Page 22 of Knight’s Dominion

“Ready?” she blurted, much too loud.

His grin spread wider, and he flashed straight white teeth, like a shark about to take a bite out of his much smaller, much weaker prey.

“Careful, you might strain something,” she muttered.

She’d never seen the surly bastard smile before, not like that, and yeah, he looked good when he did, and she wasn't the only one who thought so. Several females actually giggled for Christ’s sake. She rolled her eyes even as her heart pounded harder.

More giggling.

She swung around before she could stop herself, aiming a cold stare at one of the gigglers. “Something funny?"

The girl’s face turned an unattractive shade of red and her gaze darted back to Chaos. "I...ah...no."

“Yes, Chaos is all tall, dark, and...bulgy, but I'm sure he's not the first good-looking male you've ever seen, and I'm sure he won't be the last. Take a good look, get it out of your systems, then let’s focus on what we’re here to do, yes?”

The room went completely, utterly silent.

Fuck. Had she really just blurted that out loud?

Chaos stepped around her to address the class, thankfully ignoring the idiotic things she’d just said. “Let’s get started."

He moved through his lesson at a steady pace. He was good, of course. His muscled body moving with speed and ease, something that should be impossible for a male his size. He wasn't a bad teacher, either. He was still bossy as hell, though, but the other females didn't seem to mind his heavy-handed approach. Nope, not one bit.

By the time the class drew to an end, his darkly tanned skin was covered in a fine sheen of sweat and his shirt clung to his chest and flat stomach, defining his bulging abdominal muscles. Her mouth watered, and God, she wanted to touch every bit of that sleek, muscled body. She wanted to touch him.

And she hated herself for it.

As the last of her students walked out the door, she knew she had to pull it together. They needed to talk about the coming war, about what was happening around the city. And she needed a clear head to do it.

"Nice moves," she said, trying to come across unaffected, but her husky voice told a different story.

He inclined his head. "Thanks. You're not bad yourself."

Her eyebrows hiked high. “Did you just compliment me? Has the world already come to an end?" Grabbing a couple bottles of water, she handed him one.

Something flashed across his handsome face, but then it was gone. “I’ve never said you aren’t a good fighter, Grace.”

He lifted the bottle to his lips and drank deeply, causing his throat to work in a distracting way that for some weird reason affected parts of her body that had no right to be affected.

“You did say I was incompetent, though.” You need to get him on your side, not pick a fight.

He lowered his bottle. “I was angry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Again, not something she expected him to say. She kept her surprise to herself this time. “But you think we should stay out of this war?”

His gaze dropped to her mouth, and his jaw tightened, before it lifted back to hers. “I think you don’t know as much as you think you do. I think you and your people could be an asset to our fight if you would listen to what I’ve been trying to tell you instead of killing indiscriminately. Why did you want to see me, Grace?”

She shivered again at the sound of her name rumbling from the massive demon hunter and crossed her arms as well. “Fighting with each other is counterproductive. We should be working together. I have demi, a lot of them, trained and ready to fight. We’re an asset you can’t afford to ignore. Not anymore. There’s a hellsgate demi in the hands of our enemy. We need to stop fighting each other and work together.”

He tilted his head to the side, studying her for several long, intense seconds. “Is that right?”

His voice was doing that deep, almost hypnotic thing again, and suddenly she was being drawn in and had to fight her body’s desire to move closer, to touch him.

“Yes.”

He stared down at her, so much going on behind his dark gaze that she couldn’t take it another second.

“Teach me a move. Not one you just showed the class, but one you use when you're fighting,” she said into the tension-filled silence. She needed to move, to hit and kick, fight him before she did something else to him. Something a lot more pleasant.