The Silver Sparrow

To Win My Heart

She turned her gaze to the pitcher, picked it up and proceeded to refill his wine, wishing that he wouldn't notice how unsteady her hand was as she poured its content into the cup. A mistake she immediately regretted. An opening for him to surprise her when he reached over and took her wrist without warning. Zahara jolted at the sudden contact, spilling the wine in the process and bit her lip. He would have caught that, seen through her, gained satisfaction from it. A loss on her part that she'd remember. A victory on his.

The evidence of that was written clearly on his face, in the small sound he made in his throat and the way his eyes devoured her, seizing ground around where she stood until she felt she couldn't move. Zahara willed herself to hold that gaze, despite the way his hand around her wrist tightened, how it dug into her skin hard enough to leave a mark. She knew that hand, every crook and dent in it, how those callused fingers felt on her body, what they could do to her, to render her defenseless and tear apart whatever fort she could build to keep him out.

"Come here, Zahara," he demanded in a tone almost uncharacteristically gentle as he tugged on her arm, pulling her toward him.

She drew a breath and straightened before stepping around the table to where her conqueror wished her to be, placing herself deliberately close enough within reach and yet half a step too far for him to catch the rhythm of her heart. For everything he would take from her, there were things she would never give, no matter how much torture awaited her in this room.

He rolled her arm gently to expose the underside of her wrist, brought it to his lips and lingered there, not touching, not yet, to sniff at her scent the same way he might have done to catch the aroma of an exquisite wine before tasting it. "How is it possible," he drawled, trailing his nose further up her arm and back down where he started, "that a girl half your age couldn't excite me with her cunt the way your scent did so splendidly when you entered the room?"

What was it, Zahara thought as she struggled to settle something in her stomach, that gave this man such a contrast within him? She could withstand all his torture and unforgiving ways easily enough, but never his vulnerability when he decided to let her see it, and he was vulnerable tonight. It would be easy to deny it to her grave that he possessed such a thing to justify her hatred for him, but there were moments, words softly spoken in this room that would make it a lie. She hated those moments, those words, hated them for what they could do to her.

"And yet it was enough for you to finish the job," she said in an attempt to change the mood, the way things were heading. "What was it that stirred your desire then, my lord? The thrill of discovering her spirit or of breaking it?"

He smiled, to himself, to her, amused at his own answer he was about to give. "The thought of you listening outside my door," he said and planted a brief kiss on the inside of her arm.

"Cruel." She scowled, more at the heat from his lips that lingered still on her skin than the words spoken.

"To her?" He asked, entwining his fingers with hers and kissed her again, this time on a spot closer to her palm. "Or to you?"

The place where he touched her felt tender, like a burn wound that had yet to heal. It took all her effort to not look away and put on a sarcastic smile. "Do you ever pick just one, my lord?"

He stilled for a time, looking straight at her, into her, reading her thoughts and considering something in his mind. She had come to know that look, that gesture he let slip when he decided to take a risk, to do something out of character. "And if I tell you that I can," he said, not smiling now, not anymore, "choose one?"

It was a question that aimed to wound, an attack of sorts at something too deep, too precious in her heart. A proposition that threatened to end her if she so much as considered it. She brushed it aside immediately, feigning indifference, ignorance. "To be the subject of your torture, my lord? I'd pity the woman." The woman would not be her, not for what he'd implied, this she silently swore by the loyalty to her land or whatever was left of her pride.