Heart of a Fighter (Rocky River Fighters 1)

Sobering, she helped him fold the blanket. “In some ways. But in others, being a more uncomplicated human sounds a thousand times better.”

Lifting the basket, Alex grabbed Cammie’s hand and held it tightly as they began walking back to the house. Remembering what she told him today, he knew she wasn’t wrong. It was no wonder she was so tough, so strong. She had to be to overcome a past like hers.

Chapter Nine

Cammie held herself perfectly still as she peeked over the edge of the hayloft, watching Alex and Seth spar. She was determined to not make a peep or any movement that gave her away this time. She didn’t want to do anything that might distract Alex while he was training, and she wanted to see for herself how he was progressing.

She couldn’t help being pleasantly surprised. It had only been a week since he started seriously training, and the change in him was remarkable. He was a fast learner. No longer awkward, he dodged and spun with effortless grace, moving more like a shifter than a human now. Maybe it came from training with one of her kind, but whatever the reason, he was poetry in motion.

Of course, he couldn’t catch up with Seth enough to hit him, but Seth wasn’t making it easy for him either. When Alex did manage to land a hit, Seth was already mostly gone, and the partial blows tended to throw Alex off balance, making it easier for Seth to land his own, rather than slow him down any.

She still couldn’t believe Alex knew they were shifters from the beginning. In a way, she was glad her first thought of him being able to handle her shifter status was right, but there was something about him hiding his knowledge so easily that bothered her. She knew everything he told her about himself in the past was true, because she would have heard the lie in his voice if it wasn’t. But there was something about how he managed it without any of them picking up on it that made her uneasy. She just couldn’t figure out what it was.

Talking about her parents felt good, too. Although Ian knew the basics of what happened, she never told anyone anything else about it. She rarely even thought about it, or her parents in general, if she could help it. It made her too sad in the early days, and she decided she needed to focus on the present to avoid being captured. So she spent the last seven years avoiding any mention of them, but now she thought she did herself a disservice. She’d definitely done her parents a disservice. They deserved to be remembered.

Coming back to the moment when she heard Seth tell Alex they were done for the day, she waited until Seth was out of the barn before speaking.

“You’re doing amazingly well,” she called down.

Choking a little on the water he was drinking, Alex’s eyes shot to the loft where she was sitting up. “

I had no clue you were there this time,” he said with a laugh.

“I held myself frozen the whole time to make sure you didn’t,” she replied while she made her way down from the loft.

Meeting her at the bottom of the ladder in the hay, he murmured, “What happened to thinking I was exceptionally unobservant?”

Not giving her a chance to reply, he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. She moaned as she wrapped her arms around his neck, uncaring of the sheen of sweat on his body. She pushed herself closer as she parted her lips for his kiss. Lightning was zinging up and down her spine when she pulled herself away, lips lingering against his for a few moments.

“You are unobservant. For example, you didn’t even see me getting ready to do this,” she said breathlessly.

A frown was just beginning to form on his handsome face when she hooked an ankle around his and tugged forward. He lost his balance, falling back into the hay, and Cammie giggled as she followed him down, straddling him. He struggled for a moment, but Cammie knew what she was doing, and even though he was much bigger than she was, she had him pinned thoroughly.

“That was playing dirty,” he said with a laugh.

She leaned in to nip his bottom lip. “No, this is playing dirty,” she replied with a leisurely roll of her hips against his pelvis.

Breath catching, he fused his mouth to hers, returning her hip roll with one of his own. He was already hardening beneath her, and she moaned at the feel of him. Returning his increasingly aggressive kiss with passion, she continued the slow grind of her hips against his. Pulling away from the kiss, she planted her hands on his chest for traction, applying more pressure.

Skimming his hands up her sides, he stopped just underneath her breasts, his fingers tightening around her ribcage like he was trying to force them not to move any higher.

“Shouldn’t we move this somewhere else?” he panted.

“No,” she said breathlessly, gasping when his hardness nudged her clit through their clothes. “We’re out of the way enough. Besides, I warned the others when I came out not to disturb us. I’m sure they passed that along to Seth.”

Apparently deciding that was all he needed to know, Alex finally moved his hands, cupping her breasts. “Planning this, were you?”

“I hoped for it, anyway,” she said, unable to stop her hips from moving faster as he tugged down her tank top and she felt him on her skin.

“The hay is prickly. I don’t want your skin marked up.”

“I wasn’t planning on being the one on the bottom,” she replied, giving him a wink.

He moaned, his abs contracting as he surged upward and sucked one of her nipples in his mouth. She plunged her fingers into his hair as her movements automatically slowed so she could focus on what his mouth was doing, and he grabbed her hips, urging her back on. Breath hissing at the dual sensations, she gave herself over, letting him set the speed for now.

Releasing her nipple with a pop, he trailed sucking kisses across her chest before giving her other nipple a few flicks of his tongue. Closing his mouth around her, he sucked hard, and the combination of his wet mouth and the friction against her core nearly had her coming then and there.

“Let go,” he rasped, pulling his mouth away for a second. “I know you’re close. Come for me.”