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I didn’t.
“You’d kill me if you could, wouldn’t you?”
“Slowly,” I replied.
Devon laughed. “In another life, I think we’d have been friends.”
“I don’t.”
Devon raised his eyebrows. “Lovers then?”
I blushed, which he missed because he’d already turned and was wandering unhurriedly across the plateau in the direction of the figure, who I could now see was a woman.
For whatever reason, that irritated me. The fact that he was meeting a woman.
And as I watched them, it became more and more clear to me that thiswasa meeting. How quickly he’d leapt on the chance to scout ahead—and it had been his suggestion to do so, of course. Was this pre-arranged?
Their body language said they knew each other. A hot flare of stupid jealousy lit in my belly as the woman touched his arm in an unforgivably familiar fashion. Who was she to touch him like that?
Now he was touching her! What was he doing that for? Perhaps she was a prostitute, and he’d gone to all this trouble just for a bit of fun behind the other men’s backs?
That didn’t seem too likely, especially watching them together. It didn’t look like business. They were close. Almost intimate.
Angrily, I looked away. The truth was, I was more angry with myself than anyone else. Why I was feeling this way was the most frustrating of all questions but it didn’t change the fact that I was feeling… jealous. Envious. Angry. I turned my head, wanting an outlet for my wayward thoughts and focused on Siegfried’s saddle where Devon’s knife was still in its sheath.
I blinked.
Devon wasn’t the type to make many mistakes, but in his eagerness to meet with thisperson, he’d left his knife behind.
Suddenly, thoughts of jealousy were replaced by thoughts of escape. It wasn’t perfect because Uther was still with the others, but a chance like this was very unlikely to come again, and if I was free, then I could set about getting him free, sneaking up by night perhaps. The point was: one of us being free was better than both of us being captive.
Hastily, I drew the knife and sawed through my tether, glancing frequently over to Devon and friend to make sure they were still talking. They seemed deep in conversation and I might have wondered what about had I not had other things on my mind.
“Easy, Siegfried,” I whispered. “You know me, don’t you? You like me, don’t you? Don’t you?”
It was so hard to tell with horses.
As unobtrusively as I could, I stepped into the stirrup and swung myself up and into the saddle. Riding was a rare thing that I’d learned from my father, who had passed on to me his love of horses, but mountain riding specifically was a skill I’d perfected under Aunt Leah.
Newly freed, I kicked Siegfried’s sides, urging him on, so he was already at a gallop when I heard Devon’s yell.
“Hey!”
I didn’t look back, but I did grin to myself. All that time on his tether, under his command, his prisoner, well who was laughing now? And he had no way of catching up to me on foot. By the time he got back to the others, I’d be long gone. Then I’d ditch Siegfried and shadow the party through the wilds until I could rescue Uther.
But, for now, it was all about speed and distance, putting as much clear space between me and them as possible. Siegfried took me further up the hill, and we wove a path through the rocky outcrops as quickly as we could. The tougher the path that we gave them to follow, the better. My heart pounded in my chest with excitement and I felt a breathless exhilaration.
I’d done it! I’d outfoxed them. I’d…
A blur to my right and I was knocked out of Siegfried’s saddle, the wind knocked out of me as I hit the ground and found myself on my back and staring up, into Devon’s face.
“Not bad. But also not good enough.”
He held me with a grip like steel while he dragged Siegfried back, then swung himself into the saddle before pulling me up after him, dumping me unceremoniously across his lap with my ass in the air. Quickly, he secured my hands once more, then gave my vulnerable rear a light swat with his right hand. There was no muscle or malice behind it, but the shock still made me squeak.
“Last warning,” said Devon, conversationally, triggering a rush of relief flooding through me. “Try anything like that again and you’ll spend a long five minutes in this position and you will not enjoy one moment of it.”
I shrank inwardly, and at that moment, I hated him. He could have carried out his threat then and there of course, as he’d said he would, another more sadistic man would have. But that wasn’t Devon. It was just business.Iwas just business.
