Page 78 of Kazimir

“It is unnecessary.”

“Good.” She brushed the tear away with the back of her wrist, still holding the sword. “Because I think if anyone else had given me this, I would have collapsed onto the rug and made some truly embarrassing noises.”

“I would have had the rug cleaned.”

That earned me a wet, startled smile.

She moved with greater confidence then, stepping back to test the weapon properly. One cut. A reverse. A thrust. The blade answered her without drag, without argument. She turned it in a tight arc near her body and brought it to stillness with the point angled toward the floor, reverent rather than theatrical.

“It feels…” She searched, eyes on the gold. “Like a vow.”

I understood that better than perhaps she knew.

“At times,” I said, “the only proper answer to desecration is arming the wronged.”

She lowered the sword and looked at me as if I had become briefly unbearable to contemplate directly. Then, with great care, she returned the weapon to its velvet bed and shut the case halfway, not latching it, merely sheltering it.

When she turned back to me, something in the room had altered.

The gratitude on her face did not remain gratitude. It deepened. Warmed. Took on hunger.

She stepped close enough that the damp ends of her hair touched my hand.

“Thank you for being an ally of the Angel King,” she said.

I brushed one wet strand back over her shoulder. “If I weren’t already his friend, I would have swallowed any pride necessary to have become so for you. I’m proud to fight beside him and am grateful that he saw fit to honor my request in forging you this magnificent sword.”

She held my gaze for another second. Then she untied the robe.

The satin loosened with a whisper and slid from her shoulders.

It fell open first, then down, pooling at her feet in pale folds that looked indecently innocent around the reality they had concealed. Firelight found her skin and made silk of it. Breasts full and soft, nipples tightening under the cooler air. Belly narrow, hips curving into the kind of lines sculptors lied badly about in stone. The faint shadows between her thighs already dark with invitation. Her wet hair clung in pale strands over one breast, one shoulder, the hollow above her collarbone.

I had seen her naked. I had known her in ways language ruined by trying to contain. It did not help. The sight still pulled me in like the first impact.

She came closer.

My hands stayed at my sides because I understood instinctively that this belonged to her. The moment had opened some old wound and some newer need, and she meant to answer both in her own language.

Her fingers found the buttons of my shirt.

She worked them slowly. Not fumbling. Not shy. Methodical in a way that nearly undid me more efficiently than haste could have managed. One button. Then another. The shirt gaped over my chest inch by inch, revealing skin, scar, the dark dusting of hair beneath. She pushed the fabric from my shoulders with both hands and let it slide down my arms. I shrugged out of it because even saints were allowed to assist miracles.

Her palms spread across my chest.

Cool from the air, damp from her bath, they moved with quiet possession over my scars and muscle, mapping what she already knew. She kissed the old mark that bisected my chest. Then my sternum. Then lower, where my abdomen tightened under her attention.

“You’re beautiful,” she murmured, as if making a technical observation.

“I am overdressed.”

She huffed a laugh against my skin and reached for my belt.

The buckle came free with a soft metallic sound too intimate for how small it was. She drew the leather from its loops, set it aside neatly—my orderly little menace—and opened my slacks. Her gaze never quite left the work. She lowered the zipper. Slid both hands to my hips. Pushed the fabric down slowly enough that the scrape of wool over my thighs became its own form of provocation.

I stepped free of shoes, then slacks.

My boxer briefs did nothing to disguise what watching her naked and kneeling at my body had already accomplished. She looked directly at the shape of me then, one pale brow lifting with a satisfaction that bordered on impudence.