The way she was pressed against him, there was no mistaking his body’s response to hers. And there were all those warm, lovely muscles under her hands, just waiting to be touched, caressed . . .

Hell’s fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful.

Before she could do something stupid, she took another breath, raised her head, and said, “gr.”

Lucivar’s arrogant smile faded. His brows drew together in a frown. “What a prissy little gr. But it will have to do.” Sighing, he loosened his arms, letting her slide down his body until her feet touched the floor.

As soon as he released her, the rational part of her mind scampered off, leaving her with less sense than a rabbit. So she bolted.

Grab . . . lift . . . swing . . . plop. And she was right back where she’d started.

“You’re going to learn to defend yourself, Marian,” Lucivar said, an unyielding look in his gold eyes. “You don’t have to like it, but you’re going to learn.”

When he called in the Eyrien sticks, Marian sagged with relief. At least these were the sparring sticks and not the bladed sticks used for fighting. Even so, an opponent could take a terrible beating. Her father had done it enough times to young warriors he brought to her mother’s eyrie. He’d insist on a sparring session, with his daughters in attendance, so the young warrior could “show off his skills.” Even a skilled youth couldn’t match a full-grown Eyrien male who had been trained to fight.

And an unskilled hearth witch was no match for an Eyrien Warlord Prince.

She tightened her grip on the stick and set her feet in the stance she’d seen her father take.

Lucivar just looked at her feet. “What are you doing?”

She tensed, wondering where his first blow would hit. “This is the stance for sparring.”

“Only if you want to be knocked on your ass.”

She lowered the stick. “What?”

“You set your feet like that, you’re going to eat dirt unless your opponent is smaller than you are.”

So that explained why she’d never seen her father spar with anyone but half-trained youths. The fighting skills her father bragged about were nothing more than brags, just words without substance to justify what he did, and didn’t do, for his family.

She hadn’t thought about living with a man, hadn’t really wanted to. That had never been part of her dream. Now she wondered what it would be like to live that dream with a man who wasn’t like her father. With Lucivar.

“Marian?”

She looked at him and realized she had no idea how long he’d been standing there, waiting, while her thoughts had wandered. “Are we going to spar?”

His lips twitched. “We’ll get to it eventually. First you have to learn how to move.”