Page 140 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
Once Pete finished detailing his plan, I dropped the riggit bone I’d been sucking the marrow out of and asked, “Are you out of your effing mind, dude?”
Pete grinned into the pot of stew he stirred—a pot he meant to barter once we finished cooking supper. “Aye, sometimes I am. With all my struggles, can you blame me?”
Wellplayed. “What the hell can I say to that, if you’re using the I-was-a-cage-fighting-slave-for-centuries-and-almost-lost-my-soul card?”
“It’s my ace in the hole, Shorty.” He winked.
Something fluttered in my belly as I stroked Sionna’s silken head. She was napping, her head in my lap. “Speaking of cards—what game are we playing in this tournament?”
Angling my way, Pete added several more hunks of riggit to the pot, then continued his butchering. “Bachram, of course.”
Of course.“I seem to remember you thinking my game play sucked the once we played.”
“Which is precisely why I don’t want you to play. At least, not in the traditional, lawful sense.”
“Uh-huh.” I’d figured.
“You’d be more of a pleasant distraction than a player.”
“How?”
Pete’s eyes danced, languid in their appraisal. “How does any female distract a besotted male?”
I stared at the idiot across from me.
“Plainly, I need you to finagle your way into the slaver’s good graces, so that you’re free to watch the hands he’s dealt and signal me accordingly.”
“That’s just an eloquent way of saying I should shamelessly flirt until the slaver thinks he’s getting laid.”
“My eloquence aside, that’s our diversion.”
I scoffed. “Many beyns might be able to do that, Pete, but I ain’t one of them.” Just the thought gave me palpitations. “My Goddess, how would I even get his attention?”
“Simply walking past the bloke should do the job, but if you want to work for it, you could wiggle summat.” He shrugged.
His plan sounded worse by the minute. “Obviously, you’ve never seen me wiggle.”
I ignored the mockery in his eyes.
“It’d be like a stick figure in a mating dance.”
He sawed through a riggit leg. “Do you mean stick bug?”
“Yep!” I tossed up a hand. “Either way, you get the picture, right? And it’s not pretty.I’mnot—I’m not pretty.”
The eternity he took in blinking at me was unbearably awkward. Then he shook his head and returned to his butchering. “God’s truth, Shorty, it matters very little how you see yourself. So long as you have a pair of baps and an unoccupied cunny, he’ll take to your advances just fine.”
I soured. “Oh, do stop flattering me before I blush.”
Pete laughed. “Then stop disparaging yourself unduly. Your looks notwithstanding, you do yourself no favors by making yourself feel badly, by shaming yourself.” He opened his bloody hands, his gaze warming. “This is how Danu made you. There’s no changing you. The sooner you accept that, the sooner those around you will too.
Now, it was me blinking. Speechless.
“Put simply, Shorty, if you strut into that tavern tonight believing you’re the comeliest hen to ever flutter her feathers, that’s what everybody will see.”
I wrung my hands. “You don’t understand. It’s not just my looks. I’ve been on tons of dates before. When I get into a forced situation like that, where I know the guy is judging me for more than friendly reasons, I either clam up and can’t think of words—like, any of them—or I end up spewing verbal diarrhea.”
Pete cringed. “I pray that’s not catching.”
