“I’m not gonna make it through tonight,” he groaned. “Fuck, I can barely walk.”

Her sexy little laugh, distorted through that speaker, made him sway in his New Rocks.

Holy. Shit.

“Have you made friends in your class?”

As her father put out the inquiry, Paradise sat back in the club chair in his study. Tucking her socked feet under her, she wondered exactly how to answer him—and prayed as he rifled through the papers on his desk that he didn’t look up and see her blush.

Yup, how to answer that one, she thought.

She and Craeg had spent the last two mornings talking on the phone, speaking for hours as well as … doing other things. So yes, they were friends of a sort—and she had plans to see him in person again, both tonight and tomorrow during the day.

This was what her little impromptu meeting with her father was about.

If she didn’t get some skin-to-skin contact again soon, she was going to lose her mind. Phone sex was great unless you’d had the real thing.

Or almost had it.

“Paradise? Are you all right?”

She shook herself and made a show of getting out of the chair and going to the cheerful, crackling fire. The cold front that had come in the day before had gotten into the walls of the Tudor, and there were chills lurking everywhere in the house—something that would be a constant until spring’s warm weather came in May.

So she had the perfect excuse to turn away from him as she picked up the poker and rearranged the logs.

“Oh, yes, I’ve met some lovely people and I’m enjoying the classes very much.” As well as the sneak peeks of Craeg. “It’s amazing the things I didn’t know.”

“For example?”

Well, if she purred into the phone and told Craeg everything she wasn’t wearing, it was a guarantee that he’d—

As orange sparks fell into the smoldering ashes, she stopped that line of thought right quick. “Hand-to-hand combat is a science, Father. I’d never watched MMA fighting before, or learned anything about the different styles of engagement. They’re teaching us various disciplines, and each one has its own strengths and weaknesses. I spar with Peyton and this other male, Craeg, a lot.”

Placing the poker back in the brass stand, she pivoted around and returned to the chair. “I am very, very good at it—”

She stopped talking as she realized her father had frozen in the process of moving one sheet of paper into a pile, the bill or account statement or whatever it was hanging in the air along with his arm.

The expression on his face was akin to someone having told him his house was about to be bulldozed by humans.

“Father…” she said. “I’m really happy. I’m really … I’m learning about myself, who I am, what I want, what I can do.”

He glanced at the document as if wondering what it was doing in front of him, hovering in the air. Then he seemed to snap himself back to attention.

Clearing his throat, he asked, “And what conclusions are you coming to?”

Well, the big one was that she was probably falling in love with Craeg. But considering that was going to make her father go worse than dad-statue, she needed to keep that quiet—plus she hadn’t told Craeg yet, and it seemed appropriate that he be the first to know.

Falling in love. Such a huge thing, and yet so simple, too.

And quick, yes. But she had heard when bonding happened, it could be like this.

“Well, I want to do some good for the species,” she said.

“Exactly how?”

“Father, that doesn’t mean fighting in the war.”

“Considering you were just speaking about how good you were at…” He rubbed his temple. “I guess I should have expected this.”

“Expected what?”

“Your changing directions. What I was unclear on was how it was going to make me feel.”

“I’m not changing anything.”

God, that was a lie even to her own ears: She wasn’t sure what her future looked like, or who precisely she was going to be at the end of the training program—however long it lasted—but she wasn’t going back to the way she had been.

Those nights of being a proper female sitting in this house, or any other, waiting for the chance to come down to some social gathering was not it. And yes, that decision not to get mated—except to Craeg—had stuck.

“I wish your mahmen was still with us.”

“Me, too.” But for another reason than the one he was thinking of, no doubt. Paradise could have used some love advice. “I miss her.”

“Do you know that we were well and truly in love? We had been appropriately matched by our families, but … we really did fall in love. She was my everything.”

God … damn it, she thought. His subtle advocating for Peyton didn’t so much miss the mark as drive a stake through her heart—because she wasn’t fooled. That statement, while true and important, was without a doubt uttered in the hopes that she look favorably upon a traditional betrothal with her friend.

She had suspected for a while that that was something her father wanted for her. He liked Peyton, approved of the male’s bloodline, and knew that there was already a friendship in place. In the eyes of an aristocratic head of household, what could be better for a daughter than a setup like that.

What would he think if he ever met Craeg?

Craeg, the son of what the humans would have called a blue-collar family. Would her father even see the strength of character, the soul beneath the lack of trappings?