Ravensblood Forest the one minute. the soldier's minute

“Are you hurt?” questioned the Ceannasach, and Lotte merely shook her head; she was as pleased with the orchestrated chaos of their tumble as she was with their current state and smiled impishly up at the black-masked gangster. A wicked glint of mischief set her moonbright eyes aglow as he rumbled appreciatively, but her expression turned briefly petulant as he lifted his weight from her body. It was on the tip of her tongue to command him to stay where he’d fallen — Lotte wasn’t naturally inclined to beg, after all — but she stilled her impertinent tongue and was rewarded with the brush of his slim, tapered muzzle against the length of her rounded jaw and the smoky timbre of his accented murmur in her ear.

“You are perfect, Lotte.”

“Certainly not,” she breathed, wondering at the electricity that rippled down her spine and caused her toes to flex and knead like a contented cat. She was familiar with seduction and feminine wiles as part of a role, but it was always an act — something to be used to gain information or advantage. This was different. New. The soot-stockinged hoyden could not understand why a wolf as grand as Arturo would find her perfect — it wasn’t that she lacked confidence. It was simply that she was first and foremost a twin; a sister; a pest; a tomboy with a mother’s nagging ways. She imagined a wolf like Arturo might find a partner in a streamlined, leggy creature with limbs so tapered and fine-etched they seemed stylized and otherworldly — with brilliant green eyes and ruddy red fur and an accent as bewitching as his own..

Not that she was about to let that impossible wolf steal away this moment, though.

Forcibly, Lotte shoved away the mental image, feeling bold and cheerful as she rolled to her stomach beneath Arturo, her hips between his thighs and her shoulders between his forelegs. Tipping her head back at an exaggerated angle, she arched up slightly so that her crown and the bridge of her muzzle drew flush with his chest and neck — “Arturo,” she began, her warm, rich alto just a little more tremulous than it normally was —

— and then an urgent howl cut through the air, drawing the argent-eyed female’s attention, not because it was directed at her but because it was directed at the wolf toward whom she felt a burgeoning possessiveness. Before she could fully register his reaction, she moved like a ghost, sidling out from beneath him with a fluid, athletic twist of limbs; and with a last brazen kiss upon his mouth, she melted into the shadows and struck out toward Donnelaith.