"But Allat does not possess you," her voice is like a dagger into his gut, opening him up from groin to chest and leaving his innards pooled beneath his hooves. How can such innocent flirtation so thoroughly destroy him? He had had women pelt him with praise before, to be sure, but he had had his mind turned to war and killing then. As defender, as guardian, his life was not so bloody and this leaves him open - or so he thinks. The season is upon this woman and she cannot value what that would mean to a stallion who had been left wanting for all of his adult life save for once.

His body is a livewire, his eyes turned upon her surprised for only a half of a moment, then he chances his escape under the cover of productive service he might render to her elsewhere and out of reach of that which made her so painful to him. "Ill sleep?" He can hear her incredulousness and the look on her face makes as much of a wound as her words before. "Is it wrong for a lady to be out for a midnight stroll then Atair, to stretch my legs and perhaps join you as you traverse the stars above?"

Oh, if only she knew. If only she had understood who she spoke to of possession, of joining him in the night with all of the others asleep and no wiser to his thoughts. She steps to him and his head snaps to attention, his ears pressed so far forward he might have believed they’d rip right off his head in his eagerness to follow those following steps she takes forward.

Every fiber of her being calls to him and every cell of him cries out for him to answer her - but he had been beaten into submission when he joined the ranks of the army and he does not heed it’s agony. He is as still as stone, as immovable, for those moments that she looks back at him from over where he could have died to lay his chest and belly. He can feel how his ribs slip in slightly quickened breaths, visibly faster than a moment ago. Her snapped tail makes him realize that he had been staring where he ought never and when his eyes meet hers the glare is paired with flattened ears.

He misses the first part of her harsh words, "Am I really that bad at company, or is it my lady you fear? She is asleep for now, a rare chance for me to see the world out from under her wing," he hears the latter, but she is speaking of venturing into a night alone with him - and part of him wonders if she were so utterly naive as to think him immune to her or less than a man to have any threat in him whatsoever. He steps to one side, heated breath the only thing he allows to touch her skin as he walks into place beside her.

“Do you know, girl,” he heaves in a quiet tone, grinding out sensible words past the wailing of every inch of his person, past the terrible want and the mortifying vulnerability he had not faced in quite some time, “how dangerous I am for you?” When he opens his eyes, he is shoulder to barrel with her, brown eyes savage and stricken as he allows that stoicism mask to slip just bare enough for her to see beyond it. “It is not your company that is bad.”

In a singularly unprofessional act of weakness, his muzzle pushes out towards her, against her if she does not move to keep from feeling the press of the flat front of his teeth against her withers as his breath ricochet’s off of her against his own lips. “I fear the ruination of everything you are, letting myself even look on you a moment too long.” Had she not already moved, he would have slid the press of his teeth higher, tormenting himself moreso than her. “'ana last baman balnsbt lk , Alfatinat Alzal. 'ant last baman 'iidha kunt tahtam bisadiqik 'aw alhaqi fi alaikhtiar.”

And then he would be gone, that mask of immovable stone visibly growing and replacing the intense conflagration of his uninhibited gaze, like building up a wall brick by brick. He chains the creature he might have been back in it’s captivity and his eyes grow that shallow and bored expression they’d always taken great pains to pick at, she and Sayyida. “Your lady has made no question of her claim - and I would not be able to be kind if you gave me notions to press my own--” even at that his voice sounds as though he choked back a great sea of desire. “The world would not be where the demon in me would take you to explore, Eness.”