“You could have let me sleep with her.”
“I wonder why she didn’t think of that herself.”
Leaving Rafferty to his plight, Thom walked up to the tent where Brea sat, draping her coat over her boots. She’d taken to wearing trousers for their journey, her tucked shirt now hanging loose around her torso. With her short, trim figure, she looked even smaller under the canvas tent. It was hard to remember that she was twice his age. She didn’t look a day older than thirty. Though her cutting brown stare bespoke a maturity Thom doubted he’d ever understand.
“I pushed the bedrolls apart,” Brea said, a tinge of humor in her tone. “I wouldn’t want anyone thinking I intended to have my way with you.”
Thom took a seat at the foot of his mattress. “My chastity isn’t the one in need of protection,” he teased.
She eyed him knowingly. “If ever I find my womanly virtue threatened, I’ll be sure to defend it myself.”
“I don’t doubt that.” As he removed his boots, Thom glanced at the camp. No one was paying attention to them, but he lowered his voice anyway. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“It’s . . . indelicate.”
“My favorite kind of question.”
Thom smirked but kept his gaze averted as he asked, “You’re fifty-five?”
“That’s a stupid question when I already gave you the answer.”
“No,” Thom laughed. “That’s not the question.”
“Then what is?”
He hesitated, grimaced, and forced himself to ask what he wanted to know. “I don’t know the Schonese culture, but I’m aware that Wauld is less...conservative when it comes to...intimate relations.”
Brea lifted her chin and scoffed. “You want to know if I’ve been with a man?”
“You make it sound as though I’m a deviant.” Thom ran a hand over his face. “It’s just—I can’t fathom going fifty-five years without...”
“How old are you, Thom? Thirty?” Brea asked, her soft smile taunting.
“Twenty-eight,” he said, not bothering to inform her he was technically still a day shy of the age.
She scowled as though disappointed in the truth. “Then you and I are on roughly equal terms in our lifespans,” she said. “I am only a quarter Ephrian. This means that, at most, magic will take me to one hundred fifty years. If I’m lucky, I’ll only have another sixty.”
Thom frowned. “You don’t want to live as long as you can?”
“Why should I?” Brea asked and moved on before he could answer. “No, I’ve not been with a man. Because fifty-five years is nothing when I’m faced with likely a hundred more.”
Though it was hard to fathom, Thom thought he understood. Brea was just now in the prime of her life. Perhaps she was lonely, perhaps she wished for love, but she wasn’t running out of time, and neither was Thom. They both had at least another decade before the dream of a family was out of the picture.
Which brought up another question . . .
“Can you still have children?” Thom asked.
Brea chuckled. “Magic keeps us young,mi’caro. That means I can have children likely into my eighties or nineties.”
“Wow.” Thom blew a raspberry. “This magic stuff is weird.”
“Mm-hm.” Brea slipped under the blankets atop her bedroll. “By your previous question, I take it youhavebeen with a woman?”
Thom blanched. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
Her laugh was soft and far more feminine than he would have expected from such a direct woman. “Very well.” She leaned back, resting on an elbow as he stretched out a few feet away from her. “Then you can answer a different question for me.”
