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kept me away from Amazon and Chiquita gal, both who’d go for blood.
    I glanced at the newcomer. “You want to suit up or fight in those heels?”
    She actually smiled. Not a smarmy get-real one like I expected but the unholy gleam of someone who was looking forward to a challenge.
    “I’ll be back in a nanosecond,” she said in Brahmin tones.
    I almost grinned. What pampered princess could change out of posh clothes in a second? Taking her down was going to be a piece of cake. I only hoped I didn’t hurt her too badly in the process.
    But damn if the woman wasn’t true to her word, returning to the dojo before I could catch my breath. She wore a fresh gi which looked tailor-made for her. My own gi was so soaked with sweat it was more wet then dry, but if Princess was ready, so was I.
    “Go, Alex,” Kelly cheered as the rest of the group backed away, giving Monroe and I a circle around us. Stone didn’t wave anyone back to their own sparring partners so I guessed there was more going on here then I first suspected.
    A test? Winner take all, or Stone giving the loser an opportunity to be booted?
    Opening my senses a little I tried to guess what this Vaughn Monroe might be. Succubus? Fae? Part-demon? But I didn’t get any sense of her being a non-human, only a scowl from Stone, as if he guessed what I was doing.
    But only a fool waltzed into an uneven match, training session or not.
    Stone had been teaching us elements of Krav Maga, the noncompetitive martial art self-defense system that came out of Israel. So far from what I’d seen it included everything and anything, a little karate, some kickboxing, wrestling, crap, even some grappling techniques. My kind of hand-to-hand, down and dirty fighting. Sort of an Idaho free-for-all.
    “Come on, Princess,” I murmured, loud enough for her to hear my taunt. “Show me what you’ve got.”
    But evidently royalty were no more fools than Noziaks, or this one wasn’t about to be prodded into making a stupid first move.
    So we knelt on the mats, bowed to each other, guessing at the other’s potential strengths and weaknesses. She was about my height, almost five-ten, and her leanness looked stronger than gym-created muscles. But I doubted she’d ever sparred with a partner like me, trained by four shifter brothers.
    Not taking our eyes off one another we rose to our feet, the people around us disappearing into the background, our focus one hundred percent on the other.
    We stepped toward one another and she lunged first, so fast her leg cut beneath mine as she twisted, slamming me down on the mat before I knew what had smacked me.
    Lord love a duck, she was fast. Wicked fast and not afraid to show it.
    I flipped to my knees, rising slowly as if hurt and waited for her to make her first mistake. She did, extending her hand as one equal to another.
    This time I struck. My right hand grabbing her right hand to immobilize it, I used her kindness to pull myself up and toward her, twisting to the left, my left elbow cracking into her jaw in a pivoting movement that earned groans and catcalls from the sidelines. Yeah, it was sneaky and cheap but this wasn’t beauty pageant practice. On second thought, from what I’d heard about many of those competitions they were pretty brutal.
    Vaughn Monroe must have learned from the best as she barely hit the mat before she flipped her legs up with a scissor kick motion that wrapped them around my neck, twirled me, and we were both on the mat.
    Now I was pissed. No princess beat a Noziak.
    She scrambled to her knees at about the same time I did so I rolled backwards, thrusting upward with my leg to her chin as she leaned forward. Smack.
    But no way was she out as she pivoted away and came back with her leg sweeping my knees out from under me then pounced with an arm thrust to my neck.
    Wolf-calls whistled around us as I lay there panting, pinned and knowing there wasn’t a damn thing I could do unless she moved. Not unless I wanted a