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“I am, my dear wife, mightily pleased to discover your sex drive appears to be as... vigorous? ... as my own.”

“And I, dear husband, certainly hope you can live up to the promises made in that statement.”

My gaze caught his and silence fell for several seconds. And yet the air burned with things unsaid, and hopes too new and raw to explore as yet. I barely knew this man, but there was already a connection—an understanding—between us that went far beyond the physical.

Dhrukita, something within whispered.

But that was a tale told to little girls growing up. A belief that while not everyone would achieve happiness in their lifetimes, everyonedidhave a perfect partner—a soul that was the other half of their own. A destiny of the heart, if you will, that echoed down through every life.

It was also a belief I’d never really subscribed to.

This was nothing more than the natural attraction between two healthy, sexually active people. Or in my case, a natural result of beinglessthan sexually active in the long lead-up to our marriage.

As for that connection? I was a Strega, and it wasn’t unknown for the ability to connect with animals to sometimes bleed over into certain people. It had happened once before, when I was much younger, but he’d died in an attack while on patrol in Mareritten, robbing us of the opportunity to discover if our fledgling connection could ever have led to something more than bone-melting pleasure.

I pulled my gaze away and started scrubbing my skin with the soapweed, breaking the gathering tension between us. “When does your father leave?”

“Tomorrow morning.” Amusement ran through his reply, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. I’d retreated from what lay unspoken. He hadn’t. “He’ll send another longship to retrieve us.”

“I take it he wants to prepare Zephrine for possible battle?”

“That is certainly the excuse he’s given your father.”

I glanced at him sharply, eyebrows raised. “It’s a lie?”

His smile made a brief appearance but failed to warm the chill from his eyes—a chill that always appeared when he was speaking about his father. “He hates the bleakness of this place. The unrestrained blackness of it. Zephrine glows. Esan glowers.”

“That is nature’s dictate, not ours.” I paused. “Do you feel the same way?”

“It’s not unlike the topography of Angola, so in many ways, it feels like home.” He held out a hand. “Do you wish me to scrub your back?”

I hesitated, then handed him the soapweed. He knelt behind me and, with long but gentle sweeps, scrubbed away the grime I couldn’t reach. It was an exquisite form of torture, having him touch me so intimately and yet so impersonally.

“You’ve a rather nice collection of scars back here.” Though his voice was conversational, it held an edge that spoke of barely contained desire. “The one near your spine is particularly glorious.”

“And not a result of battle, sadly, but rather riding bareback in the rain and stupidly falling off onto rocks. Túxn was smiling on me that day, because by rights, I should have broken my back.”

“It happened when you were a wild and wandering child, I take it?”

“More like a wild and wandering adult.”

He laughed, placed the soapweed on the edge of the bath, then rose and moved across to the nearby shelf holding the drying cloths while I ducked briefly under the water to rinse my hair.

Someone knocked at the door, the sound echoing. “Your meal, as ordered, milord.”

Damon bid the man to enter before I could. As our meal was brought in, I stepped out of the bath and into the thick body wrap he held out for me. As he drew it closed, he brushed his knuckles slowly—deliberately—across my breasts. My nipples pebbled, and desire stabbed through me.

I stepped closer, rose onto my toes, and kissed him. It was a gloriously intense exploration of mouth and tongue, one that heated my soul and made my body ache in all the right places.

As the soft click of the door being closed indicated we were once again alone, I murmured, “Touch my breasts like that again without invitation, and your balls will become acquainted with my knee.”

He threw his head back and laughed. It was a warm, rich sound that filled the room with delighted anticipation. “Then I shall start wearing appropriate protection.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is there such a thing?”

Surprise flitted through his expression. “Your male soldiers do not wear a box?”

“It would hardly be practical on the back of a courser.” I reached past him to grab a smaller drying towel for my hair.