Targesh stood in the doorway, filling it as he always did, blocking the torchlight from the corridor so that his features fell into shadow. He was dressed simply, and his arms were crossedover his chest in a pose that might have been casual if not for the tension in his shoulders.
"You are hiding," he said. "Why?"
Verity set down the patrol report. Her hands were trembling slightly, and she folded them in her lap where he might not notice.
"I am not hiding." She lifted her chin. "Hiding implies fear. I am not afraid of you."
"No," he said slowly. "You are not."
He moved into the room, and the space contracted around him. Two steps brought him to the edge of the reading table, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact.
"So what are you hiding from?"
You. Your chest. Your eyes. The way you looked at me in the training yard like you could see straight through my skin. The fact that you could smell—
She could not say any of that.
"I learned something," she said instead. "About orcish physiology. About—" She gestured vaguely, a motion that somehow managed to encompass the entire mortifying situation. "Scent."
"Ah." His arms loosened a fraction where they crossed, his chin dipping. "Delia told you."
"She mentioned it. In passing. While I was—" Verity stopped. Breathed. "It was not a deliberate concealment on your part. I understand that. I simply did not realize that I was—that you could—"
"That I could smell your desire."
Verity wanted to sink through the floor. She wanted to disappear into Varresh's web of documents and never emerge. She wanted to be anywhere, anyone, other than a Valdaran archivist sitting in a pool of candlelight while the Warchief of theMountain Clan stated, with absolute matter-of-fact calm, that he had been aware of her desire from the beginning.
"Yes," she said. "That."
Targesh studied her. "You are embarrassed," he said.
"Deeply. Catastrophically. To a degree that may require years of recovery."
A low rumble from deep in his chest. "Why?"
The question startled her. "Why am I embarrassed? Because I have been—" She waved her hand again. "And you have been aware of it the entire time, and I have been blundering around thinking my internal responses were private when they were nothing of the sort—"
"That is not what I asked."
Verity stopped.
"I asked why you are embarrassed," Targesh said. "Not why you feel exposed. Those are different things."
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
He was not mocking her. He was not amused at her discomfort, or using her attraction as leverage, or any of the things she might have expected from a powerful male confronted with evidence of a woman's unwanted desire.
He was asking a genuine question.
Why am I embarrassed?
Because desire was private. Because wanting someone was vulnerability. Because she had spent years building walls of scholarly detachment, and he had walked through them without even noticing they existed.
Because he could see her, and that was terrifying.
"I don't know," she said finally. "I don't—it's not—" She pressed her palms flat against the table. "In Valdara, these things are not spoken of. Attraction, desire—they are private matters. Hidden. To have them known without your consent feels like—"
"Violation?"
