“The best stewed lamb I’d ever tasted.”
“It was the perfect day.”
I nodded in agreement. He lifted my hand to the center of his palm.
“This one?” he murmured against my wrist.
I inhaled, my heart pounding so hard it was all I could hear. A spidery scar sat on the inside of his hand like an engraving. “Our first fight.” I breathed out slow to calm my jumping pulse.
“Sometimes I rub the center of my palm when I’m missing you.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
Then I took his hand in mine, placing his fingers on the outside of my knuckles on my right hand. “This scar is from the talwar my father gave you. Before you went north with the emperor.”
He gave a slow smile. “You were so angry I’d managed to lay a hand on you.”
I arched a brow. “I vowed you never would again.”
He placed his hands on either side of my face. “And now?”
“I’d gladly retract that.”
His breathing changed, hitching in his chest, and I felt the deep sound reverberate through me. His lips captured mine again, and then he helped me out of my light kurta, both of us taking off the remainder of our clothes until it was just our skin and the marks of our past between us. We’d helped each other heal them, but it was more than the outside scars. We’d been two lonely people who had been given solace in each other. I knew what Maz meant when he went through all the memories we’d had together. We had become intertwined, we were part of each other, and with him, I felt at home.
I brushed his back as he moved against me, feeling the other scars laced across it, many of them from the ugly parts of his life, the ones I knew he didn’t want to remember.
“Shall I mark you again?” I asked, my thighs around his hips, my lips against his. “Shall I make you mine?” I whispered, tasting the salt of his skin.
He laughed against my mouth. “You already have.”
I arched against him, the feel of us pressed together like stardust across the clear night sky, and together we mapped our voyage home.
“So, it really was just an excuse, huh?” I asked, my words on the edge of laughter.
Mazin rose up on his forearms, his hair delightfully mussed, a quizzical expression on his brow.
I grinned at him. “You asked me to come to your room so you could show me something?”
Clarity smoothed his face, and he hopped out of bed, not bothering to hide his nakedness as he went to a large wooden closet at the end of the room.
“You could at least throw something on,” I groaned, a flush of heat rushing to my cheeks at the brief flash of nudity. I sat up and wrapped my hastily flung kurta around me.
“But that would have slowed me down,” he called out, rummaging around the cupboard.
He returned with a triumphant look on his face, and I tried to look anywhere but at him.
“Put some clothes on!” I shouted, shielding my eyes.
He barked out a laugh. “How are you this sensitive? You’ve seen my body thousands of times.”
“Not like this,” I grumbled. “And not immediately after we… not like this.”
“Fine. I’ll get dressed. But take this first.”
I snatched the box from his hand without glancing at him. He gave a rich laugh and threw on the long ivory tunic he’d discarded on the floor earlier.
“There, stop your blushes and open it. Proof that I didn’t drag you to my bedroom to take advantage of you.”
