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The war is not over, Ginger said. We just have an aide-de-camp.

After dinner and reading while sitting close on the bench, we shut Ginger out of the bedroom—and her sprite in a jar—and I learned Goran.

Fair was fair. He’d learned me the night before with his tongue, and a Trevil paid her debts with interest.

He didn’t make it easy. Two years of being careful had sunk bone-deep inside him.

As he sat on the side of the bed, I slid my hands under his shirt. He held himself still, braced, breathing evenly.

I leaned back and stared at him until he noticed.

“You’re enduring me,” I said.

“I’m not⁠—”

“Goran. You have your beam-lifting face on.”

His horn-bases darkened. “Habit. Being handled means something’s wrong. Stitches. Dressings.” He paused, his brow furrowed in thought. “And I’m large everywhere. Careful’s how I keep things in one piece.”

“I’m not a teacup.”

“You’re the good teacup.”

“I’m the good teacup that wants,” I said, and took his face in both hands, making him look at me. “Listen. We’re forming a new treaty right now. In this bed, you’re not large, you’re mine, and I’m not breakable. I’m thorough. The mouth is the authority, and my mouth says, let me touch you.”

He swallowed hard. “Alright.”

I started with his shirt, because I wanted to see him in the light when I wasn’t changing a dressing.

Aris had removed the stitches today. A neat pink row ran down his left side, closing nicely.

We’d waited until now.

“I won’t touch there,” I said. “But everywhere else is mine.”

He grunted.

I took that as agreement.

I climbed onto the bed and started at his horns. I’d been thinking about them since they first blushed. After stroking them to the tips and back to the bases while he shivered, I put both hands in his hair and smoothed it, then returned to his horns, rubbing my fingertips around the bases.

His groan ripped out. “Rain…”

“Interesting,” I said.

“Rain.”

“This is purely academic.”

“You said that on the bridge.”

“I’ve been thinking about publishing my results.”

“You have not.”

“You’re right, I haven’t. But your response is worth noting.”

I found the other one, working down, a spot beneath his jaw where the pulse ran close to the surface. I kissed it, and his not-purr stumbled and restarted lower and rougher.