Chapter 47

“The fuck are you doing?” Thorne grunted at Maximus.

Max jammed his elbow into Thorne’s thigh. Thorne released his grip on Maximus’s shirt with a grunt. Max immediately stood up and glared down at then other man.

“The drill as we were told to do,” Maximus snapped.

“You’re lucky you’re this far in the corner of the room,” Thorne hissed. He gestured to me. “I looked like the two of you were about to fuck on the mat a second ago.”

“And if we were?” Max pressed. “That wouldn’t be any of your business. Last time I checked you rejected your fated mate.”

Thorne’s jaw clenched. He looked at me like he was considering me then turned back to Maximus.

“Need I remind you the reason,” He spat. “There is a Princess that I am to be betrothed to. As are you.”

“Don’t pull that shit on me,” Maximus said. “I don’t give nearly as much of a fuck about some political marriage as you clearly do. Now, get off my mat so I can finish my drills with my partner.”

Thorne shot daggered at Maximus. His eyes slightly shifted towards me and I caught a look in his eyes.

Was Thorne jealous?

I let my jaw fall open in surprise. I couldn’t believe it. Thorne had marched over here to separate me and Max, not because of whatever the hell was happening between us, but because he was jealous of what was happening. I stared at Thorne as he stormed off to correct another pair that was messing around.

I looked at Maximus. His pupils had returned to normal a bit. His shoulders were tense, however and he looked incredibly uncomfortable. I slunk back in on myself.

“Maybe this wasn’t a great idea,” I mumbled from the floor.

“It’s fine,” Maximus snapped. “I don’t want you working with anyone else anyways. We just need to focus and ignore whatever it is that’s going on.”

My eyes went wide. “You feel it too?” I whispered.

Max nodded curtly. “I don’t know what it is,” he whispered back. “And I don’t think we should tell anyone. So we need to ignore it for now.”

I pinched my eyebrows together. Ignore it? How the fuck was I supposed to ignore the burning flame that sparked every time we touched and the intense… lust that followed? I stared at Maximus, waiting for him to give me any sort of words of wisdom. Finally he caught on as he dropped back to his knees and went to resume the position of the first drill.

“Just try and think of ice,” he mumbled so that only I could hear (not that anyone was paying attention to us). “Think of the cold and how if you put an ice cube on your head, it would melt down to your toes.”

I put my arm back to his throat. The sparks flew again and I tried out Max’s trick. “Ice,” I grunted as the heat spread down to my toes.

I imagined being dunked in a bucket of ice, like we used to do after track practices at my human high school. I thought of quenching every lick of fire with piles and piles of ice. It works somewhat and I managed to gather enough concentration to try and flip Max over again. I got halfway when Maximus pushed me back against the floor.

“You’re losing the press on my throat when you focus too much on the flip,” Maximus grunted, “Press harder.”

I did as instructed and sure enough, I made Maximus choke before I shoved him onto his back. Then, I lost my focus and fell foreword onto his chest. My hand was against his pec. The drumming, lub-dub, started in my head again as I stared Max in the eyes. The heat started up again, but I imagined ice running down my arms and into my toes.

It was enough to let me sit back, off Max and on the sparring mat. My breath came out in rough bursts from the energy exertion. Max sat up to be across from me. He nodded slightly.

“Good,” he said. “Again.”

The rest of the class was much of a repeat of that. A few times, the heat got to be a bit too much and Max or I would choke out a grunt or groan of pleasure. One of us would shove the other away and go scrambling off to the other side of the mat.

Another time, when I was trying to flip Maximus off my back and over me, his hand hit the front of my ribs, just below where my bra ended. The touch had made me shiver. Maximus, in turn, had buried his nose in my back. We stayed like that for long enough that I caught Thorne glaring at us from across the gym. I scrambled out from underneath Max and the pit of desire within me faded.

By the end of class, I was utterly exhausted, both physically and mentally, and I wanted nothing to do with Maximus. He must’ve felt the same way because as soon as Coach blew the whistle for the end of class, he darted off towards the men’s locker room without even so much as a nod.

I made my way towards the women’s locker room but was cut off by a man with a platinum blonde bun. I blinked twice as Thorne stood in the way of my escape to the locker room. He looked less angry and more interested in conversation.

“Hi,” I said, quietly. Everyone kept walking by me into the locker room. I’d already saw Loren had walked in before me. All my classmates walked by us as I stared at Thorne. Then, we were alone.

“Hi,” he breathed. “I’m sorry, about earlier.”

“It’s fine,” I said as I tried to push past him. He jumped to block me again and I frowned.

“No,” he said. “It’s not. I shouldn’t have gotten so—”

“Jealous?” I said with a raised eyebrow. Thorne gave me a sad smile.

“Angry at Maximus,” he finished. “What you two do is none of my business.”

“It’s not,” I crossed my arms over my chest.

“Right,” Thorne went on. “I just don’t know if that is the best pair for you. Max seemed to go easy on you and, well, I want to make sure you’re learning the skills.”

“Right,” I mimicked him.

“Being your Knight and all,” he added.

“Just my Knight,” I said. “Not my fated mate. You broke that, remember?”

“I remember,” Thorne said. There was a sort of guilt laced between his words. He cleared his throat. “Just wanted to say that if you wanted to switch partners, Maximus can go with my partner and I could spar with you.” He threw me a smile.

“If you want,”

I lifted my hand and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m okay, thanks though,” I said and finally managed to walk past him towards the locker room.

“Yeah,” Thorne called after me “’Course. Just putting it out there.”

I ignored him as I continued into the locker room. I couldn’t deal with anymore games that day. Between staving off trying to jump Max’s bones and actually fighting him, I didn’t have it in me.

I couldn’t figure out what Thorne’s game plan was but, whatever it was, I wasn’t interested in someone who’d already thrown me aside. I was worth more than that.