He left. Verity heard his footsteps recede down the corridor, then silence. Targesh leaned back in his chair.
Verity crossed the threshold, her boots loud against stone in the empty chamber. The map on the table showed the territory surrounding Northwatch in careful detail—passes, ridges, the spider-web network of patrol routes.
When she was close enough, he reached out and pulled her into his lap. She made a startled sound that he swallowed with his mouth. His hand splayed across her lower back, holding her steady against him while his tongue traced the seam of her lips. She opened for him, her fingers finding the front of his tunic and gripping.
"Targesh." She pulled back just far enough to speak. "I came here to—"
"I know." His other hand slid up her thigh, beneath the hem of her dress. "You came here to ask me something."
"Yes."
His fingers found the soft skin above her knee. Traced higher. "Then ask me."
She couldn't think. His hand was moving with terrible patience, stroking the inside of her thigh in slow circles that crept upward by inches. The door was still open. Anyone walking past would see them, the warchief with his archivist in his lap, her skirts rucked up around his wrist.
"The door," she managed.
"What about it?"
"It's open."
"Yes." His fingers brushed the juncture of her thighs, a whisper of contact through thin linen. "I remember what you liked. When I mentioned the council chamber."
Her face flooded with heat. She had clenched around him when he'd said it. He had noticed and had promised to remember.
"That was—I wasn't—"
"You were."
His fingers hooked into the waist of her smallclothes and tugged them aside.
"We shouldn't." Her voice came out breathless. "Someone could—"
"Someone could." He stroked through her folds, finding her already slick, and made a sound of satisfaction deep in his chest. "You are wet thinking about it."
She was. Gods help her, she was.
His thumb found her clit and pressed. Her hips jerked. She bit down on her lip hard enough to taste copper.
"Quiet." His mouth traced the line of her jaw, teeth grazing skin. "Unless you want them to hear."
She didn't want them to hear. She didn't want them to hear, and that was exactly why her body was responding like this.
He slid one thick finger inside her.
She choked on a moan. Her inner walls clenched around him, sore from the night before but aching for pressure anyway. He felt the resistance and gentled immediately.
"Still tender."
"Yes." The word came out strangled.
"Then I will be careful." He withdrew almost completely, then pressed back in with excruciating slowness. "I will not hurt you. But I am going to make you come in this chair, in this room, with that door open. And you are going to be very, very quiet."
His thumb circled her clit in counterpoint to the slow thrust of his finger. The sensation was maddening—not enough, too much, her body caught between soreness and desperate want.
Footsteps echoed somewhere in the corridor.
Verity went rigid. Targesh's hand stilled inside her, but he did not withdraw.
