Post by Strapless on Sept 6, 2009 15:54:40 GMT 10
Title: Reconnaissance
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2,802
Category: Tortall
Summary: “I didn’t come here to look at a map I’d been staring at all morning.”
Peculiar Pairing: Miri/Volorin
When they said it rained in the southern coast, they weren’t kidding. Heavy drops lashed against night-darkened windows with a ceaseless pattering, at times almost drowned out by the hiss and gush of wind under the eaves. It wasn’t so loud that she couldn’t ignore it, but it was sufficiently noisy to cover all but the strongest noise that might have filtered in from the men and women taking their ease in the great hall downstairs.
The southern baron was wealthy off of Inland Sea trade and a happy friend of the Crown, willing to house the Rider groups and squads of the Own in barracks emptied by caravan guards and habitually unoccupied guest rooms. A study had easily been commandeered for command central by the officers, furniture shoved aside and table surfaces pushed together to be promptly covered with the necessary maps and miscellanea.
It was one of these maps that Miri stood before in contemplation, everything dry except her hair. Damp strands curled where they had been shoved behind her ears and a long coat hung by the fireplace, formerly embers which she had stoked up to a drying blaze. She dropped a couple markers into position, adjusting the location of one placed earlier in the day, and leaned back to survey the changes with her hands splayed wide on the table edge, the inside of her lip caught between her teeth in thought.
As short swell of noise reached her ears—laughter, a protesting shout, denying hisses of a bad hand of cards and another hand won—before the rainstorm outside once again took precedence. Perhaps that was why she didn’t fully hear the click of the latch or pay attention to the brief flare of the fire. She barely saw the odd shadow cast by the oil lamps, her eyes catching the quick movement just before it was gone. By the time her mind registered that there was someone else in the room with her, it was already a foregone conclusion.
The arm came around her waist, easily pulling her back and belting her to a taller, harder body even as she jumped in unwilling surprise. Then lips came down on her neck and her protest died in the fizzing tingle of complete shock at the intimate touch. Warm and soft against her rain-cooled skin, they fell across that just perfect spot and she couldn’t help that her eyelids dropped closed and she tilted her head aside just a little to—oh, yes, right there.
“I missed you.”
The voice came in her ear, a husky whisper with a hint of laughter. By this point, the voice wasn’t a surprise.
She snapped her eyes open and spun, the arm loosened enough to allow the change, but no more. Chest to chest with the man, she was trapped between him and the table. Her eyes narrowed.
“You.” It was part acknowledgement, part remembrance, and a hefty part threat, ending on a growl.
The corner of his mouth crooked up in a grin, smirking satisfaction, eyes glinting with playfulness and mockery in the firelight. It was the look of a man well aware he had the upper hand, and used to having it. “Miss me?”
She stood up on her toes, lowering her lashes, eyes on his mouth. Trying hard not to grin like a fool, she saw him lean in. “I hardly remember you exist most days, Sergeant Volorin,” she said, mouth inches from his. She dropped back down, wickedly satisfied when he straightened in surprise. “Were you following me? You know, in some courts of law that’s considered stalking.”
Volorin stepped back with a bark of laughter.
“You’re not the only one who can find their way around a castle,” he told her. “I don’t know what you call it in the Riders, but in the Own we call it tracking the target. Information gathering. Scouting. Reconnaissance.”
Miri snorted. “Reconnaissance is what my Rider group was out doing while the Own stayed inside, nice and dry, sitting on your asses, eating real food and playing cards.”
He shrugged, that infernal smile in the corner of his mouth still there. “What can I say? It’s good to be in service to the king. Gods bless the queen, but you warrior women are workaholics.”
Turning back to the map table, she tried to throttle the wish of attaining as flippant a tone as he could. “Someone has to work around here. And stop staring at my backside.”
“It’s kind of hard not to, with those breeches. All those working hours in the saddle have been nice to you.”
“Was that supposed to be a compliment?” she asked, turning a glare on the sergeant over her shoulder.
“If you want it to be,” he replied, moving about the room. He shot a look at her that made her fingers spasmodically curl around the edge of the table. “I can think of better ones.” He paused at a cabinet and opened the glass-fronted doors, making a noise of satisfaction. Miri watched as he reached in and removed a crystal decanter, followed by two glasses, with the simple ease of familiarity. Amber colored liquid sloshed inside the decanter.
She felt her eyebrows shoot up when he removed the stopper. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“His lordship won’t mind. I was almost engaged to one of his daughters in a previous life.”
Against her will, her lips twisted. Volorin talking about being involved with other women, no matter how tentatively, set off a chord of dislike in her that was as strongly felt as it was unexpected. “And I was almost a fishwife,” she just about snapped. “The past is gone with.”
“Aye, that’s true,” he conceded. He handed her a glass, three fingers’-width of richly hued amber, and raised his own
“To the queen’s health?” she asked sardonically, accepting the drink.
It was hard to interpret his look, eyes hooded and dark as he looked down at her. “To the future.”
The glasses clinked, a high pitched note short lived against the constant noise of the storm outside. She took a cautious sip. A sharp bite at the first touch of hard liquor on her tongue. It burned in the back of her throat, but slid the rest of the way down. It wasn’t long before a pleasant warmth settled in her stomach and began spreading. Good stuff. The next few sips went down much smoother.
Volorin had found an armchair and settled into it, leaving her to perch on the map table directly across from him. On the pretext of taking another sip, she took a better look at him. As a middle son and middle child of some noble she couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of, he had been all but obscure. In the King’s Own, he was anything but. He wore his hair long, pulled back on the sides by small braids, the end of each braided length strung through an ivory bead. Quite exotic. Quite rebellious.
On closer examination, each bead was carved into a skull. She didn’t know the story behind the beads, had never asked. Add mysterious to the list. The hair alone stood to lend fuel to cruel comments, but anyone who had ever seen him without his shirt on would be the last to call him at all ladylike. She could personally attest to the condition of the well-muscled body underneath. Idly, she wondered if there were any new scars. Tonight his hair was pulled back in a horsetail, the little skull beads hidden behind his shoulders, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled back. His blue tunic was fresh. Even his boots were clean, which reminded her that she had likely tracked mud into the castle on her way upstairs. The little splatters on her breeches couldn’t be helped now, either.
“I see you’re moving up in the world,” Volorin said, gesturing towards the insignia on her own tunic. “Second in command of Commander Tourakom’s personal Rider Group. If she ever retires, the Seventeenth is yours.”
She rolled her eyes against the ambitious speculation. “That’s not likely to happen any time soon.”
“A technicality. Still friends with Larse?”
“Mhmm.” She swirled the contents of her glass, admiring the color in the light. It was easier to look at than him, knowing his eyes were on her no matter where hers were.
“Then I say you stand to gain even more when your Commander retires, if she doesn’t murder her assistant for sheer cheekiness first.”
She cut her eyes to his face and couldn’t suppress the grin that formed. “Now that could happen at any moment.”
“Are you prepared to step in?” There was a slight smirk to the corner of his mouth again.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said with a withering look, and lobbed her empty glass at him with an underhanded flick of the wrist. Even unexpected, he caught it one handed, the liquid left in his own glass not even wavering. Good reflexes, that one.
It was her turn to smirk, in response to his raised eyebrow. “Another.”
The other eyebrow joined its fellow. He tipped the rest of his drink down his throat and returned to the liquor service.
“Speaking of moving up in the world, I notice you haven’t been demoted yet,” she said while he poured. “How many corporals have you been through since we last met?”
“It’s not my fault. There’s a regrettable lack of understanding in the Own that corporals are supposed to work for the sergeant. I can’t help it if they can’t keep up with me.” This time his grin was full-fledged and he returned, handing her glass off.
Miri hummed into the crystal. “I rather thought they had to work in spite of you.”
“I’m beginning to wonder how you were ever promoted at all, with that tongue in your mouth.”
“Intelligence, Sergeant. My promotion had nothing to do with anatomy.”
“I’ll bet it didn’t.” The sly look he cut her was full of remembrance.
Miri felt her jaw set and her eyes narrow, rising to the challenge. Gods help her, the man knew how to get her blood running. A moment’s contemplation was given to the remaining contents of her glass before she belted the rest back in one go. It dropped onto the table with a dull clink.
“Atta girl.”
“Don’t even think about it,” she declared, crossing her arms resolutely over her chest. As if that would stop him.
His slow smile wasn’t quite hidden behind his glass. “Think about what?”
“Getting me drunk, or just tipsy enough,” she explained, some reproach in her voice.
“Now why would I do a thing like that?”
Miri snorted inelegantly. Even his own mother, grandmother, and great aunties wouldn’t trust the carefully constructed look of innocence on that man’s face. After a moment’s silence, he set his glass down with a careful tap on the polished wood of the side table and stood. She felt herself leaning backwards, willing herself further back onto the map table as the sergeant closed the space between them with deliberate purpose. His hands, work-roughened and larger than her own, settled firmly to either side of her hips, pressing into the tabletop.
“Why would I even have to do a thing like that?” he asked again, pointedly.
Her crossed arms had been brushing against his chest. At that, she pulled them in tighter, not altogether impressed with his arrogance—nor the memory that reminded her his question, and his confidence, weren’t wholly illegitimate.
She tilted her head back to meet his gaze, nearly tipping backwards onto the map table and risking scattering the perfectly placed markers in the process.
“What do you want, Volorin?” she asked, all teasing and pretext of offense gone.
Any other man might have backed down at the direct question. Any other man might have been caught off guard, lose his words, stutter and scramble for an excuse, a reason, losing his purpose and abandoning ship posthaste.
Volorin wasn’t any other man. Thankfully.
She felt him rest more of his weight on the table, the fabric of his shirt brushing against her arms once more, if anything his position more secure. She could feel the warmth radiating from his body, smell the flavor of the liquor on his breath, and was not entirely displeased to be pinioned between his arms, not even able to wiggle out from between him and the table. His eyes met hers, steady and direct, dark in the dimly lit room.
“I didn’t come here to look at a map I’d been staring at all morning, I’ll tell you that much.”
Miri swallowed, excitement and apprehension lodging in her throat and getting stuck halfway down. She found her mouth had gone suddenly dry, and the thunder ringing distantly in her ears wasn’t just a product of the weather.
A touch, a sudden point of warmth, came upon her arm. It traced a line along the fleshy bit above the elbow.
“That’s new.” Volorin’s voice was inquisitive, tinged with concern. “What’s the story behind it?”
She looked down at the scar, the new paleness contrasting with the darkness of Volorin’s own tanned skin. Function returned to her voice, now that it was given a purpose.
“Hurrok. Nasty bugger swooped down on us from above.” She could remember ducking close to her pony’s neck as the Immortal dove, flinging her arm up reflexively at the sight of those reaching claws. She also remembered cursing both the action and the beast with the first flare of pain, a talon having made contact. And then promptly making a mad dash for the shelter of the trees.
Volorin straightened, stepping back, and lifted a hand from the table to raise one side of his shirt. Along his ribs, what must have once been a gash still showed pink in the process healing.
“Killer centaur,” he offered as the only explanation.
Involuntarily, Miri felt the corner of her mouth quirk in a smile. It was the familiar share-and-compare routine among soldiers, but oh so much more personal when she knew each and every scar intimately. It was one thing to admire or commiserate a new wound with a comrade, but quite another when she had been privy to the previously unmarred flesh.
Unfolding one crossed arm, she reached out and placed her hand on the scar. It disappeared under her palm. The healer had done well, the skin still smooth to the touch despite its visual appearance. She could feel the firmness of his abdomen, the warmth of his skin heating her palm. Slowly, creepingly, that warmth was moving through her body. Alcohol had nothing to do with the warmth that suddenly filled her, fluttering and tickling in her belly, when his hand covered hers, fingers curling around her own.
Her eyes followed the line of his wrist from his hand, up his arm. Bared by the rolled up sleeves, she found the small stretch of burned skin almost instinctively. It was the first scar of his that she had become familiar with, what he jokingly referred to as a “residual” from the magical blast that had taken down a tauros they had been hunting. Her other arm uncurled from her body and she traced a circle around the long-healed burn. The muscle twitched under her touch, then settled, but not before she felt him tighten his grip around the fingers of her other hand. With barely any extra effort needed, she saw his head dip closer, lips brushing against her downturned cheek before he pressed his own against hers.
Gods help her.
Miri lifted her own head, feeling the coarseness of a day’s scruff against her cheek. The hand on his arm slid up towards his shoulder, the other creeping from his ribs to a more secure hold around his side, craving more contact than just a touch. Volorin lifted his own head to meet her gaze, with not a little bit of hopeful inquiry in his expression.
“If you didn’t come in here to look at a map,” she said, her voice sounding surprisingly low and husky to her own ears, “then what did you have in mind?”
At that, his arms slid quite purposefully around her and he pulled her closer. A little thrill shot through her, as if the rougher movement made his intentions more real.
“A little reconnaissance of our own,” he replied, that infernal little grin crooking the corner of his mouth once more, his hands already finding their way beneath her shirt and dipping to tease the skin beneath the waist of her breeches.
Miri couldn’t help it when she felt herself smiling in response. “I always liked collaborating with the King's Own. Now I remember why.”
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2,802
Category: Tortall
Summary: “I didn’t come here to look at a map I’d been staring at all morning.”
Peculiar Pairing: Miri/Volorin
---
When they said it rained in the southern coast, they weren’t kidding. Heavy drops lashed against night-darkened windows with a ceaseless pattering, at times almost drowned out by the hiss and gush of wind under the eaves. It wasn’t so loud that she couldn’t ignore it, but it was sufficiently noisy to cover all but the strongest noise that might have filtered in from the men and women taking their ease in the great hall downstairs.
The southern baron was wealthy off of Inland Sea trade and a happy friend of the Crown, willing to house the Rider groups and squads of the Own in barracks emptied by caravan guards and habitually unoccupied guest rooms. A study had easily been commandeered for command central by the officers, furniture shoved aside and table surfaces pushed together to be promptly covered with the necessary maps and miscellanea.
It was one of these maps that Miri stood before in contemplation, everything dry except her hair. Damp strands curled where they had been shoved behind her ears and a long coat hung by the fireplace, formerly embers which she had stoked up to a drying blaze. She dropped a couple markers into position, adjusting the location of one placed earlier in the day, and leaned back to survey the changes with her hands splayed wide on the table edge, the inside of her lip caught between her teeth in thought.
As short swell of noise reached her ears—laughter, a protesting shout, denying hisses of a bad hand of cards and another hand won—before the rainstorm outside once again took precedence. Perhaps that was why she didn’t fully hear the click of the latch or pay attention to the brief flare of the fire. She barely saw the odd shadow cast by the oil lamps, her eyes catching the quick movement just before it was gone. By the time her mind registered that there was someone else in the room with her, it was already a foregone conclusion.
The arm came around her waist, easily pulling her back and belting her to a taller, harder body even as she jumped in unwilling surprise. Then lips came down on her neck and her protest died in the fizzing tingle of complete shock at the intimate touch. Warm and soft against her rain-cooled skin, they fell across that just perfect spot and she couldn’t help that her eyelids dropped closed and she tilted her head aside just a little to—oh, yes, right there.
“I missed you.”
The voice came in her ear, a husky whisper with a hint of laughter. By this point, the voice wasn’t a surprise.
She snapped her eyes open and spun, the arm loosened enough to allow the change, but no more. Chest to chest with the man, she was trapped between him and the table. Her eyes narrowed.
“You.” It was part acknowledgement, part remembrance, and a hefty part threat, ending on a growl.
The corner of his mouth crooked up in a grin, smirking satisfaction, eyes glinting with playfulness and mockery in the firelight. It was the look of a man well aware he had the upper hand, and used to having it. “Miss me?”
She stood up on her toes, lowering her lashes, eyes on his mouth. Trying hard not to grin like a fool, she saw him lean in. “I hardly remember you exist most days, Sergeant Volorin,” she said, mouth inches from his. She dropped back down, wickedly satisfied when he straightened in surprise. “Were you following me? You know, in some courts of law that’s considered stalking.”
Volorin stepped back with a bark of laughter.
“You’re not the only one who can find their way around a castle,” he told her. “I don’t know what you call it in the Riders, but in the Own we call it tracking the target. Information gathering. Scouting. Reconnaissance.”
Miri snorted. “Reconnaissance is what my Rider group was out doing while the Own stayed inside, nice and dry, sitting on your asses, eating real food and playing cards.”
He shrugged, that infernal smile in the corner of his mouth still there. “What can I say? It’s good to be in service to the king. Gods bless the queen, but you warrior women are workaholics.”
Turning back to the map table, she tried to throttle the wish of attaining as flippant a tone as he could. “Someone has to work around here. And stop staring at my backside.”
“It’s kind of hard not to, with those breeches. All those working hours in the saddle have been nice to you.”
“Was that supposed to be a compliment?” she asked, turning a glare on the sergeant over her shoulder.
“If you want it to be,” he replied, moving about the room. He shot a look at her that made her fingers spasmodically curl around the edge of the table. “I can think of better ones.” He paused at a cabinet and opened the glass-fronted doors, making a noise of satisfaction. Miri watched as he reached in and removed a crystal decanter, followed by two glasses, with the simple ease of familiarity. Amber colored liquid sloshed inside the decanter.
She felt her eyebrows shoot up when he removed the stopper. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“His lordship won’t mind. I was almost engaged to one of his daughters in a previous life.”
Against her will, her lips twisted. Volorin talking about being involved with other women, no matter how tentatively, set off a chord of dislike in her that was as strongly felt as it was unexpected. “And I was almost a fishwife,” she just about snapped. “The past is gone with.”
“Aye, that’s true,” he conceded. He handed her a glass, three fingers’-width of richly hued amber, and raised his own
“To the queen’s health?” she asked sardonically, accepting the drink.
It was hard to interpret his look, eyes hooded and dark as he looked down at her. “To the future.”
The glasses clinked, a high pitched note short lived against the constant noise of the storm outside. She took a cautious sip. A sharp bite at the first touch of hard liquor on her tongue. It burned in the back of her throat, but slid the rest of the way down. It wasn’t long before a pleasant warmth settled in her stomach and began spreading. Good stuff. The next few sips went down much smoother.
Volorin had found an armchair and settled into it, leaving her to perch on the map table directly across from him. On the pretext of taking another sip, she took a better look at him. As a middle son and middle child of some noble she couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of, he had been all but obscure. In the King’s Own, he was anything but. He wore his hair long, pulled back on the sides by small braids, the end of each braided length strung through an ivory bead. Quite exotic. Quite rebellious.
On closer examination, each bead was carved into a skull. She didn’t know the story behind the beads, had never asked. Add mysterious to the list. The hair alone stood to lend fuel to cruel comments, but anyone who had ever seen him without his shirt on would be the last to call him at all ladylike. She could personally attest to the condition of the well-muscled body underneath. Idly, she wondered if there were any new scars. Tonight his hair was pulled back in a horsetail, the little skull beads hidden behind his shoulders, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled back. His blue tunic was fresh. Even his boots were clean, which reminded her that she had likely tracked mud into the castle on her way upstairs. The little splatters on her breeches couldn’t be helped now, either.
“I see you’re moving up in the world,” Volorin said, gesturing towards the insignia on her own tunic. “Second in command of Commander Tourakom’s personal Rider Group. If she ever retires, the Seventeenth is yours.”
She rolled her eyes against the ambitious speculation. “That’s not likely to happen any time soon.”
“A technicality. Still friends with Larse?”
“Mhmm.” She swirled the contents of her glass, admiring the color in the light. It was easier to look at than him, knowing his eyes were on her no matter where hers were.
“Then I say you stand to gain even more when your Commander retires, if she doesn’t murder her assistant for sheer cheekiness first.”
She cut her eyes to his face and couldn’t suppress the grin that formed. “Now that could happen at any moment.”
“Are you prepared to step in?” There was a slight smirk to the corner of his mouth again.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said with a withering look, and lobbed her empty glass at him with an underhanded flick of the wrist. Even unexpected, he caught it one handed, the liquid left in his own glass not even wavering. Good reflexes, that one.
It was her turn to smirk, in response to his raised eyebrow. “Another.”
The other eyebrow joined its fellow. He tipped the rest of his drink down his throat and returned to the liquor service.
“Speaking of moving up in the world, I notice you haven’t been demoted yet,” she said while he poured. “How many corporals have you been through since we last met?”
“It’s not my fault. There’s a regrettable lack of understanding in the Own that corporals are supposed to work for the sergeant. I can’t help it if they can’t keep up with me.” This time his grin was full-fledged and he returned, handing her glass off.
Miri hummed into the crystal. “I rather thought they had to work in spite of you.”
“I’m beginning to wonder how you were ever promoted at all, with that tongue in your mouth.”
“Intelligence, Sergeant. My promotion had nothing to do with anatomy.”
“I’ll bet it didn’t.” The sly look he cut her was full of remembrance.
Miri felt her jaw set and her eyes narrow, rising to the challenge. Gods help her, the man knew how to get her blood running. A moment’s contemplation was given to the remaining contents of her glass before she belted the rest back in one go. It dropped onto the table with a dull clink.
“Atta girl.”
“Don’t even think about it,” she declared, crossing her arms resolutely over her chest. As if that would stop him.
His slow smile wasn’t quite hidden behind his glass. “Think about what?”
“Getting me drunk, or just tipsy enough,” she explained, some reproach in her voice.
“Now why would I do a thing like that?”
Miri snorted inelegantly. Even his own mother, grandmother, and great aunties wouldn’t trust the carefully constructed look of innocence on that man’s face. After a moment’s silence, he set his glass down with a careful tap on the polished wood of the side table and stood. She felt herself leaning backwards, willing herself further back onto the map table as the sergeant closed the space between them with deliberate purpose. His hands, work-roughened and larger than her own, settled firmly to either side of her hips, pressing into the tabletop.
“Why would I even have to do a thing like that?” he asked again, pointedly.
Her crossed arms had been brushing against his chest. At that, she pulled them in tighter, not altogether impressed with his arrogance—nor the memory that reminded her his question, and his confidence, weren’t wholly illegitimate.
She tilted her head back to meet his gaze, nearly tipping backwards onto the map table and risking scattering the perfectly placed markers in the process.
“What do you want, Volorin?” she asked, all teasing and pretext of offense gone.
Any other man might have backed down at the direct question. Any other man might have been caught off guard, lose his words, stutter and scramble for an excuse, a reason, losing his purpose and abandoning ship posthaste.
Volorin wasn’t any other man. Thankfully.
She felt him rest more of his weight on the table, the fabric of his shirt brushing against her arms once more, if anything his position more secure. She could feel the warmth radiating from his body, smell the flavor of the liquor on his breath, and was not entirely displeased to be pinioned between his arms, not even able to wiggle out from between him and the table. His eyes met hers, steady and direct, dark in the dimly lit room.
“I didn’t come here to look at a map I’d been staring at all morning, I’ll tell you that much.”
Miri swallowed, excitement and apprehension lodging in her throat and getting stuck halfway down. She found her mouth had gone suddenly dry, and the thunder ringing distantly in her ears wasn’t just a product of the weather.
A touch, a sudden point of warmth, came upon her arm. It traced a line along the fleshy bit above the elbow.
“That’s new.” Volorin’s voice was inquisitive, tinged with concern. “What’s the story behind it?”
She looked down at the scar, the new paleness contrasting with the darkness of Volorin’s own tanned skin. Function returned to her voice, now that it was given a purpose.
“Hurrok. Nasty bugger swooped down on us from above.” She could remember ducking close to her pony’s neck as the Immortal dove, flinging her arm up reflexively at the sight of those reaching claws. She also remembered cursing both the action and the beast with the first flare of pain, a talon having made contact. And then promptly making a mad dash for the shelter of the trees.
Volorin straightened, stepping back, and lifted a hand from the table to raise one side of his shirt. Along his ribs, what must have once been a gash still showed pink in the process healing.
“Killer centaur,” he offered as the only explanation.
Involuntarily, Miri felt the corner of her mouth quirk in a smile. It was the familiar share-and-compare routine among soldiers, but oh so much more personal when she knew each and every scar intimately. It was one thing to admire or commiserate a new wound with a comrade, but quite another when she had been privy to the previously unmarred flesh.
Unfolding one crossed arm, she reached out and placed her hand on the scar. It disappeared under her palm. The healer had done well, the skin still smooth to the touch despite its visual appearance. She could feel the firmness of his abdomen, the warmth of his skin heating her palm. Slowly, creepingly, that warmth was moving through her body. Alcohol had nothing to do with the warmth that suddenly filled her, fluttering and tickling in her belly, when his hand covered hers, fingers curling around her own.
Her eyes followed the line of his wrist from his hand, up his arm. Bared by the rolled up sleeves, she found the small stretch of burned skin almost instinctively. It was the first scar of his that she had become familiar with, what he jokingly referred to as a “residual” from the magical blast that had taken down a tauros they had been hunting. Her other arm uncurled from her body and she traced a circle around the long-healed burn. The muscle twitched under her touch, then settled, but not before she felt him tighten his grip around the fingers of her other hand. With barely any extra effort needed, she saw his head dip closer, lips brushing against her downturned cheek before he pressed his own against hers.
Gods help her.
Miri lifted her own head, feeling the coarseness of a day’s scruff against her cheek. The hand on his arm slid up towards his shoulder, the other creeping from his ribs to a more secure hold around his side, craving more contact than just a touch. Volorin lifted his own head to meet her gaze, with not a little bit of hopeful inquiry in his expression.
“If you didn’t come in here to look at a map,” she said, her voice sounding surprisingly low and husky to her own ears, “then what did you have in mind?”
At that, his arms slid quite purposefully around her and he pulled her closer. A little thrill shot through her, as if the rougher movement made his intentions more real.
“A little reconnaissance of our own,” he replied, that infernal little grin crooking the corner of his mouth once more, his hands already finding their way beneath her shirt and dipping to tease the skin beneath the waist of her breeches.
Miri couldn’t help it when she felt herself smiling in response. “I always liked collaborating with the King's Own. Now I remember why.”
---