Chapter 36
It's not really anything that could be called a kiss. What it is, is brutal. Your captain's teeth are not as sharp as some, but they are not blunt, either, and there is nothing soft about her lips just now, the way she drives herself upon Quen's muzzle and forces the kneeling woman's jaws apart with her own, with all the implacable strength a hyena's mouth can bring to bear—tongue thrusting, forcing itself against Quen's, and were the taller woman not already kneeling you can see in the way she sags under the weight of it that it would drive her to her knees—and Hua follows her down, still driving hard upon her, still holding her head back with one hand as the other captures the wolf's jaw, thumb and fingers pressing hard in between her teeth, holding her helpless there wrists tied behind her as she makes clear without words that she will have of Quen exactly what she requires, for as long as it please her to do so—
—when Hua finally draws back a little way, once she's made her point good and proper, and releases the other woman's jaw, it's to press hard with her thumb at a spot of blood on Quen's lip, where one of those not-blunt teeth jabbed harder than the rest. When she turns loose of Quen's hair, it's only to twine her fingers again this time in the wolf woman's mane, a less immediately painful sort of hold but a much more powerful one for anyone of canine stock for whom the response is instinctive—as Hua no doubt well knows.
Did you choose to do so, you could know in the mind-sense the effect this harsh clinch has had on both women. But you do not so choose, and you need not, for it could tell you nothing you cannot see simply by the way they look now into one another's eyes.