"Tomorrow," he said against her hair, "you can wear whatever you want. The gray dress. The apron. The kerchief." His thumb moved in a slow circle across her skin. "And I'll still put you on my horse and ride three days with my cock hard against your back, and every warrior in my command will know exactly what I'm thinking about."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "They'll know?"
"They'll smell it on me." He pressed his mouth to the curve of her neck. "They already do."
She stirred against him. A small movement, her body settling deeper into the curve of his. Her hand came up and covered his where it rested on her stomach, her fingers light against his scarred knuckles, her palm barely pressing down. Like she wasn't sure she was allowed.
He turned his hand beneath hers. Laced their fingers together over the soft curve of her belly.
"Sleep," he said. "Long ride tomorrow."
Her thumb moved once across his knuckle.
Then her breathing slowed, her body sinking into his, and Varek lay there in the dark with his woman in his arms and his hand spread across the part of herself she'd tried to hide from him.
Chapter 15
Mab woke before dawn.
The room was gray, the fire burned down to embers, and Varek's arm was still heavy across her waist. His breath stirred her hair in slow, even rhythms. She lay still for a moment, feeling the warmth of him along her back, the weight of his hand where it had stayed all night.
The memory of last night moved through her in pieces. The belt around her wrists. His mouth on her breasts. The way he'd looked at her and spoken to her and held her.
This is mine.
She didn't move.
Usually she would have. A lifetime of rising before the bell had wired something into her bones that made stillness feel like debt.
But his thumb moved in his sleep. Pressed into the soft curve of her belly, the exact place he'd held last night while he wasinside her, and the pressure sent a sweet low ache through the bruises on her hips.
She stayed.
After some time, Varek's arm tightened.
"You're awake," he said. His voice was rough with sleep, low enough that she felt it in her spine before she heard it.
"Yes."
"How long?"
"A while."
His hand spread flat across her stomach, and he pulled her back against him, settling her into the curve of his body like fitting a lid to a pot.
"And you stayed," he said.
"Yes."
His mouth found the back of her neck. She felt one tusk graze her skin, the lightest drag, and her breath caught.
"Good," he said.
They lay like that. The gray light in the room shifted by degrees, the embers pulsing in the hearth, and Mab felt the strangeness of it settle over her like snowfall. Quiet. Unhurried. No bell to answer. No charger waiting in the trough.
"I can hear you thinking," Varek said. "What is it?"
"I was thinking," she said, "about Northwatch."
