Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

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gesture for unbound hair. He'd never seen her with it down. She smiled back.
As people got up to dance or visit the latrine or leave, she worked her way next to him. Even her slight
drunkenness was fish-bowl distant, like in a fight. She passed the wine-skin to him, careful not to
puncture it with the claws of either hand. His wounded arm was out of the sling, but he moved it carefully.
Not yet, take your time. It wouldn't be so soon. Through song and talk she sat, waiting, feeling his
warmth on her side. Then when the time was right, an hour or so having passed, she laid her right hand
on his arm, half-casual, half-tentative, feeling the soft fuzz; he wasn't a hirsute man. "I was thinking about
a talk we had a while ago," she said quietly, under the sound of the harp and flute tuning to each other. "I
thought I'd take you up on your offer." She tossed her head, sending ripples down the fall of her hair.
His eyes remembered, understood, smiled a smile deeper than greeting. He touched three fingertips to
the back of her hand, feather-gentle.
She leaned her head into his shoulder. She'd seen others do it, friends, even strangers, wanting comfort
against the stress of war. He never denied them. Someone else called him into conversation. The
wine-skin came around again; she noticed he took only a short draught. She caught his, eye, tilted her
head toward the woods. She slipped her right hand in his left, feeling its gentle grip, large and warm, as
they stepped away from the fire. "I have a daughter in my tent," she whispered.
"So do I. There's my office-cart: it's stuffier than the woods, but more private and better guarded." They
threaded their way through trees and fires, talk and song in a score of tongues. He needed no password,
knowing all the sentries' names.
He gave her the usual hand up to the door. Their feet drummed softly on the boards. She heard him
grope for the light, the rasp of a tinder box; a flame leapt up and he lit a taper to a stone lamp, alabaster,
carved in the shape of a leaping dolphin. He set it on the floor next to the bed, and sat on its edge at her
feet.
"I knew your hair was long." His accent gave his words a silvery sound in the dimness. "I didn't know it
was so long." She looked down at the ends brushing just below her knees, then at him, the lamplight from
below and to one side making his scarred face faintly sinister.
Now? She could half-trip and scratch him when he moved to steady her. It would be done, she could
leave…No . It would seem suspicious, he'd have it checked.For one so subtle, only the subtlest plan I
have in me will do . "I swore I'd never cut it again. That was eight years ago." She smiled and sat to his
right—her left hand, the poisoned one, flat on the bed.
"It's beautiful," he said. She leaned toward him, laid her right hand softly on his chest. Warm, muscles
hard like Shkai'ra's, but in the more massive masculine form, under a small patch of black hair. The new
scar on the inside of his left upper arm, still an angry red, with stitch marks. She remembered her thought:
better I kill you myself than send you to that . He would never fight again.
She brought her lips close. His came to hers, but slowly, waiting, letting her lead. His eyes were closed,
showing delicate black lashes. "All through this," he breathed, "I'm yours. You choose. You rule."
Yes. Lixand-mi. Akribhan.
She slid her arms around him. "Hold me first, please." He did it as if she were fragile; as she kissed his
neck, tasting the slight trace of salt on her lip, she felt shivers shoot through his body, from head to toes in