Free City of Rogues: Book I of the Kobalos Trilogy by Ty Johnston Page B

grin, Fortisquo jumped to his feet and marched toward her. “I suppose I can kill you after we make love!”
     
    ***
     
    Of course Fortisquo had been joking when he’d threatened to slay Adara. He would no more kill a woman of her beauty than he would drop a bag of gold into a river. Both ideas would be repugnant to him. Besides, he knew he would have one hell of a fight on his hands. He would win. Of that he was sure. But he was positive he would not walk away unscathed from a duel with the slender female.
    He grinned as he slid from the rumpled bed and into his pants. He could not imagine knowingly attacking Adara, but daydreaming about ways to conquer a formidable foe was another matter. Fortisquo didn’t get to be one of the best rapirists and assassins in West Ursia by daydreaming about women and sex all day long.
    “ Why are you smiling?” Adara asked from the bed. “What are you thinking?”
    Fortisquo’s grin grew wider beneath his thin mustache as he pulled a silk white shirt over his head. “That’s a woman's question.”
    Adara squinted one eye. “Then give a man’s answer.”
    Fortisquo laughed and strapped on his sword belt. He placed one finger on his chin while staring upward as if in deep thought.
    His playful eyes shifted back to her. “I don’t know.” Then he laughed.
    A pillow smacked him in the face.
    The swordmaster gripped the cushion, bringing it above his head to fling back, but the woman had already slid across the bed and was standing there naked with a thin sword, a rapier, in her hand.
    Fortisquo chuckled as he saw the pointed end of the blade leveled at his eyes. “ What are you planning to do with that?”
    Adara gave a half bow, then stood in a fencing posture, her left hand behind her back and the right hand slightly extended with the rapier’s blade pointed at Fortisquo’s face. She stood on the balls of her feet as her right foot faced forward a couple of steps ahead of her left foot, which was turned outward slightly.
    The fencing master tossed the pillow onto the bed. “Enough play, woman! I’m hungry!”
    Adara took a step back. “You’ve already eaten this morning," she said with a squinted eye.
    It was too much for Fortisquo. A hungry belly laugh erupted from him as he turned away and waved a hand at the woman.
    Adara lowered her weapon. “ Where are you going?”
    Fortisquo shot a look back. “I’m going to have breakfast while you dress. We can’t spend all day in bed!”
    Adara tossed the sword on the sheets. “I don’t know why not,” she said, pulling on her britches. “It wouldn’t be the first time we stayed in bed all day.”
    She could hear Fortisquo chuckling again from the front room.
    “ That’s true, my dear.” His voice was followed by a chomping sound Adara decided was his teeth biting into one of the apples left from their dinner the night before.
    She pulled a white shirt over her head. “ Are you going to tell me why that man came to see you?”
    There were more chomping sounds from the other room. “You’re sounding like a woman again.”
    Adara’s eyes narrowed as she glanced at the door. That’s because I am a woman! Instead of shouting the words aloud, as she wanted, she thought it best to keep the peace until she had learned all Fortisquo had to teach her. “Anyone would be curious.”
    There was another biting sound. “True. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to tell.”
    Adara reached for her tall boots. This was one part of the day she detested. Without servants, pulling up thigh-high leather boots could take all morning.
    “ Well?” she said testily as she yanked on black leather.
    “ He works for an old associate of mine,” Fortisquo explained from the other room, “and he had a business proposition for me. I refused him.”
    Adara huffed, ran out of air and halted her tug-of-war game with the boots. “Why did you do that?”
    She heard Fortisquo’s familiar chuckling again before he spoke. “ Because I am no longer in