A man. Waiting for her.
Without a word, he stepped aside. She walked past him into the room, and the door closed behind her.
The fire was built higher than before. The table had been cleared. There were no plates, no reports, nothing between them and whatever was about to happen. The door to his sleeping chamber stood open, and through it she could see the edge of a massive bed piled with furs.
Her mouth went dry.
"Verity."
She turned. He had not moved from the door. He was watching her with an intensity that made her skin prickle, his eyes tracking the flush she could feel climbing her throat.
"You have questions," he said. "Ask."
It was absurd and the only right thing he could have said in that moment, and she exhaled through her nose in a quiet huff.
"How does this work?" Her voice held steady; her fingers were twisting the wool of her skirt behind her back. "Is there—are there expectations I should know about?"
He moved away from the door. Not toward her, but toward the hearth, where he stood with his back to the flames, watching her across the room's width.
"I expect nothing." His voice was low and calm.
She pressed her palms against her thighs, feeling the wool of her dress bunch beneath her fingers. He watched the small motion.
"You have not been with a man," he said. Not a question.
"No."
He nodded once. "What do you want to know?"
She wanted to understand the mechanics so she could stop being afraid of them. She wanted to stop thinking entirely and let her body make decisions her mind kept second-guessing.
"Will it hurt?"
"It can." He did not soften the answer. "The first time. With care, less. Without care, more."
"And you would—"
"I would take care." His jaw shifted, tusks catching the firelight. "I would take more care than you can imagine."
She believed him. Not because he had promised, but because she had watched him for weeks now. She had seen the precision of his movements, the attention he gave to everything that mattered.
Shewould matter.
"What else?" he said.
"I don't know what to ask." A laugh scraped out of her, barely a sound. "I know what happens. Technically. I have read very detailed correspondence from people who were not nearly as private as they believed themselves to be. I know the stages of tumescence, the role of lubrication, the average girth-to-depth ratios. But knowing what happens and knowing what it—" She made the helpless circular gesture. "What it feels like. Those are different."
He crossed the room, closing the distance between them until he stood before her, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
"I cannot tell you what it feels like," he said. "That is not something words carry."
"Then how—"
"I can show you."
His hand rose to her face, palm curving around her cheek, fingers extending past her temple, thumb resting near the corner of her mouth. She turned her face into his palm and pressed her lips against the rough center of it.
"Show me, then," she said.
