inside without touching her and made a great fuss of clearing off a chair for her to sit in.
He carefully avoided looking at the bed, and she followed his example, pummeling her brain for some way to make him feel comfortable again. If it had been warmer, she would have suggested they go out on his balcony—his room had one, hers didn’t. But it was freezing out there, literally; the ice on the ponds would be thick enough to skate safely on, come morning. Cold hands and feet were not conducive to romance, and the temperature out on the balcony was likely to chill the hottest lust.
Her throat tightened, and she flushed for no reason. Suddenly she was afraid, though of what, she couldn’t have said. To cover the fact, she ignored the chair and sprawled out on the sheepskin rug in front of the hearth, half reclinging against a cushion.
“If you could be anything in the world,” she said, staring at the flames, as he sat down hesitantly beside her, “What would it be? Anything at all—anything you wanted, king, minstrel, beggar, whatever.”
He thought about it; she took a sidelong glance at him, and saw that his face was set in a frown of concentration. “You know, I think I’d be a merchant. I’d get to travel anywhere, see everything I ever wanted to. I’d be a rich merchant, though,” he added hastily. “So I could travel comfortably.”
She chuckled. “Like one of Tarma’s proverbs: ‘What good is seeing the wonders of the world when you’re too saddle sore to enjoy them?’ “
He laughed, and relaxed a little, letting his hand rest oh-so-casually on hers. “What about you?”
“Being a rich merchant would be nice,” she agreed. “But I’d rather be the kind of person that travels just because she wants to. Not tied to a caravan or a trading schedule.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding wisely. “A spoiled dabbler.”
“A
“A dilettante,” he teased. “A brat. A—”
He didn’t have any chance to go on, because she hit him with a pillow.
That attack engendered a wrestling match which he, heavier and stronger, was bound to win—unless she resorted to tactics which would have ended any further plans for the evening. But it was a great deal of fun while it lasted—the more so because she discovered his one weakness, and turned the contest into something much more even.
He was ticklish.
She managed to get his shoes off while tickling his sides. Protecting one meant that the other weak point was vulnerable, and the moment he curled up into a ball, she grabbed his feet and ran her nails along the soles. When he thrashed helplessly and got his feet away from her, his sides were exposed. Before long, she’d turned the tables on him.
She tickled him unmercifully, until they were both laughing so hard their sides ached. Finally neither one of them could breathe, and they tumbled together on the rug, completely unable to move.
“You—” he panted, “—cheat.”
“No such—thing,” she replied, trying to brush her hair out of her eyes with one hand while she held onto his bare foot with the other. “Just—obeying—my teacher.”
“Exploiting the enemy’s weakness?” He was getting his breath back faster than she was, and he managed to eel around so that her head was in his lap. “But Kero—I’m not your enemy.”
“Aren’t you?” she began, when he stopped all further conversation with a kiss.
It was in no way a chaste or innocent kiss. It picked up where the last of their tentative explorations had left off, and carried them to the logical conclusion. Kero let go of his foot, and groped for the laces of his tunic. His hands slid under her shirt and cupped her breasts with a gentleness that vaguely surprised her, stroking them with his callused thumbs.
The tunic-lacings foiled her hands, which seemed to have lost all dexterity. She broke off the kiss, and cursed the things; he laughed, and got out of the tunic without bothering to unlace it, tossing it off somewhere into the dark. The loose shirt, a copy of her own, was easy enough to slide her hands under—which she did, holding him closer to her, feeling her blood heat at the play of muscles under his skin.
