Aleksandra was calm, showing only the barest hint of irritation at her loss. But inside, she was raging. And deep down, she felt small and inadequate in the face of Aulfr's disappointment. None of his men could see it like she could. He thought she was weakening. Slipping. And it both frustrated and angered her that 1) He was disappointed, and 2) that she [i]was[/i] weak enough to give a damn what he thought.

Still, her expression were serenely neutral as she got to her feet without any apparent discomfort or annoyance, as if she were a very good sport about losing. She didn't lose often. She always lost to Aulfr, but she knew him and had respect for the way he could fight her all by himself for more than a few minutes. If it came to a true battle to the death between them, she didn't really know who'd win. But these lackeys of his? Even three of them on a bad day wouldn't hold against her. She'd been trained to kill with her hands by masters in Xiang-Bao and the deserts of Banti.

What she was truly enraged by was her own reluctance to cause Aulfr's soldiers too much pain simply because they were Aulfr's. At her own distraction, becoming so weak as to care what Aulfr thought about how she treated others. She was a killer. She'd hung men by suspension and watched them suffocate slowly. She'd pulled the guts out of a man and listened to him scream as she fed them to a stray mutt. She was ruthless, cold-blooded. And somehow she was reluctant to give a few men some bruises because she didn't want to make Aulfr unhappy. Saints, he'd probably be proud of her if she broke them both in half on accident.

And all of this flashed through her head as she looked between the two men, who both looked pleased and eager to receive their kisses from her. She was going to punch Aulfr for that. He had no right to pawn off her kisses like that. Didn't he know how special it was for her to kiss him? But at least these two didn't seem smug about it. In fact, they both looked rather sweet, with those dumb grins on their faces. It wasn't every day they earned a kiss from the Wolf Maiden. Especially because they beat her in a fight. And maybe it would make Aulfr just a little bit jealous to see her kiss them.

So she stepped forward and gave them a coquettish little smile, tossing her hair back from her face. "So, which one of you is first? And don't make me climb up the side of you, you're both going to have to lean down below cloud height to kiss me," she tutted, which immediately made them chuckle. The larger one stepped forward and dropped to one knee very gallantly, prompting a genuine smile from Aleksandra. "Alright, you. Let's get this over with." And so she leaned down a bit and kissed him, not really taking the time to enjoy the kiss, but instead cataloging the details of what kissing felt like with other men. Kind of warm. And slobbery. Not the most pleasant.

And then the kiss was over and she wanted to wipe her lips, but that would be rude. So she let the man walk away and started to raise a hand to her mouth, but then the shorter one was there and wiping her lips for her with the edge of a kerchief he'd apparently had, gentle and with no small amount of amusement in his eyes. She raised an eyebrow and lightly batted his hand away, grabbing the cloth from him to do it herself. She was secretly pleased that he'd realized how awkward that had been. And she was also pleased that he was much shorter than the slobbery giant. Still quite muscled and strong as an ape, but he was only half a foot taller than her.

And handsome. His eyes were a soft brown framed by gold lashes, and his hair was that same gold, just a bit too long and curling at his ears and nape. He had a friendly, perpetually-amused expression. She was sort of looking forward to kissing him. And she didn't have to wait long. He wasted no time once she finished wiping off the spit. He captured her wrist and tugged her closer, his lips closing the distance suddenly enough that she felt a small stab of panic in her chest and held rigid a moment. And then, the sensation hit her. Heat. A fire in her belly that almost scared her at the feeling of his mouth moving on hers, on the way he instinctively wrapped an arm around her and let his hand wander a bit...

"Hey!" Too low his hand went. She broke away, displacing his hand from her rear, and lashed out with a few expert kicks. He was flat on his back in moments, half laughing and half gasping. "Don't get too full of yourself, boy. I've bathed in blood before. They didn't give me all of those scary names for no reason." She 'nudged' him in the side with her foot. "Up," she snapped. "Go slither off with the rest of your comrades."