Keeping track of his sword is more challenging than I expect. He’s very distracting. He moves like liquid, his body sinuous as a cat, molten eyes fixed on me, lips pressed in concentration.
He thrusts and I parry—barely.
“Very good,” he praises with a lift of his eyebrow. “But I almost had you.”
That smug tone provokes me. I lunge in an explosive advance.
He spins and swings at me, the flat of his blade smacking me on the ass.
Hot indignation burns through me. “You think this a game?”
He smiles and his entire face transforms like the sun breaking through the clouds. “I’m enjoying myself,” he admits and then pounces.
I whirl away, narrowly missing the blade—again. Following up, I deliver a strike of my own, a wild swipe on course for his torso, which he neatly evades with a light bounce of his feet.
We continue in a barrage of quick moves. Strike. Parry. Strike. Parry.
I step back, panting hard, heat flooding my face as I glare at him. He’s still wearing that infernal smile.
“Ready to forfeit?” he teases—again, reminding me this is just a game to him.
I am nothing more than a plaything.
With a bellow of outrage, I charge.
He meets the charge with his own and suddenly, without quite realizing how, I’m pinned against the wall, the rock rough at my back, our swords locked, trapped between us.
And that’s not the only thing locked in battle. His dark eyes, the pupils shuddering, narrowing, clash with mine.
“Ready to surrender?” he goads, his voice unnaturally thick.
The words slide beneath my skin like a splinter, and words of my own explode from me in a burst of fury. “Get. Off. Me!”
Suddenly...he is.
He stands several feet away, blinking rapidly like he isn’t certain how he came to be so far from me.
I chalk it up to the power of anger, granting me the strength to hurl him off me. I come for him again, sword ready.
He quickly recovers, meeting my attack.
I grunt as our swords crash and clang so hard I feel the vibrations in my teeth.
Soon, I’m winded, my arm and hand aching. Where did that surge of strength go? I thought I was better than this...even if he’s a dragon. I never expected him to be so good with a sword. He couldn’t have had any formal training up here in the Crags.
Frustration swells and turns to rage when he taps his sword against mine, once, twice, three times. It’s a mockery. An insult. He’s toying with me yet again.
Growling, I come at him in a wild charge. A mistake. He deflects and twists around, catching me in his arms, his breath hot in my ear. “Enough. You’ve made your point. You’re capable with a sword.”
“That wasn’t my point!” Not myonlypoint at least.
“Wasn’t it? You wanted to show me you can handle yourself out in the Crags. Well, no amount of sword skill was ever going to convince me of that. You alone are no match for the ancient magic or fierce beasts or armies of man that populate these mountains.”
I’m wheezing. Saliva floods my mouth, and it has little to do with how exerted I am. It’s rage. My sense of defeat, helplessness. “You didn’t draw first blood. That was the deal.”
“I’m not drawing your blood, you little fool,” he mutters against my ear, his lips the barest brush. “What have I ever done that leads you to believe I would physically hurt you? That I would cut you with a sword?”
I’m panting hard like a caught animal. His arms lock around me, just under my heaving breasts. I hate that he’s stronger. I hate that he’s right. I hate that I’m his prisoner, that I’m stuck here, that there is no escaping this night...that now, in this moment, it’s tempting to surrender and just melt into him.
