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“Help me get back to the village. I cannot make my way in the dark.” They both knew she could, but he didn’t argue.

“And what will you give me for doing this?” he asked.

“What do you want?”

She saw his shoulders move up and down. “Protecting you from this vast wilderness until you get back to your village is worth quite a lot, is it not?”

She moved closer. “What do you want, Nero?”

“More than a kiss.”

Her skin prickled. “How much more?”

He seemed to think about it. “I want you to teach me how to fight like you do.”

She blinked. It wasn’t what she’d been expecting him to say. She was a bit disappointed. “What? Right now? I cannot teach so much in one night…”

“Not all of it, just the way you got me on the ground before.”

“I… suppose I could do that.” She didn’t really want to fight him again. She trusted him more than most men she knew, but having hands on her, striking her, attempting to hold her down, was not particularly enjoyable. But she would do it, if it was what he wanted. She liked him. And she knew he would not actually hurt her.

She thought about what had happened the night they’d fought. It had all happened so quickly. “I do not remember exactly…”

“I was holding you like this,” Nero said, taking her wrists lightly in his hands. He took a step closer, holding her hands up between them. His grip was loose, his thumbs stroking up along the spiderweb of veins on her inner wrists and onto the pads of her palms. There was nothing about the touch that made her nervous. “And somehow, you cleverly escaped.”

She smiled. “There is not much clever about it.” She tilted slowly sideways, pulling him with her, then slid her leg in to demonstrate what she’d done that night. “I only tripped you. You could have avoided it if you had reacted quickly enough.”

He nodded. “And then what happened?”

Zara swallowed, very conscious of his hands on her and of the way their bodies were intertwining. “Then you went down.”

He took her in his arms and rolled backward onto the ground, taking her with him. Suddenly she was lying atop him, her face inches from his. “Like this?” he asked innocently.

“I think you were on your front.”

“What would you do if I weren’t?” His hands went to her waist and his leg bent, pressing his thigh into the sensitive heat between her legs. Zara sucked in a breath, pressing her hands against his chest to push herself upright and rub herself more deeply against him. The soft pressure against her was embarrassingly pleasurable and made it difficult to think straight. Suddenly her mind was overrun with thoughts of other parts of him pressing there.

“I… would try to get behind you,” she said eventually. “If I could not, I would probably try to strike a vulnerable spot. Here,” she said, tapping his nose with her finger. “Or here.” Her finger moved down to his trachea. “Or… here.” She inched her thigh up to rub against his groin.

“Ah. I’m glad you didn’t resort to that.”

“I did not really want to hurt you.”

“I appreciate that.” His hand moved slowly up her arm. “Couldn’t you use your weight to hold me down here the way you did when I was on my front?”

“The angle is not to my advantage. I am not strong enough.”

“Are you certain?”

Something in his voice sent chills through her.

She hesitated, then found his hands in the darkness. Her fingers circled his wrists and pinned them to the ground on either side of his head. She squeezed, putting her weight onto him, and pushed her knee against his groin in a way that could either have been seduction or a threat, she wasn’t sure which.

Nero inhaled and exhaled slowly, his body flexing beneath her. She leaned down, and her lips bumped his chin before finding his mouth. His hands curled into fists, his hips lifting slightly to grind a hard length against her.

He made no move to extricate his hands from her grasp, content to be held on his back beneath her. To Zara’s surprise, his submission filled her with heat.

No Varai would have lain beneath a human and pantomimed surrender for her. They’d have preferred death over that humiliation. And in all her life she had never partnered with a man who did not need to be in a position of dominance over a woman. For some of them, it seemed like sex was as much about demonstrating their power over another person as it was about physical pleasure.