“Your turn,” she said, glancing up at me with a smile that made my pulse flutter.
“Would you rather…” I considered carefully, savoring the way her hand felt in mine, small but strong. “Know everything about everyone or have everyone know everything about you?”
“Oh, that’s good.” She wrinkled her nose, thinking. “Know everything about everyone, I suppose. I’ve spent too long keeping secrets to feel comfortable with the alternative.”
The fence posts cast long shadows across the grass as we walked, our boots crunching on the loose gravel. Treelee watched us from the pasture, her big form outlined against the starry sky. The night air carried the scent of pine from the forest and the sweeter notes of Riley’s shampoo when the breeze caught her hair.
“What about you?” she asked.
“Have everyone know everything about me.” My answer came easily. “I prefer things orderly, predictable. If everyone knew everything, there’d be no assumptions, no misunderstandings.”
Riley’s laughter rippled through the night. “Even your most embarrassing moments?”
“Even those.” I squeezed her hand. “There’s freedom in being known completely and accepted anyway.”
Her steps slowed, and she turned to face me, her eyes reflecting the moon’s glow. “Is thatwhy you never hide your organizational systems and precise routines? You’re just authentically you.”
“My brothers taught me that,” I said. “Sel once beat up a youngling who mocked the way I arranged my school supplies. After that, Tark told me never to hide who I was to make others comfortable.”
“I wish I’d had siblings like that.” Her expression turned wistful. “Growing up as an only child meant figuring everything out alone.”
We reached the fallen log I’d placed at the perfect viewing spot where the pasture met the forest edge. I’d positioned it here not long after we arrived from the orc kingdom, angling it to capture both the mountains and the night sky. Riley settled onto it, and I joined her, careful to maintain the exact distance that allowed our bodies to touch without crowding her.
“Tell me something about your childhood,” I said. “Something happy.”
She leaned against me, her warmth seeping through my shirt. “My father built me a tree house when I was nine. Nothing fancy, just a platform with a roof and rails, but it was mine. I spent summers up there reading mystery novels and pretending I was a detective.”
“So you always had the investigative instinct.”
“I guess I did. I used to make my poor parents participate in elaborate whodunits I’d stage around the house. Once, I hid my mother’s favorite earrings and left a trail of clues that took them three hours to solve.”
“I bet you were thorough even then.”
“Obsessively.” She caught herself and glanced up at me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean?—”
“It’s just a word, Riley.” I brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “It doesn’t hurt me.”
“Still.” Her hand found mine again. “Your meticulousness is one of the things I admire most about you. The care you take with everything, whether it’s ordering files or…” her voice softened, “or holding me.”
Heat bloomed low in my belly at the memory of her in my arms, the way she fit against me as if the fates had designed us specifically to complement each other. The way her breath caught when I touched her, the small sounds she made when pleasure overtook her.
“Your turn,” she said. “Tell me something else from your childhood.”
I gazed up at the stars, organizing my memories into neat order before selecting one. “When I was twelve, I built a perfect scale model of our family compound using nothing but clay and twigs. It took me three months, working every day after our lessons. I measured everything exactly.”
“That sounds amazing.”
“My brothers thought it was boring until I showed them how I’d included secret passages and hidden rooms. Then they wanted me to build models of everything.” I smiled. “That was when I realized my attention to detail could be useful to others, not just satisfying to me.”
Riley rested her head on my arm, her body relaxing against mine. “Did you bring the model to the surface?”
“I gave it to my youngest sister before we left. She has it displayed in her room.” The thought of home brought a familiar ache, not of homesickness exactly, but of the distance between what had been and what now was. “I should take you there someday. To the orc kingdom.”
The words slipped out before I could consider their implications. Only mates were allowed to travel to my homeland. Riley stiffened, then relaxed again, her finger tracing patterns on my palm.
“I’d like that,” she said softly. “Someday.”
Not a promise, but not a refusal either. I’d take it.
