It takes me a minute to understand. “Ah. The dead wildcat. I see. You don’t want to put more animals at risk, is that it?”
Pain ripples across her face as she swipes at her nose.
Nodding to myself, I say steadily, “There are ways to give yourself claws, then.”
She meets my gaze, very much intrigued. “How?”
I draw my hunting knife from the holster at my hip. It’s a wide, ten-inch blade with a heavy brass handle, given to me by Lord Rian as a prize when I slaughtered a wolf that attacked one of the Valvere’s prize horses.
I press the hilt into her small palm. “This hilt was made for my hand, not yours. When we arrive in Duren, I’ll have a properly sized blade made for you. Something small and sheathed that you can hide beneath your clothes.”
“Oh,” she says softly, wrapping her fingers around the brass hilt. “I can’t pay you.”
Pay me? For keeping her safe? I would pay her a thousand coins if she only promised to keep a blade on her at all times. Even after crossing half of Astagnon together, she still doesn’t seem to understand that I exist to serve her, not the other way around.
I give a low laugh. “Consider it a wedding present.”
She gives me a wry look. “Not many people would associate weddings with knives.” She toys with the blade’s sharp point, pressing it gently against my heart. “I do, too.”
I swallow a dry breath. Because we’re the same, I think. Both abandoned. Both made to survive on our own.
A girl like that doesn’t want rubies and gold. She wants claws.
She applies slight pressure to the knife’s tip, bowing but not breaking my skin. “And what if, when we reach Sorsha Hall, I don’t have a blade at the ready? Should I scream?”
“Hmm,” I stall, not wanting to dismiss her suggestion immediately. Yeah, right. The chance of someone responding to a scream in Sorsha Hall is as fanciful as cloudfoxes. Sorsha Hall is no silent convent filled with soft prayer and incense. Screams are the fucking standard. There are always sporting fights in the ballroom, not to mention moaning from the bedrooms.
“Distraction,” I say instead. “That’s your best option. Divert your attacker’s attention and run.”
She squares her stance just as I taught her. “Like this?”
She raises her fist, ready for more sparring, but I hesitate as my eyes trail down her curves beneath my oversized shirt.
“I don’t mean to offend your decency, my lady, but there’s often only one reason a man would attack a girl who looks like you do. He’ll likely be able to overpower you physically, but such an attack also leaves him open to vulnerabilities.”
Her cheeks turn a pretty shade of rose as she puts together my meaning, and she lowers her fists slowly, but maintains her fierce stance. In a dry, steady voice, she says, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Show me.”
Anticipation blooms in my chest. I’ve already touched my master’s bride during this sparring lesson far more than is appropriate, and now she’s asking for more?
I can tell myself it’s for her safety as much as I want—it doesn’t mean I don’t also jump at every chance to feel her soft flesh. I am truly fucked by how much I like touching her. A better man would tell her that it’s enough, and she can continue fighting lessons with her husband as her guide.
But I’m not a better man.
“Down,” I command, tipping my chin up.
She readily complies, lowering to her knees while keeping her round eyes on me. She sinks onto her bottom, then leans back onto her elbows in a submissive, reclined position, looking up at me expectantly through her long lashes.
Fuck. I could be hung for the sick thoughts going through my head to see my master’s bride splayed out like that on the ground before me.
With a dry throat, I drop to my own knees, straddling her waist as I brace myself over her with one arm. She’s kiss-close beneath me, her lips parted as her breath rises and falls shallowly.
I say hoarsely, “A man, especially an aroused one, will be most vulnerable in his groin. That’s where you’re going to want to hurt him. He’ll expect you to struggle, so he’ll be on guard. The best thing you can do is put him at ease. Don’t fight him—at least at first. Make him think you want it.”
She scowls deeply at the suggestion. Disgust laces her voice as she says, “No man bent on rape would ever believe a woman wants it.”
Oh, little violet, I think, recalling all the vile conversations I’ve overheard in army barracks. You don’t know men.
“He will,” I vow darkly, so serious that the scowl melts off her face. “Men have an astounding capacity to lie to themselves if it’s something they want to hear. Make him think you want it, and then, once his guard is down, you raise your knee up like this, as hard and as fast as you can.”
I reach through my straddling legs to grasp the back of her knee, then pull her leg up to meet the underside of my crotch. She complies, shifting her hips beneath me to get a better angle. With her body fondling all around my groin, it’s all I can do to keep my breath from giving out. I get no perverse pleasure from pretending to force a woman, but I sure as hell am drowning in arousal to have Sabine Darrow between my legs.
“If you have a knife, now would be the time to draw it.” I take her hand and place it over my bare abdomen, above my soft inner organs. “Stab him on his lower belly. Here.”
Her fingers blaze a path against my bare lower stomach as she feels for the place I indicate. I silence a groan rising in my throat. I’m not the only one warring with myself over all our touches and strokes. Sabine tries to hide it, but her body betrays her. She shows all the signs of a woman in heat: shallow breath, dilated pupils, the sharp, sweet smell of lust between her thighs. Maybe she gets as confused between fighting and fucking as I do. She can’t have ever been in this position with a man before, so her innocent body doesn’t know what to do with itself.
“Now, try it,” I bark hoarsely, and pin both her wrists to the dirt above her head. Her coiled braid drapes around her face like a garland, her eyes searing up at me.
She drives her knee up to my groin. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to jostle things that shouldn’t be jostled. I free one of her hands, and she grabs a stick to act as a knife and presses its point against my lower abdomen.
“Good,” I bark. “Again.”
We go through the motions time and time again. Once Sabine masters the initial moves, she quickly wants to advance. She starts trying to distract me in various little ways so she can roll away, but I easily thwart her every time. She grows frustrated the more I foil her, her pulse thumping in her veins, her breath coming in little huffs.
“A man won’t go easy on you,” I challenge, perversely enjoying her frustration. “Neither will I.”
She temporarily stops struggling, letting her body sag against the dirt as she scowls up at me. We’ve been wrestling enough that her wiggles have awoken every part of my body, and it’s a damn battle to keep my focus on teaching her to fight instead of training her to do what I really want: wrap those pretty little lips around the specific body part she keeps battering with her knee.