Free Taking the Stage: Soulgirls, Book 2 by Heather Long Page A

the excuse she would use to explain why in avoiding another cut, she ended up windmilling backwards to the water. Anthony caught one flailing arm, balancing her, his expression so intent and focused that she had three seconds of regret before she used his weight against him, flipping him toward the water.
    He snagged her shirt and yanked, plunging her into the pool with him. She surfaced to the sting of another cut. A second stripe cut neatly parallel to the first on her biceps.
    Wet hair clinging to his face and plastered along one cheek didn’t detract from the broad smile on Anthony’s face as he surged through the water. Tigers apparently liked to swim. Or maybe it was just him.
    Roseâtre struck out for shore when strong hands wrapped around her thighs and pulled her under. She didn’t imagine the scrape of his beard against her ass, the T-shirt floating up to leave her nether regions bare. Nor the yelp as teeth nipped her rear.
    Scissoring her legs, she found purchase against that magnificent chest and kicked herself free, surging up and out. She scarcely made it to the rocks when Anthony propelled himself out of the water, landing just a few feet away.
    Her rump stung.
    “I’d call that three, but I didn’t use my blade.” Cheeky bastard. “So, sorry.”
    The damnable thing was, Roseâtre wanted to laugh. The teasing heat of his mouth on the curve of her ass provoked dangerous thoughts. Her gaze skated over his broad, glistening chest. Water droplets skirted his nipples to race down his abs. Despite their exertions, he was barely breathing hard.
    She’d compared him to a god when she’d first seen him and looking at him, barefoot, soaking wet with a wild grin on his mouth, she was more convinced than ever.
    Surrender could be so easy.
    She banished the thought as he pounced, darting right at the last moment and pivoting to kick him. Unfortunately, he learned faster than most of her opponents, catching her ankle and flipping her into a roll midair and catching her left foot to his shoulder for the trouble. He fell on his ass even as she landed on her hands.
    They stared at each other, Roseâtre’s lips curving upward to match his grin. Damn, he’s fun .
    “Still two to one in my favor.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Ready to surrender?”
    “Worried you can’t take me?”
    “Oh, I can take you.”
    “Then catch me if you can.” She threw the verbal gauntlet even as she launched herself, but instead of attacking him, she raced up the path through his forest. For a brief few seconds, as her feet struck the hard dirt surface and she twisted through the trees and crashed through the foliage, she marveled at her own insanity. Anthony was a cat.
    She was running.
    Of course, he would chase her.
    Her cheeks ached from grinning. But that was what she wanted him to do. She wanted him to catch her, to prove that he could take her in battle.
    Then in lust.
    Her heart thundered a powerful back beat to her headlong run. She couldn’t hear his approach over the wild beat of her pulse. She burst through the trees to see a great bed cradled by a smaller, squat tree pushing up from the forest floor. Thick branches curled over the head and the base, creating a four-poster sensation that was both natural and erotic.
    A whishing of sound was all the warning she received before Anthony’s hard male body collided with hers, tumbling them both onto the bed. He caught his weight on his arms, the wild heat of him blanketing her back. His arms closed around her front, seizing the wrist that held her blade, turning it so even as she impacted the bed, her cheek flush with the silken sheets, her blade-wielding hand was pointed away, doing no damage to either of them.
    The soft brush of his breath against the back of her neck teased her. The T-shirt rode up, leaving her bottom exposed to the roughness of denim, but instead of chafing, he settled his hips firmly against her, removing any and all doubt of his arousal straining the