Page 21 of Fastest Kill

"Unless you think you'll lose, then you might as well just let me call him now," Dario replied with a shrug.

Frederica was already pushing her sleeve up before she finished the thought about not engaging with him on this. She dropped her elbow on the table. He looked at her arm, and then at his own, and the smile went sheepish.

"This is going to be embarrassing for me," he said pleasantly and planted his elbow anyway. "I don't like the idea of hurting a girl."

Frederica rolled her eyes and got the better of him in about eight seconds. His arm went down, she pressed it flat, and she kept her face very neutral about the fact that her shoulder was burning from the effort.

"We wait," she said firmly.

"That was one round," he pointed out. "Arm wrestling is always best of three."

"No."

"I let you win so you wouldn't be embarrassed. I didn't put my full strength into that one."

"You absolutely did."

"Frederica." He said her name the way he always did, as if it were the setup for something. "Best of three."

Frederica would blame what happened next on the wine, or the hour, or the fact that she was tired enough to strip away her good judgment.

She shoved her chair back, got to her feet, and said, "Fine. Get your oversized ass up. If we're doing this, we do it properly."

"You want to fight me, Spartana?" The look on Dario's face was delighted in a way that should have been a warning enough.

"You are spoiling for one, so let's get it out of your system, arkoúdos. Unless you don't want to have to tell your brothers you lost a wrestling match to a girl."

"You've done it now, Dario." Tore lifted his wine glass with unhurried calm and moved it to the windowsill, where it wouldn't get knocked over.

There wasn't a great deal of space once the chairs were pushed back, but there was enough.

Dario was bigger than her, but she had been trained by her mother, and her mother's philosophy on fighting men with greater mass had always been efficient and simple: make them commit to a direction before you change theirs and put them down hard and fast.

They clashed in a grapple, and he may have been big, but she was quick.

Frederica aimed a strike for his face, making him block before she pulled her punch, ducked, and swiped his legs out from under him.

"The bigger they are, the harder they fall," she said, right before he did something too quick for her to follow. His long legs were suddenly locked about hers, and she hit the rug beside him.

"They sure do," Tore commented and turned a page of his paper.

Frederica recovered first, rolling quickly. Dario made a lunge for her but fell on his stomach just an inch short of catching her.

Frederica grabbed his overstretched arm, locked it behind him, and sat on his back, pinning him face down on the rug. He struggled, swearing in Italian, and she got an arm around his neck from behind, tightening until she had the position she wanted, and pushed him face down.

"Yield," she snarled in his ear.

He made a sound that was not yielding.

She tightened her arm. He got a hand under him and pushed, which she countered by shifting her weight, and they ended up at an angle she hadn't planned, both of them breathing hard, her arm still locked and his face very close to hers.

"Yield," she said again, her breath panting out of her.

Dario's face was turning red, but he still grinned and whispered, "Harder, baby…"

Frederica's eyes went wide in surprise as her mind went to a dirty place very fast. Dario used the half-second to grab her wrist, break the lock, and pivot. The room tilted. Her back hit the floor again, and he was above her, one hand braced by her head, his shirt ridden halfway up and his hair loose around his face. Neither of them moved.

Frederica was aware of the weight of him, the warmth, the look he was giving her that had nothing to do with the fight. There was a flash of heated desire in his dark eyes that left her stunned and unprepared for.