Neither of his brothers could claim they had looked into a werewolf's face and lived, something Vos had often mentioned in the weeks they'd spent wending their way from the capital to Gallowsport and now all the way to the Straits of Twilight. So perhaps they would not have understood, nor his father, how fascinated he was by her. Perhaps it was different if you didn't know the werewolf's human side. But the beauty of this dancer made him wonder if what she had become was really so terrible a thing. She had known his name, even spoken it aloud. She had leapt through a window rather than attack him, or Vos, or even Varallo Thray. Varallo Thray, whom she had whispered to him more than once, even when they were much younger and not yet promised to each other, was a snake who she thought would hurt her father sooner or later.

Vos had just slain her lover -- gods, how it made him wince to think of that word -- and still she had spared them. Vos might argue she had merely fled in the face of greater numbers, but to Denisius that would mean discounting the tears in her wolfish eyes and the anguish in that single word, those two little syllables of his name. Maybe all those tavern fire tales, all the gruesome horrors Lorith had repeated to him and Steffen as they cowered together under a blanket in their bedroom in Coldspring Hall when they were but boys, were nothing but that: tales.

As he lowered his tankard to the smoothly polished table built into the chair's left arm, Denisius became aware of a subtle perfume: something dark and musky but richly compelling, not exactly sweet but a long way from unpleasant. At his right side he felt an alluring warmth, like that of a banked furnace, filling him with a delicious lounginess as if he'd smoked too much kossun.

"Demelza saw you watching her dance." Swallowing hard Denisius looked up, just imagining Vos's look of resigned exasperation at seeing his master taken unawares so easily. The tiger-dancer lounged against the wall, gazing down at him with those hypnotic jade-gold eyes, the whiskers of her muzzle swept back in an unmistakable smirk. Her voice was low, rough, dwelled too long on R's and sibilants, and was easily the most gorgeous voice he had ever heard from a female throat. "Demelza has never seen such devotion, such focus. Demelza thinks you have never seen a Namarri before."

With a nervous smile Denisius shook his head. He hadn't failed to notice she hadn't thrown on a stitch of clothing, and wore no more than she had while prowling her stage. "Er, no, Madam Demelza -- er, Lady Demelza -- "

A low chuckle shivered her whiskers. Those jade-gold eyes never left his face. "It is just Demelza, nice human."

"Well -- Demelza, then. We, erm, don't see your people much where I'm from."

"This is very sad. All humans should have the chance to see us once in their lives. May Demelza sit with you?"

Before Denisius had answered she had smoothly curled not beside him but half on his lap. The chairs, he realized now, were not simply built for comfort but to accommodate two people -- one patron and one dancer -- as cozily as possible. The heat of her tigerish body was amazing, and seemed to flood every inch of his own. The velvet feel of her pelt was unlike any sensation he had ever experienced, and when her muzzle began lightly teasing along his jawline, he couldn't restrain the smallest of whimpers. The musk of her perfume, perhaps the very scent of the Aznian jungles of the furthest west, threatened nearly to addle him. His hands clutched the armrests of his chair, remembering Vos's admonition not to touch the dancers without permission, if he didn't want the bouncers to beat him to a pulp. At the time he hadn't thought much of Vos's warning, as he couldn't imagine allowing himself to be distracted from their endeavor for such a trivial thing as tavern dancers.

But Demelza seemed to be inviting him. In arranging herself on his lap (and oh, sweet gods, the tip of her tail was coyly tracing at his calves) and draping one striped arm around his shoulders, somehow she had contrived to let one of his hands rest upon her naked hip, her silken fur interrupted only by a taut string of her loincloth. In fact, his fingers were resting directly on the loose knot which, with a simple twist of his fingers, would come undone, allowing the little scrap of fabric to flutter to the ground. Denisius sorely doubted this was an accident.

Her words quivered against his cheek in a playful growl. "Demelza finds you curious, human. Demelza has seen such stares before from silly humans who think Namarri gods, addled humans, simple ones. But you seem not simple. Just watchful." One paw, white as her belly, with smaller stripes than those which writhed across her body, idly grazed along the pouch of his stomach, which was a bit less prominent than it had been the day he and Vos departed Talinara. Her thick but dexterous fingers terminated in peculiar divots, and he realized with a start he was looking at her velveted claws.

Demelza didn't fail to notice his reaction, and a purring chuckle escaped her throat. "Oh, does the nice soft human find Demelza's claws intriguing? Many do." At that she spread out her fingers. Their thickness was largely an illusion from her fur, and when spread they were amazingly delicate. Perhaps half an inch of her claws emerged to prickle the dusty gray leather jerkin Denisius had donned at Vos's advice rather than the fine clothes he wore on trips to the capital. A gasp escaped his lips as he the tips of those claws pierced the thick fabric, right through his undershirt, teasing at his bare flesh.

Now her muzzle was pressed to his ear. Her breath was hotter than the heat radiating from her body, and while her whiskers were sharp and stiff the fur surrounding her lips was the softest thing he had ever felt. Growled words, hungry words, seemed to vibrate through his head. "Demelza has rooms upstairs, human, many nice and lovely rooms. Perhaps you would like to see them? Or perhaps lovely soft human would like to see one room in particular?"

The paw not lightly stroking his shoulder moved smoothly to one of his trembling hands, guiding it gently but insistently to her silken thighs, guiding him in a sinuous petting motion, letting him feel a mere hint of the incredible heat that lurked under her loincloth. Denisius was now utterly at a loss for words and could only stammer foolishly.

"Demelza would only ask a hundred gold, soft human. You could stay til dawn, exploring Demelza's rooms. Demelza would even feed you breakfast, right from our lovely kitchens."

At her insistence he felt his fingers touching the silk of her loincloth. Among the many things he could feel, perhaps nothing was more powerful than her heartbeat, feral and strong, pulsing eagerly through both the loincloth and the velvet flesh nestled beneath it.

Denisius's voice was barely a whisper. Demelza watched him with that knowing, purring smirk, cunningly shifting her body down just enough for Denisius's hand to be caught firmly between her thighs and against the heat that he already felt himself longing for. A hundred gold was an outrageous price for a prostitute; even so neophyte a brothel-visitor as himself knew that. A fee like that was something wealthy and prominent nobles paid to highly trained and beautiful courtesans, not wild things that had somehow prowled here from Summervale.

But that was the sort of thing his brother might say about Demelza, and after that night in the Curate's Tower Denisius would never again be capable of such a limited view. The Denisius that had emerged from the Judges' Conservatory and now found himself with one hand pressed between a Namarri tigress's striped thighs understood that such a price was not merely reasonable but a bargain.

And yet: "No. I'm sorry, I -- it's not something I can do."