Lightning

There was something about him I recognized the moment I first laid eyes on him. The fact that caravan merchants allow themselves to be branded simply for whatever profits they can coax from the Tuchuk is disgusting enough to me but this one ... his smile was oil slick .. greasy. He had his father written all over him with that small exception that he was not frail and his skin did not seem to shroud him like a veil. Far from it, this one oozed virility as if it sweat from his pores. His mannerisms were so cocky that it left a foul taste just watching as the women swarmed to him like gnats to a tharli oil lantern. He would juxtapose himself between whatever they were doing or where ever they were going and turn on those sweet nothings meant to lift a skirt for his pleasures. He was nauseating to me for far too many reasons.

I would have willingly slipped into the shadows not to make any encounter with him if it had not been for Zarna. He had her pinned against the side of a wagon. His hands roaming despite the obviousness of her discomfort. Too arrogant to call for help, too ashamed that she'd gotten herself into the situation, too naive to be able to put him in his place. She'd thought he had been attracted to her. She was bait and I knew it. I knew it and there was nothing I could do but invade his trap.

I stepped in between them. So close he could feel my breath against his mouth as I spoke. "She's not what you are looking for." While all of my feminine assets grazed against his chest, his torso, I reached behind me to ease the young woman from the pinning against the canvas. I broke my gaze from the intense widening of the merchants to kiss Zarna's cheek. There against the softness of her ear I whispered. "Go. Go Now." The last word punctuated before I looked back into the amusement of the dark blue eyes of the man. They seemed as multifaceted as a spider's, one that had felt the web dance with movement and now waited .. waited for that precise moment to pounce. "What do you want?"

"You broke your word."

As others of the back wagons strode nearby, he stepped in closer until I felt the ribbed stay gouging into my back, trapping and shielding me from any who would could recognize either of us. "The word of a slave means nothing. Go back and tell him what he seeks .. is not here?"

"What he seeks .. now ... is."

I watched his eyes as the glimmered when my hand slid down my skirt. Lower. Lower still. The brush along such sensitive places provocative enough to surge his pulse. I know. I could feel it. Fingers of the other hand lifted to touch his lips and I leaned nearer. He would feel the warmth along his mouth at the precise moment my blade touched the inner part of his thigh. I have to admit it gave me a rush to watch the iris' of his eyes disappear into a pure black abyss. That small hort of closure pressed the point into muscle, deep enough to glide under the artery. Not enough to sever it but a delicate slither behind it. One wrong move and he would know such blissful peace. "Go back and tell him there is nothing here for him. Nothing."

I used my hand to create distance once more between us, allowing the dagger to return to where I kept it, I smiled at him. One of those oil slick greasy ones. There was no mistaking the hissed sound of venom as I bid him farewell.

"It wasss a pleasure meeting you ... little boy. If you come again and we can finish this .."