polished surface as it met the Friar’s blade in a jarring impact. They both gasped and added their cheers to the others as the Friar pivoted on the heels of his feet, avoiding a slicing sweep across his flanks with barely the width of a prayer to spare.
Cords of muscle bulged and rippled in the Wolf’s arms. Beads of moisture slicked his brow and temples, darkening the unruly locks of chestnut hair where they whipped and lashed against cheek and throat. He wore only a loose-fitting shirt of lincoln green over his deerhide leggings; heat and concentration had already caused the cloth to cling in damp patches to the vast slabs of granite that bunched across his shoulders and chest. His hands gripped the sword as if they were born to it, wielding its power smoothly, effortlessly, never once breaking tension in the wrist or upper arm.
Servanne’s hands fell motionless on her lap, her throat was suddenly as dry as parchment—an oddly disturbing contrast to the rest of her body, which seemed to be drowning under a deluge of liquid warmth.
She had indeed tried hiding away in her chamber, pleading illness and fatigue to avoid his company, but not seeing him at all was somehow worse than having only the company of her memories to contend with. Memories could not be refuted, only embellished. His hands, his lips, the tempered hardness of his body … If he was there, in the flesh, she could always find things about him that annoyed her and thus enabled her to use her anger and contempt to defend against the frequent lapses in vigilance.
Mon Dieu, how she burned with shame each and every time she found the Wolf’s smouldering gaze upon her. How she ached with the knowledge of where his hands had been and what they had done. What did he think? What did he remember? Could it be one tenth … one hundredth part as devastating as what she agonized over each time she drew a breath or released it?
A resounding shriek of metal slicing along metal startled Servanne’s thoughts back to the sun-drenched courtyard. The two antagonists were crouched and stalking in a slow circle, their swords gripped double fisted, their faces tensed into murderous grins. There was blood dotting the Wolf’s sleeve and a row of cleanly severed thongs hanging where the front seam of his shirt had once been bound together. Sweat sleeked his hair; it streamed down his face and neck, and glistened from the breastplate of dark hair that clouded his chest. His flesh was undoubtedly hot. Steaming. Salty.
Servanne cleared her throat and sat a little straighter on the wooden stool. She was aware—acutely aware—of a heart that beat too fast, of blood racing too quickly and too warmly through veins that ran alternately hot as fever, cold as ice. A knot of tension sat in her belly like a fist, growing and twisting upon itself until it seemed to be sapping the strength from her limbs as well as draining it from her chest.
Out in the courtyard, the two men rose up like rampant lions, their bodies clashing together, their blades crossing one over the other, locked in a tremendous outpouring of raw energy. The Wolf snarled an oath questioning Friar’s ancestry, and lunged mightily to throw his adversary off balance. Friar feinted to the left, his sword arcing off the Wolf’s with enough force to create a shower of sparks. Two clean, blunt strikes later and the blades crossed again, grinding in a screaming weal of flashing silver to lock again at the hilt guards.
“A draw?” Friar suggested through his clamped teeth.
“The third this month?”
“Fourth. But one I fear may be too violent for the more faint-hearted in the bower.”
The gray eyes flicked to the shade of the ancient yew. Servanne’s pale face registered first as a blur, then as a glaring, fundamental mistake any bowed-legged page should have been able to see through. But before he could correct the error, Friar had already taken advantage of the distraction to hook a foot around the Wolf’s ankle and thrust forward with his full weight. The two crashed heavily onto the ground in a churning cloud of dust and cartwheeling swords, and, when the curse-laden air cleared, the Wolf was flat on his back, his neck forced to an impossible arch by the biting tip of Friar’s dagger.