She was angry, angry and I loved watching it. It was like every bit of her seemed to come alive and for the first time, I felt a flicker of desire for the mare herself. Not for her body or the season or the hormones or the act of lovemaking, but for the furious little mare herself. A sliver of respect - thin as spider silk - stretched from me to her, and I resented it as much as I was in awe of it.

I liked my mouses meek, didn't I? I liked it when they cowered and ran and hid from me. When they shrank from my presence and didn't talk back. Khar'pern was the very opposite of that, even now, even captured, in enemy territory in the midst of fall she was a hissing, spitting cat.

"Was I preaching?" I ask, head tilting and dark eyes glinting, mostly because it served as a welcome diversion for the direction of my own thoughts and because I knew it would only fire her up more. "Perhaps you should kneel and listen then."

I watched as she backed away from me, attempting to reduce the temptation that swirled between us, despite the anger. We were both resentful of the other, but I honestly think that was fueling the fire rather than diminishing it. I kept walking toward her - not fast - but relentlessly, drawn by the infuriating silver string of something else. She kept speaking, punctuating her words with a snap of her teeth that for all its threat, did not touch my skin. If it had, I might have abandoned the pretense of allowing her personal space altogether.

Her reservation, more than anything, suggested to me I wasn't the only one feeling conflicted.

"I assume the truth." I answer, aware afterward that that didn't really make a lot of sense. It didn't matter really, because I was already chuckling as I kept speaking, eyes glinting with desire. "You expect me to believe that with our history, you picked my trinket out of the crowd in the middle of fall just by accident?" My smirk broadens and I take another step toward her. "And now you want me to believe our child is such a disappointment that you left it behind?"

That one might actually be true to be fair, but it did set me up for my next line, for which I was eagerly anticipating her reaction. "Are you sure you just didn't want them to watch us make a sibling?"

Stallion - Young Adult - 15.2 - Brown Overo