“Zhumo dzind mbi.”

Asshole. She supposed she could always bite it really fucking hard too. She wasn’t even sure what pissed her off more, being called a stupid fool, or the fact that even insults sounded sexy in his baritone voice.

“Call me stupid again, and I—”

He suddenly twisted, flinging his leg over her head and missing her nose by a hair. The weight that’d been baring down on her ribs lifted for one blessed moment before he dropped back down, grinding her spine into the salt-slicked wood beneath her.

Locking her jaw to hold in her grunt of pain, she exhaled through clenched teeth and glared at the scruffy, scar-flecked face that’d replaced the firm rear. How could someone so attractive be so gods damn frustrating?

As if reading her mind, he smirked down at her, unperturbed. “And you’ll do what? You’ve yet to succeed at even pinning me once today. I don’t think you quite have it in you, Nlem snadzend.”

His tongue curled around the syllables of her title, taunting her, and drawing pinpricks of blood along her pride. But it was the suffocating male arrogance pulsing near her heart that was the last straw.

Tapping into, what she hoped, was a minuscule amount of power, she snapped her head up toward his nose. He reared back to avoid the hit, shifting his weight and removing the bulk of it from her torso.

Using the split second she had before he recovered, she flung her arms into the space between them and shoved against his chest. His breath whooshed out, and she couldn’t fight her own smirk when his eyes flashed just before he went flying backward.

She didn’t see him hit the deck from her prostrate position, but the thunk of his body against the wood was just as satisfying. Maybe it’d knock some manners into him.

Rolling to her least-battered side, she pushed to her feet, mentally preparing for the new bruises that were sure to come from his retaliation. By the time she’d raised her arms, he’d done the same, dropping into a defensive stance.

She took a deep breath, ignoring the stab of pain in her side. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear she had the tip of a rib imbedded in her left lung from the last kick he’d landed.

Jaren’s eyes immediately latched on to her torso, and he lowered his arms, the muscles of his jaw flexing. “Resorting to cheating when you’re angry is a character flaw you should reflect on during meditation today.”

“Fuck you,” she seethed. She’d barely cheated, and in a real fight, anything was game anyway.

His eyes shot up to hers, flaring in time with the pulse in her chest. “You’d have to actually pin me in order to do that, little star.”

Her face heated, and her gaze dropped to his body like her own was physically unable to resist imagining pinning him and doing just that.

Droplets of sweat covered his tanned chest and arms, glistening in the unrelenting sun and drawing attention to each ripple of muscle. His usually sharp jaw was hidden under facial hair that’d grown during their days at sea, and his emerald eyes seared into her under his dark, drawn brows.