shepherd’s pie,” Az said softly, lips quirking. I opened the door to the gym, the sound of bodies slapping against mats and voices grunting with impact rushed out into the church’s side garden. “Yes, Deyva. I would look after them.”
I didn’t look back at Az, only nodded and stepped inside, my eyes adjusting quickly to the darkness of the gymnasium. There were eight mats set up around the vast space, each of them occupied by two to four people in various stages of combat. On one, a woman was being attacked from all sides by the three men and she was using evasive maneuvers to escape. On another, two older men were taking turns practicing quick, sharp offensive moves to disable and escape their partner.
“No, no. That won’t work,” Az said, jogging over to them. “You’re betting on the hellions being single jointed, but most would let you break their arm before letting you go. Here, try this.”
I found Kais at the back of the room, engaging in an earnest wrestling match with the man who’d complained about training twice a day. I walked slowly around the edge of the gymnasium, ignoring the stares of suspicion coming from most of the humans, keeping my eyes fixed on Kais. He was out of his priest robes, dressed in those addictively clingy sweatpants of his and just a tank top. There were women perched on the bleachers, drinking water and looking barely rumpled as they stared hungrily at my—at Kais—actually fuck that, at my Kais.
Kais looked like a predator, his eyes focused and sharp, constantly flicking over his opponent, waiting for the glimpse of an opening. My tongue ran over my bottom lip and I paused against the wall as his muscles tensed. The other man lunged and Kais caught him easily around his ribs, swinging him and making him lose his footing before driving him down to the mat with a hard smack and a great groan. I winced and Kais caught his breath, covering his face with his hand briefly before smoothing it back through his dark curls and rising. He held out a hand, which was ignored, and the man rolled to his side to rise on his own.
“If we’re supposed to be learning to fight demons, why don’t we just throw around the one we have inside the gate,” a voice muttered.
Kais and I turned to them at the same time. He was young, big, and his eyes were drinking me up in a way that made it pretty clear he would’ve liked to throw me around, but not on a mat in a crowded gymnasium.
“She’s not a demon,” Azariah said, prowling through the mats, drawing eyes with every step as he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the kid.
“No, but I have the strength of one,” I said with a shrug, stepping forward from the wall.
“Jason, I saw her fucking lift an entire tree, man. Don’t be stupid,” one of Jason’s younger friends called.
I glanced at Kais who blinked at me and shrugged. “Just don’t break anything,” he said.
I grinned and turned back to young Jason, who had a pair of murky brown eyes fixed determinedly to my tits. “Okay, Jason. I’ll give you three tries to put me on my back.”
Jason grinned and somewhere from the bleachers, too quiet for anyone but me and Az to catch, a woman muttered under her breath. “Isn’t that kind of just what she does though?”
“More like she gets on her knees,” another whispered.
“Ladies, you’re both right,” I called loudly across the room, and the entire gym gave up the pretense of paying attention to anything but me.
I stepped forward to meet Jason on the mat, his friends backing away, Az moving to join Kais at the sidelines to watch.
“If it gets to be too much, just say ‘uncle,’” I said, smiling up at Jason. He was pretty enough, but he wasn’t one of my priests, and there was a mean hunger to his lustful emotions that reminded me too much of Kimaris, enough that I had to stamp down the shudder as he grinned back at me.
“Oh sweetheart, the only one who’s gonna be feeling too much is you when I find you down in whatever basement they’re keeping you in tonight,” Jason whispered.
Huh. So not everybody knew about me shacking up in the priest house yet?
Jason charged as I mulled over this discovery, and behind me Kais barked my name. Like he thought I wasn’t