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Khar’pern recognizes the victory dancing behind his amber eyes. Victory that no doubt he recognized in her own icy ooids as they glowered at him in victory time and time again. It has always been a never ending cycle between them, a hatred that stemmed from something far deeper and more real than anything that could be taught. Competition between the Lagoon and Peak horses has always been common knowledge. The charge that lit the air now is something foreign and altogether new to her but still it stems from that same need to compete and best the other.

Khyber is different. A stallion to be remembered and by the gods would she always. There have been others she sought out previously, when the need to procreate burned to strongly in her loins. Always there were stallions willing to help scratch the proverbial itch, but none she cared to remember the next morning. Not until now.

Even without seeing them, she knows the cocky smile has returned to his lips as the velvet flesh lingers close enough to her skin that his whiskers tickle. A shiver of repulsion and pleasure ripples through her heated form. Her glacial gaze follows his, defiant and hard to read. Small, cupped ears pitch forward at the rumble of his deep baritones as his hot words breathe into her dappled skin, causing her heartbeat to quicken.

A feral noise gathers deep in her throat in response. It is the only voice she can be confident to relay her warning. Both her heart and mind were at war within her, screaming to lunge away and to press closer to his patchwork frame. The nearness of his body to hers strengthens the memories of their meeting last season, when she had known him as nothing more than a pretty face. He had been attentive then, hungry to comply with the ingrained need. This, this was something… different. Entirely different on a level that she feared. And a peak mare NEVER feared a stallion. SHE never feared anyone and yet…. The connection that was knitting together deep inside her very soul was terrifying.

The first touch draws her thoughts back to the surface. Small, fluted lobes snap backward, disappearing beneath the thick curling tendrils of her obsidian mane as the rose-gray mare tenses once more. Ash dusted labrums peel back in warning as defiant to herself and to him, she lifts her finely dished head… but she does not move away.

His next touch comes, and then the next after that, hard and soft, fierce and gentle, tender and hungry. Even without the autumn leaves rattling in the trees above, Khar’pern is all too aware of her body’s reaction to his touch; to the subtle manner in which she instinctively leans into the intensity of him. Their relationship will forever be taboo to her and yet….

A snarling reverberates deep in her throat as her sleek serpentine arches towards him, her own lips parting to roughly claim his russet flesh between her teeth. ”This changes…. nothing.” she huffs, her breath heavier than she would like but she is beyond caring now. Like a fog settling over the forest in the early morning hours, she feels the desire for his touch heighten, her skin crawling with a need only he can sate. She resists the whisper of his name on her lips, focusing instead on the sharpness of his trailing teeth and reciprocating with her own searching touch.

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