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“What’s that?” I asked, my voice pitched low.

“A male with everything to gain,” he said roughly. “And everything to lose.”

Slowly, he raised his hand and guided the intana’s blade to the side so he could close the distance between us. And I let him.

Weapons in hand and nearly toe to toe, we stared at each other.

“A wager,” he said. “One match, to yield or first blood. You choose.”

“First blood,” I said automatically. “What’s the wager?”

His lips twitched. “When I win, I get to kiss you.”

I might have guessed that would be his demand. “And when I win?” I asked.

He smiled and tilted his head. “What would you claim as your prize in that unlikely scenario?”

I studied his mouth. The tips of his fangs were just visible between lips I could ravage much like my old Havelian crew would have plundered a fully laden Gandarian merchant vessel.

“When I win, I kiss you,” I said.

Very suddenly, he looked like a male giving serious consideration to losing rapidly and on purpose.

“But if I think for one moment you let me win deliberately,” I added, “I will choose something else as my prize, and I assure you it will be far, far less appealing. In fact…” I raised my voice slightly. “Siber, will you judge our match and alert me if at any point our Fortusian guest attempts to throw the fight?”

“It would be my pleasure, Captain Wren,” the AI said.

The speed of Jarrix’s attack made thought impossible. I simply reacted, slipping into training and muscle memory as everything but my opponent and his weapon disappeared from my field of focus.

I ducked under his swing, hit the mat, and rolled fast, avoiding three attempted strikes of the stunner end of his staff by a few centimeters or less each time.

I rolled to my feet, blades at the ready, just in time to block a swing by trapping his staff between my intanas.

I sensed the move coming before he made it: a jerk and twist of the staff designed to not only free his weapon but to catch my hip or thigh with the stunner. Instead, I moved with him, forcing the staff away from my body and swinging a blade at his knee. But when my intana sliced through the air, his knee wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

He was a meter away now, the staff whirling fast and its stunner end sparking in an attempt to distract me. But only an inexperienced fighter would fall into that trap.

I did allow myself a glimpse of his expression: hard, focused, and calculating, with fangs bared. All traces of smoldering looks and flirtatious smiles had vanished.

Good.

He wanted me. He wanted the woman who’d survived Ganai and emerged from its horrors defiant and determined. He wanted the woman who owned a fast ship and an arsenal of weapons.

I wanted a battle. I wanted him to be as fierce and uncompromising as me. I wanted blood on the mat.

Maybe we could both get what we wanted.

Blades spinning, I attacked in a flurry of flowing circular movements, attempting to hook his staff and pull it aside with one blade so I could slice with the other. He blocked me from every angle, switching between single-handed and two-handed grips on the staff and striking out with the stunner end several times.

One of his strikes made contact with the intana in my left hand and sent a jolt up the blade that ended at the hilt, which was designed to absorb energy pulses. Otherwise, I might have lost use of that arm for the remainder of the match.

The seconds stretched into minutes as my blades and his staff clashed again and again, moving so quickly at some points that they blurred. Sometimes I thought he was holding back, but then his staff would hit one of my blades and nearly knock it from my grip or his stunner missed me by millimeters. And Siber never called foul, so maybe he’d decided to follow the rules after all.

I was dripping sweat and my heart raced and my shoulder ached and for the first time in all my years of captaining this ship, the sounds of combat echoed throughout the cargo bay and the corridor beyond. I would have been grinning if I could have spared the energy.

And then somehow the stunner end of Jarrix’s staff slipped between my blades and hit me square in the diaphragm.

Between one heartbeat at the next, I was on my back on the mat, vision hazy, unable to speak or get breath into my lungs.