Frustrated, I pulled on tight exercise clothes, black spandex, and went looking for a sparring partner. Wrassler, standing guard in the hallway in front of Grégoire’s room, told me how to find the hotel’s fitness area, his smirk ringing bells in my mind. I jogged downstairs, and took it in fast: the small room and blood-servants. The B-twins had cleared space, machines pushed to the side. Some tinkly Oriental or New Age music played over the speakers. The twins were dressed in black cotton martial arts uniforms—traditional karate Gi tops with kicker pants, and were still warming up. The clothes told me a lot about the martial forms they practiced. We had the place to ourselves. Wrassler had known they were here, of course.
The door closed behind me with a soft whoosh. The twins paused in their stretches and I grinned at them, letting Beast rise in my eyes. They stepped apart slowly, facing an opponent. My heart started to pound, a fierce, hard rhythm. “How quickly does vamp blood heal you boys?” Brian laughed and shook out his hands, setting his feet, carefully balanced. Brandon bent his knees, finding his own perfect readiness position, one hand fisted in a defensive posture. With the other, he made a little “come and get it” motion. I leaped.
It wasn’t play. It wasn’t practice. It wasn’t sparring. It was the closest thing to real combat I’d had, outside of fighting for my life, in years. I proved to myself that longtime blood-servants were faster than humans, stronger than humans, and sneaky as cats. They didn’t play by TV rules, attacking one at a time. They played by fire ant rules—swarm and destroy. Punches, open handed and fisted, kicks, sweeps, blocks that disguised punches, kicks that hid more kicks, attacking from both sides and from front and back, holds better suited to judo or the wrestling mat, and moves that were strictly illegal in the fighting ring came at me. I loved it.
For nearly half an hour, they attacked, the beating we were giving and receiving growing in speed, force, and complexity, until we moved in a blur. The scent of vamp blood, their blood, human sweat, testosterone, and big-cat musk-and-blood filled the space; faint lust pheromones added to the wonderful stench. We overwhelmed the air-conditioning, our body heat condensing on the door and windows. When I cheated, using momentum and the Gi tops, throwing one brother into the other, both men lost the tops, fighting bare chested. Which made Beast pant with delight. I took two hard punches, one to the face, before I got her back into the brawl.
We fought hard, pulling no punches, and I gave as good as I took. It was painful, swift, and exactly what I needed, bruises, strains, sprains, blood on the mats, and all. When we were exhausted, sweating, and breathless, I heard a sound that pulled me out of the fight. The door to the fitness room closed with its soft whoosh.
I bounded out of Brandon’s fist-punch-range and into Brian’s space. Brian’s arm went around my waist, pulling me against his sweaty chest and abdomen, steadying us both, stopping the bout. Brandon whirled toward the door. We went still. Two of my security boys were inside the room, sitting on equipment, as if they had been there a while, dressed in workout clothes but looking lazy. Derek was standing in front of the door, his heels twelve inches apart, legs braced, hands clasped behind his back as if at Marine parade rest. He was dressed in baggy workout clothes. But his eyes were hard and predatory. Derek Lee was seriously ticked off.
I started to say something. Started to try to explain why I was faster than a blood-servant. As strong as one. Make that two. But Brian’s arm tightened on me in warning. I clamped my mouth shut. Brandon turned to me and said, “Nice bout, Yellowrock. Rematch. Soon. And we take the gloves off for that one.”
“Yeah. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more holding back to protect the little lady.” Brian pushed me away from him as if I burned his skin and picked up a towel. He tossed one at his brother and they moved toward the door. I fell in behind them.
Okay, I got it. Act as if nothing had happened. Riiiiight. “You boys weren’t holding back,” I said. “You gave it all you had and I busted your butts. But if you’re gluttons for punishment . . .” The twins pushed past Derek and out into the hallway. Derek didn’t try to stop them. He didn’t reach out and grab my arm, to hold me back, but I could feel his eyes smoldering holes in my spine. He murmured, “You’re as bad as the suckheads. Maybe worse. At least they don’t pretend to be human.”
I blinked but didn’t give away that I had heard, though a heated shock flushed through me. I was in the hallway, the door wide open behind me, still talking. “. . . I’ll be happy to provide the fists and feet to teach you to respect the weaker sex.”
“If it’s sex you want”—Brandon said, wrapping his arm around me and pulling me along as Brian punched the elevator button—“we can oblige on that score too.”
“Ever heard of tag-team wrestling?” Brian asked. “We can make you scream for more until you’re begging us to stop.”
And we were in the elevator, the doors closing on us. I fell against the elevator wall as the unit moved, my eyes closed. “Crap,” I said.
The brothers chuckled, twin sounds of amusement. An unwilling grin pulled at my mouth. “Tag-team sex? That’s the best you could come up with?”
The door dinged open and we stepped into the hallway. “Admit it, Legs. You have mental images right now. We know. Your heart rate sped up. Blood-servants can tell.”