Instead, I only let my gaze hang on her small frame, drowning in my borrowed shirt. “Where exactly are you hiding a pouch of gold coins, my lady?”
Her heartbeat changes, thumps lighter with hope.
“I have a friend who can get you money if you take me to a rendezvous location twenty miles inland from Salensa.”
Inwardly, I groan deep in my bones. As I suspected, this girl has some lovesick scheme with a boy she met somewhere. That damn seashell. The way she caresses it.
Turning the spit buys me time as I consider how to handle this foolish girl’s artless plan. I suspect the boy is the supposed brains behind it, not her. Sabine may be clever, but like any pampered lord’s daughter, she is uneducated on such things as geography and roadways. This is trouble. Not because she’ll escape—she won’t under my watch—but because I don’t know how much this boy might have already spoiled Sabine.
She’s still a virgin—of that, I’m certain. It’s crass, but I can smell it if a girl is untouched. Lord Rian used to use that particular skill of mine when evaluating new whores for the brothels. Since virgins are worth far more, every girl claims to be one, and he needed my nose to suss out the liars.
Unlike most, Sabine has the scent of innocence all over her.
But this lover of hers could have had his mouth on her, his hands in places reserved for her future husband. And that would be unacceptable.
Standing, I take my time removing one of the rabbits from the spit, picking off the ash and charred bits, then stalk around slowly and hold the roasted meat above Sabine’s head.
Her stomach growls. Saliva floods her mouth. Her big eyes look up at me with so much goddamn hope it takes my breath away.
In a hard voice, I say, “Never attempt to bribe me again, Lady Sabine. It won’t go as well for you the second time.”
I pop a chunk of the meat in my own mouth.
Her face falls. I’m never keen to see a girl’s hopes dashed like a rotten pumpkin, but she doesn’t realize what a favor I just did her. What a favor I’m about to do for her now, though she’ll hate me for it.
Setting the stick back on the spit while her stomach rumbles louder, I rummage through my rucksack until I find a length of rope.
“Hold out your hands,” I command, and measure enough to bind her wrists.
Her eyes fill with fear.
Violets, I think as her scent mixes with the savory juices in my mouth. Goddamn violets.
Chapter 5
Sabine
My wrists are bound.
My ankles are tied.
My stomach growls like a newborn pup.
And all I can think is: I hate Wolf Bowborn with all the marrow in my bones.
My captor sits on a log by the fire, confident I can’t escape, taking his time picking the meat off a rabbit haunch like he enjoys watching me try to squirm out of my binds.
After he torments me long enough, he comes around the fire in unhurried steps, then lowers the roasting stick with the second rabbit toward my mouth.
“Eat,” he commands.
Seething, I glare up at him, but I’m too hungry to refuse. It’s pathetic how a single day without food sends all my resolve flying out the window. As I think of all the ways I’d like to stab him with that pointy stick, I part my jaw. He holds out the meat, and I take a bite, ripping its flesh with my teeth. Grease drips down my chin.
A dark smile plays on his lips—he’s enjoying this far too much.
“You’re a beast,” I mutter around the bite in my mouth.
The insult doesn’t phase him. “A beast? Sure. A beast who will get you to Duren even if I have to bind and gag you every night. So any ideas you have about escape, you give up now, do you understand? Because I’m happy to repeat this act every night. I assure you, I don’t mind.”
“I wasn’t planning to escape!”
He reaches into his pocket and takes out a small object, dropping it in the grass beside my bound feet.
It’s Adan’s cockleshell.
Oh, shit.
At my silence, he wipes the rabbit grease from my chin with his thumb, then slowly pops his thumb in his mouth to lick off the juices.
I gape at him—there’s something deeply carnal about that action, something that stirs a buzz in me I can’t place a name to.
“What is his name?” Wolf asks, licking his lips.
I’m not sure which emotion is greater—fury that he seems to somehow know about Adan or baldfaced awe that he figured it out so easily. Does his godkiss let him read minds, too?
“Answer me, Lady Sabine.” Wolf grips my jaw, forcing my head upward.
“You wouldn’t hurt me,” I mutter between squished lips.
“Oh, I’ve hurt plenty of women.”
My eyes narrow with seething anger as I explain, “I don’t doubt it, but I mean that Lord Rian wouldn’t like his bride bruised.”
He snorts to concede that I’m right. “Perhaps. But I don’t have to be kind.”
“Ha! What kindness have you done?”
“I could take back my shirt and have you stand before me bare, little violet.”
My heart thundering, I twist my head out of his grip, keeping my eyes on the cockleshell in the grass.
Adan’s sunlit voice reaches out from my memory:
“I’ll show you the sea, Sabine. You and me, we’ll cross the waves together and leave this place once and for all.”
Wolf snorts. “As you wish. When you feel like telling me the details of your plan to run away with your lover, I might feel like loosening your binds. Until then, finish eating this before it attracts every predator in the valley.”
He thrusts the stick at me. I manage to take it awkwardly in my bound hands, then tear into the rabbit.
Wolf settles back on the far side of the clearing, extending his legs and using a log for a pillow. I have nothing—no blanket, no bedroll, only the borrowed shirt steeped in his masculine scent.
His eyes close.
At least now I can scowl at him openly without fear of punishment. He’s even more of a devil than I first suspected. That untamed long hair that flaunts every social norm. Those honed muscles that’ve doubtlessly bloodied countless men like Thom Wallsor. The scars on his torso from a lifetime of fights.
I take my time searing Wolf with a long, assessing look. Do all men look like that bare-chested? So raw? Battle worn? So dominant, like a ram?
They can have my body . . .
My head feels cloudy. I’m too frustrated to get through my recitation. But I grit my teeth and force it.
. . . my mind is my own.
And my heart? Well, my heart belonged to Adan the first moment he ambled through the convent gate.
Because of the strict chastity vows, no males were allowed to set foot in the Convent of the Immortal Iyre, and frankly, the Sisters didn’t need them. For as mean-hearted as those old crones were, I have to give them credit for their mettle. They hauled stones for the new chapel. They bricked and mortared the buildings themselves. They repaired the wagon when the axle broke.
And yet there was one thing they needed men for:
The goats.
Immortal Iyre’s teachings forbid Sisters from touching any male anatomy, even that of a goat. So once a year, a farmer was admitted into our sacred feminine space to castrate the newborn male kids. During my first eleven years at the convent, it was blind old Mr. Porter with his steady hands and oak-handled knife. But the fae gods called Mr. Porter to join them in eternal rest, and the following year, Adan came in his place. Beautiful, golden-haired Adan, who the animals called “The Boy Who Shines Like Sunlight.”