He stares at me for a moment that stretches long enough to make the back of my neck prickle. Then he makes a sound low in his chest — not words, just something that comes from somewhere very deep — and he picks me up.
Just like that. His hands at my waist and then I'm off the ground, my legs wrapping around him automatically because he's solargethat it's either that or dangle, and his mouth finds mine as he turns for the tree line.
He doesn't put me down.
He walks the whole way — through the pines, past the edge of the sparring ground, down the path toward the cluster of longhouses where the senior warriors bunk — kissing me the entire time. Not frantic, not clumsy, but sure. Like a man who has thought about this extensively and planned for every variable.
His hands shift to keep me steady and I feel the flex of his arms each time he adjusts and I decide, firmly and with my whole chest, that I do not mind being carried in the slightest.
"Anyone could see us," I say against his mouth.
"Good." He keeps walking. "They can have something to talk about."
I laugh. The sound surprises both of us, bright and real, and his whole face changes when he hears it — something in the set of his jaw going soft, his eyes crinkling at the corners — and then he's kissing me again before I can say anything else, shouldering open the door to his quarters without breaking contact.
Inside is warm.
He keeps a fire going even in spring, which I already knew because I've walked past his window on perimeter checks and noticed the orange light. I've noticed a lot of things about Ursik and I've been pretending I haven't and I am done pretending.
He sets me down on the edge of the bed — low, wide, covered in furs that smell like pine and woodsmoke — and he stands in front of me with his hands loose at his sides and looks at me with that careful, steady look.
"I need you to know," he says. His voice is low. "I don't want you to push me away again."
Something in my throat tightens. "I won't."
"I mean it, Aislin."
"So do I." I reach out and take the front of his shirt in both hands. "I was stupid for walking away. I was stupid every time I kept my distance when what I actually wanted—" I pull, drawing him down toward me, "—wasthis." My mouth grazes his jaw, just below his ear. "I want you so much, Ursik. You are funny and kind and you have always gone the distance for me. You are such a good male, and sometimes, I don't think I deserve it."
"You deserve the world."
I lean back to look at him. "All I want is you."
The sound he makes against the side of my head is somewhere between a growl and something much more undone.
We undress each other without urgency. His hands move over my clothes the way he does everything — deliberate, unhurried, like he has considered what he's doing and made a decision about it. I do the same to him, working at the laces of his shirt until it's over his head, and then I stop and look because I've been not-looking for weeks — even in the cave, I didn't take him in really — and I'm allowed to look now.
He's enormous. I knew that. Butknowingand seeing are different things — the broad shelf of his chest, the deep green of his skin in the firelight, the way every part of him is built forwar and currently dedicated entirely to being gentle with me. The scar running across his ribs from some raid I don't know the name of. The missing fingers on his left hand. Evidence of a life I haven't heard the whole of yet and want to.
"You're staring," he says.
"I know." I press my palm flat to his chest. His heartbeat is fast. I note that with considerable satisfaction.
"Aislin."
"Ursik."
His mouth curves, the slow private one that isn't performing anything, and he tips me back against the furs and I pull him with me.
There's a moment, with his weight settling against me — careful, distributed, nothing crushing even though he absolutely could — where I feel the last of it leave my body. Not gone permanently.
I'm not naive enough to think trauma dissolves like spring frost at the first warmth. But right now, in this specific moment, with this specific man breathing against my neck and his hand splayed warm across my ribs — it loosens. Steps back. Gives me the room.
I take it.
I pull him down and I don't hold anything back as he kisses me long and deep. As his hands move down my body and between my legs. As he stretches me, making me soak his hand until I am pleading.
And then he flips us.
