Liza felt heat wash through her face as she remembered the sensuality that had tightened Stygian’s expression.
“Great,” she muttered, resting her face against her up-raised her knees.
“Hell, I just can’t believe Stygian got so fresh,” Shiloh drawled. “He doesn’t even get sexy-nasty with the Breed females he takes to his bed. He hasn’t even been known to flirt.”
Oh, he knew how to flirt—just as he knew how to make a woman insane with anger.
“Why don’t you guys find something else to talk about?” Liza demanded.
“Because, this is just so interesting,” Shiloh assured her with practiced mockery. “Come on, Liza, it’s simply uncalled for to hear of Stygian actually going on a date.”
“Well, you can at least take a break and let us finish here,” Emma declared as she moved back to the center of the mat where Liza sat, finally breathing regularly. “Come on, bad girl, get off your lazy ass and see if you can’t find a way to at least tip me here.” Turning her palm, she gave Liza a backward wave. “Up and at ’em.”
Liza rolled her eyes as she came to her feet and gave her arms a loose shake to relax her stiffening muscles.
“Take it easy with those paws of yours,” she ordered the other girl. “Hell, my arms still ache.”
“Sissy. Stop wussing out on me.”
Wussing out on her?
Liza glared back at her.
She had yet to wuss out on anything.
Watching Emma carefully, she was able to dodge the first set of jabs as well as Emma’s attempt to trip her.
Liza focused her memory on the fight she’d managed to glimpse between Diane Broen and one of her former mercenaries. She concentrated on coordinating her movements to match the practiced symmetry the Bureau enforcer had used.
Why hadn’t she tried that before? she wondered distantly.
She’d watched enough Breeds sparring over the years that she should have already been incorporating what she’d watched them do.
She blocked Emma’s next attempt to grab and throw her to the mat. As though she had slipped into someone else’s skin, she began moving automatically. Blocking, jabbing, moving offensively instead of defensively until she had Emma actually breaking a sweat.
She had watched the Breeds—Cullen, Reever, and Klah—sparring for most of her life, and had resisted the urge to attempt to use the maneuvers she’d seen. Her body always felt ready, prepared to execute the moves, but her confidence in putting into practice what she had seen without training, had held her back.
Until tonight.
Until the urge to do so overcame her lack of confidence and she learned she had a talent she’d never recognized before. It was a talent she realized she’d had since her and Claire’s accident. The fiery car crash had nearly taken both of their lives, and had left each with subtle talents that for some reason they were terrified to reveal. Talents they had only shared the secrets of with each other.
“Geez,” Emma muttered as Liza blocked another move and came back at her quickly with an offensive jab to her jaw, then followed with one to the midriff.
Emma barely had time to block before awareness of another move slid into Liza’s consciousness and went straight to the instinctive impulses snapping through her brain then to
her body.
Emma sent a jab to her jaw. Sweeping back and going to the floor, Liza caught herself on her shoulders and arms, legs swinging out as she rolled and swept Emma off balance.
As the Breed went down, Liza was there, her fist coming in and stopping short of Emma’s throat in what would have been a killing blow for a human. For a Breed, at the very least, it would cause a lengthy incapacitation, giving Liza a chance to escape.
As Liza blinked down at the shock in Emma’s face, she quickly jumped back, stared down at her hands, then to the Breeds and two friends watching her in wide-eyed disbelief.
In Claire’s eyes though, Liza saw fear—and a desperate warning.
Fear that the minute changes they had experienced after their recovery would be detected and alter them in the eyes of their loved ones.
The warning that she was skirting the line and placing them both in danger.