A disk popped in my spine and slid sideways. In an explosion of movement, my body jerked backward, forcing his knee to dig in that little bit more I needed. I could picture the smirk on his carved, handsome face, and I used the anger to steel myself against the coming pain. “All right.” Defeat colored my tone, and my body went limp.

Powerful energy, but not enough to turn the tables. Grunting, I tested my range of motion and felt an electric storm of agony gathering inside my body. His knee pressed harder, as he settled in with more of his weight. Tell me I’m the greatest Protector who ever lived.” Ten minutes ago I’d bet him that I could take him down in a fair fight, and he’d agreed with terms of his own if I lost. His humiliating version of saying “uncle,” he meant. “Now, be a good little mortal, and say it.” “I also told you to concentrate instead of getting cocky.” The cheer in Gabe’s proper British voice grated on my nerves. The thought had scarcely occurred to me when I found my face planted in the mat with his knee bending my spine like a bow. He might look twenty to my eighteen, but Gabe had lived more than a century, and his experience with our powers surpassed mine.

Gabe cursed and cut my amusement short when his muscles tightened and gathered under me. Never turn your back on the enemy, Protector.” I savored any opportunity I had to take his ego down a notch.

With his sculpted features, Gabe never lacked for company, and he never let anyone forget it. “What is it you’re always yelling at me?” I pretended to think about it, enjoying my little victory over my boyfriend’s brother. And then I wondered if I might have given away my abnormal speed.

Unwilling to loosen my hold for even a second, I considered biting him in retribution for the thousand times he’d insulted me. My height rivaled his, with me close to six feet and him just over, but he had a good sixty pounds of muscle on me. I took advantage of Gabe’s distraction to wrap an arm around his neck, putting the whole of my weight into pinning him. Gabe’s breath hissed out when Asher, leaning against a rack of weights, laughed at his older brother’s defeat at the hands of a gangly girl half his size. Our bodies hit the blue mat in the middle of the Blackwells’ gym with a thud that shivered from my teeth to my backbone. In the tick of a hummingbird’s wings, I had launched myself at his back, taking him down in a tangle of arms and legs.

If i lie by corrine jackson