“Do you see the dead too?” she whispered.
“…aye,” he said, coming back to her from a long and horrible way off. Toinette knew the path he walked. She gently eased her wrist out of his hand and helped him sit up.
“I hate this place,” she said.
“Aye.” He sounded more certain about that, and less surprised. Slowly he gathered himself, wiped his brow, let out a breath: the steps of reasserting himself as a man and the world as less horrible than it was in his dreams. She knew that well too. It was what had driven her to find him, after a month when she’d avoided being alone in his company.
“Bear in mind,” she went on, keeping her voice quiet but knowing how welcome a voice speaking rationally would have been to her, “I’ve been in some wretched hives. Place up north where we all had bad meat—I never thought I’d hate anywhere more. And yet, there’s this. The world just keeps surprising me.”
“It’s…enterprising that way.”
“Would you like some water?”
“I’d like strong drink. Otherwise…” He shrugged. Moonlight picked out the muscles of his shoulders beneath his unlaced shirt. “No need. Thank you for waking me. I didn’t cry out, did I? Disturb you?”
“No. I had the same problem. I thought…” It sounded stupid, now that she came to say it, but she’d learned that the only cure for sounding stupid was to keep going. “I thought a walk might do me good. And I wanted to be sure nothing had made off with you in the night.”
“Don’t trust your sentries?” he asked with a semblance of his usual grin.
“Four eyes are always better than two.” She pushed back her hair, aware suddenly that she’d probably been thrashing around in her sleep fully as much as Erik had been, and that she’d not even tried to mend her appearance. “Or maybe I just wanted company that didn’t have to keep watch.”
“Oh?” He lifted his eyebrows, and the way he smiled let her know exactly how he was interpreting what she’d said.
Toinette opened her mouth, starting to protest that she hadn’t meant itthatway—but then, why not? They were away from everyone else’s view, neither of them were on sentry duty, and the beach had always been fairly peaceful regardless, and there was nothing like sport to make you know that you were alive and not, say, in a nightmare den of underwater talking corpses.
She leaned forward and kissed him. She was better at that motion than she’d been when they’d been young. It was easy for her mouth to settle atop his, to curl one hand around the back of Erik’s neck as she let her breasts graze against his chest. His arms slid around her with far more grace than before, and the splay of his hands on her back was unhurried, without pressure. They were old enough to be smooth now, when anger and despair didn’t drive them.
Slowly Toinette learned his mouth, the fluid glide of his tongue against hers, the way his fingers slowly clenched, dragging themselves across her lower back. She thrilled to the hitch in his breath and leaned further toward him. In time she’d have to shift position—hers was already unstable, her weight balanced half on Erik’s shoulders and half on one knee—but the very precariousness was interesting, a factor to work around and to lend unexpected pressure.
He skimmed the side of her breast with his fingers, brought them up in a tingling line to her collarbone, and finally cupped her chin as he pulled away.
“You’ll have to be verra quiet, you know,” he whispered, his voice like thick velvet. “Do you think you can do that this time?”
“Do you?” she asked, while even the question brought her sex to pulsing heat.
Erik’s fingers tightened. “I asked you.”
Arousal was a slow twist in her gut, a tightness in her chest. “Then,” Toinette said softly and from her throat but in no way uncertain, “I’ll be quiet. There’s no man born can make me cry out if I set my mind against it.”
His eyes flared. “We’ll see, won’t we? Stand up.”
Toinette could have told him to go to hell. She could have ignored him. She considered doing both, but the order itself made her shiver with sensation. She wanted to obey.
The idea wasn’t entirely new to her. She’d heard stories enough. She’d spent a few nights drinking with whores, while her men enjoyed themselves, and heard of bishops who liked to be whipped and lords who enjoyed being slaves for an evening. Yet her own liaisons had never been so complicated, and this wasErik, and she was actually blushing as she got to her feet.
That only made her more excited.
Putting a hand to her hip, she cocked her head and looked back down at him. “So, then?”
“Take off your gown,” he said, no less authoritative for whispering.
She wanted to undress smoothly, without any of the frantic scrambling that had happened last time. She almost managed it, though as with any gown, there was an awkward moment when her head was covered with fabric. Then she dropped the fabric to the ground and stood, feeling the night air cool against her naked body.
Erik’s gaze was almost warm enough to make up for it. He sat spellbound, looking first at her bare breasts and then down over her belly to the tuft of hair between her thighs. The uncanny light spilled across them both, and Toinette could have done without it since it made her look as though she was underwater. Still, it let her see the stark desire on Erik’s face, and the thick ridge rising from his lap, and for that she’d almost forgive it.
The silence was rich and shortly unbearable, the anticipation too drawn out for her willpower. “If I were mortal, I’d be freezing right now,” she said, by way of somethingtosay.
She’d expected that to break the mood. Instead, Erik chuckled, shaking his head, and stood up. “But you’re not, are you? Stand still.” He slipped around behind her, his breath hot on her neck as he ran his fingers over her hard nipples. “No, it’s no’ chill behind this.”
