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I bend my head to the side of her neck where the shift has slipped and I put my mouth on the warm skin just below her ear, breathing in her scent of saffron and sugar. Her sharp indrawn breath goes against my cheek, the pulse at the side of her throat is going hard under my lips. Her skin tastes of the cold night and sweet sweat and I open my mouth against her and I taste more of her, and I feel her shift against me, and the whole of my attention narrows to the width of her neck under my mouth and stays there.

She lets out a moan which sends a rush of blood to my cock and I can’t help the animal inside, the kind that pushes against her hip so she can tell how hard I am, and exactly what she’s doing to me.

A gasp escapes her lips and for a moment I fear I pushed her too far. I don’t know her background, I don’t know if she’s been with a man before, I don’t know how delicate her sensibilities are.

Then she brings my hand to the small of her back and she presses it there, flat, so that my palm is on the thin linen of the shift at the base of her spine and I can feel the warmth of her skin through the fabric and the shape of her under my hand.

She takes my other hand and brings it up to the front of her and moves the robe aside and places it, palm flat over the thin linen of the shift against the curve of her left breast. The nipple is pebble-hard and she holds my hand there for a beat with her own hand over the back of mine until I cup her breast, squeezing lightly. I feel practically lightheaded as I knead it, wanting more, my thumb brushing over her nipple, back and forth until her moans turn into a symphony.

I kiss her once more at the hollow of the throat and then I lift my head and I find her mouth.

Fuck.

Her mouth opens under mine without hesitation and the taste of her goes through me, mulled sweet wine, and I make a rumbling sound from deep in my chest. My hand at her back pulls her against me. Her hand that had been on my chest slides up into my hair at the nape of my neck and her fingers close in it and tighten, and the pull of her fingers in my hair goes all the way down the length of my spine and lands.

I turn her against the wall of bones and press her back into them and I kiss her the way I have wanted to kiss her since the night we met, slow at first, learning the shape of her mouth, learning what she does with her tongue when I open mine to her, learning that she makes a small sound in the back of her throat when I bite gently at her lower lip. Then not slow. Then hungrier. Then her hand comes up to grip the front of my coat, and the kiss goes deeper and wetter and hotter until I am breathing against her mouth and have stopped having any composure.

I pull back just far enough to look at her. Her eyes are half-shut. Her lips are parted and swollen from me. The red of the sky shines in her hair.

“Fuck,” I say. Not at my most eloquent, but I don’t care.

And apparently she doesn’t either. She pulls me back down to her mouth as if she’s starving for me.

I kiss the corner of her mouth and the hinge of her jaw and the place below her ear, sucking and licking, taking my time before I come back to her waiting mouth again. My hand slips lower under the robe to the warm skin at her hip, bare under the shift, and I spread my fingers against her ribs under the fabric. She shivers against my palm, and her hips move and she pushes, deliberate, and the sound she makes next is lower and goes straight through me.

I bite the side of her neck. Not hard, just enough that she makes the sound again, louder, and her hand in my hair tightens, and her head tips back for me to do it again.

I do it again.

I know I should have stopped three kisses ago. I know I am going to pay for all of this. I don’t care. My mind is finally quiet, all my thoughts are whittled down to nothing but what’s in front of me, nothing but her, and I am going to stay in it as long as she lets me.

I bring my mouth back to hers. “I know you’ve put a spell on me.”

Her hand tightens.

“I don’t care,” I whisper against her lips. “You could put a hundred more, darling witch, and I would still be yours.”

She laughs against my mouth. “I haven’t put anything on you.”

“Not that you’re aware of, but you have.”

Then I hear the sound of a watcher in the distance, the boots getting closer as he comes back this way.

I pull back. She blinks up at me and I put my finger to her lips. We don’t want to push our luck tonight and there’s a chance that the watcher will catch us on the patrol back. Does it mean the watcher will say anything? Probably not but again I can’t afford to take any chances, not with her.

I take her hand and we walk fast along the wall into the arch of a door that opens off the sea wall into the service corridor. I deftly pull the door closed behind us without letting the latch click.

The service corridor on this side is dark and unlit at this hour save for a single candle in a bracket at the far end that throws just enough light to see the stones. I pull Saturna two steps deeper into the shadow and I press her against the wall and I bring my mouth back to hers because I cannot be this close to her and not kiss her, and her hands are at the lapels of my coat pulling me in, and my hand slips down to her thigh and I slowly start to gather up the hem of her shift. I want to touch her everywhere.

I’m about to put my mouth back on her neck when I hear the voices.

Men’s voices, two of them, low and from somewhere in the corridor ahead of us. Coming toward where we are and not yet in sight.

My hand goes over her mouth to keep her quiet as a mouse and her eyes come up to mine in the dark. She nods, getting my meaning, and I take my hand away and slide us both further into the deeper shadow at the alcove where the corridor turns, pressing her against the wall.

The voices come closer.

“—at the pier, I’m told.”