had three shipments attacked in the last month, including one that took down an entire warehouse and cost millions of pounds. It isn’t unusual to have some shipments targeted, but the rate at which it’s happened since I first left for Spain has been alarming. As has the fact that the dates of those shipments were never publicly declared. There are a number of people in the cartel who were aware of them – lieutenants, crew, shippers, distributors, accountants – so any one of them could have sold us out, I just can’t see who or why.

With the cartel under attack, Tess’s safety is even more at the forefront of my concerns, which is why I’ve decided to teach her a few self-defense pointers in the unlikely but incredibly terrifying event that she finds herself without myself or Arturo to protect her.

Tess stands in the middle of the backyard, wearing leggings and a tight workout tee and holding a water bottle as she watches me prowl around her. My eyes drop to her ass. I have to rein my focus back from going somewhere X-rated.

“Alright. Obviously, you’re not going to turn into a martial artist overnight, so we’re just going to focus on teaching you the basics of self-defense.”

Arturo leans against the doorframe of the glass double doors leading out into the garden. Marco follows him out and drops down on the small steps that connect the two spaces, biting into an apple and grinning at the scene before him.

“Why do I need to learn self-defense when you’ve given me my very own shadow?” she says, waving at Arturo. “He has a gun. It doesn’t need to be ornamental, he should feel free to use it if the occasion arises.”

“If any of my men are with you, they’ll defend you with their lives. This is worst case scenario planning, in the event something happens that would see us separated.” She swallows, something approaching fear flashing in her eyes. “I wouldn’t let it happen easily,amor, I promise you that. But the chances aren’t zero so I can’t ignore it.”

The second I frame it in stats, her brow smooths.

“I understand,” she says, turning and setting her bottle on the grass behind her. “So where do we star–”

Her words cut off with a sharp cry when I sneak up behind her, lock my forearm around her throat and yank her backwards against my chest. My lips press against the shell of her ear. “The first lesson is to never turn your back on someone, whether you think you trust them or not,” I say, grazing her ear. “They’ll make you pay for that mistake. You have to always be at the ready.Oof.”

The wind expulses from my lungs when she elbows me swiftly in the stomach, surprising me. I make out Arturo chuckling in the background, but I don’t release her.

“Good!” I praise. “Good reflexes. Reacting quickly and precisely like that is perfect. You want to catch your attacker off guard.”

“Not very effective though,” she answers. Both her hands hold on to my forearm and try to pry it off. “I didn’t manage to get you to release me.”

“No, but you stunned me, which is the first step. The key to self-defense is using the hardest parts of your body as weapons. They’re going to inflict the most damage. Your elbows. Your knees. And in this case, your head.” My other hand comes around her front and lightly clasps the underside of her jaw, using it to move her head back and forth. “Once you’ve stunned me, you thrust your head backwards as hard as you can and you headbutt me. That’ll break my nose. It also works if you’re facing your attacker. Go ahead and try.”

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