Too much. Too good.
Haven't been touched like this in... years? Ever? Battle touches, yes. Sparring and fighting and the casual physicality of the war band. But this gentle exploration as she pushes my shirt off my shoulders feels entirely different.
"You're covered in scars," she whispers.
"Proof of survival."
Her fingers trace a particularly large one across my ribs. "What happened here?"
"Troll. Bad day. I won."
"Of course you did." Something fond in her voice that makes my pulse kick. Her palm flattens over my heart. "You're so warm."
"You're cold." I cover her hand with mine, savoring the contrast—her cool fingers against my perpetually overheated skin. "Always cold in this building. Like a tomb. How do you work here without freezing?"
"Energy efficient temperature control." Even now, even half-undressed and breathing hard, she can't help correcting me with corporate speak. "Sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit is the optimal setting for productivity and operational costs."
I snort, squeezing her hand gently. "Torture. Complete torture. Your people would last maybe two hours in the war camps before demanding seventeen blankets and something called 'central heating.'"
"Drama, oh." The last word comes out breathy because I've pulled her forward, sealing my mouth over the curve where her neck meets her shoulder.
Salt. Lavender. The pulse point jumping under my tongue.
Perfect.
I scrape my teeth over the spot experimentally and she jerks, nails digging into my chest.
"Thraka."
"Yes?"
"That's, you can't—" She struggles for words while I work my way up her throat. "People will see."
"Good."
"Not good. Very bad. Terrible." Her voice wavers between stern and breathless, fighting for control even as her body leans into mine. "We agreed to discretion. We made an explicit verbal agreement about maintaining professional boundaries and?—"
I pull back enough to meet her eyes, searching her flushed face, reading the contradiction between her words and the way her fingers are still gripping my shoulders. "You want me to stop?"
She bites her lip, internal battle playing out across her expressive face. Professional Orla warring with the woman who tastes like reckless abandon and sounds like temptation when she moans.
"No," she finally admits. "But nothing visible above the collar line."
Compromise. I can work with that.
I map the territory below her collar instead, finding sensitive spots that make her breath catch. The hollow of her throat. The upper curve of her breast where it swells above the white undergarment.
That elaborate contraption has to go. Immediately.
I need to see her, touch her properly without barriers of engineered cotton and underwire between us.
"How does this—" I tug experimentally at the fabric, searching for some obvious mechanism, some clear point of failure in the construction. There has to be a logical way to remove it, but the design makes no sense. No laces. No obvious clasps on the front. "Where's the fastening?"
"Hooks in the back," she says, slightly breathless, amusement threading through her voice despite the flush spreading across her cheeks. "Three of them."
Back. Of course. Why would humans make anything simple?
I reach around her, pulling her flush against my chest. She wraps her legs around my waist instinctively, locking her ankles. The pressure makes me groan.
