There was a rattle outside the door.
“Rin,” muttered Brand, and as if that was the starting word on a race they both took off running. Pelted down the corridor like thieves caught in the act, tangling on a stairway, giggling like idiots as they scrambled into a room and Brand wrestled the door shut, leaning back against it as if there were a dozen angry Vanstermen outside.
They hunched in the shadows, their breath coming quick.
“Why did we run?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” Thorn whispered back.
“You think she can hear us?”
“What if she can?” asked Thorn.
“I don’t know.”
“So this is your room, is it?”
He straightened up, grinning like a king who’d won a victory. “I have a room.”
“Quite the distinguished citizen,” she said, strolling around in a circle, taking it in. Didn’t take long. There was a pallet bed in one corner with Brand’s worn-out old blanket on it, and his sea chest sitting open in another, and the sword that used to be Odda’s leaning against the wall, and aside from that just bare boards and bare walls and a lot of shadows. “Ever wonder if you’ve overdone the furniture?”
“It’s not quite finished.”
“It’s not quite started,” she said, the circle taking her back toward him.
“If it’s not what you were used to at the empress’s palace, I won’t keep you.”
She snorted. “I lived under a boat with forty men in it. Reckon I can stand this a while.”
His eyes were on her as she came close. That look. Little bit hungry, little bit scared. “Staying, then?”
“I’ve got nothing else pressing.”
And they were kissing again, harder this time. She wasn’t worrying about Brand’s sister anymore, or about her mother, or about anything. There was nothing on her mind but her mouth and his. Not to begin with, at least. But soon enough some other parts started making themselves known. She wondered what was prodding at her hip and stuck her hand down there to check and then she realized what was prodding at her hip and had to break away she felt so foolish, and scared, and hot, and excited, and hardly knew what she felt.
“Sorry,” he muttered, bending over and lifting one leg as if he was trying to hide the bulge and looking so ridiculous she spluttered with laughter.
He looked hurt. “Ain’t funny.”
“It is kind of.” She took his arm and pulled him close, then she hooked her leg around his and he gasped as she tripped him, put him down hard on his back with her on top, straddling him. Familiar territory in its way, but everything was different now.
She pressed her hips up against his, rocking back and forward, gently at first, then not so gently. She had her hand tangled in his hair, dragging his face against hers, his beard prickling at her chin, their open mouths pressed together so her head seemed to be full of his rasping breath, hot on her lips.
She was fair grinding away at him now and liking the feel of it more than a bit, then she was scared she was liking the feel of it, then she decided just to do it and worry later. She was grunting in her throat with each breath and one little part of her thinking that must sound pretty foolish but a much bigger part not caring. One of his hands slipped up her back under her shirt, the other up her ribs, one by one, and made her shiver. She pulled away, breathing hard, looking down at him, propped up on one elbow.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
“For what?” She ripped her shirt open and dragged it off, got it caught over the elf-bangle on her wrist, finally tore it free and flung it away.
She felt a fool for a moment, knew she was nothing like a woman should be, knew she was pale and hard and nothing but gristle. But he looked anything but disappointed, slid his hands up her sides and around her back, pulled her down against him, kissing at her, nipping at her lips with his teeth. The pouch with her father’s fingerbones fell in his eye and she slapped it back over her shoulder. She set to pulling his shirt open, pushing her hand up his stomach, fingers through the hairs on his chest, the bangle glowing soft gold, reflected in the corners of his eyes.
He caught her hand. “We don’t have to … you know …”
No doubt they didn’t have to, and no doubt there were a hundred reasons not to, and right then she couldn’t think of one she gave a damn about.
“Shut up, Brand.” She twisted her hand free and started dragging his belt open. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she knew some right idiots who’d done it.
How hard could it be?
SORT OF ALONE
They’d gone to sleep holding each other but it hadn’t lasted long. Brand never knew anyone to thrash about so much in the night. She twitched and twisted, jerked and shuddered, kicked and rolled until she kicked him awake and rolled him right out of his own bed.