7. The Workshop Door
THE WORKSHOP DOOR
He said he was not going to pretend he did not want her, and if she would rather leave that was what she should do, and Iva put her pack down.
The words landed in the workshop with no more force than if he had commented on the weather, which was somehow worse than if he'd dragged them out and made a scene of wanting.
She stood at the worktable with the strap of her restoration pack looped over one wrist, lamp heat low against her cheek, and stared at the folded cloths beside the jar he'd just sealed as if one of them might rearrange itself into a sensible answer.
Mavrek had said it once. No repetition. No prowling advance.
He had turned back to the pigment slab almost immediately, grinding a last measure of blue into oil with that same infuriating patience he brought to everything.
The lamp threw gold over the side of his face, over the stained backs of his hands, over the worktable where her pack waited half lifted.
If you would rather leave, do it now.
Clear enough for any fool. Clear enough for a woman who had built three years of her life on exits and still stood there not taking one.
Her fingers loosened from the pack strap.
The bag settled onto the worktable with a soft, decisive thud.
Her brushes and knives sat inside it. Her careful professional life remained on Mavrek's table because she had not carried it out when offered the chance.
He did not look up at once. He finished the turn of the grinding stone, scraped the pigment into the shallow dish, covered it with wax cloth, and only then lifted his head.
Their eyes met across the lamplight.
No triumph in his face. No satisfaction either. The offer had been genuine. He had meant to let her walk away if walking was what she chose.
"Close the door, woman," he said quietly. "If you stay."
The address struck low and hot through her belly.
She could still leave. Even now. Pick the pack back up, make some withering remark about festival fever rotting the male mind, go up the walkway to her room and lie to herself all night with some dignity left.
Instead she turned, crossed the few steps to the workshop door, and swung it shut.
The latch fell into place with a small iron click that seemed to travel through her whole body.
The room changed at once. The world outside reduced to muffled lantern noise and cut-off festival sound; the workshop had always been intimate by accident, and now it was intimate on purpose. The whole settlement remained only one door away, which was perhaps why the choice felt so ruinously alive.
Iva kept her hand on the latch one beat too long. "This is a terrible idea," she said to the door.
"Aye."
She turned back. He stood where he'd been, one hand braced on the worktable, shirt open at the throat, hair partly loose, not advancing. Waiting without any visible strain in it.
She hated him a little for how safe that patience made him feel. So she crossed the room in six sharp steps and stopped close enough to smell the maruk on his hands.
The air between them was thick with it. Warm resin, sea-salt, crushed green things, lamp oil, stone dust, and underneath all of it the darker heat of him that the workshop had been soaking into her for two weeks.
"You spent yesterday telling the market what my hands could do," she said.
"Aye."
"And now you want the door shut."
"I wanted the choice plain," he said. "Nothing hidden in it."
That answer should have sent her straight back to the latch. Instead it landed too near the center of the wound.
"If you say something patient now," she said, "I may hit you with a pigment jar."
The corner of his mouth moved. "Then I shall spare the jars."
His hand lifted, slow enough for refusal, and touched the side of her throat.
That was all. The broad warm weight of his fingers under her ear, thumb resting light at her jaw. None of the incidental contacts of the past two weeks had prepared her for touch that neither of them could pretend was accidental.
Her pulse slammed against his thumb.
"You may still say no," he said.
Instead she put her palm flat against his chest through the open throat of his shirt and felt the warm skin there, the solid muscle, the faint tack of maruk oil at the collarbone where he'd handled the bottle earlier.
"I know," she said.
Then she rose on her toes and kissed him before her nerve could rot.
He made a sound low in his chest that went straight through her.
One arm came around her waist, not dragging, simply taking her weight as if he'd expected exactly how far she'd reach and planned for it.
The other hand slid from her throat into her hair, cupping the back of her head.
His mouth was warmer than she had imagined and less careful.
He kissed the way he painted: certain of the line once chosen, willing to stay on it until the material answered.
Iva grabbed a fistful of his shirt because otherwise she might have done something humiliating like sway. His tusks altered the angle, made every pass of his mouth a little rougher, and gods curse her, she liked that at once.
When he pulled back it was only far enough to look at her.
"Tell me what you want, woman."
"Do not start sounding noble," she said, breathless and angry at the breathlessness. "You will ruin the mood."
His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth. "Then tell me to keep going."
"Keep going," she whispered.
This time the kiss went on until thinking thinned into sensation.
His hand at her waist slid lower, then up under the back of her blouse with deliberate slowness.
He was not teasing her. He was reading the surface before committing pressure, the same way he tested wall plaster with a palm before deciding where to lay the brush.
Her body responded to the professional patience of it before her mind could intervene.
When his fingers found the line of her spine she shuddered.
"Aye," he murmured, as if confirming data.
"Do not observe me."
"Too late."
She pushed at his shirt until it slid off one shoulder. Warm skin under lamplight, rougher where old pigment and work had marked him. He caught the back of her hand and turned it, pressing her palm fully to his bare chest.
"Feel it," he said.
His heartbeat hit her skin, deep and steady.
She tried to tell herself it was the oil.
Easier than the truth. Mavrek's hand slid down the front of her blouse to the first fastening.
He looked at her once in silent question.
She answered by undoing the buttons herself, because if this was happening she would not stand there passively while he carefully negotiated every inch of cloth.
"Impatient," he said.
"You have been patient enough for both of us."
He opened the blouse the rest of the way and looked at her with the same terrible exact gaze he'd given her notes and her brushwork. Heat rushed through her so fast she wanted to cover herself and arch into it at the same time.
He dragged the chemise strap aside and bared her breast to the lamplight.
Iva sucked in a breath. His mouth closed over her nipple and the world fractured.
"Fuck."
He backed her toward the edge of the worktable. Brushes rattled in a crock. The table edge caught the backs of her thighs, and he lifted her onto the broad scarred wood with such appalling ease she could have bitten him for it.
Pigment dust marked the heel of her palm. Of course. Her skirt rucked higher under his hands. He pushed the chemise up her belly, looked once at the bare skin, and groaned.
When his fingers touched the damp linen between her legs she jerked.
He held still, looking at her face, not her body now. "Iva."
The use of her name there -- low and rough with wanting -- felt worse than woman.
"If you stop now," she said, "I may actually die of it."
Then he hooked his fingers into the soaked gusset of her underclothes and dragged it aside.
Two thick strokes through wetness and she was gripping the table edge. He worked her with one finger and then two, curling them until her thighs shook open around his hips. He rubbed his thumb over her clit with measured strokes that made the tension climb and climb and never break.
"Let it come, woman."
She did, suddenly and violently, one hand clapped over her mouth too late. The orgasm hit all through the body at once. Her cunt clenched hard around his fingers. For a second she lost every organized thought she'd had since arriving in Brineshell.
When she came down he was kissing her again, his cock a hard brutal line against the inside of her thigh through his loosened trousers.
"Do you want this still?"
"Yes," she said.
He stepped back long enough to shove his trousers down. His cock came free heavy and thick, the blunt crown already wet. He took the maruk flask from the table and poured a little into his palm.
"It warms," he said roughly. "On the skin."
He spread the oil over his cock and the scent punched through the room all over again.
The same blend he would use in daylight on claimed skin if she ever lost the sense to let him.
Then he slicked two oiled fingers through her cunt and over her clit, and the heat of it there made her whole body jerk.
He hooked one arm behind her knees, opening her wider over the table, and lined himself up.
"You will tell me if you need me slower."
She had time to think this is insane and chosen and mine. Then he pushed inside.
The stretch was immense. A burn first, then pressure, then more of him, until she was clutching at his shoulders with both hands and breathing through parted lips. He stopped halfway in, forehead against hers.
"Too much?"
"No. Do not you dare stop now."
He sank the rest of the way in with one slow hard thrust.
Pain and pleasure crossed wires so quickly she could not tell which had lit first. Full. Gods, too full. The heat of the maruk, the shut door, the lamp, her own pack still sitting where she'd put it down. All of it became one unbearable fact.
He stayed still, giving her the chance he had promised.
She felt the tremor running through his arms where he held himself back. Felt his breath against her mouth. Felt herself tightening around him despite the ache.
"Move," she whispered.
He did.
There was no gentleness beyond the care not to hurt her. Each stroke deliberate, drawing almost all the way out and pushing back in until the rough fullness tipped into something hot and wet and devastating. The table knocked softly against the wall. A jar somewhere rattled.
He kissed her throat, bit lightly at the base of it, and thrust deeper.
He reached between them and found her clit with his thumb, rubbing in time with the thrusts, harder. The angle changed when he pulled her hips to the table edge. Every stroke hit a place inside her that made her see white.
She came the second time with his name torn out of her, heels digging into the table edge, body shaking so hard she barely felt the first hot pulse of his release.
Then she did.
He shoved deep and stayed there, cock jerking inside her as he spilled. Thick heat flooded her cunt in heavy pulses. His forehead dropped to her shoulder.
For a long breath neither of them moved.
The workshop smelled wrecked. Oil, sweat, sex, pigment, lamp heat.
Mavrek lifted his head first. His gaze went over her face as if taking inventory after a storm.
"Iva."
"Do not," she said, because whatever tenderness might be arriving would be unmanageable.
Something in his face gentled anyway. "Aye."
He withdrew slowly. She hissed at the emptying stretch and the first thick slide of his seed. He took a clean cloth from the stack and held it out. She snatched it and pressed it between her thighs at once. Warm wetness kept coming.
"Excellent," she muttered at no one.
His mouth twitched. "Aye."
She climbed off the table on shaky legs, nearly stumbled, and glared at the floor. Her underclothes were ruined. Her chemise bunched halfway to her ribs. Her blouse hung open. Pigment dust streaked one hip. Maruk oil glowed faintly on her forearms where his hands had held and turned.
Evidence. Everywhere.
She made it to the basin with the cloth clenched between her thighs and every step reminding her exactly what had just been inside her.
She braced both hands on the basin rim and scrubbed.
Hands first. Forearms. Throat. Soap bit. Sand cloth rasped. Pigment came off. Some of the oil came off. The scent thinned and stayed. Maruk clung to the inside of her wrists. He clung between her thighs in heat and soreness and the intimate wet drag of aftermath.
Behind her Mavrek moved quietly through the workshop, righting what they had disturbed, setting brushes back in order. That particular restraint had become one of his more maddening habits.
By the time she pulled herself back together, her pack still sat on the worktable exactly where she'd abandoned it before he asked her to choose.
She took it up.
Mavrek stood by the door now, shirt half-buttoned, hair loose.
"You may go by the back stair," he said. "Fewer eyes."
She stared at him.
He reached for the latch and stopped. "Woman."
Her whole body answered the word before her pride could interfere.
"Do you regret it?"
"No," she said.
His eyes closed once, briefly. Then he opened the door.
In her room later she undressed with all the tenderness of a person dismantling a trap she'd set herself.
Oil residue at the wrists and forearms. Faint scent at throat and breast. Pigment dust ground into one skirt seam. Tender nipples. Inner thighs tacky. Cunt sore and faintly swollen. Muscles pleasantly wrecked.
She lay on the bed naked in the dark heat and ran the consequences the way she would have run a damage assessment on a newly uncovered panel.
What had been altered. What could be hidden.
What would announce itself despite intervention.
Brineshell's women knew maruk oil. Anyone close enough would smell the difference between workshop residue and skin that had been thoroughly used.
This had been her choice.
She had been offered the door and shut it instead.
She had put her pack down. She had told him to keep going.
The evidence on her body belonged to that decision, and so did the aching pleasure still pulsing low between her legs when she moved.
Brineshell, damn it, specialized in noticing what could not be fully scrubbed away.
She pressed her forearm over her eyes and felt the faint remaining warmth of maruk at the wrist and knew, with the precise horror of a competent woman taking accurate notes, that this was the most dangerous thing she had felt since the guild. And the first danger she had chosen with both hands.