Meredith.
The sun was merciless today, hanging low and bright over the training grounds, but it wasn't nearly as merciless as the man currently wiping the floor with me.
Draven.
I still hadn't figured out what changed in him. After weeks of that strange distance—of avoiding my gaze, of a coldness so heavy it made the air around us brittle—he had thawed. Not just thawed, either.
Now he teased me, smirked like Dennis would, and even had the gall to slap my backside every time I turned away from him in the wrong stance.
It started a week ago. The night he came into my room when my heat was unbearable, his scent the only thing that could calm the fire burning under my skin.
And afterwards… it was like something loosened inside him.
And now, here we were. His voice—infuriatingly calm—cut through my ragged breathing.
