And yet, I suddenly found him beautiful, devastatingly so, irresistible even. Ilsit had been right.
She wants to have a hearty rut in the woods with the one-eyed man.
I did want a rut with this half Tintarian, half Vyggian scout, a stranger from out of nowhere, the only other person—save Magda and her vague explanations of her earth penchant—I had ever met with magic. This lithe, tattooed stranger with his lowered eyelid and wildcat musculature, serpentine in his movement, somehow both careless and measured in his gait, had bewitched my body.
I was overcome with the sudden urge to be naked with him, or at least to be seated in his lap with a lifted skirt, to have a mouth bruised and swollen from his own mouth, to run my hands down his long, lean frame and take his prick in my hand, to straddle him and show him how my own sex worked.
I swallowed and looked away. I was delirious. I prayed he did not see any of this in my expression. “The heat is making me insane,” I muttered.
“You did not answer the question,” Reed said, a note of confusion in his words. “What do you suggest I do to earn your saying my name? Which I think we both know is symbolic for my earning your trust.”
“I will have to think on it,” I replied lightly, my mind whirling. Then I said, “And you have not answered my own question.”
He made ahmmnoise. “What is that now?”
“Your reasoning for calling me inept,” I said, exasperated.
“But you did not ask a question. You repeated my words back to me.”
“Well, I ask it now. Why did you insult me so?”
Reed was looking at the back of the wagon now too. “Well. I suppose I have good reason to say you are a piss-poor criminal.”
I gritted my teeth, grateful to feel irritated instead of aroused, though the skin on the upper part of my left arm prickled every time he was just near enough to barely graze it. “Because you caught me? Perhaps you are just a very skilled scout. More so skilled than I am at being a criminal. Meaning that you are applying your own standards to me, which is unfair.”
There was a beat and then he said, “I would agree. That was unfair of me. I am a skilled scout. And it is hard to hear my feet as they are soundless. My air penchant. I think... Perhaps I was frustrated that though I caught you, you almost eluded me.”
Confused, I asked, “Eluded you?”
He let his eye flit to me for a moment and then, his tone careless and indifferent as it so often was, he said, “I almost fell for your seductions. I am a man, after all.”
I could not help myself and gave a highly unladylike exhale through my nose. “This again.”
“You protest again,” he answered. “Butagain, I charge you with this.”
“Charge me?”
“If I were a sheriff, a guard, a magistrate, I could easily charge you with the crime of seduction. And you may be a piss-poor criminal, but you are a proficient temptress, madam. Probably often victorious too.”
I turned to him.
He was no longer looking at me, simply walking while looking at the back of the wagon, his left hand on his horse’s neck, idly petting. He was wearing his usual sleeveless, hooded jerkin made of thin leather over a short-sleeved tunic tucked into his breeches. His twin short swords hung off his slim hips on either side.
Because it was a hot day, the hood rested on his shoulders and back such that I could better see his face and head. His brown hair was cropped close, nearly shaven on the sides so that the snake’s head could be seen inching into the skin over his ear, the flicked-out tongue lacing down to the sharp cut of his jaw.
I gave myself a moment to admire his corded arms, eyeing the god snake’s tail curling around the one nearest to me. I looked away before he caught me.
“I grow weary of this,” I sighed, putting as much boredom into my words as possible. “You act as if I am bedding men all over this caravan.”
“Oh, no, that is not what I mean,” he replied, his tone also uninterested. “I think a triumphant seduction does not require the seducer to swive the seduced.”
I was annoyed with myself for blushing at this.
He went on. “The victory is not in the bedding; it’s in the prey thinking they are predator, that bedding the seducer is their idea. Had I fallen for your charms, as powerful as they may be, I would have said to myself, ‘I can let this woman go, no harm done.’ And I thought about it, and then I grew angry with myself for considering it. So I think that is why I pointed out your lackluster lawbreaking. To draw attention away from my being so easily baited.”
“I think you are raving mad,” I said, my tone almost friendly.
“And yet,” Reed countered, “I have seen three different men approach you in the short time since I arrived in Sheridan. Is your seduction like a window you forget to shut? Do you seduce and not even realize it? If so, then I should firstly apologize for charging you so aggressively. If you are unwittingly going around and not trying to lead all these men around by the nose, you cannot be faulted for that. But now you are aware of your power. And you will have to take more responsibility with this knowledge.”
