He was beautiful in ways that had nothing to do with classical ideals—strong without being bulky, graceful despite his size, marked by experience but not broken by it. And when he caught me staring, the smile that curved his lips held none of the embarrassment I might have expected.
"Something you like?" he asked, and there was teasing in his voice that I'd never heard before.
"Everything," I admitted shamelessly.
The water was shockingly cold against heated skin, stealing breath and clarity in equal measure. But it was also refreshing, washing away the sweat and tension of the day along with some of the overwhelming intensity that had been building between us.
We stayed at opposite ends of the stream at first, both of us trying to maintain some semblance of propriety even as we stole glances at each other through the crystalline water. But gradually, inevitably, we drifted closer together until we were within arm's reach, both of us breathing hard and not entirely from the cold.
"Better?" I asked.
"Different," Rion replied, his voice carrying the huskiness that came from arousal barely held in place.
I moved closer still, until I could reach out and touch him if I chose to. "May I?"
He nodded, and I traced the line of a scar across his ribs with gentle fingers, marveling at the silken texture of his skin, the way he shivered under my touch.
"Korvan's Bay," he said quietly. "Raider's blade."
"It could have killed you."
"It could have. But it didn't." His hand rose to cover mine, pressing my palm flat against his chest where I could feel the steady beat of his heart. "I'm here."
"You're here," I agreed, and leaned in to kiss him again.
This time there was no hesitation, no careful exploration. We came together with the desperate hunger of people who had been starving without realizing it, hands tangling in wet hair, mouths moving against each other with increasing urgency. The water around us seemed to catch fire, or maybe that was just the heat we created between us.
When we finally broke apart, both of us gasping, I rested my forehead against his and tried to remember how to think coherently.
"This is dangerous," I said.
"Why?"
"Because I don't want it to be temporary. Because what I'm feeling doesn't fit into a twenty-eight day cycle." The admission escaped before I could censor it, raw and honest and probably foolish.
Rion's hands framed my face, thumbs brushing over my cheekbones with infinite gentleness. "Then maybe we need to change what we're building toward. Maybe we need to forget about prescribed timelines and traditional expectations and focus on what we actually want."
"And what do you want?"
"You," he said simply. "However I can have you. For as long as you'll let me."
The words hit me like lightning, illuminating possibilities I'd barely dared to imagine. But beneath the joy was a thread of fear—of institutions that wouldn'tunderstand, of consequences neither of us could fully predict.
"Three more days," I said.
"Three more nights," he corrected, echoing my words from the evening before.
"What happens then?"
"Then we find out whether we're brave enough to build something real," Rion said. "Whether we can create a bond that serves us rather than tradition."
The promise hung between us like a bridge we could choose to cross or burn. But as I looked into his eyes, saw the hope and determination there, I knew we'd already made our choice.
We would be brave. We would build something real.
And we would face whatever consequences came from choosing authenticity over expectation.
Dawn found us walking back through the forest paths in comfortable silence, both of us changed in ways that went beyond the physical intimacy we'd shared. The kiss had been a beginning, but it was more than that—it was a declaration, a choice, a first step toward something that felt both inevitable and impossible.
