Sophia hadn’t been expecting the kiss, not consciously, yet from the first brush of Cathal’s lips against hers, it had felt inevitable. There was momentum here, borne from weeks of awareness. It rose within her body and mind alike, blissful heat even in the midst of winter. When Cathal’s tongue slid past her lips, she sighed into his mouth. When his hand splayed out against her back, his fingers brushing the upper swell of her buttocks, she yielded to the gentle pressure and tilted her hips forward.
Hewasbeing gentle. Even through his urgency, Sophia could tell that much. This was a man used to sword and armor, capable of deadly strength even in human form, but the arms around her, though firm, didn’t crush her, and neither the hand at her back nor the one cupping her head pressed too hard. His touch was a suggestion, an urging, but there was no force in it, and he kissed her slowly and surely, lips and tongue coaxing her response.
It didn’t take much. Sensation spread out from his hands and mouth, delicious ripples in a pond, and an overpowering wave at the front of her body, where she arched against him with only their clothing in the way. His chest was just as broad and solid as it’d looked, and every breath they took together rubbed her breasts against it, until her nipples were stiff and pushing at her gown. If not for her cloak, she realized, Cathal could have seen them clearly. The thought sent a dizzy wave through her body, even as she blushed. She wanted him to see—to know the effect he was having, even if she suspected she was making it obvious already, panting and clinging to him as she was.
His own response was obvious: the ridge that nudged at her stomach, hard against her even through their layers of clothing. The cloth concealed size and shape to a degree, and Sophia’s reading had only revealed so much. Now a certain curiosity mingled with her desire—not one she could gratify, though even approaching the thought sent that giddy feeling through her stomach again and made her sex pulse.
Settling for a more minor experiment, she ran her fingertips up the back of Cathal’s neck, tracing the line of his backbone up under his hair, then around to the spot behind his ear. Confirmation came in the involuntary flex of his arms around her, the clenching of his hands, and a sudden depth and hunger to his kiss, catching her by surprise but raising no objections. She couldn’t imagine objecting to anything. She couldn’t imagine anything butwanting.
“Sophia!”
The voice, usually welcome, fell on her ears like the yowl of a starving cat.
Sophia had time to step back, even if she nearly tripped over her gown in the process, and time to spot Alice, coming around from behind a tree with a small collection of plants in her hands. She even had a moment to pat at her wimple, as if that would help matters, and to answer in a voice that sounded vaguely normal. “Right here… Are you well?”
“Of course. But I found these, and I didn’t know whether they were the sort of thing you were looking for.” Approaching, Alice held out a selection of short branches, their leaves shiny and green despite the cold. “You should have brought a book for me. With illustrations.”
“There were plenty of books back home with illustrations, or where do you think I learned from?” Sophia headed quickly to her friend, putting distance between herself and Cathal without looking back. It was a relief to have the excuse and to have a reason for a flippant response.
Even so, Alice didn’t speak for a moment. Sophia felt those sharp blue eyes on her face, where she suspected her cheeks were still flushed, and where her lips still felt the memory of Cathal’s. Her eyes might have yet been glassy with desire too, so she kept her gaze carefully on the plants that Alice was holding out. She might have frozen to death, had she stood there naked, but she was certain she wouldn’t have felt more exposed.
Just at the moment, the cold was itself welcome. The heat in her body was subsiding, flame returning to embers, but it was still very much present. Sophia took a long breath of chilly air.
“Well?”
She blinked at Alice. “Um…”
Alice shook the handful of stems. “Are these useful, or do we leave them for…well, not wolves, I’d imagine. Deer?”
“I don’t know.” Scholarship, like the cold, was a handy path back to calm, a return to the world she knew. Sophia took the plants and was glad that her hands didn’t tremble. “These are unfamiliar to me as well, and yet I think worth at least bringing them back. I can consult my books or ask Donnag, and in any case, a thing that retains life in adversity is almost certain to be of use in our current matter.”
“If you say so,” Alice said and took the plants back. “Not that I’ll say anything against tenacity. It’s served us well so far.”
“Endurance,” said Cathal, and his voice sent a shiver through Sophia’s body. “Patience. My father would approve.”
“Well, and as he was the man we came to see,” Alice said, “that’s an excellent recommendation. I’m sure those qualities come much more easily to him—and to you—than they do to us, for all I was praising them earlier.”
“To him, perhaps. You both strike me as ladies of strong will,” said Cathal.
Sophia busied herself arranging what she’d picked, still not trusting herself to look into his face. He was the opposite of a gorgon, and she a very odd Perseus, and yet the effect was the same. She did see Alice tilt her head, though, before she replied.
“For humans, perhaps,” her friend said, polite and not openly unfriendly. “But to creatures like your family, I’m sure we’re very impulsive. And very…brief.”
“I think,” Sophia said, raising her head at last because she couldn’t kick Alice in the ankle without being obvious about it, “that perhaps we should go back. We have what we came for.”
“We do indeed,” said Alice. “And it doesn’t do to exhaust ourselves.”
* * *
“Was that completely necessary?”
Sophia had to walk back, making polite conversation the whole time, and then pull Alice into the corner beside the fireplace before she could actually ask. After so much time, a lesser woman might have found the question confusing. A different woman might have pretended to.
“If I hadn’t thought so, do you think I’d have said it?” Alice replied unflinchingly and almost immediately.
“I know what you thought. I asked in the hope that you’d think twice, vain though that hope may be.”
“Ah, well, if we’re on the subject of thinking twice…or even once…”
