bruised, her body violated. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth as if she could remove the taste and feel he had left branded upon them, but her hands were themselves victims of his overpowering maleness and could not be trusted.
“I should kill you for that,” he said hoarsely, his face still turned away, his fists still clenched against the need for violence. “I may not be the demon you would take me to be, but in all good sense, madam, I would tell you to go. Now. Run back to the warmth and the light before I forget who I am and become what you would make me.”
Servanne’s eyes were two shimmering discs of moonlit tears as she whirled and ran along the broken path, her cloak belling out behind her, her haste startling small corkscrews of mist to whorl together in her wake.
Sparrow, stopped on the path by the sound of voices ahead, was nearly bowled top over toe by the sobbing figure who ran past. He had barely finished setting himself aright when an explosive curse, followed instantly by the fractious meeting of a fist against a hapless tangle of ancient grape vines, sent the wary fellow inching cautiously forward again.
“Is it a man or a wild boar loose in these gardens?” he queried hesitantly.
The Black Wolf wheeled around, the expression on his face rivaling the blackness of the night. His one hand was clasped about the wrist of the other, and, as he recognized Sparrow’s diminutive form, he released the wrist with a savage oath and shook the spasms of pain out of the scraped fingers.
“I trust it is not a sudden dislike of grapes that makes you want to deny them further longevity,” Sparrow remarked, wafting out of the fog like a faerie gnome.
“It is not the grapes I would deny longevity,” snapped his glowering companion after a moment.
“Ahh.” Sparrow puckered his lips thoughtfully. “Such pretty pieces usually do end up being more troublesome than appearances would imply.”
“Troublesome?” The word was raked past gritted teeth. “You do the word an injustice. Vipers are troublesome. She-cats are troublesome. That one … !”
“Tut tut. You like vipers and she-cats well enough when your thoughts are not occupied elsewhere.”
“Well then, thank the good Christ they are occupied. Saints assoil us—!”
“Here, give it to me, you great heaving lummox,” Sparrow said, reaching up to catch the flexing hand. His stubby fingers prodded and probed the thicker, more heavily calloused ones and decided nothing was crushed or bent out of shape. “You might at least have put a foot to a rock instead of a hand through a wall of vines. Better still, a fist to the jaw that caused such an outbreak of distemper. A fair beating would have tamed her to your purposes soon enough, I warrant.”
The Wolf reclaimed his hand with a scowl and sucked on a bleeding knuckle. “It would take more than a beating to tame that one, and a bigger fool than me to want to try.”
Sparrow sighed expansively. “You have been lurching about the forest like a pissed newt since she first crossed your path. If the wench is proving to be so resistant to your overwhelming charm, why not just toss her on her backside and have done with it? It will not be the first time you have persuaded a reluctant pair of thighs to spread, nor the first time you have won a reluctant pair of lips over to singing sweet and long after a night in your bed.”
“I doubt if rape would win her as a friend to our cause,” came the dry response.
“You do not have to win her. Only unbalance her so that there is room for doubt. She could prove a useful ally, not to mention a useful pair of eyes and ears to have inside the Dragon’s lair.”
“You place too much store in my abilities between the bed sheets.”
“Not so much so as I have not seen you send a filly from your thighs as bright-eyed and addled as a drunken maybug. What is more: A woman who fights the hardest also falls the farthest. To my mind, our quivering little peahen appears more than ripe and ready for a steep tumble … and if not by you, then surely by her lusty bridegroom. I warrant he’ll have no reservations about taming her.”
Sparrow saw, by the Wolf’s grimace, that his bolt had struck home, and did not know whether to be pleased