Jess waved her hand. "Go on, do whatever you were doing. Pretend I’m not here.”

Lachlan made a sound suspiciously like a grunt. “Then you’d better close your coat.”

She jammed the edges together, her cheeks warming at the cleavage she'd been showing, and quickly changed the subject. "The bruises. Did I do those?" She walked up to him, taking a closer look at the ugly purple bruises on his shoulder.

He looked at them. "You fight like a hellcat."

She couldn't help herself, reaching out and gently touching the skin next to the bruised area.

He flinched but didn't move away. "Don't touch me."

She met his gaze at the soft order. "Does it hurt?"

"Yes."

Her fingers barely grazed skin that had no bruising. She let her hand drop and walked to the place he’d indicated before.

He faced an imaginary opponent, bringing his sword around. He pretended to meet his enemy's sword, his blade pointing downward. Then, rotating the sword above his head, he delivered a fatal, slashing blow.

The sword was black metal, with what looked like a playing card’s spade at the base of the handle, and then a carved section of wood. What she thought were hand guards were angled toward the blade. The metal was pitted and looked forever old. He was liquid motion, steel strength, and she could see how he maintained his lean but muscular physique. Her chest tightened as she watched, and that odd sensual heat curled through her like tendrils of fire.

He ran toward the far wall as though he intended to barrel right through it. At the last second, he tucked his sword to his side and ran right up the wall, doing a complete flip until he landed on his feet again.

“Show off,” she said with a smile.

He slid her a look. “I’m pretending you’re not here, remember?”

“Oh … right.”

She'd put her hand to her chest, her fingers clutching the edges of the coat. If she watched him the whole hour he planned to be in here, she'd be a puddle on the floor. That every now and then he slid a glance her way made it even harder. She actually didn't get the sense he was showing off. Between those glances, he was focused, eyes as hard as the steel of his blade. He hated whoever he imagined as his opponent. Every thrust, every slash, carried the extra energy of that enmity.

"Who are you pretending to engage?" She followed his gaze to the mirror, seeing the recipient of that hatred.

He didn't answer, just gritted his teeth and kept fighting.

"You're fighting yourself, aren't you?"
He grunted, neither confirming nor denying.

He had gone beyond grief and self-recrimination to punishing himself with meditating in the cold, these brutal workouts, and that bare room. Cutting off his desires, a psychic castration.
But she had made him respond.