That memory she held closest of all.
Gray had already put her through the boring part of training. Ten minutes of watching him circle her on the padded sparring mats, fixing every sound into her memory with a visual to match. Except now that she understood what he was doing, she didn’t have to try. Her whole life had been a desperate struggle to absorb as little as possible of the world around her, to stave off sensory overload by disconnecting. No wonder she’d never realized the potential of her perfect memory.
Noticing things really was a superpower.
By the fifth minute, Maya could have closed her eyes and reconstructed the space so perfectly she could have found a pin dropped at ten meters. But she let Gray go for another five because she liked watching him move. He was graceful and deadly, every flex of muscle perfectly controlled, every movement planned with calm deliberation and executed with precision.
She couldn’t see him now, but she could feel him.
“The hardest part of fighting in the dark is finding your opponents,” he told her—conversationally, as if discussing the weather. “The faster you can locate them, the more of an advantage you’ll have.”
Her instinct was to turn toward his voice. She could visualize him easily … a fraction of a meter behind her, slightly to the left. She could also remember how fast the Silver Devils moved. Maybe not quite Dani’s speed, but they could give Nina a challenge in a footrace, and Maya was never going to be on that level.
But she could be sneaky. She tilted her head to the right, as if listening. “What do I do when I find them?”
“What do you—?”
She moved like Nina had taught her. No winding up, no tells. She lunged as fast as she could to where she knew Gray would be, using the momentum of her body’s turn to launch a punch from the hip.
She hit air as Gray danced around her. “Good. Answering your own question.”
His voice was close, but she didn’t swing again. A moment later she heard it—the whisper of his feet against the mat. Soft, barely audible … but she’d fought a hundred battles across this room. She knew the sounds of it in her beating heart, in her bones. She tracked him on instinct, keeping her hands up as she turned her body. “You know, it’s not fair for me to have to chase you around when you’re not blindfolded.”
“It’s not going to be fair to your opponent when you track him, sight unseen, through a pitch-black room and lay him out flat, either,” he retorted. “Focus, honey.”
Maya danced a few feet forward, twisting toward the sound of him again. “Well, yeah. But it’s fair when the unfairness is good for me.”
She didn’t wait for him to answer but lunged in another attack. This time, he stepped into it, pressing his body against hers. Her swing connected, but without her weight behind it, she didn’t have enough leverage to make it count.
Gray spun her around by the shoulder and wrapped his long arms around her, trapping her fists at her sides. His breath warmed her ear as he leaned in and rasped, “Oh, this will be very good for you, Maya. Trust me.”
She stopped breathing.
She stopped everything.
For a heartbeat—or what would have been a heartbeat, if she weren’t definitely actually in cardiac arrest—her brain simply couldn’t process anything. Then her heart gave a shuddering thump and she felt everything.
She felt him.
His chest against her back felt like safety. His arms pinning hers was a thrill of danger. She could fight him, the way Dani and Rafe seemed to fight in a way that was clearly totally sex even if they pretended it wasn’t.
Or she could melt into this bliss and find out what very good felt like.
She let her head fall back against his shoulder, shivering as it bared her throat to the heat of his soft exhale. Her skin tingled everywhere he was touching her and everywhere she wanted him to be. “Gray.”
His voice rasped over her nerve endings, low and lazy. “Again?”
No. Yes. Hell, how was she supposed to think? But his arms dropped away, freeing her, so she reacted the way Dani had trained her to react—swift and vicious and definitely cheating.
Even as she drove her elbow back toward his ribs she knew it was a mistake. Her back was still pressed to Gray’s chest and the flex of muscle gave her away. He caught her elbow and spun her around for a dizzying, disorientating second. Then her feet left the mat.
She only had seconds to brace. But Gray didn’t let her crash into the mat. Her back thudded softly against the padded surface. Her breath left her in a woosh anyway as he stretched out above her, almost-touching her everywhere. “Cheater,” she accused hoarsely.
“Completely legal move,” he countered. “You’re the one dropping the ball here.” He rolled, and she found herself on top of him, straddling his stomach. “The fight’s not over until it’s over. If they take you down, don’t give up. Use it.”
She braced herself with her hands on his chest, savoring the feel of him even through his shirt. But just for a moment. The world was bright even behind her blindfold, as piercingly real as she could ever remember it being. She rolled smoothly to her feet and stepped back, confident in the placement of her feet because she knew exactly where she was.
Perfect recall really was a damn superpower.
Two more steps put her in the center of the mat. She bounced on her toes, smiling in the direction Gray was, and listened to him as he rose almost silently. Almost. She’d spent so much time pretending she wasn’t watching him, and it was all there in her memory. A perfect road map to his slightest gesture, to the way he moved, to the way he fought.
Her awareness of him wasn’t a distraction. It was her secret weapon. So she smiled and crooked a finger at him. “Come get me.”
He dove for her. It was fast, the creak of the mat and the whisper of his clothing the only real warning. But Dani had lunged at her a thousand times on this mat. Her brain knew the sounds of it, and her body knew the response.
She pivoted at the last moment, turning in to him and grasping his arm. He was bigger than Dani, but she’d practiced this with Rafe, too, and Rafe was like Gray—a mountain of muscle. The adjustment was instinct and his height made it easier. Maya used Gray’s momentum to execute a flawless shoulder throw.
The thud of Gray hitting the floor was sweet victory. Maya laughed and danced backward, bouncing in her glee. “Try again.”
So he did. Again and again, they clashed. More often than not, she ended up on her back with Gray’s body pressing hers into the floor, but she held her own. Each time they lingered a little longer, the tension prickling as his breath tickled her ear or her hands pinned his wrists.
The urge to kiss him was overpowering. But she denied herself, breaking away to grapple again. The moment she kissed him, everything would change. There’d be no pulling back, no slowing down. She craved it with an intensity that should have made her dizzy but instead sharpened her focus.
Tracking him got easier, as if his presence prickled along her skin. Maybe she had an entire sixth sense that was attuned to Gray. If so, she was drunk on him by the time she narrowly avoided a grapple and tripped him in a desperate move. They went down in a tangle of limbs, and Maya ended up straddling his stomach, breathless as she hastily pinned his arms with her knees.