A pause. "The good cask, Warchief?"
"He'll be easier to manage drunk." Targesh's mouth found the crease of her thigh. She made a strangled sound, and his hand clamped over her hip, holding her still. "Go."
Footsteps retreated down the corridor.
Targesh lifted his head. His jaw was tight, a muscle ticking beneath the scar on his cheekbone. His nostrils flared once, hard, like a man breathing through something he did not intend to name.
"I have to go," he said.
"I know." Her voice came out breathless. "I'll—"
She started to sit up. His hand pressed flat against her sternum, pushing her back down into the furs.
"You," he said, "will stay exactly where you are."
"But—"
"I will handle Tormund." He rose to his feet, and the loss of his warmth left her shivering despite the fire. "It will not take long. Trade disputes are simple. Then I will come back here."
He looked down at her. The firelight caught the sheen of her skin, the rise and fall of her breasts, the damp curls between her thighs still swollen from his mouth.
"And we will finish what we started."
He crossed to the doorway, pausing with one hand on the frame. His shoulders filled the space, blocking the light from the outer chamber.
"Do not dress," he said. "Do not leave this bed. Do not—" His voice roughened. "Do not touch yourself. That is mine tonight."
He was gone before she could respond.
Verity lay in the tangle of furs, staring at the ceiling, her pulse still hammering in her throat, his taste still on her lips.
She pressed her palms flat against the furs.
She did not dress. She did not leave. She did not touch herself.
She waited.
Chapter 14
Verity counted the minutes by the guttering of the candle on his bedside table, watching the wax pool and shift, her body still humming with the aftershocks of what his mouth had done to her. The furs were soft against her bare skin. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the fortress, Targesh was managing a trade dispute, and she was supposed to be lying here, waiting, not touching herself.
She was not good at waiting.
Twelve minutes. Thirteen. Her fingers drummed against her thigh. Her mind, which had gone beautifully blank under his hands, was reassembling itself piece by piece, filling the silence with questions and observations and the creeping awareness that she was naked in the warchief's bed and had no idea when he would return.
At fourteen minutes, she sat up.
The furs slid off her shoulders as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The stone floor was cold against her barefeet. She grabbed the largest fur and wrapped it around herself, tucking it under her arms the way she'd seen Valdaran women wrap bath sheets.
His sleeping chamber was sparse. The massive bed. A weapons rack against one wall. A trunk at the foot of the bed, iron-banded, closed. A single window, shuttered against the mountain cold.
Through the doorway, the main chamber glowed with firelight.
She padded across the threshold, fur trailing behind her, and stopped in front of his bookshelf.
Two dozen volumes. She'd noticed them the night of the first dinner, when she'd been too overwhelmed to examine them properly. Now she had time. Now she had nothing but time and the restless energy of a body that had been wound tight and released and was not yet ready to be still.
Her fingers traced the spines. Orc sagas, as she'd expected. Philosophy. A treatise on governance she recognized from the Archive's restricted collection. And there, on the lower shelf, three volumes of Valdaran history.
