Sianim 02 - Wolfsbane

incident later that I realized he could have misinterpreted my response to several things he said. He could very well have thought that I was eager for him.”
    Wolf growled, and she hurried on. “At any rate, he tried to kiss me. I stepped on his foot and elbowed him in the stomach. About that time, I heard my sister’s voice in the corridor. Knowing that no good could come from Freya’s finding me with Nevyn—even though nothing happened—I turned into a mouse and escaped out the window and into the gardens.”
    “And how did your Darranian take that?” asked Wolf.
    “Not very well,” admitted Aralorn, smiling wryly. “Obviously, I wasn’t there for the initial shock, but when I came in to dinner, Nevyn left the table. Freya apologized to me for his behavior—all of it. From what she said, I understand that he confessed all to her, which is admirable. He also claimed that it was my evil nature that caused his ‘anomalous’ behavior. She didn’t believe that—although Nevyn probably did—but Freya wasn’t too happy with me anyway.” She smiled wryly. “But Freya wasn’t why I left. I’d seen Nevyn’s face when he saw me: He was afraid of me.”
    Wolf walked around the screen. He wore his human form, but the mask was gone, and his scars with it. It could have been illusion—human magic—but Aralorn sometimes thought that it was the green magic that he drew upon when he chose to look as he had before he’d burned himself. Surely a mere illusion would not seem so real; but then, maybe she was prejudiced in favor of green magic.
    The unscarred face he wore was almost too beautiful for a man, without being unmasculine in the least. High cheekbones, square jaw, night-dark hair: His father had left his mark upon his son’s face as surely as he had his soul.
    She would never let him see the touch of revulsion that she felt for that face, so close to the one his father wore. She knew that he wore it now in an attempt to be vulnerable before her, so that she could read his emotions better, for the scars that usually covered his face were too extensive to allow for much expression.
    “It hurt you,” he said. “I am sorry.”
    Aralorn shook her head. “I’ve grown up since then and learned a thing or two along the way. I’ve stayed away from Lambshold for my sister’s sake, and, I think, for my father’s as well. He loves—loved—Nevyn like another son. My presence could only have divided this family. And Nevyn . . . Nevyn came to us broken. One of us had to leave, and it was easier for me.” She thought a moment. “Actually, looking back, it’s rather amusing to think that someone thought I was an evil seductress. It’s not a role often taken by folks who look like I do.”
    Although his lips never moved, his smile warmed his habitually cold eyes. “Evil, no,” he commented, his gaze drifting from her face.
    “Are you implying something?” she asked archly, not at all displeased. She knew she was plain, and her feminine attractions were not enhanced by the muscles and scars of mercenary life—but it didn’t seem to bother Wolf.
    “Who, me?” he murmured, kneeling beside the bath. He pressed a soft kiss on her forehead, then allowed his lips to trail a path along her eyebrow and over her cheekbone. Pausing at the corner of her mouth, he nibbled gently.
    “You could seduce a glacier,” commented Aralorn, somewhat unsteadily. She shivered when the puff of air released by his hushed laugh brushed her passion-sensitive lips.
    “Why, thank you,” he replied. “But I’ve never tried that.”
    “I missed you,” she said softly.
    He touched her forehead with his own and closed his eyes. Under her hand, his neck knotted with tension that had nothing, she thought, to do with the passion of a moment before.
    “Help me here, love,” she said, scooting up in the tub until she was sitting upright. “What’s wrong?”
    He pulled back, his eyes twin golden jewels that sparkled with the lights of the candles that lit the room. She couldn’t read the emotion that roiled behind the glittering amber, and she doubted Wolf could tell her what it was if he wanted to. He reacted to the unknown the same way a wild animal would—safety lay in knowledge and control; the unknown held only destruction. Falling in love had been much harder on him than it had been on her.
    “I wasn’t going to ask you again,” she said. “But I think I had better. Why did you leave?”
    Wolf drew in a breath