Page 26 of What About Love

He rose to his full height, his head tilting slightly. Then he chuckled. “Does come at me work better?”

She glared at him. Scowling when his laughter went beyond a mere chuckle bursting free of his lungs and rocking him back on his heels.

“It wasn’t as funny as all that,” she muttered.

T didn’t answer, he couldn’t, bending forward with his hands on his knees and convulsing in a fit of hilarity. Definitely not of the same opinion, she crossed her arms and waited.

“Can we get to work, please?” she asked a moment later.

“Sorry, but the look on your face—” He stood again, beginning to wind down, although chuckles continued to roll out. After staring at her for a moment with a wide, goofy grin, he bent and swept up the headgear from the mat where he’d dropped it. Settling it on her head, he winked. “From now on, I’ll call it a takedown, darlin’.”

“Whatever,” she muttered, but when she glanced away, her mouth curved upward.

His grin softened. It was small, but after this morning, he’d consider any progress a win.

***

FULL OF PENT-UP FRUSTRATION, and let’s face it, awe—he was a gorgeous man, but when he laughed, he was stunning—Angie closed those feelings away and lunged forward. With her foot between his, she bent into a crouch while shoving her shoulder against his hip and wrapping him up with both arms. Her double take-down maneuver rarely failed even against a larger opponent. Six and a half feet, two hundred seventy-five-pound walls of muscle were the exception, evidently.

Long arms snaked around her waist and lifted her off her feet. A second later, she felt the mat at her back in the gentlest body slam she’d ever experienced in her years of police work.

T’s grinning face appeared above her. “Nice try, though a double won’t help when the brute is twice your size.” He extended his hand. When she grabbed hold, he hauled her to her feet.

He took the same wide stance, his fingers curling in a come-and-get-me motion. “Try again.”

She didn’t wait, throwing a right. As he blocked it, she swept his opposite leg with her own. Or at least she tried to. He went down with her but rolled, pressing her onto the mat with his big body. As if that wasn’t enough, he threw a leg over hers and came up on his knees, straddling her as he pinned her wrists beside her head, completely immobilizing her.

Another of her best moves had failed miserably.

Her breath caught when he flashed his brilliant white, toothpaste-ad-perfect grin at her.

“Leg sweep. Effective, if I didn’t outweigh you by what—” He paused for a slow up-and-down perusal of her frame. “A buck fifty?”

“Let me up.”

He dipped his head, his nose almost touching hers. His breath, fresh and sweet like mint, brushed her face. Damn, the man was killing her.

“Fight dirty, baby,” he urged. “Go for the throat, the eyes, the balls. Don’t worry about hurting me. This is your chance. When I get mine tonight, you better believe I’m taking it.”

As his meaning hit home, she arched, trying to knock him off-balance so she could flip him over, but that, too, was a waste of energy.

“Get off,” she protested with a grunt.

He rolled away. As he did, she hopped on his back. Her arm wrapped around his throat, her free hand curling, ready to go for an eye. That’s when she made a costly error by not going in for the kill. He was right; she didn’t want to hurt him or truly gouge out his eyes, so she clamped her hand around his jaw, trying for a head twist instead.

Yet again, he got the upper hand by dropping onto his back. As his weight hit the mat on top of her, it knocked the breath from her lungs and he broke free. For the third time in a matter of minutes, Angie found herself pinned to the floor with T straddling her.

“Better,” he praised, before he popped to his feet and dragged her up with him. “Again. But don’t wimp out this time. Go for it.”

They spent the next hour engaged in hand-to-hand combat, or H2H, as he called it, which mostly consisted of Angie horizontal and winded. Despite her total humiliation at being pancaked between a human mountain and the equally unyielding floor, she enjoyed the exertion. Saying nothing of the feel of his body against hers, his muscles flexing beneath her hands, his face a breath away, and his mocha-brown eyes gleaming with as much exhilaration as she knew glimmered in her own.

During their sparring, she also discovered a sexy dimple appeared in his cheek when he smiled from time to time. It was that look which really made her want to jump his bones the most. She didn’t pin him once, but at the end of their time, he still said, “Good job.”

While he stood over her, unfazed, not even breathing hard, it left her gasping, her body aching and exhausted.

“You’ve got thirty minutes to shower,” he advised, his hand extended downward to help her up.

She studied it for a moment and heaved an exhausted sigh. “I’m too tired to move. Have someone come back in an hour and scrape me off the floor.”

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