Chapter 15: The Cabin

The sleet caught us an hour above the spring.

It came sideways off the ridge, and within minutes the road was glass under the horses' hooves.

"There's a herder's cabin past the next bend," Joss shouted over the wind. "Can you make it?"

"I can make anything," I shouted back. "I haven't a single ache."

"Rafe's howl," he shouted. "Still thinking about it?"

"Every step," I said. "He never made a sound in four years. I'd like to know why he made one now."

We made the cabin, and the question came in with us.

The cabin had one room, a stone hearth, a heap of split wood and a narrow bed with a wolfskin on it.

Joss stabled the horses in the lean-to while I got the fire lit.

When he came in he was soaked to the skin, with ice in his beard.

He shut the door and put his back against it.

The fire cracked.

Neither of us said anything.

"Terms," I said at last.

"Nothing that outlasts the road."

"And nobody mentions my back."

"Understood."

"Then take your coat off, Joss. You're dripping on my floor."

He took it off.

He pulled his wet shirt over his head and dropped it on the hearthstones, and I looked at him in the firelight as long as I pleased.

He was broad through the chest, with a line of sandy hair running down his stomach and an old pale scar over his ribs.

I crossed the room and put my palm flat on the scar.

His stomach went tight under my hand.

"Ivy."

"I'm leading this," I said. "You'll know when I want something different."

"I wouldn't dream of leading."

"Good."

I kissed him.

It was nothing like the careful kisses I remembered, the ones with someone's grievance in them.

His mouth was hot and wet and hungry, and he tasted of sleet and tea.

He groaned into me when I bit his lower lip.

I walked him backward to the bed and pushed him down onto the wolfskin.

I stripped off my own coat, my jersey, my boots, and then my trousers, and I did it all while he watched me.

I stopped before the thin shirt on my back.

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