She smiled at this, and then her expression changed, her amusement replaced with a flash of shameless desire. She pressed her body against his. The blade was gone. Instead her hand cupped him, he tasted her lips, her tongue darting in his mouth.

The chain rattled as he took hold of her. Her body felt thrillingly warm and smooth under the silk. His fingers followed the curve of her buttocks up her spine to her perfumed neck, down her arms to her hand and over the dagger haft in it. With a jerk, he spun her round, his fist clamped over her tiny knuckles. Her body went taut with the sudden violence between them.

‘He told you I was dangerous, did he?’ Erlan hissed in her ear. ‘Did he tell you how easily I will kill what belongs to him?’

‘Mmmm,’ she moaned, then tipped back her head, exposing the full length of her dusky throat to the blade’s edge, moving against it as if it were a lover’s lips. Perfume rose from her mane of hair, intoxicating. He felt her tongue-tip trace along his jaw, probing among the bloody bristles where her dagger had broken his skin. She moaned again. He tried to focus but whatever substance he had swallowed was clouding his head. One slice of the blade and she would fall. She wouldn’t even cry out. The door lay open. The guard drugged. . .

Except now her buttocks ground against him, soft but insistent, her hand reached down between them, freeing him from under his tunic. The dagger dropped to the floor with a thud. His hand slipped around her breast, pinching the swollen buds of flesh between his knuckles under the silk as she hitched her robe over her hips.

She sank back onto him with a gasp, her fingers reaching up to pull at his hair, dragging his mouth down onto hers. He tasted his own blood on her tongue. It went through him like wildfire, burning his throat with a white heat as darkness flooded his mind. . .

Later, much later, they lay sated on the shelf where he slept, beads of sweat growing cold on their skin. The air was warm and musky. His head throbbed gently but his mind was calm, as the intensity of what had happened ebbed slowly from his limbs.

She stirred beside him. ‘My ágrios,’ she purred. ‘Tamed, I think.’

‘Sweet revenge on Arbasdos, I suppose.’

‘Revenge? Hah! Revenge is for fools like you. And him. No. This is only a little game I like to play. One I never lose,’ she added slyly.

‘I can well believe it.’

‘Still, it was sweet enough.’ She smiled and cupped his cheek. ‘But now I go.’

‘Will you come again?’