Page 97

“So are you.”

She draws me inside. I close the corridor door, and she leans back against it, looking up at me. The last of the afternoon light catches the copper in her hair. She has pulled her braid over one shoulder. I run a finger down its loose end while she watches my mouth.

Beyond her window, water moves against stone.

“You said an afternoon would be a start,” she says.

“It is nearly evening.”

“We’ve wasted some time.”

She steps out of her boots.

I watch her sit on the bed to remove her stockings. She puts them together on the shelf, gives me a look that has nothing innocent in it and rises.

“Did you think about this today?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When you took the bread from my hand.”

“That was hours ago.”

“I have thought about it since.”

She crosses the room to me. I brush a loose strand of hair behind her ear. There are things I still want to tell her about the day, about how it felt to leave with her, and we will have time for them. At present she is moving her mouth against my wrist, and I am having trouble remembering any of the words.

I follow her through the new doorway into the courtyard. Warmth rises from the pool. The fig tree casts a trembling shadow over the shallow steps, and the branches above us hold back the view from the higher walkways.

Vai stops beside the water. She pulls the tie from her braid and leaves it on the dry ledge. Her hair falls in loose waves over her green dress.

I love her. I have told her, and I still enjoy the way her face changes when I say it again.

She reaches for me.

Her fingers slide beneath the new leaves at my throat. I draw them back, baring the grain she likes to kiss.

She kisses the dark seam beside my mouth.

“I’ve wanted to do this all afternoon,” she says.

“So have I.”

I close one hand around her waist and pull her against me. Her mouth opens under mine. She tastes of spiced liquor and honey. The bond heats between us.

Vai bites my lower lip.

“Harder,” she says.

I kiss her harder.

My fingers find the buttons at the back of her dress. I stop kissing her long enough to work the first one free.

She turns her back to me for the rest. I undo them, then lift the dress and shift over her head and put them on the dry ledge. She steps naked into the warm pool and looks back over one shoulder.

“Are you coming?”