SSWM 693

The attentions of every man (and a few women) in the room shifted all of a sudden, and Levent was aware of the collectively turned gazes. He was acutely aware, and his fur prickled along the nape of his neck, but he personally did not look up from the meat he was biting into. Instead, he inhaled as if seeking to enjoy the odors of the cooking pits, the charred meat and the spices—discovering the scent of a very confident female coyote hybrid.

His pale blue eyes continued to linger on his meal; an air of calmness settled over him, and even when she settled down beside him and flashed him a smile, what he returned was no more than a coy quirk of his mouth.

The act was not fooling Wilson, of course, who bristled with annoyance and quickly skirted around his Eurasian wolf companion to sit at his other side. He let out a mew that grabbed his friend’s attention for a moment—but only for a moment, as Levent was absorbed in listening to the woman speak, the angle his dark ears the only indication of that.

The Turkish merchant had flirted with his fair share of women, a good percentage of them timid creatures he’d had to coax out of their shell. No lady was as confident as this one without good reason—though it was obvious from her appearance that she could enrapture anyone with a swivel of her hips. However, he’d met more modest beauties in his time, too, ones who might have recognized their blessing in their reflection but did not flaunt it in this way. Women as confident as this were often quite dangerous—in the most delicious of ways.

The trader in him perked up at mention of the silver coins; such objects normally only had a “shiny” factor, as currency had only come about in select portions of Europe. At this point he allowed his eyes to wander toward her again, down a tan arm to said coins. It took all of his self control not to guffaw at the cook eagerly taking the gifts from the lovely lady—though she could have been handing the man shit and he might not have cared. He’d been in North America long enough to recognize the false-silver coins scattered around the area. They had absolutely no worth, able to be found scattered along with deteriorated paper notes. Maybe at one point those coins could have paid for duck, but not in this day and age.

Gold eyes turned to him then, and Levent met her gaze, feeling his heart hammer its reaction despite his control. Though he was not as brain-dead as some of the other males here, the charms of a beautiful woman affected him just the same. The only difference was that this was now a game between two players rather than a flirting female and her pawns.

And Lev played to win.

He frowned thoughtfully at her question, taking a moment to glance back at the last morsels left of his own meal. He slipped another small piece to Wilson, who stared daggers at the woman, then flashed her a sudden grin—one that lasted only a moment but flourished on his face like an explosion of daylight. It was a wicked grin, but not an unkind one, the sort of grin that belonged to a no-good flirt but also the sort of grin that fessed up to just that. In the moment he beamed at her, handsome face warmed with mirth, he was revealing the man he’d hidden briefly away when she’d come onto the scene and made it oh so interesting.

“For fun,” the brown wolf mused. “Besides duping cooks, you mean.” He smirked and pushed the blue cloth hanging from the band away from his face. “Oh, I’m sure a beautiful woman like you could do whatever they want for fun. But I’m up for giving you a tour of Freetown, if you’d like. I have been here for some weeks and might know what would interest newcomers.”

Wilson sighed. It was going to be a long night.