would be far too dangerous for her to know in the harsher light of day.
“The queen’s methods and justifications are her own,” he said coldly. “Suffice it to say she could not very well send an army into England.”
“So she sent you? A man with blood on his hands and death in his eyes? A man who kills without thought or remorse; who takes women as hostages to act out his petty games of revenge! Truth?” She spat the word at him in a blaze of fury. “You would not recognize the word if it lay prostrate on the ground in front of you!”
He had had enough. Despite the two broad paces that now separated them, he was by her side before she could react to avoid him. A brutal and crushing grip on her wrists forced her even closer as he twisted both arms around to the small of her back.
“I gave you fair warning, madam,” he snarled. “Yet still you seem bent on testing just how long it will be before you are the one prostrate on the ground.”
“Was that not to be part of your revenge all along,” she said bitterly, the anger crowding the fear in her eyes. “Was that not what you intended all along?”
“Madam,” he said carefully, “had it been my intention all along, I would have had you on your back this morning, or last night, or, by Christ, in the glade when you first defied me to behave at my worst!”
“Should I feel gratitude then, that you have spared me this long?” she cried, her body beginning to tremble so badly, she would have crumpled to her knees if not for the support of his arms … arms that tightened further, forcing her to rise up on tiptoes and bring her face within a scant few inches of his.
“You should feel gratitude that I am not my brother,” he said thickly. “Were our positions reversed, I have no doubt he would have had you chafed raw by now, merely for the pleasure of knowing he had been there before me.”
Tears that had been collecting in shiny crescents along her lower lashes, splashed free on a horrified gasp and streaked wetly down her cheeks. Her chin quivered and her limbs shook like young saplings. The shock of contact was sending her senses reeling farther and farther from the bounds of reason and logic. She no longer cared who he was by name, she only knew …
“You are the Devil! Let me go!”
“The Devil?” he rasped, taken aback enough to grin sardonically. “So now you think I am the Devil?” “Yes!” she cried. “Yes! Yes!”
For the longest moment, the ardent desire to shake her into oblivion was foremost in his mind, but then he saw the wide, wet path of her tears, and felt the fear, as vibrant within her as the trembling of a lamb being led to slaughter. The anger began to drain out of his hands, and the vengeance to fade out of his eyes, and he recalled the look on her face when she had seen his scarred body that morning.
“The Devil,” he mused. “Deformed and maimed, capable of conjuring ghouls and grotesques … even elfin demons at the snap of a finger. Yes … I suppose the comparison is a fair one.”
Servanne could not answer. She could not think for the scalding ribbons of fear, apprehension, and … anticipation that began to twist through her belly, circling, swirling, rushing to tauten the skin everywhere on her body until her flesh was so rigid, she feared the slightest movement would shatter her like glass.
“Look at me,” he commanded softly.
Servanne opened her eyes, unaware she had sealed them tight against unwanted intrusion. The vast, dark breastplate of his chest filled her view; the heat of intimacy was like a flame, scorching and searing her through the layers of her clothing.
“Look at me, damn you.”
She shook her head, and kept shaking it until he caught her face between his hands and forced it to tilt upward. Her eyes were slower to obey, climbing by halting fractions from the broad, strong column of his neck, to the angular savagery of the uncompromising jaw. Driven by dread from the blatantly sensual mouth, she found herself drawn into the deep, merciless centres of his eyes, and a smothered gasp sent her fingers clawing into the thick fur pelt of his vest. A surge of wildness rose within her—a wildness that changed, between one heartbeat and