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She yanked her leg free, stepping back fast, resetting her stance.

“Don’t,” she snapped. Touch me.

“Don’t what?” His brows lifted, all innocence that didn’t fool anyone. “Stop you from falling on your ass?”

“I wasn’t—”

“You were.”

That cocky edge — calm, certain — lit something sharp in her chest. She went at him again before she could think about it.

Jab, cross, another jab, pushing him back a step this time. He blocked, but she kept coming, closing distance, forcing him to engage fully.

Momentum carried her forward. Straight into him.

Everything registered at once — the press of his body against hers, the heat of him, the solid line of muscle.

His other hand landed at her waist. Her pulse roared in her ears.

Neither of them moved.

She was close enough that she could see the shift in his expression, the cocky edge easing, something else sliding in underneath.

Something heavier. Focused.

She should step back. She didn’t.

His exposed thumb shifted, just slightly, against the inside of her wrist.

His gaze dropped, brief, but not brief enough, to her mouth.

He didn’t let her go. She didn’t step back.

And that—

That was the problem.

Because standing there, caught between his hands, every inch of her too aware of every inch of him, the fight had shifted into something else entirely.

Something she had absolutely no control over.

She pulled away.

“This was a mistake.” She looked about, her gaze snagging on the vacant machine. “I’m gonna row.”

Ronan’s mouth curved. Slow, knowing. “Sure. Catch you later.”

*

He should’ve handed her the keys and walked home. Because this — the cab holding the heat of their bodies, adrenaline not yet burned off — was a bad idea.

A very bad idea.

Ronan gripped the wheel a little tighter than necessary and pulled out of the lot.

She was a warrior on the mat. Fierce. Focused. Relentless.

And he’d felt every second of it.