“What thing?”
“Looking pleased with me.”
“I am pleased with you.”
“I didn’t do anything remarkable.”
He started to answer, then stopped. Once he might have told her exactly how remarkable it was that she could spend a day apart from him without fear, or that she’d found work she cared about, or that someone else now relied upon her. But she knew how far she’d come. Perhaps he didn’t need to keep reminding her.
“Then I’m pleased for no remarkable reason,” he said, and her expression immediately softened.
“That’s better.”
They ate together. She had kept a pot of stew warm over the fire, and while they ate she told him about Tess’s increasingly creative theories concerning the suspicious ships.
“At one point she decided Nareth Station was secretly controlled by slavers.”
“Possible.”
“Then she decided the station master was a slaver.”
“Also possible.”
“Then she decided the entire station might be fake.”
He paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. “How would an entire station be fake?”
“I asked the same thing.”
“And?”
“She told me I lacked imagination.”
“Perhaps you do.”
She kicked him beneath the table, and he laughed.
It was late by the time they finished eating. He cleared the dishes while she put away the records, and the ordinary familiarity of their life settled around him.
This was what he’d wanted all day. Not merely her body, although he wanted that with a persistence that was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. He wanted her things mixed with his. Her voice filling his quarters. The small knife he’d carved for her lying beside one of his own. Her half-finished necklace on the shelf. Her clothing hanging near his weapons harness. Evidence of her everywhere he looked.
The thought edged dangerously close to a future he had no right to assume, and he turned away from it.
She disappeared briefly into her little sleeping cave, and he forced himself not to watch.
The past few nights had been difficult enough. Their intimacy had changed. She touched him with increasing confidence. She kissed him because she wanted to kiss him. She had allowed him to touch her, to bring her pleasure, and each new freedom she offered made the next one harder to wait for.
But patience had brought them here. He would not abandon it simply because waiting had become difficult. He went into his sleeping cave and lay down. She would come if she wanted to. Or she wouldn’t.
Either choice was hers.
A short time later he heard bare feet crossing the stone, and his body tightened immediately.
She appeared at the entrance a moment later wearing the soft blue gown she wore to sleep in now, her dark hair loose around her shoulders. She hesitated for only a second before coming to him. He lifted the furs and she slipped beneath them, nestling against his side with a familiarity that made his chest ache.
He put his arm around her, and for several heartbeats neither of them moved. Then her hand settled on his chest, and her fingers stroked slowly through his fur. He closed his eyes.
“Polly.”
