Before she’d gotten far, the door opened, and Cade stepped across the threshold. He smiled easily. “What have you done with Tam Ryder?”

“Uh . . .” Karigan blushed, wanting to cover her legs. Accidentally she yanked on the comb. “Ow! Damnation.”

Cade latched the door shut and strode over to her. “Here, let me help.”

She let him take the comb from her hand, and he started working it through her hair.

“Whoever you are,” he said, “you smell much nicer than Tam.”

Heat flamed in Karigan’s cheeks. She tried to tug the shirt farther down her legs, which only made the collar gap in front. She pressed it back into place. Had she really smelled so bad before her bath?

Cade was tender in his ministrations, and as the tangles came apart, the stroking of the comb became soothing, made the rest of her relax. If she’d been a cat, she would have started purring. He stroked her hair with his hands, then draped it all over one of her shoulders and leaned down to kiss her bare neck. Surprised, she stiffened, and he stepped back, no longer touching her.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” he said. “That was forward of me.”

Forward? After all their dancing around? She turned to face him. “Don’t apologize. It wasn’t . . . forward. It just startled me. I thought as a Weapon you wouldn’t be interested in—” she gestured ineffectually at the air.

“Er, interacting with women?”

“That’s one way to phrase it.”

“I learned a few things talking with Joff and the others at the Heroes Portal.” He looked away bashfully. “It appears I misinterpreted the codes of conduct of the Black Shields as passed down to me by the professor.”

“Oh, really?” she asked, her interest piqued.

“Yes, pertaining to, um . . .”

“Interactions with women?” she provided.

He nodded. “Celibacy. It—it is not a requirement, as I had thought. However, marriage is not permitted until retirement. Abstaining is an individual choice. Some Weapons are very strict in practice, others are not.”

“And what is your preference on the matter?”

His answer was to sit beside her and take her into his arms and kiss her, a long, sound kiss that left no room for misinterpretation.

For her, it was as though everything that had held them apart—propriety, immediate danger, her illness—was finally melting away. There were now no barriers between them, and Karigan, who had so assiduously set aside her feelings for others and denied her own needs so often, found that she was hungry, hungry for the touch of another, and not just anyone, but Cade.

Cade, however, was apparently still struggling between desire and propriety, for he pulled away. “I—I am not being a gentleman. It is not acceptable for me to—”

“I do not want a gentleman. I want Cade.”

“But—”

She laid her fingers across his lips and smiled. The cottage darkened as dusk settled in. Neither of them moved to light a lamp. “I can’t help but think,” she said, lowering her hand to twine her fingers with Cade’s, “that it was no mistake we met and have been brought together through time. What are the chances?”

“Fate?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Fate, destiny, the gods? Take your pick. Maybe it’s pure coincidence. I do not know. What I do know is that you are here, and so am I. It seems to me that between all that has happened and all that is to come, it would be wise to make the best use of our time.”

“Are you sure?” Cade asked.

“Let me show you,” she replied.

STARLING

Karigan was determined to show Cade all she had set aside. No more holding back. She shook with suppressed excitement as she kissed him.

Cade, perhaps surprised by her ardor, responded a heartbeat behind her, but quickly adjusted, drawing her close into his arms. Her hands fell upon the muscles of his chest, and she was filled with the desire to get under his shirt.

As she attempted to do just that, amid a flurry of kissing and nervous laughter, they rolled right off the bed and hit the floor with a thunk. Barely distracted, they rose up, still kissing and touching, and entangled in Cade’s suspenders. Karigan growled in frustration, wishing she had a knife on hand to cut them away, and his trousers, too. In retrospect, she guessed Cade would have been alarmed by her using a knife near that region of his body. Her persistence paid off, however, and soon his suspenders, along with his trousers, lay crumpled on the floor beside their bed. What she had once seen of him in threes while in the grip of the morphia, she discovered was just as impressive singularly.

Cade was more patient than she, opening her shirt one button at a time at a leisurely pace, kissing her exposed flesh as he went, his lips lingering. The wait was excruciating, and she wanted to tear her shirt off for him, but in the end, when it did finally fall away, the wait proved worthwhile as his mouth and hands found her breasts. She blazed within.

He paused, pulled away from her just the slightest bit, but it felt like a gulf as wide as the ocean.

“Don’t stop,” Karigan said.

“But . . .” He blushed. It was interesting to observe that not only his face reddened, but so did parts of his body usually concealed by his clothes. “I have never . . . I never, um . . .”

“Me either, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

“This is your . . . first, too?”

“Yes.”