The weight of her eyes on him warms the Marwari more than the sun at high noon ever could. Like birds they flash their plumage, weighing their judgement upon each other; a slight smirk drifts across his lips, and he watches as she comes to life under the sudden influx of attention. He knows this game, knows the role he was meant to play, and play it he does, giving her the consideration a mare like her deserved - no, demanded. Khajiit’s inkjet ears tip willingly forward to catch her lilting voice, ready for his next line -

And then she goes off script, taking him by surprise.

She laughs at him. He follows her movements, holding himself in place as she approaches, and though he wants to drag his muzzle across her smooth, unblemished hide he keeps his nose tucked neatly to his speckled chest. He prepares to concede, to look without touching, to let her pass without incident; just as he resigns himself to it, recalibrating his goals towards a longer pursuit, something in her posture stiffens. Nimble as he is, he’s not fast enough to avoid her pinching teeth. Khajiit tries to leap away, his ears folding briefly back, and hisses involuntarily at her harsh contact. Is it pain that he feels, or is it pleasure? He can’t quite tell.

Khajiit supposes he could go - accept her words at face value, cut his losses, and slink away chagrined with his tail between his legs - but what’s the fun in that? She was a powder keg. Why stomp out the embers when it was so much more exciting to light the fuse, sit back, and enjoy the show? Why settle for capturing fleeting scraps of her cinnamon-sugar scent when he could learn the taste of her oil-slick flesh beneath his tongue?

Before his hooves even hit the ground, he’s smiling.

The pale stallion takes it all on the chin, mirth dancing over his face. The moments tick by, the colt adds nothing Khajiit cares to remember, and with every sharp-edged one-liner the mare throws over the young upstart’s back, his amusement grows. “My mistake, milady,” he demurs when it’s his turn, at last, to speak, feathery white lashes shielding his gaze. He pauses - a breath, maybe two - and when his smoke-lined eyes snap up to meet hers, any trace of bashfulness or embarrassment is gone, replaced by pure, glimmering, mischievous bliss. “I must have misread the overwhelming odor of men coming off your skin,” he quips, “and been led astray.”

He steps nearer to the pair, smug. It’s his turn, now, to swallow back laughter, to yank the dark mare’s arrows from his body and send them soaring back, to watch his target expectantly for signs he’d made his mark and wonder about their next moves. True, he admits to himself, she might not have the expected, ah, equipment to fill a bachelor’s role - but her actions spoke well enough for her. She toys with them like only a mare well-practiced in the company of stallions could, subtle and precise, carefully tantalizing while lingering just out of reach. She courts the storm, dances nimbly towards it, unafraid; she makes it look easy, almost as if thunder clouds and cyclones had crafted her in their image.

Khajiit comes nearer. “Although,” he says after a second, his tone growing more serious. The Marwari pivots, circling around the couple, darting near enough so that his own creamy tail glances across them both. He doesn’t stay within striking distance for long, but he doesn’t leave entirely: instead, when he stops, he’s now on the opposite side of the night-cloaked vixen, his sinewy frame and the colt’s blocking her in.

“I do wonder,” Khajiit muses, “since you so vehemently deny all association with us, if you know what game it is, exactly, that you are playing.” His blue eyes flash to the golden stallion, taking him in for the first time in several minutes and noting the hunger smoldering within - for destruction, for chaos, for blood in the water and a way to prove himself. “And who it is you are playing with.”

Khajiit had his own plans for the Islands, yes. The difference between him and the champagne youth the mare had wrapped herself around was that Khajiit’s goals were pinpointed towards a certain outcome. This man… this man felt like a wildcard. Unpredictable, starved for glory and a reason for being, and uncaring of who he swept up in his powerful wake.

The Marwari rests a hind hoof lazily on its tip.

”Do you?”

He goads her; he makes no attempts to hide his interest, and he knows he is the prime subject of her focus, but he doesn’t force himself into her space, doesn’t try to take what he could very well be given. All he does is apply pressure - meticulous, discerning, exacting - where it might be of best use, and wait.

However the flame-tongued woman responded, he knew, at least it would be entertaining.