Page 41 of Beds and Blades

His face was serious. Simply stating what he believed to be true.

“That is courage,” he said, “from where I stand.”

He looked into my eyes.

I did not look away. Neither did he.

The silence between us changed. It was full of everything that had been building since the field, the horse, the courtyard, the first kiss. Present now. Certain now. Requiring nothing except acknowledgment.

He kissed me.

It was a slow kiss. Unhurried. The fire warm beside us, the hall quiet around us, no one shouting for bandages or reports or reinforcements.

His hand came to my jaw the way it had before, and I understood that this was how Skip held things he had decided mattered.

Our mouths opened against each other, and the world narrowed. I felt the fire at my back, the solid strength of him beside me, the weight of his hand, the controlled restraint in him beginning to give way.

I felt the unmistakable evidence that he wanted this as badly as I did.

He pulled back just enough to look at me.

His voice was low.

“Let us continue this in my quarters.”

He stood and held out his hand.

I was aware of his eyes moving over the pale linen, taking in what the fabric did not conceal. He liked what he saw. He made no attempt to hide it.

I took his hand.

***

He held my hand as we walked down the corridor.

His hand was large and calloused and warm, and mine fit inside it.

A fire was already roaring in his quarters. I stopped in the doorway. I had seen this room once before, during my first tour of the outpost, and my mind had immediately supplied an image of Skip in that bed with me beneath him. I had been trying, with limited success, not to think about it ever since.

Now, I was not managing anything, and the room was exactly what it had been on the tour and different at the same time.

The hearth. The desk. The massive bed.

The reality of it was warmer than the version in my head.

He closed the heavy oak door behind us. The sound of it was quiet and final, and I stood in the middle of the room and understood that I had stopped pretending I was going to process this at an analytical distance. The dam that had been building since day one was going to break tonight, and I had come here to let it.

Skip released my hand but did not step away. For a moment, he gazed upon me. Then he reached for the hem of his shirt.

He pulled the shirt over his head in one motion.

His shoulders were even broader without the shirt, wide and heavy with the kind of dense power that came from years of swinging weapons and wearing steel. They tapered down to a narrow waist.

He looked exactly like what he was. A man who had been doing serious physical work in dangerous conditions for most of his adult life and wore the evidence plainly.

There were scars. A white line beneath his left collarbone. A longer one curving along his right ribs.

He stood there, half-lit by the roaring fire, letting me look. No self-consciousness. No false modesty. Quiet certainty.