War God for Hire- Gladiator by David Burke (books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

From there, a dance back and forth began. Kyle could only dodge less than half of her blows and rarely was able to move the maul into place as a defensive measure. He found the best defense was a good offense. The faster and more furious his attacks came, the better he was able to keep her off balance.

Still, she was fast. He found himself admiring the way that she moved, and honestly not just as a fighter. The fur that covered her arms, legs, and back still threw him off, but she was all woman. A monster could never look like this while moving gracefully, at least not to Kyle. At one point, she slid in and sank her claws into his arm which was partially protected by armor, then spun her body so that she rolled across his back only to end up on the other side where she dug into the other arm.

Kyle was pretty sure that he wasn’t a masochist, but the pain simply wasn’t bothering him as much as he would have expected. In contrast, the feel of her warm, barely clothed body rolling across his back made him lose focus for just a second. It had definitely been too long, and shockingly the fur was nowhere near as off putting as he had expected.

She seemed to notice his reaction, because when she spoke next it was more purr than lycan bark. “I can smell your desire on you.”

She stepped back, well, really more like she pranced back, shimmied her hips, and made the bikini top of her armored costume giggle. Kyle shook his head to keep his focus but she went on. “Too bad you aren’t lycan. You don’t fight half badly. But a human could never tame one of the wolfborn.”

Then just as his mind started to imagine trying to tame her, she rushed forward, cutting low before spinning to plant both her feet into his gut. The distraction made his reactions too slow, and he felt the full thud of her strength land into the dual kick. Fortunately for him, she had once again underestimated his ability. He might not have her tremendous agility but as he was knocked to his back, he instinctively tucked and went with it in a roll only to come up a few feet away from her.

“You will have to do better than that,” he snapped back, trying to regain an equal footing in the fight. As he well knew, emotions could control performance and he couldn’t afford to feel off kilter. He needed to be at his peak. Some might have expected him to beat himself up for his loss of focus, but that was for lesser men. Kyle would replay the fight in his head later to learn from it, but self-recriminations didn’t benefit anyone but his opponent.

He quickly learned that short steps and shorter swings of the hammer were more desirable. One strategy that caught her off guard was when he shifted to using the hammer as a pool cue. It lacked the deadly tip of a spear and wasn’t balanced for such a maneuver at all, but an abundance of strength made what would have otherwise been an awkward motion into a shocking attack.

The top of the maul made contact with Kierra’s shoulder as she was caught off guard by the sudden thrusting motion. Normally, this wouldn’t have meant much since the maul was meant to generate force by swinging it. Due to Kyle’s superhuman strength, though, it caused her body to twist and then do a full spin in the air.

Kierra landed on her back, and while not as fast as she was, Kyle didn’t hesitate at all. He followed the motion of her body while it was still airborne so that he came down on top of her just as she hit the ground. His denser body meant that several hundred pounds were slammed down onto the lycan. That, combined with the impact on her back, drove all the air out of her lungs and slowed any response she might have made.

Kyle ended up straddling her legs and pressed the haft of his maul across her upper chest, just beneath her neck. He managed to pin her arms and legs completely like this, and while she bucked, his great weight kept him in place. He smiled at her but then felt a tension building. It wasn’t his objective to humiliate her and up close to her like this, there was no doubt that she was all woman.

“Do you yield?”

In response, she jerked her head up at him and tried to bite down one of his hands which was holding the haft against her. He simply pressed down harder, and she wasn’t able to bite him, but her intensity took him back a bit. Kyle was used to serious competitors, but that was for baseball. He hadn’t quite made the leap yet to fighting.

Behind him, he heard Saber say, “If she won’t yield, you have to finish it.”

Chivalry was dead in the modern world. And why shouldn’t it be? But Kyle still felt odd hurting a woman, even one with claws and arms as strong as any Olympic power lifter. One of the last things that Tess had said to him before leaving him echoed in his mind. “You open doors for me, but won’t open your heart to me. Which do you think means more?”

It was odd how the mind worked, bringing back the one failed relationship that haunted him, especially at a time like this. But Kyle realized he couldn’t fall into old habits or live by old rules. Kierra was a fighter and deserved to be treated as such.

So, he leaned in and pressed the haft down until it was squeezing against her chest. Her hands struggled to try to reach the wood to push back against it but failed. Then he slid his weight to one side and slammed his elbow