Page 61 of Captured By the Highland Devil
“What are ye doin’ here?” he asked, his tone flat and his eyes guarded.
The apology was on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it back. “Ye said ye would teach me how to defend meself usin’ daggers—” her lashes swept up. “I wanted to ken if ye would like to start now?”
Instead of replying right away, Ruben gazed at her. Paige remembered the moment when she had first seen him as he entered the room where they were to be married.
He had seemed like such a hulking figure, his face a slab of stone, his eyes harder than obsidian and soulless. Now, she realized it was not a beast but a red-blooded, passionate man who took her breath away. That was a side of him that she believed he only showed to her.
He looked over his shoulder. The sweat from his exercise made his hair cling to his neck and her fingertips itched to lift it away. “Yer cousin hasnae made the daggers for ye yet so ye’ll have to use some of mine. Come with me.”
Ruben led her to what she could only assume was a weapons shed and there, he pulled out what looked like a scarecrow. The shirt and breeches were stuffed with straw, and he drove the scarecrow’s pointed pole into the ground.
“We use these to train the archers when they move from circular targets,” he said.
After another dip into the shed, he took out two daggers and handed her one.
“Imagine this is a man who is tryin’ to grab ye,” Ruben said while working a circle around her. “How many places on this body do ye think ye can stab to disable him?”
Observing the dummy, Paige said. “His heart… and his neck?”
“The obvious answers,” he said, while slapping the torso with his dagger. “In the upper body, male or woman, there are eleven places ye can stab to make sure the person is incapacitated enough for ye ta have a good chance to flee.”
“The side of the neck and throat are just about even with the Adam’s apple. It has a main artery and the jugular. If either is cut the attacker will bleed to death very rapidly—” he placed the point of his dagger to a point where the shoulder met the arm.
“Here, a powerful cut to the outer side of this muscle can potentially sever another vein which will bleed him dry.”
He told her more places, the inside of the elbow joint, the horizontal cut across the neck and even a powerful vertical slash, leading to the penetration of the abdominal wall will result in loss of motion, and possible disembowelment.
“Here too,” he said, pointing to right in the underarm. “The artery runs along the inside of your arms. It’s deep but severin’ it will have him groggy in a few moments and dead a few after that.”
Paige swallowed. “These…these sound like huntin’ techniques.”
“Some of them are,” he said. “If ye slit the throat of any livin’ thing, they will die but if ye cannae, these techniques are yerbest bet. Now—” he took her hand and firmed her grip over the dagger. “Strike.”
When she did, Ruben grunted. “Lass, are ye tryin’ to escape death or are ye tryin’ to irritate the captor for him to kill ye? Strike it like ye mean it because with some men, ye only get one chance to survive. Again!”
Gripping the blade, she struck the points he ordered to, memorizing half of them as she went. Here and there, Ruben would grab her hand to fix her grip or turn her hips for a better stance. Even though his touch was cursory, his warm grip and rough fingers, coasting over her neck and hands, made her shiver.
By the end of her training session with the makeshift man, the scarecrow looked like a pincushion.
“In yer spare time, ye will practice with this scarecrow,” Ruben ordered her. “Ye did fine for now, but I think at one point I’ll have ye train with one of me men.”
A brisk wind rustled the trees around them when Ruben said, “I need to teach ye more than how to use daggers.” He circled her again; a dark emotion flickered in his eyes. “Suppose ye have nay weapons with ye and someone is attackin’ ye, what will ye do?”
“I’d scream for help,” she answered promptly.
“What if there is nay one to hear ye?” Ruben demanded.
“I’d…” she paused. “…look for any weapon around, a rock maybe, even a branch.”
“And what if—” in a flash Ruben wrapped his arms around her, and Paige found herself caged, her back against his hard chest, his arm hooked around her waist and neck. “—he held ye this way, blockin’ ye from runnin’ and screamin’?”
Instinctively, she tried to get away, twisting in his arms and hooking her hands around his arm, trying to pull him away. He would not budge, and a streak of panic began to set in. It was trying to pry a strip of iron free from a stone wall—impossible.
Trapped by his greater strength, she could do nothing but try to wiggle away, which gained her nowhere. “First lesson of defense, ye cannae fight an attacker by tryin’ to match strength for strength.
“The chances are the man is going to be stronger than ye and ye tryin’ to match him in brute strength will only waste yers. Ye have to be smarter about it.”
Ruben’s hot breath coasted over the sensitive curve of her ear, and despite the situation, sensual awareness shivered over her. Or perhaps—because of it.
