Her throat tightened, and she flushed for no reason. Suddenly she was afraid, though of what, she couldn’t have said. To cover the fact, she ignored the chair and sprawled out on the sheepskin rug in front of the hearth, half reclinging against a cushion.
Talk. Say anything.
“If you could be anything in the world,” she said, staring at the flames, as he sat down hesitantly beside her, “What would it be? Anything at all—anything you wanted, king, minstrel, beggar, whatever.”
He thought about it; she took a sidelong glance at him, and saw that his face was set in a frown of concentration. “You know, I think I’d be a merchant. I’d get to travel anywhere, see everything I ever wanted to. I’d be a rich merchant, though,” he added hastily. “So I could travel comfortably.”
She chuckled. “Like one of Tarma’s proverbs: ‘What good is seeing the wonders of the world when you’re too saddle sore to enjoy them?’ “
He laughed, and relaxed a little, letting his hand rest oh-so-casually on hers. “What about you?”
“Being a rich merchant would be nice,” she agreed. “But I’d rather be the kind of person that travels just because she wants to. Not tied to a caravan or a trading schedule.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding wisely. “A spoiled dabbler.”
“A what?” she said, sitting up straight, pulling her hand away.
“A dilettante,” he teased. “A brat. A—”
He didn’t have any chance to go on, because she hit him with a pillow.
That attack engendered a wrestling match which he, heavier and stronger, was bound to win—unless she resorted to tactics which would have ended any further plans for the evening. But it was a great deal of fun while it lasted—the more so because she discovered his one weakness, and turned the contest into something much more even.
He was ticklish.
Very ticklish, especially down both sides and on the bottoms of his feet.
She managed to get his shoes off while tickling his sides. Protecting one meant that the other weak point was vulnerable, and the moment he curled up into a ball, she grabbed his feet and ran her nails along the soles. When he thrashed helplessly and got his feet away from her, his sides were exposed. Before long, she’d turned the tables on him.
She tickled him unmercifully, until they were both laughing so hard their sides ached. Finally neither one of them could breathe, and they tumbled together on the rug, completely unable to move.
“You—” he panted, “—cheat.”
“No such—thing,” she replied, trying to brush her hair out of her eyes with one hand while she held onto his bare foot with the other. “Just—obeying—my teacher.”
“Exploiting the enemy’s weakness?” He was getting his breath back faster than she was, and he managed to eel around so that her head was in his lap. “But Kero—I’m not your enemy.”
“Aren’t you?” she began, when he stopped all further conversation with a kiss.
It was in no way a chaste or innocent kiss. It picked up where the last of their tentative explorations had left off, and carried them to the logical conclusion. Kero let go of his foot, and groped for the laces of his tunic. His hands slid under her shirt and cupped her breasts with a gentleness that vaguely surprised her, stroking them with his callused thumbs.
The tunic-lacings foiled her hands, which seemed to have lost all dexterity. She broke off the kiss, and cursed the things; he laughed, and got out of the tunic without bothering to unlace it, tossing it off somewhere into the dark. The loose shirt, a copy of her own, was easy enough to slide her hands under—which she did, holding him closer to her, feeling her blood heat at the play of muscles under his skin.
“Beast,” she said, and went back to the kiss. He sank slowly to the floor, taking her with him, his hands moving against her skin under her shirt. She pushed his shirt up out of the way, the better to touch him. He rolled over to one side to give her hands more room to roam.
This time he broke free with a yelp as his bare back came into contact with the stone floor. “I hate cold floors,” he said ruefully, as she giggled at his woebegone expression. Then he scrambled to his feet, and pointed off into the dark. She couldn’t see his face from that angle, and she couldn’t see past the light cast by the fire, so she jumped to her feet—
Only to find herself scooped up, and launched across the room, to land in his bed. A moment later, he was beside her.
“Oh, my,” she said, “Where do you suppose this came from?”
He didn’t even bother to answer, and in a moment, she didn’t really want him to.
Shirts and breeches were everywhere, being tossed out of bed or shoved to one side. Somehow she managed to get out of her clothing without tearing anything; he wasn’t so lucky. He couldn’t get the wrist-lacings on his shirt to untie, and with a muttered oath, he snapped them.
His hands and mouth were everywhere; well, so were hers. Every touch seemed to send a tingle all over her, seemed to make her want more.
They explored each other, a little awkwardly sometimes; she hit him in the nose with her elbow, once, and he knocked her head against the footboard. Kero hardly felt it when she collided with the carved wood, every inch of skin felt afire, and she was propelled by such urgent need that she could have pursued him over the side of a cliff and never noticed.
It hurt, when he took her—or she took him, whichever; she wanted him as much as he wanted her. But it didn’t hurt that much, and he was as gentle as his own need would let him be. And she began to feel something else, something she yearned after as shamelessly as a bitch in heat. Just out of reach....
It was all over too soon, though, and she was left feeling as if something had been left undone; unsatisfied and still hungry somehow.
Sated, he just rolled happily over into the tumbled blankets, and went right to sleep.
She could have killed him.
Twice.
She curled up on her side, stared into the dark, and listened to him breathe. And wondered, What did I do wrong?
Later, she figured out she hadn’t done anything wrong. Practice, as with anything else, made both of them more proficient, better able to please each other. Eventually the outcome equaled the anticipation, and neither went to sleep unsatisfied.
She finally understood what all the fuss was about—and the obsession. She understood—but she felt herself somehow apart from it; her desire was satisfied, but whatever it was that awakened real passion in others had not touched her.
And nothing ever quite made up for the letdown of that first night.
And he never understood, or even noticed.
Winter became spring, then seemed to run straight into autumn without pausing for summer. There were never enough hours in the day for everything. Kero often wondered what possessed her, to have consented to this.