“It was just one day. You’ll get the hang of it.”

“You really think so? Or are you just trying to make me feel better?”

“Maybe a little of both.”

She laughed, and I could feel it.

“I guess it worked, huh?” My voice was low.

“Yeah,” she whispered.

I liked the soft smile on her face—a contented smile. The kind of smile I imagined would grace her lips after having an orgasm. That flush would be there, too, just like it was then. But I bet it would be deeper, richer.

I grabbed more of the salve, and my hands moved to her lower back, following the slight, sexy curve. There were faint bruises here. Nothing major, but that didn’t stop me. Even though I was well past the amount of time it would take to do this, my body was on autopilot. My fingers reached the soft sides of her waist, and I heard her inhale. The sound ricocheted through me like a boomerang. I was so hard, I ached. This was pure, senseless torture, but again, I couldn’t stop myself.

Rubbing the salve up her sides, to where her shirt was bunched up, my gaze flicked to her profile. Her eyes were open in thin slits and her lips were parted. Chest rising and falling unsteadily, I dragged my hands back down her sides as I kept my gaze glued to what I could see of her face. The pink was deepening, spreading. My fingers trailed to the center of her lower back, and there wasn’t even a speck of salve left on my fingers, the scent of menthol faded, as I worked my thumbs along her skin, dipping them under the hem of the loose sweatpants.

Her hips jerked up toward me and her eyes widened as my thumbs worked in short, pressured circles. Then they jerked again and her legs pressed together, like she was unconsciously seeking something—something that I could give her, that I wanted to give her.

I shuddered as I closed my eyes. The feeling of her skin under my hands, her body so close to mine, and knowing that if I took this further, she wouldn’t stop me, nearly blew the head right off my cock. Being that stiff hurt, but that throbbing pulsed deeper. Yeah, I wanted to strip her out of these clothes, part those thighs and ease into her from behind, blissfully losing myself in her and forgetting everything else, but I wanted more. I wanted to get so close to her that there was not an inch of space between our skin, and I wanted to stay with her. The nights I had slept next to her, were the nights I had gotten the best sleep of my life.

I didn’t deserve that.

Sure as hell didn’t deserve something as fresh and fucking pure as Josie, because that’s what she was. Totally untouchable.

It took everything in me to move my hands up and off her, and she stayed still, her breath coming in quick, short pants. I forced my hands to the mattress on either side of her as I stood and leaned over her.

“You want to know something?” I asked, my lips so close to her cheek I could almost taste her skin. “Sucked today or not, nothing in the sky is shining brighter than you.”

And then I pushed up off the bed, and I left with her calling out my name like a church bell leading a sinner to the promise—to the illusion—of salvation.

Chapter 23

IN A blur, days turned into weeks faster than I could ever imagine they would, taking me further away from the life I had known and turning it into something foreign. Hours during the day were spent getting to know all the different areas in my body that could hurt, places I’d never even thought about before.

My legs felt like they had permanent shin splints from running in the evenings. It didn’t matter if it was indoors or outdoors. My thighs ached from the uneven terrain when we were outside, and from when we were inside, and Seth jacked up the treadmill incline to run-or-die levels. The cheeks of my butt hurt from both the running and falling on them. I didn’t even want to think about my back, because the word b-a-c-k made it ache.

About a week into training, I’d finally taken a fall correctly. Once in an entire day, and it wasn’t until two days later that I was able to consistently land the correct way, but in the big scheme of things, that was a minor triumph, even though Luke and Seth insisted it was a big deal. But after learning how to take a fall without knocking the air out of my lungs or giving myself a concussion, I had to learn how to get back up.

Quickly.

And like a ninja.

Seth and Luke had taught me that I didn’t want to roll up or get up by turning my back on the attacker, which was a big duh, but they expected me to get up just by pulling my legs in and propelling myself onto my feet.

What?

So this new phase of training had my stomach muscles feeling like someone had karate-chopped my nonexistent abs and my b-a-c-k was hurting even worse because I’d finally been able to get myself off the ground, kind of horizontally¸ only to fall right back down. It took almost another week for me to learn that I needed to roll onto my shoulders and to gain enough force when swinging my legs back down to propel myself up.

Then I spent another two days doing this repeatedly until the guys figured it was time to move onto defensive techniques, which resulted in lovely shades of purple, blue and red up and down my arms.

After the training sessions, I usually ate dinner in the cafeteria with Deacon and Luke, and there I saw more aspects of this strange world. I got to see pures using the elements to do things, like moving their plates or chairs without touching them, or causing it to rain over the unsuspecting heads of other students.

Other than Deacon and Luke, no one else really warmed up to me, even though a lot of them ended up watching the three of us train. The chick named Thea, with the huge boobs, was there every other day visually molesting Seth, and I didn’t want to think about what it could mean.