Shadow Revealed (The Enlightened Species Book Two) by Wendy S. Hales

weakness.”
    “Eeewww.” Jerika crunched her nose up. “I do not need to see you two get funky.” Rolling her eyes. “Again.”
    Enlil too had seen the mated pair “get funky.” On the couple’s bonding day, he’d been sent by his twin sister Ninlil to take the couple fighting clothes. Now he often wondered if Etana would have liked to have been spanked the way it seemed Jess did. He missed Etana so much.
    Jerika had been staying with the newly mated couple right before she graduated the police academy six months earlier. According to her prior whining, Jess and Shane had been enjoying each other in the Jacuzzi when Jerika had come out to the deck. She had gone on and on about how Shane and Jess’s coupling had traumatized her for all time.
    “You can’t say ‘ewww’ to our getting funky when you’ve been known to get down yourself, chickie.” Jess called Jerika on her bullshit while Sam blushed a deep shade of crimson. Enlil couldn’t figure out if the overly shy male was attracted to Jerika or Jess’s best friend Aymee, who happened to be human. Maybe it was the fact that both females were overly confident in their sexuality, a phenomenon completely alien to both he and Sam. Not that Enlil would judge another; these were different times.
    Until recently, Enlil was pretty sure Sam had rudimentary if any sexual knowledge. He’d lived in a place where sex was only a means for procreation, even if the females were … resistant … to the idea. Since Hulven males were sterile, odds were good he had never partaken. His constant blushing guaranteed that Jerika and Aymee would make him the target for shock at every chance they got.
    Shane swept Jerika’s feet when he stepped past her, ass planting his protégé onto the mat. “You let your guard down,” he said, tsking. “And that particular skill of Jess’s could never be considered her weakness.” He winked to his mate, who was watching him approach with suspicion. Her hand on her hip, she looked fully relaxed, but Enlil knew better. Her innocent, “I’m tiny and delicate” facade was one of Jess’s most powerful tools, usually.
    “You’re such an ass, Shane.” Jerika picked herself off the ground, dusting off her “Mesa PD” sweat pants, and headed over to take a seat next to Enlil and Sam, ready to watch the show down between bloodmates.
    Shane and Jess bowed to each other, taking position on the balls of their feet. Enlil sat forward. If Shane found a weakness in Jess, mate or no, it was his responsibility to ensure that she minimize or eliminate any weakness she had. Teaching a protégé to protect against weakness, whether psychic, physical, or emotional, was one of the biggest responsibilities a warrior mentor had. Being Jess’s mentor was the central focus of Enlil’s life. Well, that and the hunt for the Morsdente that killed his Etana centuries earlier.
    Jess and Shane were circling each other. Circling, Circling. Neither being the aggressor. Sure enough, Jess stepped into Shane in an attempt to draw him into engaging her. Shane just shifted away, circling some more.
    Frustrated, Jess straightened. “How are you going to show my weakness, dancing around me like a pansy?” As soon as the words left her lips Shane lunged, staying at the furthest point of his reach, left then right, the tips of his fingers hitting at the center of her sternum in quick succession. He pushed her back just an inch, and then she was back in her crouch. Circling.
    “You see,” Shane said to the three observers now sitting forward attentively, “Jess is weakest when she can’t get her hands on you. If you can keep just outside of her reach and still engage—” touch, touch, fingertips to sternum, setting her back another inch “—you might have a chance against her.”
    Jess dropped to the ground in a back-bend, balancing her weight with her wings, pushing off with her fingertips to the ground. Her flat foot kicked Shane in the leg. Not really