He had no time for this. For her.
His brother’s killer sat on Guerlan’s throne. Weather mages were working constantly to threaten his army, and he had ambitions. Yes, by the gods, she had been correct. He did have ambitions.
This woman didn’t factor into any of his goals or schemes. And yet he was drawn to dally, if but for a moment or two, to share warmth on a bitter winter’s night, to smile at the multitude of ways she managed to be so transparent and yet still surprise him.
To discover the taste of her mouth, the sensation of her body against his.
In the fleeting privacy created by his bigger body as he stood between her and the manservant, he reached around her shoulder to lightly trace the satiny skin of her neck, the line of her jaw. He felt her swallow at his touch, and he was so rock hard from that tiny interaction he had to move.
Move toward her or away.
“I’ll just refill the wine goblets, my lord, and add them to the table,” Jada murmured.
Quiet though the manservant’s voice was, it was a shattering intrusion. Lily jerked away from his touch, slapped the book shut and slammed it down on the pile. Her hands were trembling.
After sucking in a deep breath to compose himself, Wulf clamped down on his temper to avoid snapping at the manservant. “Of course.”
Moving neatly around the space, Jada collected the goblets and set them at the table, then refilled them and stepped back. Biting back a smile, Wulf wondered how a dinner conversation with Lily would go. He could hardly wait to find out.
She had backed several steps away and was staring at him as if she half expected him to come after her.
And he was definitely more than half tempted.
But a strategist also knew how to play a long game.
Gesturing toward the table, he said, “Come have a seat. I don’t keep an elaborate table during a campaign, but the food will be hot and filling.”
“It smells delicious.” Her gaze went to the table, and her slender brows drew together. Walking over, she sat at one of the tree-stump chairs before he could move to pull it back for her, then inspected the food on her plate.
Wulf glanced at his plate too. It was piled high with generous slices of roast venison, potatoes, carrots, and gravy, all perfectly straightforward and easily recognizable, so he wasn’t sure what to make of her reaction.
“Like I said, it’s not fancy, but I have a good cook, and one of my guard tastes everything before any food or drink is brought into the tent.” He sat opposite her and picked up his wine goblet.
As he brought it to his lips, her expression changed.
Jumping up, she slapped the goblet out of his hand. It spun through the air, wine spilling from it in a wide crimson spray like blood spurting from an arterial wound.
He met her wide, frightened gaze. Aggression roared to life in his body, and his thoughts raced like a runaway horse.
They had already drunk from the wine in the jug. When it had been brought into the tent, it had already been tasted. The only way it could have poison in it was…
Before the wine goblet could descend on its inevitable downward arc, Jada moved when he did, whipping out a long knife from a sheath at his waist. As Wulf grabbed his sword from where it lay, the other man kicked the tabletop.
The planks were only loosely laid in place on the wooden frames. Supper dishes, jars of caviar, and chocolate flew everywhere. One plank struck Wulf squarely in the chest, knocking him back a beat, while Lily scrambled away, tripped, and sprawled on the rugs.
Jada leaped.
At Lily.
Wulf gripped his sword by the sheath but he had no time to draw the blade. Growling, he thrust the plank aside and sprang at the other man, body-slamming him.
Agile as a cat, Jada twisted to slice at him with the knife. Jerking up the sword, he blocked the knife from reaching from his throat, but fire ran across the heel of his hand as Jada’s blade bit deep.
Lily cried out. Still on the ground, underneath the two men, she had rolled onto her stomach and was trying to crawl away.
Shifting his grip on the sword sheath to use it like a blunt weapon, Wulf slammed the pommel into Jada’s face. The man’s cheekbone shattered under the force of the blow.
All too often the outcome of a battle was decided not in moments, but in fractions of moments.
A decision to move left instead of right. Weaving when you should have ducked.
Choosing to take a moment to breathe instead of thrusting forward with everything you had no matter how loudly your body’s instincts screamed at you, no matter how badly you might be wounded.
Jada’s battle ended the moment he screamed and fell back. He still fought, still struggled. He might even have believed he was still in the game, but Wulf knew better.
Wulf knew how to push forward no matter what. How to ride that crested wave, because when the battle rage was upon him, it broke everything into those fractions of moments and made them easy to see, and it made him so much faster and stronger than the other guy.
He kept at Jada like a battering ram, striking him again and again. Blood sprayed everywhere from the wound in the heel of his hand and from the wounds splitting open on Jada’s contorted features. Wulf’s focus had narrowed to a single murderous intent: cracking the other man’s skull wide open like an egg.
Trying to protect his face with one forearm, Jada made a wild stab. Wulf caught the other man’s wrist and broke it, and the knife fell to the rug.
Cold wind whipped into the tent as the guards sprang inside.
Then a weight landed on his back and slender arms wrapped around his neck from behind.
Lily shouted in his ear, “Wulf, stop it! You’re killing him!”
That surprised him so much he actually stopped.
5
Much later, Lily huddled on the pallet in Gordon’s tent while she listened to the uproar in the camp.
Wulf and his soldiers were busy for quite some time. As she waited, disjointed images of the evening’s events kept flaring in her mind’s eye.
The light in Wulf’s eyes when he caressed the sensitive skin at her throat.
The single-minded savagery with which the two men had fought. Wulf had transformed into a killer, completely unlike the roguish man who had gently teased a piece of chocolate into her mouth.
That hadn’t stopped her from jumping on his back. Almost, she wanted to laugh at the memory of his incredulous expression when he had glared over his shoulder, but a part of her was still in shock, and it was a little too soon for humor. Of all the outlandish things she had experienced in her twenty-seven years, she had never been in the middle of a battle before.
And she had achieved her objective. He had paused long enough for her to tell him, “You aren’t going to get any answers if you kill him.”