He was nervous.
"Come here," he said. "I made you something."
He brought his hands around, and there was a knife in them.
Not one of the blades off the wall. I knew those by now; the long heavy things balanced for a fist like his. This one was small. My size. A blade no longer than my hand, the steel folded over and over into dark, rippling patterns that caught the firelight, the handle wrapped to fit my grip exactly, the whole of it tucked into a sheath of soft, oiled leather.
It was, without contest, the most beautiful thing anyone had ever made for me.
"It's shadow-fold," he said when I didn't say anything, talking fast now to fill the quiet. "The best steel I've got. It'll hold an edge for years and it won't ever let you down. I scaled the grip to your hand." He showed me, his huge fingers careful around the little hilt. "It won't turn on you, no matter how wet it gets." He stopped, like the next part had gotten away from him, then said it rougher. "So no one ever pins you against a wall again with nothing in your hands. You'll always be able to protect yourself now. Whatever happens. Wherever you are."
And I stood there in the heat and the dark with this perfect, deadly little thing in my hands, and I could not breathe.
It wasn't the sex that undid me in the end, though God knows the sex was doing its part.
It was this. Everyone I had ever met took one look at me and saw a thing to be handled. Fragile, returnable, a little too loud. Two almost-husbands had decided I needed managing. The whole Agency had me marked unkeepable.
And this terrifying, gentle male, who built a wall of knives against the end of the world, had looked at the woman everyone handed back and decided I wasn't breakable at all. He'd decided I was someone who ought to be armed.
Nobody had ever once believed I could protect myself. He'd gone and built me the means to.
"Lorkin," I said, and my voice came out wrecked.
"You don't have to say anything." He'd gone shy again, shifting his weight. "I just needed you to have it. In case."
He didn't get to finish the “in case”. I set the knife down on the bench very carefully. It was the finest thing I owned, and I wasn't going to drop it.
Then I crossed the room and climbed onto him.
He caught me on instinct, big hands spanning the backs of my thighs, taking my whole weight without the smallest strain, and I wrapped my legs around as much of him as they'd reachand kissed him with everything the knife had cracked open in me. He made a sound that sent heat with nothing to do with the forge scorching down through me.
Then his mouth opened over mine and he kissed me back like he'd been waiting his whole life for the permission, deep and filthy, his tongue stroking against mine. He tasted of smoke and salt and want. One hand left my thigh to spread up my spine and fist gently in my hair, tipping my head exactly where he wanted it, all that leashed strength in his grip and not one ounce of it a threat.
"Here?" he got out against my mouth, already turning, already walking me back toward the cool stone end of the bench, away from the banked heat of the fire. "You sure?"
"Don't you dare make me wait while you find a bed."
He set me down on the worn wood, and then he decided to torture me. He slowed down.
He drew my shirt off over my head and just looked, his gaze dragging over me in the low light like he couldn't believe he was allowed, and then he bent and put his mouth on me. My throat first, a slow open-mouthed drag down the side of it that rolled my eyes back. Then lower.
When he closed his lips around one nipple and sucked, slow and hard, his tongue working the stiff peak while his other hand kneaded my breast, I made a sound I'd never made in my life. He took his time there. He took his time everywhere, learning me by mouth, unhurried, like we had all day and the whole rest of our lives.
By the time he dragged my leggings down my hips, I was shaking and arching up into nothing.
He stripped them off, got a look at me spread open on his bench, and a rough, almost pained noise scraped out of him.
I was soaked. I'd been soaked since the second he saidyou'll always be able to protect yourself, and he dragged two thickfingers up through the slick of me, slow, parting me open, and swore like it hurt him.
"You're dripping," he said, low and wrecked and wondering, like I'd done something miraculous.
"Your fault." I could barely get the words out. "Stop talking and?—"
He put his mouth on me.
I lost the rest of the sentence somewhere up on the ceiling. He licked one long, broad stripe up the center of me and settled in, slow and thorough.
His tongue circled and flattened and dipped, one thick finger easing inside to press at the place that made my hips buck up off the bench. He pinned me down with a forearm across my belly and feasted on me, unhurried, ruthless, until I was right at the edge of it, thighs clamped around his head, both hands fisted in his hair, the sounds tearing out of me and echoing off the stone?—
