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“Okay,” I challenged. “What about knowing how I prefer to ride bareback?”
Sal heaved an exasperated sigh. “I’ve been following you for three days. When you and your brother arrived in town, his horse was saddled, and yours wasn’t. He’s not the kind of man who would make you ride without one if there was only one to share.”
My heart clenched at her correct assessment as an inexplicable pang of homesickness washed over me.
I hadn’t had a home in a very long time.
Home had become the area occupied by the sound of my brother’s voice.
“And what about your eyes?” I continued.
Sal propped her foot on a trunk at the end of her bed and peeled back the cuff of her leather breeches to unstrap an additional dagger. “What about them?”
“They were glowing,” I said. “Outside the inn, right before you took off your hood.”
She folded her arms beneath her breasts. Seeing them in proximity to the elegantly drawn lines dancing over her forearms made it difficult to remember precisely what we were arguing about.
“Were they?” she asked. “Or were they reflecting yours?”
What annoyed me even more than the plausibility of her argument was how much I wanted her to be wrong. I wanted her to be something different.
Something like me.
Sal began peeling away her stockings. “You’re more powerful than you know, my lady.”
I leaned back on the bed and crossed my legs. “I insist all my abductors call me Kat.”
Her dark brows drew together in her smooth forehead. “You’ve been abducted before?”
“Mad that someone beat you to it, are you?”
A wicked light gleamed in eyes that were more greenish than I’d originally thought. “If I were after any of your firsts, Kat, it wouldn’t be that one.”
I swallowed very, very hard as Sal stuck her thumbs in her breeches and wiggled them down her hips. My teeth sank into my lower lip, and I tore my eyes away before they reached the backs of her thighs.
“I don’t mind,” she said, smirking at me over her shoulder as kicked the pants aside she and stepped into the bath. Her moan elevated my temperature by several degrees as she sank to her slim, graceful neck.
The very last thing in the world I wanted to do was climb into bed with my skin feeling gritty and sweat salted, but damned if I could sit here, stewing in my own self-loathing for my martyrdom’s sake while Sal emitted sexy sighs in her fragrant soaking tub.
Stomping across the room, I yanked my chemise from under my travel dress and tossed it on the bed. I stripped off my cloak without a second thought and pulled the undershirt over me before whipping back the coverlet and climbing in.
The bedding was annoyingly luxurious. An actual feather mattress pad, fine linen head sheet, and fur-lined blanket.
The exact kind of setup you don’t want to climb into, feeling like something tumbled from the dustbin.
I wondered where my brother was at this precise moment.
Whether he and Hanna were dozing in a heap of tangled limbs and the glow of firelight.
Whether he’d found his happy ending at last.
A hot tear slipped down my cheek and soaked into the head sheet over the feather pillow. I wasn’t even special enough to roll the shifter kingdom, yet someone still wanted me dead. The prospect of setting out on a new adventure with the wind of freedom in my sails ebbed further and further away as exhaustion pulled me down into a fitful, dreamless sleep.
Chapter Three
I woke in the middle of the night, disoriented, my head aching and my sweat-soaked chemise twisted about me. Blinking to clear my sleep-gritty eyes, the room made sense of itself. Hearth. Chair. Bed.
Sal.
