She saw him out of the corner of her eye as he slinked like a cat into her circle. The sunlight fell in ripples through the canopy, disrupted by the leaves so that it seemed to shine dimly down through shallow water. She eyed the feline stallion as he moved stealthily toward her, the lean muscles coiling beneath his pale skin. Vihar felt the intensity of his gaze, and through it the hunger that seemed to link them. She watched him shamelessly with the same intensity, though hers was more than hunger alone. Her pride was still wounded from the race, and a devious smile curved her dusky mouth. The need to even the score tainted (or perhaps intensified, she wasn’t sure) her attraction to him, and while it was an exciting driving force, she couldn’t hold out forever.

She had to satisfy that little need before she could even think about satisfying the other.

I would hate to find you tangled up somewhere in one of those twisting vines. Might make you look the part of a slave girl.

Vihar ignored the last part, closing the distance between them and wrapping herself around him like a snake around prey. ”Good thing I’m slippery,” she said, snapping him lightly in the chest with her flagging tail. He took another step into her, and spoke again, but she wasn’t really paying attention. ”Sort of,” she said absently, stepping around him until she stood on his opposite side, now shoulder-to-shoulder. ”It’s much warmer here,” she added. She trailed her whiskered muzzle up the lines of his neck, then along his cheek and the fine bones of his face. She was teasing him, but she knew he could probably see the evil glint in her eyes, or the coiling of her muscles when she suddenly pulled away.

Without any other obvious warning, Vihar lunged at Annubis, her jaws agape, teeth ready to snap closed on the crest of his neck just behind his ears if he did not move quickly away. She moved like a snake, throwing her weight at him as though she wanted to tackle him to the ground. She hadn’t had much of a plan for her attack, just the need to teach him a lesson, to make certain he remembered her fury and pride. Vihar was a sore loser, and proud to be one. She wanted to worry him like a dog and make him understand the lengths she would go to get what she wanted: to win, to come out on top. She had never taken it this far before, but she had also never had the hormones of the Fall season to push her into such a frenzy. Raw, animalistic fury burned through her, blinding her with its smoke.

Her attention turned to the black-tipped ears buried in the tangled ebony mane, and now Vihar snapped at those, wanted to grab one and twist it until he squealed. After this last attempt to drive her point home, however, the anger drained. Her need to touch him evolved from a violent one to an equally intense, much less aggressive pull. She doubted he had any interest in touching her after her outburst, however, so she untangled herself from him, savoring the sting of any defensive wounds he had left on her. She was panting lightly from the exertion, but she felt high from the fight, and part of her didn’t want to stop.

With a sweet smile, she stepped away from Annubis and began her little dance around the meadow again. ”Your turn,” she said, her voice like honey, as though she had not just thrown herself at him in a violent assault. She wanted to tease him again, to get him to snap, to take out his frustration on her and find release. She wanted to give him the euphoria she knew he craved, if he still craved it, because she could most certainly find a way to use that to her advantage.

vihar

mare // 2 // EE aa Dd nCh RnT // 14.3hh // Solomon x Nadja