FIFTEEN
Something warm gently tugged at his hand, unfastening it from his death grip around the bird's neck feathers. He struggled to keep his legs wrapped around that deadly beak, but that slid out of his grasp, too, as he was surrounded by something warm and soft. It almost reminded him of that night two of his concubines had agreed to share him, and his bed had become a paradise of perfumed, female flesh...
The annoyed chittering of a bird – the same one who'd tried to eat him? – dragged Philemon out of his delightful daydream. His harem was no more. He sighed.
"You're a strange one, aren't you?" a female voice purred. "I've never heard a frog sigh before. And Merlin tells me they don't usually scream until her master cuts their legs off."
"Then Merlin is a barbarian," Philemon dec
