Elena stayed flat against the mat for a few long, heavy breaths, her chest rising and falling against the pale wood before she began to push herself back up.
She didn’t get up off the floor, though.
She shifted back into the position—arms reaching forward, chest sinking low, hips rising behind her, the black tights resting pulled down around her thighs.
Her body was still warm, sensitive, and visibly glistening, but her eyes held a sharp, dark heat as she looked back over her shoulder at him.
"You’re not getting off that easily," she said, her voice low and catching slightly at the edges. "I’m still waiting."
Liam didn’t say anything.
He leaned in, taking his time.
He unbuckled his belt, freed himself, and guided his hands back to her hips, his fingers digging into the soft curve where her waist met her pelvis.
He lined himself up at her entrance, feeling the intense heat coming off her, and pushed forward in one steady, continuous motion.
Elena let out a sharp, breathless gasp that echoed off the tall mirrors. "Oh..."
He filled her completely, the depth of the position leaving no room for distance between them.
The angle was sharp and intense, pulling a long, shuddering exhale from her as he held still for a moment, letting her body adapt to the stretch and the weight of him inside her.
"Better?" he asked softly, his thumb tracing the bone of her hip.
"Don’t talk," she murmured, her forehead resting against her forearms on the mat. "Just... move."
Liam smiled against the back of her neck, setting a slow, deliberate rhythm.
Every slide back and forth was deep and exacting, the friction heightened by the tilt of her hips.
He kept his hands firm on her waist, holding her steady so she couldn’t retreat from the depth of it.
The quiet room filled with the soft, steady rhythm of their movement—the light friction of skin, the quiet rustle of the mat, and the increasingly ragged sound of Elena’s breathing.
"Liam," she whispered, her hands gripping the edges of the yoga mat until her knuckles turned white.
Her hips involuntarily began to meet his thrusts, pushing back against him, abandoning all the controlled discipline of the yoga posture for something entirely unscripted.
He sped up, the strokes growing firmer, deeper, hitting the same sensitive spot again and again.
He bent over her, resting his chest against her lower back, his cheek resting against her shoulder as he drove into her with an even, unrelenting pace.
"You’re holding the position very well," he murmured into her ear, his voice a low, raspy vibration against her skin.
"I’m glad you like it," she panted, her voice breaking as another wave of tension began to coil tightly in her lower stomach. "Liam—don’t stop. Right there."
He didn’t stop.
He set a faster, harder pace, his hand sliding around to press against her stomach, holding her anchored to him as he set the final rhythm.
The sensation was overwhelming, the intensity building rapidly until Elena arched her back slightly, a low, helpless sound escaping her throat.
She clamped down around him tightly, her inner muscles contracting in sharp, rhythmic waves.
The sheer force of her second orgasm sent a shiver straight through Liam; he buried himself as deep as he could go, holding her tight against him as he let go, his own release hitting him hard and fast.
They stayed like that for a long moment, locked together in the quiet room while the morning light streamed over them.
Liam’s weight rested comfortably against her, his breathing heavy against her neck, while Elena lay completely spent, her forehead resting on the cool surface of the mat.
Slowly, Liam withdrew and sat back on his heels, catching his breath.
Elena rolled onto her side, pulling her tights back up with a slow, exhausted grace, before sitting up to face him.
Her hair was a little messy, her cheeks flushed, but her usual composure was already beginning to settle back over her face, save for the faint, satisfied curve of her mouth.
"Now," Elena said, smoothing down the front of her top and looking at him directly, "we can talk business."
Liam looked at her, a slow grin spreading across his face as he reached for his belt. "Lead the way."
She stayed flat on the mat for another full minute before her arms found the energy to push her up.
Liam was already standing, looking out of the tall windows at the grounds, his hands in his pockets, the morning doing its thing outside.
She got up.
She looked at him standing there and then looked at herself, at the black tights still pulled down from where he had left them, and she fixed that with the specific brisk efficiency of someone returning themselves to a functional state.
"Come on," she said.
He turned.
She walked out of the yoga room and he followed her into the corridor and then up the stairs and through a part of the house he hadn’t been in yet, a wing that felt different from the rest of it, quieter and more deliberate, the kind of part of a house that existed for specific purposes rather than general living.
She stopped at a door and opened it and went in.
He followed.
They entered what it looked like a study room, larger than the one he had seen briefly on the ground floor, the one with the papers on the desk and the lamp left on.
This one was different.
The shelves here were not books in the reading sense but files and folders and binders arranged with the precision of someone who used them regularly and knew where everything was.
A wide desk sat in the center, clear except for a lamp and a leather blotter, the kind of desk that existed for work rather than appearance.
Two chairs on the near side of it. One on the far side where she sat.
Liam sat across from her.
She reached down to the lower drawer of the desk and produced a large binder, dark cover, no title on the outside.
She set it on the desk and looked at him.
"Before you step into that arena," she said, "you need to understand what you’re walking into." She opened the binder. "Not in a general sense. Specifically. Who is in there, what they can do, and what has happened to the people who faced them without knowing."
Liam looked at the binder.
She turned to the first section and then past it, her fingers moving through the dividers until she found what she was looking for and laid the binder flat and turned it toward him.
A page with a photograph clipped to the upper corner.
A man, somewhere in his mid-thirties from the look of him, built in a way that photographs struggled to fully convey, the kind of build that arrived from years of something specific rather than general fitness.
Dark skin, shaved head, a jaw that had the set of someone who had made a decision about their face a long time ago and it had never changed.
Below the photograph a name and a number.
Number Eight.
"His name is Marcus Vell," Elena said. She folded her hands on the desk in front of her and looked at the page. "He has been fighting in the arena for six years. In that time he has had forty-one fights." She paused. "He has lost two of them."
Liam looked at the photograph.
’Two out of forty-one,’ Liam thought. ’This man had thirty-nine wins... damn, I thought that big was a monster but this guy might just be a demon.’
"What happened in the two he lost," he said.
"The first was in his second year," she said. "He was matched against Number Seven at the time, who had a specific advantage in speed that Marcus hadn’t encountered at that level before. He learned from it." She turned the page. "The second was eighteen months ago. An injury going into the fight that he should have disclosed. He didn’t disclose it and he paid for that."
Liam looked at the next page, which had a list of his documented fights with outcomes and brief notes beside each one.
"What’s his ability," he said.
Elena looked at the page. "He generates force," she said. "Not strength in the conventional sense. Strength you can train around, you can find angles against it, leverage, speed. What Marcus generates is different. It’s kinetic. When he strikes something the impact carries beyond the point of contact." She looked at Liam. "One of his opponents had his arm broken in two places from a hit that landed on his shoulder."
Liam looked up from the page.
"The force transfers through the body," she said. "Whatever he hits, the impact doesn’t stop there. It goes through." She closed that section of the binder. "He’s Number Eight, which means there are seven fighters in that arena who are rated above him."
’Seven people worse than this,’ Liam thought.
"Why are you starting with him," he said.
"Because he’s the most likely first match," she said. "Stiles will want to see how you perform before he puts you against anyone in the top five. Marcus is the kind of opponent that tells you a lot about a fighter without necessarily ending their career." She paused. "If things go well."
Liam sat with that.
He looked at the binder on the desk, at the section she had just closed, at the photograph visible through the clear cover of the divider.
"Is there any other thing i need to know?," he said.
"Contact," she said. "He has to make contact for the transfer to happen.
Which means his fighting style is built entirely around closing distance and landing.
He’s not a long-range fighter, he doesn’t need to be. What he needs is to get one clean hit on a body part that will do enough damage to end the fight."
"Speed," Liam said.
"Yes," she said. "The two fighters who gave him the most trouble were both significantly faster than he was. He’s not slow, but he’s not exceptional in that area. His entire game is getting inside your range before you can do anything about it and then it doesn’t matter how fast you are."
Liam thought about Wrath. About the fight in the forest clearing. About what it felt like to close distance on someone that size and find them already there when you arrived.
"Does he know about my skills," he said.
"Nobody knows about your skills," she said. "That’s the one advantage you have going in. In the arena everyone eventually becomes known.
Their abilities get studied, their patterns get mapped, their weaknesses get found. You’re new. Nobody has footage of you. Nobody has data." She looked at him directly. "Use that."
’Good, it’s not like I have only one but still I’m happy’. Liam thought to himself.
He nodded.
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