Trey shrugged. “Not as fun to watch.”
“Are we going to do this or what?” Penny asked, drawing their attention back to the task.
Logan, looking less eager than before, stepped back onto the mat. Penny mirrored his movements when he made his approach. No way in hell was she backing down. Her renewed fervor had less to do with tossing the cowboy operative to the floor than it did wiping the bemused grin off Rafe’s face.
And she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that a small part of her wanted to impress the hell out of him, too.
Crazy. Pure insanity considering she told herself years ago that men with the GI Joe Complex were strictly off-limits. She abso-freaking-lutely appreciated everything soldiers did for their country. The duty and loyalty that ran through their veins produced true heroes. But she knew from experience that that kind of allegiance often put people who weren’t dressed in Army green—or Navy blue—into a second-tier spot of importance.
Been there. Done that. Had the daddy issues to prove it. And most importantly, not doing it again.
Keeping a safe distance from anything or anyone who couldn’t offer her a first-place ranking was paramount. And she’d get back to it—after she demonstrated to Rafe and the others that she wasn’t a liability.
The glint of the mock knife in Logan’s hand snapped Penny back to reality. He deftly tossed it from palm to palm. Her eyes tracked it like the pendulum of a clock. The second he lunged, she dodged left. The quick-ducking side step made him miss by inches. It was poetry in motion as she found her groove.
Lunge and evade. They moved in an unchoreographed dance that paraded them around the mat. On their third pass, her sneaker snapped against his wrist, sending the knife flying.
“Save the acrobatics for the circus,” Rafe growled from the sideline.
Logan’s gait glided over the floor as he and Penny circled. He flashed her a quick wink. “I don’t know, Ortega. Some of those gymnastic moves could be pretty damn inspiring in the bedroom.”
“Aw, have things become so deficient you’d resort to getting your butt kicked to spice it up again?” Penny ignored the fact her words came out sounding like an asthmatic phone-sex operator and continued to tease. “Maybe you should be the one taking that nap. You’re slowing down.”
“No way in hell, darlin’. You caught me once. Not gonna happen again.”
Male laughter erupted from everyone except Rafe. A split second later, Logan charged in a frontal assault. Grabbing onto his forearms, she used his forward momentum and propelled him across the floor like a two-hundred-pound paper airplane.
A second from his face hitting the mat, he ducked into a roll and came back to his feet. When he turned, she was there with a sharp elbow jab to the gut. Logan doubled over with a grunt, giving her the opening she needed. Lowering her center of gravity, Penny gripped the back of his shirt and with a throaty growl, tossed him over her shoulder and onto the mat.
Again.
Logan looked momentarily stunned. “Well, hell, darlin’. You may be small, but you’ve got some skills.”
Penny chuckled as she wiped the stream of sweat off her forehead. “I think there was a compliment in there somewhere, so thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And I’ll give you another one by asking you to have my children. I mean, just imagine them…beautiful, sassy, redheaded ones with fast reflexes.” He got back to his feet with a groan. “That’s if I can have children after that elbow drill. Shit. I think I need a medic, Kincaid.”
“If it were an arm, leg, or even your head, I could be convinced to give you a hand, but I’ll be damned if I’m going anywhere near your junk…or your ass. You’re on your own, man,” said Chase Kincaid, the blond Viking standing next to Trey.
Penny snorted on a laugh. As far as ending notes, this felt like a pretty damn good way to finish the day. Preoccupied with her mental pat on the back for not looking like a complete damsel, she didn’t register the looming figure at her back until twin logs wrapped around her middle.
It was freaking déjà vu.
CHAPTER THREE
Rafe could deal with a lot of shit, but watching Penny spar with Logan wasn’t one of them. As a matter of fact, it felt like having a hot poker repeatedly shoved through his eye socket. He lost count of the number of times he’d nearly made an ass of himself and stopped the whole damn thing. But the real challenge came in the form of the hard-on that sprang to attention the second it was his hands on her lithe body.