He gave as good as he got, unconcerned that she might not withstand his most aggressive attacks or break through his staunchest defenses. She was more than up to the task, only snarling under her breath and baring those intimidating teeth when he managed to wallop her with the silabat.
Outside, winter still gripped the land, coating the grass with frost. Inside the stable it was warm and sweat dripped from Serovek's hairline into his eyes. Anhuset's gray skin glistened in the dull lamplight, a lavender blush riding along her cheekbones from the heat of the building and their own exertions.
Their sparring came to an abrupt end when Anhuset maneuvered close to the stall housing Serovek's horse. Ears laid back and nostrils pinched, Magas stretched his neck over the stall door and bit the Kai woman on the shoulder.
“Gods damn it!” Yellow eyes wide, Anhuset pivoted, ready to strike this newest attacker with her waster. She lowered her sword arm and glared at the stallion before turning the baleful expression on Serovek. “Did you put him up to that?”
Both man and horse snorted at the same time.
“Magas and I are close, and I'm good with horses, but not that good. He's probably annoyed that we're keeping him awake.” Serovek leaned the silabat against one of the stalls before approaching. “Let me see the damage.”
She exhaled an indignant breath but turned to present her back. “We should have listed a rule or two before we started. No biting.” Before Serovek could respond, she dropped the waster and pulled her shirt over her head, baring her torso to his gaze.
He paused, swallowing a gasp at the sight of her long back, as graceful as he remembered. His thoughts scattered in every direction before he managed to catch one and hold on to it. Not that it did him any good. The notion he should have taken up sculpting instead of warfare just for the ability to carve this majestic woman from stone wasn't what he needed to dwell upon at the moment.
Anhuset glanced at him over her shoulder, a silvery eyebrow arched in question. “Well?”
Serovek had interacted with the Kai enough over the years to know they were more broad-minded about such things as nudity than many human cultures were and didn't assign it the same eroticism. Had the stables been too warm, he had no doubt Anhuset wouldn't have hesitated to strip and fight him, bare-arsed as the day she was born. With that kind of distraction, he would have lost the sparring match after her first attack.
She had a way of testing him at every level. This was just one more, and he shoved down the lust roiling through his veins to concentrate on the bite mark Magas left on her shoulder. A crescent shape of square indentations that marched along the top of her shoulder and through the scar left by the bodkin Serovek had dug from her shoulder more than a year earlier, the bite hadn't broken the skin. The bruise it promised to leave would be impressive, one not even Anhuset's gray skin could hide.
“You'll live,” he said, fingertips hovering just above the mark, the temptation to touch humming along his fingernails. Did his voice sound as hoarse to her as it did to him? Strands of her silvery hair fluttered across his knuckles. “That was a warning nip at most. He gets grumpy when he's sleepy.”
“Stallions,” she groused, shrugging her shirt back over her head and straightening the hem with a yank. “Arrogant, temperamental, and more trouble than they're worth.”
He couldn't resist. “Not all of us.”
It was a good thing he never underestimated her martial prowess. He snatched up the silabat just in time to deflect her strike with the waster. Nearby, Magas gave a disgruntled whuffle.
Anhuset's narrow-eyed gaze flared bright in the dim stables. “I was talking about your horse.”
“Were you indeed?”
His mild taunt earned him a hard wallop to the hip from her waster. He dodged her open-palmed blow, went low and managed to kick one of her legs out from under her. She stumbled but recovered just as fast. After several feints and counter feints, as well as exchanged blows, they ended up on the stable floor amid a flurry of straw.
Anhuset straddled Serovek's torso, hard thighs clamped against his sides like a vise, her waster's edge pressed to his neck. She gave him a glimpse of her pointed teeth when her lips parted in a smirk. “Now what, margrave?”
“I die from lack of air,” he said on a soft wheeze. “My gods, woman, did you fall on me, or did Magas?”
She gave a scornful huff but shifted position to ease her weight on him. “Better now, dandelion?”
He inhaled a thin breath, still recovering from having his chest flattened. “Never let it be said the Kai are made of flower petals and wool rovings.”
“I don't know how you weak humans ever got this far.”
“We're cunning, feral, and afraid of dying.”
Anhuset arched an eyebrow. “If that was praise toward your kind, it's the worst I've ever heard.”
Serovek savored her considerable weight now that she was settled more on his midriff and pelvis. He glanced to the side at her waster. “Are we finished sparring, or are you planning to wallop me a few more times with your sword?” He didn't mind lying on the stable floor among a cloud of straw remnants, though a tickle in his nasal passages warned of a coming sneeze.
Anhuset tilted her head to one side, studying where the waster's blunt edge rode the ridge of his jugular. “Had this been a real sword and a real fight, I'd have cut
