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As he commands, I step to where he directs me, watching him circle behind me. “It’s best if you can learn to kill from a distance.” With his chest pressed into my back, his massive arms circle me from behind, swallowing my body as he lifts my hand to press the blade’s hilt into my right palm, then he nudges my left knee.

“You throw opposite the leg you keep forward, to steady yourself.” The rumble of his voice in my ear is a minor distraction, while he positions my limbs where they should be. “Use your upper body.”

Nodding is all I can do to ignore the way his rough calloused hands feel against my skin when he takes hold of my wrist. The way my bones could easily break in his grasp, as he draws my hand back. When his other palm rests against my belly, I suck in a sharp breath with the contact, and he lowers his hand away.

Shaking my head, I set his hand back where it was, turning my head just enough to feel his warm breath against my ear. “I’m fine.”

He releases my throwing hand to extend my non-throwing hand, smacking my palm with the back of his. “Use this arm for momentum.” Taking hold of my knife-toting hand once more, he guides a mock throw for demonstration, and I nod.

Positioned as before, he draws my hand back, and snaps it forward with enough force that the blade whirls out of my grip. The power in his arms nearly knocks me forward, but his hold at my stomach keeps me grounded against him. The blade lands off to the side of the tree.

“Again.” A nudge from behind is my cue to gather the fallen knife, and when I return to my spot, he resets my arms and legs, lifting my momentum arm a little higher than before. “More snap. Imagine that tree is the Rager that attacked you.”

The thought of that fills me with determination, only it isn’t the Rager that comes to mind, but Remus. The memory of him tying me up and whipping me until I bled. I grind my teeth, and together, we throw it again.

Another miss, but closer to the target than the last.

I throw it again. And again. Twice more. A half dozen times after that. Each miss only fueling my refusal to give up. And every time I tromp back to my position from retrieving the fallen blade, Titus is there to reposition me and guide the next attempt. He’s patient in ways that my own father never was, encouraging me to pick it up and go at it again, until half the day is gone and the sun is beating down our necks.

Out of breath and sluggish with exhaustion, I swipe up the knife again and take my position, just like the dozens of times before.

“This time,” he says in a low voice, “I want you to imagine it’s me.”

With my back to him, I frown at that. “I don’t want to.”

“The resentment is written on your face for what I did to Will. If you’re not going to take a real blade to me, then pretend.”

“I understand why you did it, Titus. It wasn’t out of malice, or hate. You had no choice.”

“I did have a choice. Your life, or his. I chose yours.” Given the outcome, his words shouldn’t send a shiver down the back of my neck, and my skin shouldn’t prickle when he lifts my arm to draw back for another throw. “Now. Imagine I’m your target.”

Gaze set on the tree trunk ahead of me, I swallow hard, then snap the blade forward.

It lands dead center in the bark.

Part of me wants to rejoice with the first success, but a bigger part of me fears the truth in it.

“If I had to choose again, nothing would’ve changed.”

“I don’t hate you.” I should, given the fact that he murdered my best friend. But I can’t.

He curls his big hand around mine where the blade is, and draws my arm back, this time raising the knife higher.

Stretching the cotton of my shirt over my breasts that hardens my nipples beneath.

A tingle spirals through me, in spite of myself, and I can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to be at the mercy of his full attention. To be devoured by those golden eyes. Caressed by such strong and weathered hands.

“Focus,” he commands, as if he can hear my musings. My thighs clench with his imagined touch, but instead, he pats my leg to move it forward, urging me back into form. The scent of metal and sweat hits the back of my throat, watering my mouth, and I follow the length of his outstretched arm, noticing the sinewy muscles beneath his skin.

Perhaps it’s because I’m alone out here, having to rely on him for survival, or the fact that he’s the first man who’s ever taken me seriously enough to teach me to wield a knife, but my thoughts about him have shifted in recent days.

After what happened in the forest, the second time I found myself at the mercy of a Rager, it doesn’t take psychoanalysis to see why I’m attracted to Titus, no matter how much I try to fight it. He’s a dangerous man, and that’s saying something out here, amongst the most dangerous creatures in this world. To have someone like him on my side ensures my survival. To have someone like him attracted to me, as well? It almost guarantees my survival. I’ve known possessive men in my life, ones I’ve shunned because I belong to no man, but life out here is different. No doubt, a strong woman could survive on her own in these unforgiving lands, but I imagine it’d get lonely and exhausting after a while. Titus carries this undercurrent of animal and savage that seems to appeal to some primitive desire deep down inside of me. One I didn’t bother to acknowledge while living in the safe confines of Szolen. He seems to have awakened a feral side of me.

I hurl the knife with his guidance one more time, and though it doesn’t fall dead center, like last time, it hits the tree. “You’re not afraid of me honing this skill to use on you?”

“You wouldn’t be the first.”

“You’ve trained a woman before?”