A Court of Silver Flames - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,67

his smell. And if she looked at the bulge in his pants with that heat she’d had in her eyes last night, the heat he’d come to just picturing her, he might very well make a fool of himself.

It was a risk he was willing to take. Had to take, before he laid her flat on the table and removed their clothing piece by piece.

Cassian shot out of his chair, muttering, “I’ll see you there,” and left.

“The book,” Nesta repeated to herself, staring at her porridge, “is about a book.” She cupped her forehead in her hands. “Idiot.”

At least Cassian hadn’t seemed to be listening. But whatever willingness had been in his eyes last night seemed reluctant today, as if he couldn’t help—didn’t want that heat between them, that tension. He’d practically run out of the room to avoid her.

Training would be awful.

He was waiting in the ring, the portrait of a swaggering warrior. Nesta didn’t dare look at his pants. To what she could have sworn she’d glimpsed straining at the stays and buttons when he’d fled the room.

But if he appeared unruffled, then fine. She’d match him in it.

Nesta rolled her shoulders, approaching him. “More stretching and balance?”

“No.”

Their eyes met, and there was only clear, determined calm—and a challenge. “We’ll do the warm-up, and then we’re moving into some core work.”

She gaped. Her … core?

“Abdominals,” he clarified, and pink washed across his face. He cleared his throat. “Filthy mind.” He flicked her cheek. “Too much smut.”

She batted him away and gestured to the muscles hidden beneath his shirt. “You’re going to make me look like that?”

His low laugh rippled over her body. “No one can look like this but me, Nes.”

Arrogant ass.

“Rhysand and Azriel do,” she said sweetly.

“I’ve got one or two muscles on them.”

“I don’t see it.”

He winked. “Maybe they’re in other places.”

She couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop it. Not the flash of desire, but the smile that overtook her face. She huffed a laugh.

Cassian stared like he hadn’t seen her before.

His shock was enough that Nesta dropped her smile. “All right,” she said. “Warm-up, then abdominals.”

She hated abdominal exercises.

Mostly because she couldn’t do them.

“I knew you didn’t have much muscle,” Cassian observed as Nesta lay belly-down on the ground, having collapsed onto her front after trying to hold a full-body plank, “but this is absolutely pathetic.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be my inspirational teacher?”

“You can’t do more than five seconds.”

She spat, “And how long can you do?”

“Five minutes.”

Nesta pushed herself onto her elbows. “I’m sorry if I haven’t had five hundred years of core work.”

“I asked you to hold that plank for thirty seconds.”

She shoved onto her knees, stomach aching. He’d had her doing curls upward, then leg extensions while lying on her back, and then lifting a smooth five-pound rock over her head while she’d tried to raise herself from lying prone into a sitting position using only her stomach muscles. She hadn’t been able to do more than one or two of any of them before her body gave out. No amount of will or grit could make it move.

“This is torture.” Bracing her hands on her knees, Nesta pointed to the ring. “If you’re so perfect, do everything you just ordered me to do.”

Cassian snorted. “A ten-year-old Illyrian boy could do it in the span of a few minutes.”

“Then do your big, tough male routine.”

He smirked. “All right. You want to mouth off, then I’ll show you my big, tough male routine.”

He slung his shirt off. Tied back his hair.

And this was a different sort of torture. To watch him go through the same exercises, only harder, heavier, faster. To watch the muscles of his stomach ripple, muscles everywhere ripple. To watch sweat glisten and then run down his golden body, over his tattoos, along the eight-pointed star of their bargain on his spine before sliding into the waist of his pants.

But he’d been professional during their lesson. Utterly professional and distant, as if this training ring was sacred to him.

Nesta couldn’t tear her eyes away as he completed his exercises, panting softly. She tried not to wonder if that panting was how he’d sounded last night when he’d pleasured himself.

But Cassian’s hazel eyes were clear. Triumphant.

In another age, another world, he might have been deemed a warrior-god by mortals. After what he’d told her about the monsters he’d put in the Prison, he might very well be considered a great hero in this age. The kind that would one day be whispered about