Mab's breath left her in a rush. Her fingers dug into his tunic, and her hips rolled against him before she could stop herself, chasing the pressure, the friction, the searing heat of him through all those layers of fabric.
"Answer me." His voice was rough. "Do you like hearing what I want to do to you?"
"Yes." The word came out broken. "Yes, I like it."
Varek's grin was slow and wicked, his tusks catching the light from the fire. "Good." His hands tightened on her thighs, holding her still when she tried to rock against him again. "Remember that."
Then he lifted her off his lap and set her on the bench beside him.
The sound she made was half whimper, half protest. Her body was still thrumming, still aching, still reaching for him even as he stood and stretched his arms over his head like a man waking from a pleasant nap.
"I have work," he said. "Inventory of what we're taking north. Messages to send ahead. A conversation with my brother about supply lines that should have happened yesterday."
"What about me?"
The question came out before she could stop it. She was still sitting on the bench, nightgown rucked up around her thighs, face flushed, body wound tight as a bowstring. And he was talking about supply lines.
Varek looked down at her, one brow raised. "What about you?"
"What am I supposed to do?"
"Whatever you want." He said it like the answer was obvious. "Walk the grounds. Sleep. Eat. Sit in the sun. Nothing, if nothing suits you."
Mab stared at him. The words made sense individually, but strung together they formed a shape she couldn't parse. "I don't understand."
"Which part?"
"The part where I do nothing." She tugged the nightgown down over her thighs, suddenly aware of how ridiculous she must look. Flushed and rumpled and asking an orc war-leader for a chore list. "I've never done nothing. I don't know how."
"Then learn," he said. "You have three days before we ride. Spend them however you want. If you want to work, find work. If you want to sleep until noon and eat your weight in bread, do that. No one will stop you. No one will punish you for it."
His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone. The same slow, deliberate pressure he'd been using all morning, but gentler now. Less heat. More steadiness.
"But if you go looking for a mop because you don't know what to do with your own hands when they're empty," he said, "I'll take the mop away and find something better to fill them with."
The grin was back, edging up over his tusks, and then he was walking away. His boots rang against the stone floor. He didn't look back.
Mab stood and tugged the nightgown back down, smoothing the linen over her thighs. The handful of warriors at the fartables had gone back to their conversations. None of them looked at her.
Her skin was still flushed. Her body was still humming. She stood up. Her legs held, which surprised her a little. She walked out of the hall, and no one stopped her, and no one asked where she was going.
The holding was quieter than she'd ever heard it. Not silent. There were orcs in it, and orcs were not a silent people. She could hear voices from the hall behind her, the scrape of benches being moved, someone laughing in a room she couldn't see. From deeper in the building, the thud of something heavy being set down. Inventory, probably. Varek's supply lines.
But the human sounds were gone. No clatter of pewter from the scullery. No shrill bark of orders from the upper floors. No rustle of skirts in the stairwells, no murmur of gossip from the servants' corridor that ran behind the main hall.
Mab reached the end of the corridor and turned left without thinking. Toward the kitchens. She'd taken three steps before she caught herself.
Not the kitchen. Not yet.
Instead, she went out the door to her left into the kitchen garden.
It was small and poorly tended since Hester's death, the beds half-choked with weeds. Mab had kept it up for a while after Hester died, but Garrad hadn't cared about the garden, and eventually the weeds won.
Mab stood at the edge of it now, her bare feet in the cold grass, and looked at what remained. Hester's herb beds, overgrown. The sorrel had bolted, its seed heads brown and dry, rattling in the wind. The thyme had spread across the path stones, fragrant when her foot caught the edge of a runner.
She crouched beside the rosemary.
It needed cutting back. The lower stems were woody and bare, and the new growth was all at the top, reaching for light. Hester would have pruned it in autumn. Hester would have taken the cuttings inside, dried them in bundles over the hearth, used them in the lamb if there was lamb or in the bread if there wasn't.
