Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.

He’d worn his armor day and night. For years, he’d worn it, until it sank into his skin. Who was he, without it? Certainly not the sort of man any girl would dream of. There would be no storybook romance, no poetic words, no idyllic family life awaiting anyone who was foolish enough to place their heart into his keeping. He doubted he’d live to see thirty. Why should he? He was already older than Jordie had been when he died. 

He’d forged himself into a weapon when he’d crawled out of the harbor years ago and like a weapon, what he would leave behind in this world would be scars and damage. What Inej demanded of him was impossible. 

But a small voice inside him told him that they’d done the impossible before. And Kaz Brekker did not accept defeat. 

It wasn’t that Kaz himself didn’t want more. His emotions paced inside his body like a caged animal, terrified, furious, longing for release. He was broken in a way that he did not know how to fix, and the frustration built as he pushed himself and learned the exact dimensions of his prison. In the end, he realized that there’d be no escape. As he had done with the Dregs and with Fifth Harbor, he’d have to take the shattered remains of something ruined and build it up into something stronger. This scarred and crippled body, this racing heart and skin that flinched from touch, they were his and he would find a way to use them to give her what she wanted. 

Like all good schemes, he could see the paths of it in his mind like rivers on a map, like veins under the skin. What Inej wanted from him was passion, vulnerability, intimacy. But intimacy wasn’t a single physical act, and she knew that even better than he did. 

He began by trying to show her. 

No matter how far she voyaged, she eventually returned to the berth in Fifth Harbor, and each time she did, he was waiting with an offering. Sometimes it was a cup of hot tea when they met on cold mornings or evenings. She received it with a sweet, surprised smile at first, but became enough of a habit that she jokingly took offense one night when he had been in too much of a hurry to stop by the tea shop. Kaz did not know why her petulant “You didn’t bring me my tea!” had made his cheeks flush and his heart ache. Perhaps it was because it had been a very long time since anyone had expected kindness from him. Perhaps it was that she felt she could claim this small service from him as her right. 

He had taken her to Groenestraat and bought her tea before they headed back to the Slat together. Inej drank it Ravkan fashion, with a cube of sugar held between her teeth, and the little croon of catlike satisfaction she made as she took the first sip made his breath stutter in his lungs. That sound wasn’t for the tea. That sound was for him , and he’d gladly fight armies to hear it again. 

He started leaving gifts for her to find. Some of them would arrive at her ship addressed to her without explanation or comment, just his name as the sender. Others, he’d leave in the little bedroom that Wylan and Jesper kept for her visits. The names and berth numbers of ships carrying “indentures.” Those little pastries with sour cherries and custard that made her giggle with happiness and get powdered sugar on her chin. A deadly repeating rifle, the latest in Fjerdan artillery. A long leather coat Fabrikated like a Grisha’s kefta to turn aside blades and bullets. A newly purchased distillery in need of paid workers, just as she returned with a cargo of newly freed slaves. 

He knew by the soft light his gifts kindled in her eyes how much they meant to her. He also knew that they were not enough. 

It took over a year for him to summon up the courage to ask her to the country for a picnic, probably because he was incapable of doing things halfway like a sane person and had chosen the Rietveld farm as their destination. Without armor, she had said, and he was determined to give her that. As they traveled there by carriage, he stole glances at her, his eyes lingering on the way the wind teased strands of hair loose around her face and the sun kissed her skin. His self-consciousness and fear burned in his stomach, clenched in his hands. 

He was quiet, tense, as they laid out the blanket, and Inej was beginning to look uncertain by the time he forced the words from his throat.

“I used to climb that tree, when I was a boy. My-- my brother taught me how.” He cleared his throat. Inej’s dark eyes traveled from his face to the tree he was pointing to and back again.  

“I knew you didn’t grow up in Ketterdam,” she said softly after a moment of silence. He looked at her, a little startled. She smiled and answered his unspoken question. “Because of the way that you say you have no parents, no childhood. Like you’re challenging anyone to tell you otherwise.”

“I did grow up in Ketterdam,” Kaz said, taking a steadying breath and beginning to lay out the picnic foods with careful, gloved hands. “I was a child when we--” He swallowed hard. “When I arrived. It was Ketterdam that made me who I am.”

Inej placed a hand on his and he froze. Her touch was feather light. He could barely feel it through the leather of his glove. He stared at her hands, slender and sun-darkened from her time at sea. He wanted to tear off his gloves and feel them on his skin. He wanted to jerk back from her touch and throw up every wall he had until he could breathe normally again. He made himself keep talking.

“I’d most likely have ended up like you did, if I’d been less broken. New to the city, no one to turn to… and I was pretty enough as a kid-- big dark eyes, country accent. You know the type. I’d probably have made some bawd good money for a few years if I hadn’t responded to the slightest touch like a feral animal.”

“Oh, Kaz,” Inej said softly, and he shook his head. 

“Don’t feel sorry for me. The child you’re pitying died in the Ketterdam harbor and I’m what crawled out. I didn’t stay true to myself the way that you did. I wasn’t forced to sell my body, but instead I chose to sell my soul, and learned every lesson the Barrel had to teach. ”

“I used to think like that sometimes, back in the Menagerie,” she told him. “That the Inej I once was had died, and I was someone else now. But nowadays, I’m not so sure. I think your childhood stays with you in ways you don’t realize. Your home stays with you. And… it means a lot, you bringing me here.”

Kaz looked around them, breathed in the scent of fields and open air, and swallowed the reflex to respond with something cold and sardonic. Ketterdam was his home now, but this place was still … something to him, something raw and fragile that he could not find words for. 

“I don’t come back here much,” he said instead, trying to find his composure by changing the subject. “But… between living on a small ship and coming back to the Barrel, I thought somewhere that smelled pleasant where no one’s actively trying to kill you might be welcome.”

Inej laughed, and Kaz let the sound wash over him, chasing away some of his tension. Reminding himself that this was Inej, that it was safe to just talk like this. That against all good sense, she liked him.  

“It does smell a lot better here than the Slat,” Inej admitted. “No offense to the Slat, of course. At least Roeder’s stopped wearing that cologne that smells like something Wylan cooked up to eat through metal.”

“The perfumer who made it placed some unwise wagers,” Kaz said, one corner of his mouth kicking up in a smirk. “She was open to selling some of her rarer materials in order to repay her debts. Tragically, one of them happened to be the one that gave his cologne it’s … unique odor.”

“Kaz Brekker, whenever I think you are truly a villain beyond redemption, you reveal some secret good deed,” Inej said in feigned shock. 

“Hmmm. The Shu tea house owners whose incense shipments were mysteriously tainted with it might disagree with you there, especially since it forced them to buy from our suppliers at three times the price,” Kaz said, putting sausage, cheese, and fruit on a plate and offering it to her. 

They began eating, and with a little encouragement, she spoke to him about her crew, sharing recent anecdotes and a concern over replacing a helmsman who would be retiring from the sea to start a business in the Southern Colonies. In return, he was able to bring himself to tell her a little more about his childhood, giving her more shattered pieces of himself, handful by jagged handful, and trusting that they would be safe in her keeping. 

She seemed happy. She hummed to herself on the carriage ride home, and smiled at him. He wanted to devour that smile like some ravenous beast. He wanted to blush like a boy. He wanted more , and he didn’t know how to ask for it. 

Chapter Text

Another year passed, and now, when she returned to the Barrel, she was no longer spoken of as his Wraith but as the pirate captain who was quickly becoming a legend. Hunting slavers had given her a brutal, driving purpose, put a hardness in her eyes and new calluses on her hands and her soul. Instead of mourning her lost innocence, Kaz greedily hoarded each tale of the bloodshed and fear she left in her wake. She was building her own reputation with each voyage, and he watched with pride as it grew to nearly eclipse his own. 

His joy in her victories and his unwavering support of her mission weren’t born of something so straightforward as love. They came from a simple, bone-deep need for her to be as close to invulnerable as possible, to be someone who couldn’t be taken from him. His respect for her strength tangled itself up in sick knots with how very desirable he found her when she was at her most dangerous, all lithe, silent movements, dark eyes, and cold steel. And the petty criminal in him wanted to see her hands, her soul, as sullied as his. 

She wasn’t the only one who had changed. Nina came for a visit with tales of horror to tell of Fjerda, what she’d discovered there and the powers she’d finally embraced within herself. The five of them, Kaz, Inej, Nina, Jesper, and Wylan, took over a private room in the Crow Club and spent hours catching up and drinking massive amounts of alcohol. 

It was in the small hours of that morning, after Jesper and Wylan had gone home, when something happened that changed everything. Inej lay sprawled on a couch with Nina, and they were giggling over something -- what, he no longer remembered, only that he was laughing too and trying to hide it. Nina hid her face in Inej’s neck and Kaz felt a flash of something hot go through him. He’d kissed her neck once, years ago, brushed his lips against the warm bronze of her skin before his demons had taken that moment from him. If he were able to be close to her like that, without fear or hesitation, the things he would do…

As if Nina was thinking the same things that he was, she gave Inej’s throat a playful lick. Inej squealed in surprise, pinned Nina to the couch cushions, and bit her lightly in retaliation. Nina’s eyes fluttered and she moaned low in her throat. Kaz saw the exact moment when the playfulness in Inej’s eyes turned to curiosity and desire. Slowly, deliberately, Inej traced the place she had bitten with a fingertip, her gaze riveted to Nina’s face. Then she pressed her mouth to it and made Nina moan again. 

Nina opened her eyes and leaned in until their lips were only a breath apart. It was at that point that Kaz’s empty whiskey glass slipped from his fingers, forgotten, and clattered to the floor. He cursed under his breath and snatched it back up. Both of them were now looking at him instead of each other. 

“What’s the matter, Kaz?” Nina asked innocently. Inej’s eyes widened and she giggled a little as Nina pulled her closer and raised a challenging eyebrow at Kaz over Inej’s shoulder. 

“You’re drunk, Zenik,” Kaz rasped unconvincingly. He couldn’t tear his eyes away. He was drunk too, drunk and starved with lust for the woman in Nina’s arms. 

“Not too drunk to enjoy this discovery,” Nina gloated. “‘Nej, Kaz has a kink. The terrifying Bastard of the Barrel likes to watch.”

“I do not have a kink,” he said indignantly, then regretted it because it would have been so much easier to let her think that than to explain. He fumbled for the glass of water that Wylan had left on the side table and took a swig, trying to clear his head. 

“Wanna kick him out and have some fun?” Nina asked Inej. Kaz choked, nearly spat a mouthful of water all over his shirt. 

“I… Kaz and I are sort of ... “ Inej looked hesitant, darting a glance back at him as he tried to swallow. He cursed himself for her uncertainty. He’d tried to show her in a thousand ways what she was to him, but now that it came down to it, she didn’t have words for it. Why hadn’t he just told her? 

“We’re together,” he said roughly. “Inej and I are together.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “Obviously. Are you really saying you’d mind if Inej and I had sex? You seemed pretty into the idea a moment ago.”

His first instinct was to say that of course he would mind, to demand that Nina take her hands off his Wraith and … and what? He couldn’t replace them with his own. He couldn’t wrap his body around hers and press his mouth to her skin and make her giggle like that. He could only break this moment of happiness for her by claiming her like a possession. She’d been claimed and possessed enough. 

He wasn’t the only one with scars. How many men had touched Inej in her years at the Menagerie to hurt and use, rather than to give pleasure? Kaz thought of the way Jesper and Wylan sometimes looked when he dropped by unannounced--  rumpled and blushing and unable to stop grinning at each other. He wondered what it would take to put that kind of radiant happiness on Inej’s face. Would he ever be able to do that for her?

“Do you want to, Inej?” he asked her. “I’m not going to tell you not to.” 

“You wouldn’t feel--” Inej began, and he cut her off. 

“This isn’t about me. It’s about you.” He looked away, clearing his throat. “You know what you don’t want. I’d understand if you wanted to take this chance to learn what you do want. What you like."

Nina looked from Kaz to Inej and back again. “Wait, you two haven’t--”

“Mind your own business, Zenik,” Kaz snapped. 

“No, Kaz,” Inej said, shooting him a look. “And quit interrupting us. You can’t just drop that she’s maybe about to be my sexual awakening and then tell her to shut up. No, Nina, we haven’t. After the men at the Menagerie, I wasn’t sure I wanted that from anyone. That’s been changing, slowly. There’s things I still don’t think I’d be comfortable doing, but… “ she lightly traced Nina’s lower lip with a finger. “I like the way it feels when you touch me, and the way you react when I touch you. I… I think I do want to do more.”

Nina gave her a warm, slow smile. “Then it’s time for him to leave. No offense, Kaz, but you watching would just make this weird.”

“None taken,” Kaz said after several false starts where his voice refused to come out of his throat.

Offense? He hadn't assumed he’d be allowed to watch. He hadn’t even thought about this as a real thing that might happen. Not until a few minutes ago. His stomach was a tangled knot of jealousy, lust, and frustration. He wanted her passion for himself. But when he and Inej came together, it would have to be careful, calculated, fraught with workarounds to his triggers and her own. Didn’t she deserve something more than that?

“I’ll go,” he said, trying to sound casual and failing completely. He got out a hasty goodnight and made a tactical retreat, head still swimming with drunkenness, desire, and panic. He leaned against the door for a moment, heart racing. Then he made his slow, painful way to his room in the Slat. Would the two of them head back to Nina’s lodgings, or Inej’s? He couldn’t stop himself from wondering. What would they do there? Kaz was familiar with the mechanics of sex, the various things two people could do together for pleasure or profit. But what would Inej want, what would she like ?

Alone on his narrow cot, he let his imagination torment him as he desperately sought his own release. Inej, laughing and touchable. Assertive and demanding. Arched and radiant in pleasure. Rejoicing in what her body was capable of as he had only seen her do balanced on a wire or soaring through the air. Fly for me, Inej. 

When Inej came to his office the next day, she shut the door behind her and then all but threw herself into his arms. Kaz felt his entire body go whipcord tense, but Inej had been careful -- even with his gloves and coat off, none of her skin was touching his. He could feel the tough, slender shape of her body through the layers of clothing that separated them. As he deliberately controlled his breathing, he carefully catalogued every place their bodies touched, every line and curve of her. She fit her form against his like a key fit the tumblers of a lock, and-- still uncertain-- he brought his arms up to awkwardly hold her. 

“How do you always know what I need?” Inej whispered into his collar.

He swallowed. “The same way I know what anyone else needs. I know your tells. Your face, your body, your voice …” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “So, you, ah… it was ... good? No regrets?”

Her arms tightened around him. “It was a glorious, silly, drunken romp and I regret nothing,” she said, and he shivered in arousal and envy. “I had no idea how easy it could be to just … fall into another person and let them make you feel good.”

Kaz’s hand gripped the back of her coat tightly and he nodded, refusing to flinch at the pain in his chest. This was what she deserved. Nothing would be easy with him, but she could have something easy with somebody else. And if that’s what she wanted, he wouldn’t deny her that.

“I can’t wait to make you feel like that,” Inej said, and every thought in his mind ground to a stop. 

“I -- you -- what?” he stammered, feeling like the floor had tilted under him. 

“Afterward, Nina and I talked about what parts I’d liked best, things I’d like to try, and I realized something.” Inej released him and looked seriously up at him with her beautiful dark eyes. “As much fun as I had with Nina, as safe as it felt with another woman, when I thought about things I wanted to do, ways I wanted to be pleasured? It was always with you.”

“Inej,” Kaz said. For a moment, he forgot how to say anything else. He reached out an ungloved hand to touch her, but stopped and closed his fingers on empty air. “I want to give you more. I want to try. But I don’t know if I can. I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“Then let’s talk about what we want first,” Inej said, reaching out and taking his hand gently in her own. He felt her touch like a shock through his entire body, but he did not move away, focusing on her face, the warmth of her, and the sunlight streaming through the narrow window, forcing the rising waters down. She led him to his bed, and sat down on the mattress, drawing him down beside her. He sat, the motion strained and ungraceful without his cane, his heart racing. 

“I learned some stuff about myself,” she began, looking a little shy. “For one thing, I don’t really like making out that much. It’s supposed to be romantic, so I thought I’d like it if it was with someone I chose. But I guess I had enough of the feeling of other people’s tongues in my mouth in the Menagerie. I had to ask Nina to stop kissing me because it kind of broke the mood for me. I know how to kiss back, but I don’t know how to enjoy being kissed in that way.”

Kaz nodded intently. 

“I like the feeling of kisses on my neck and stomach, though. I like being touched for a long time beforehand, until my body relaxes into it and I feel warm all over. I like being in charge of how much and how fast, and being able to move against someone without having them grab my hips and try to move me.” She had been staring at their entwined hands, and now she looked up at him. “I like being able to take control and take what I want, how I want it. If I wore gloves … do you think you’d be all right with me touching you?”

Kaz could barely breathe. “Yes,” he said, fear and arousal pounding in his throat. 

“Do you think if we kept our clothes on, I could rub against you until I came?”

“Please,” was all he could answer. “Please do that.” 

Inej bit her lip. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to take you inside me. The thought of doing that bothers me a little, which is stupid, because--”

“Don’t,” Kaz said immediately. “The men from the Menagerie were pigeons, marks. I don’t care about having what they had. I want what they couldn’t have. I want Inej Ghafa.”

“Could this be romance, and from the Bastard of the Barrel, no less?”  It was all he could do not to get lost in those laughing dark eyes of hers. 

“Romance is the wrong word,” he countered, his voice grinding roughly in his throat. “If my thoughts right now were a book, the Merchant Council would ban its publication on moral grounds.”

Inej slid a little closer to him. “I’d like to get my hands on a copy,” she said. “I told you what I want. Now it’s your turn.”

“To tell you what, my fantasies?” Kaz asked with a bitter huff of laughter. “Fantasies are all they can ever be, Inej. Even if you’re willing, my own body will betray me at the first touch of bare flesh. I want everything with you. But between your ghosts and mine, I’ll take whatever we can get.”

“When you think about being with me,” Inej pressed, “What excites you the most? Tell me.”

Kaz closed his eyes for a moment. “The way you move, like a deadly shadow. You moving toward me like that, powerful and hungry, with desire in your eyes. I think about making you come, with my hands or my body. How you’d look. The sounds you’d make. Losing myself in your pleasure. Knowing that it was me you wanted, me who made you feel that way.”

“Saints, Kaz,” Inej said, and he opened his eyes to see her lips parted slightly and her pupils blown with arousal. “You do know how to talk to a girl.”

“I mean it,” he said softly. “I would give you anything you wanted, if I could. If I wasn’t so broken … my body would be yours, to do whatever made you feel good, and I would glory in every second of it.”

Inej narrowed her eyes, then gently placed a hand on his chest. He wondered if she could feel his heart beating through his shirt. She pressed firmly, pushing him down onto the bed, her eyes never leaving his. Then she swung a leg over his hips to sit astride him. He forgot how to breathe. 

“Broken or not, you are exactly what I need, Kaz Brekker, and I am going to make you mine .”

“Right … right now ?” 

Inej’s laugh flowed over him like music. “Right now, you are going to take me out for tea and pastries, and we’re going to talk more about exactly what ‘Inej and I are together’ means, because apparently it takes me being propositioned by someone else for you to actually declare your intentions.”

“Declare my intentions?” Kaz said, raising a skeptical eyebrow. His heart was racing and her body, pressed directly against him where he was hard for her, was an exquisite torment. But really, declare his intentions ? “You make me sound like some character in a cheap novel.”

“You can keep being cryptic and brooding and court me from afar, or you can buy me tea and admit we’re in a relationship. I’ll let you decide which is more like a cheap novel.” Her weight lifted from him and he almost moaned. It took all his self-restraint to keep his hands clenched at his sides. He slowly sat up and straightened his clothing, his hands a little unsteady. 

Sometimes he forgot how wicked she could be. Other times, that was his favorite thing about her. She yielded to no one. He screwed up his courage, levered himself clumsily to his feet, and held out his arm. 

“Shall we?”

Chapter Text

The gloves were in a box atop the crate that serves as Kaz’s bedside table. Inej had left them there the last time she went to sea, a wordless promise. She must have had them made specially -- they were buttery soft, made of the thinnest calfskin leather and sized to fit her hands. The gloves she would touch him with. He was almost ashamed of how much he wanted it.

I am going to make you mine. The words echoed in his bones.  He had thought of his body as merely a faulty vehicle, a tool, for so long. The idea of it being something that she might like, that she might want, was still a difficult one for him. He stripped off his clothes, alone in his room. Pale skin, an assortment of scars, and a fucked up leg. Did he have the right amount of body hair? Were knees supposed to be this bony? Would she like his-- no, he was pretty sure she’d been forced to look at enough cocks that his wouldn’t make any impression one way or the other. 

He pulled his clothes back on roughly, frustrated with himself. She wanted to touch him not because his body was anything special, but because it would give him pleasure. Couldn’t that be enough? He ruthlessly squashed down the part of himself that wanted her to think he was handsome. She didn’t owe Kaz her admiration or attraction, and he’d best get over any hopes of that.

But he wanted her to want him so much that his mouth went dry thinking about it. Inej would be back in Ketterdam tomorrow, and she was going to touch him with these gloves. He lay there, caught between dread and anticipation. He’d been wanting this for years. He wasn’t ready. Touching her, tasting her, loving her, had always been an unreachable fantasy. He felt like he’d fly to pieces at the first brush of those beautiful new gloves on his skin. He took one from the box, pressed it to his cheek, and felt himself harden in anticipation. 

He didn’t sleep that night.

Kaz had planned and imagined this particular reunion between himself and Inej so many times. She would freshen up, they would talk, and then when they retired for the night, they would touch at last. He would be wearing his best suit, the one that had once made Wylan elbow Jesper in the ribs for staring. Inej would take it off him, piece by piece, until only the soft leather of her gloves was between him and her hands. She would let him touch her in return, through his gloves or her clothing. She’d show him how to make her come. Then he would do it over and over until she made him stop, and she’d be flushed and laughing and so utterly satisfied that it wouldn’t matter that he couldn’t love her the way other men could.

He had not planned on her arriving in port heavily battered from a fight in which her shoulder had been dislocated and her face slammed into the deck. Kaz hadn’t slept the night before. When she got there, he was strung out and slightly manic from sexual tension and too much coffee. But even with a good half of his brain bouncing off of the ceiling, he could tell just from looking at her that tonight was not going to be the night. 

She looked terrible. It had been reset neatly, but he could tell by the bruising and swelling that her nose had been broken. There was a cut on her forehead and both eyes also bore dark bruises. He knew how those injuries felt from fights of his own. He wished he could steal her pain from her, take away the awful vulnerability of having been beaten. That was always the worst part -- not the damage itself, but the reminder of your own body’s fragility. Inej should never feel that way. 

They ate dinner at the Kooperom together, and he ordered her a massive plate of waffles which she tiredly devoured. He’d already traded a favor to reserve her one of the nicer rooms at the Geldrenner for what had been going to be their first more intimate night together. When he took her back to it, he shoved the box with the gloves into a drawer. Then he went to the bathroom instead and began to run her a hot bath. 

“Oh, Saints, hot water ,” she sighed, and began stripping without warning or ceremony. Kaz’s arousal at the sight was tempered by anger at the many bruises that marred her skin. He clutched the handle of the cane so hard that the feathers of the crow head imprinted themselves into his palm. 

“Tell me you killed the man who did that,” he ground out.

“The men who did that weren’t slavers, just thugs hired on to protect the cargo,” Inej sighed. She stepped into the tub and lowered herself into the water with a small sound of pain. “They surrendered once we got the upper hand. We left them alive. Killed the slavers.”

“Did you get their names?” Kaz asked, and knew she could hear the cold murder in his voice. 

“I wouldn’t tell you if I had.” Inej shifted and then winced. “Okay, maybe I’d be tempted to. My shoulder joint feels like someone took a hammer to it.”

“I’ll get a runner to fetch some ice from the butcher’s shop. You can ice it once you’re out of the bath. Don’t move it more than you have to for a few days.”

“Yes, I remember how well you followed that advice a few years back.” Inej snorted and shot him a sardonic look. 

“No one told me it might dislocate again,” he grumbled. “Besides, it's not as if the Ruys family would have postponed their holiday so that we could wait to break in until my arm healed.” 

“Learn to delegate,” Inej advised. “On the voyage back, you didn’t find me hauling on lines or climbing masts. You may be the best, but you’re not the only Dreg who can pick a lock.” She began running the soap over her skin, completely distracting him from the lecture she was giving him. Something about leadership, or possibly stubbornness. He was sure he’d caught both those words. A strand of her hair had come loose from the coil. It lay in a damp curl against her neck. 

“Kaz. Kaz?” He snapped back into focus, clearing his throat. 

“Sorry. I’ll send someone for that ice,” he blurted out. He wanted to touch her. He didn’t dare to. The only thing that made his stomach turn faster than bare skin was bare, wet skin. She stood and wrapped a towel around herself. At the sight of her slim, muscled legs stepping out of the tub, water droplets running down them, he retreated from the room in panic and terrified a servant into bringing ice for her shoulder. Then, when the boy left, he leaned his forehead against the wallpaper for a long moment. 

He felt edgy and vicious, like a feral cat who had strayed too close to human contact. He had to get control of himself. Inej deserved a man, not a broken boy. 

“Kaz.” Her voice made him jump. How long had he been standing here? Inej was in the doorway, dressed in clean clothing. 

He set his jaw. “What business?” 

“Get back in here, you podge,” she told him gently. He opened his mouth, but nothing witty came out. He followed her in. She sat down on the bed. 

“I can’t brush my hair out properly with my shoulder like this. Help me?” 

Kaz swallowed and awkwardly sat down behind her on the bed, bringing his gloved hands hesitantly to her coiled braid. Fingers that could pick any lock in Ketterdam fumbled for a moment with a simple hairpin. He forced himself to focus. He unravelled the braid, and Inej sighed softly. Her hair flowed over his gloves, inky waves against black leather. He handled it gently, like it might break. Like he might break. He felt painfully fragile. 

Had he ever truly thought that Inej had no scent? It was on every breath he took as he loosed her hair-- the faint salt tang of the sea that never quite left her, but also the scent of her sweat and body, caught in the strands. It was a form of intimacy that was less dangerous than touch -- the smell of another person’s living body in close quarters, and the small sounds of breathing and movements. The tightness in his chest unwound slightly. Maybe this was something he could handle. 

She reached back, holding out a hairbrush. He took a breath, held it for several heartbeats, and took off one glove, then the other. Then Kaz gathered her hair in a shaking hand. It felt smoother and cooler than silk. He laid the gloves in her lap, took the brush from her, and ran it through her locks with painstaking care. Long, steady strokes. Eventually he was able to run the brush from the roots to the tips without catching. Inej’s eyes were shut, and he could see the smallest hint of a smile on her lips. 

“Who do Kerch women let brush their hair?” she asked softly after a few moments. Kaz’s hands paused as he considered that. 

“Whoever they want to? I always assumed they brushed their own unless they were terribly rich,” he said, resuming the movements of his hands. At this point, the feeling of her hair in his bare hands was stirring up a familiar heat deep in his stomach. 

“Suli women don’t let anyone they’re not terribly close to unbind or brush their hair,” Inej said. “A sister, a best friend, a parent. And we rarely wear it down in public.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “You can learn things about a man from the way he touches a woman’s hair for the first time.”

“I expect you can learn how inexperienced he is at brushing hair,” Kaz replied dryly. Some strands of her hair brushed against the sensitive insides of his wrists when she moved her head, and he was intensely aware of this. 

She ignored his sarcasm. “You touch my hair like a sacred icon. Gentle, reverent. Your fingers never stop moving over the strands.” Was this a good thing? She sounded pleased about it.

“It’s beautiful,” he admitted quietly. “I’ve always thought so.”

“I thought about cutting it once,” Inej told him. “When I was just out of the Menagerie. I felt like I could still feel all their hands and breath on it, like it would never be clean.”

“Why didn’t you?” If it would have freed him from the shadow of the Reaper’s Barge, he would have clawed off his very skin. He wrapped strands of her hair around his fingers, unwrapped them, stroked them smooth. 

“I decided I wouldn’t let them take any more than they’d taken already,” Inej said, her voice quiet steel. “Not my hair. Not my body. Not my faith.” She paused. “Will you do this for me, Kaz? Brush my hair sometimes? It makes me feel safe. Treasured. I wasn’t sure that it would.”

“I will,” he said, his voice catching a little in his throat. He lifted her hair in his hands and let it fall onto his face and throat. He shivered and a quiet sound tore from him. “Touching your hair does things to me, Inej. You need to know that. I don’t know if that changes the … feeling safe, for you.” 

She turned slowly to face him. “It doesn’t. But you should know that your voice does things to me.”

Kaz blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that. “ But it’s so … damaged.”

Inej shrugged with a slight smile. “The rasp of it. It just … “ she shivered a little. “I like it. Does that make you feel less safe?”

“No,” he said, then, “Maybe. But in a good way.” He let his eyes linger on her for a moment, the way the fall of her unbound hair softened the sharp angles of her face. “Since when have I cared about safety more than getting what I want?”

“Kaz. Are you sure it’s a good way? I can’t be the only one of us who cares for your safety,” she told him firmly. “I won’t be one more way that you punish yourself.”

He laughed, a slight manic wildness to the sound. “You’ve got it backwards. This is the target that I want to steal. The victory.” He met her eyes. “Being together is our victory over everyone who tried to break us. It won’t be easy for me and I don’t care. I never even thought I’d live this long. I never believed I could have something this good.” He touched her cheek with a fingertip, carefully avoiding the bruises and forcing down the panic as it tried to rise. 

“So you want me to push you?” she asked. The hunger inside him sharpened unbearably at the way she was looking at him. 

“Yes.” His voice was fierce. “Push me. Take me. Destroy me.”

The moment was abruptly broken by a knock at the door. Kaz used his cane to shove himself to his feet. A minute later, he came back with the ice and a towel from the bathroom. He made a clumsy pack of the ice and offered it to her, and she pressed it first to her face, then to her shoulder. He looked at her for a long time, and then spoke. 

“Lie down.” He carefully lifted her hair as she did, arranging it over the pillows. Carefully, avoiding the skin of her neck with his bare hands, he re-positioned the ice pack to sit directly over the swollen shoulder joint. She sighed softly, wriggling a little to get comfortable. He took off his shoes, coat, and waistcoat and lay down beside her. After a moment, he dared to reach for her hair again, stroking it. 

“That feels good,” Inej’s voice was quiet. “You may not care about comfort, but right now, I’m tired and hurt and I’m going to demand it. I want you to stay with me and hold me while I sleep.”

Kaz’s eyes roamed over the bed, calculating, and Inej smiled. 

“Scheming face,” she said happily. 

“Move, let me get the sheet from underneath you.” With a little shifting and repositioning and a few small pained sounds from Inej, he had covered her with the sheet, and then fitted his body to hers. The soft linen separated them, but he could feel her heartbeat as he held the ice pack firmly against her shoulder with the arm that was wrapped around her. His face was buried in her hair. 

He could not sleep deeply, not this close to another person, and filled with so much emotion. But he rested, letting his mind unwind until all he was aware of was Inej, the weight of her body against his, and the slight sounds and movements she made in her sleep. 

Chapter Text

Kaz woke from a sound sleep to the sound of his window being opened from the outside. 

He tensed for a moment, his hand going to the pistol that was never far from his reach. Then he heard the sound of her feet touching the floor and the tension left his body as quickly as it had come. Only Inej knew precisely where to step so that the floorboard under the window did not scream in protest. He sat up and turned to face her. 

The moonlight coming through the window limned the edges of her hair with radiance and cast her face into shadow. Kaz thought fleetingly of the paintings you’d see in Little Ravka of Sankta Alina, light shining from her. Sankta Inej , he thought, knowing she’d scold him if he ever actually called her that. What would she be the saint of? They all had a thing, didn’t they? Bees or dragons or bones or the sun, stuff like that. Knives, he thought, then, the wind. She had left the window open behind her, and he could feel a soft night breeze against touching his face and bare chest. It smelled of brine, and he knew that the wind he was breathing was the one that had brought her to him early this time. 

He watched her remove her knives, one by one, noting that there was a new one now. He’d ask her about it later. For now, he drank in the sight of her and her graceful movements. 

You’re home. I’ve missed you.  He didn’t say the words. Why would he? They were obvious. Instead, he held out a hand to her when the last slender throwing knife had been carefully laid down, and she took it. 

“Kaz,” she said softly, coming to stand beside his bed and wrapping her fingers tightly around his. His heartbeat sped up for a moment, then steadied again. They had found out during her last stay in Ketterdam that pressure helped keep him from falling back into his nightmares. “I got Jesper’s letter.”

Kaz smiled as she sat beside him. 

“How long have you been planning this?” she asked him. 

“The big picture’s been there since we moved Wylan into position to take over the Van Eck Council seat. The fine details weren’t in place yet, though. I needed time to get everything set up.” 

He’d begun gathering power as a means to get his revenge. Then he’d turned all his will towards solidifying his place as a major player in Ketterdam, becoming someone who’d never be at the mercy of the Staadwatch or the gang leaders again. Now, to all appearances, Kaz Brekker was the youngest and most vicious of the Barrel bosses, running the Dregs with an iron fist and turning a profit from the usual trades of smuggling, gambling houses, and protection rackets. His Wraith had become something between a nostalgic memory and an urban legend, but his new spiders were more than adequate. 

If asked, most of his business associates would say that he had achieved his ambitions and was content to rule the petty kingdom he had built. Only Wylan, Jesper, and a couple handpicked members of the Dregs with their own vengeance to achieve knew his current designs-- and now Inej. 

“The Council referendum comes up for voting in a month, and you only tell me now,” Inej said, mingled frustration and amusement in her voice. 

“I let Jesper tell you,” Kaz corrected her. “He made me promise he could give you the news.”

“Banning indenture contracts on minors and outlawing the practice of adding additional fees to existing indentures,” Inej said quietly. “Kaz, it’s…”

“It won’t stop them,” he told her, keeping his voice matter-of-fact. “But it will make sex trafficking less lucrative. They’ll have to go around the law to make the same kind of profits off of it. And once they’re on the other side of the law, they’ll have to answer to us here in the Barrel.” He carefully touched a flyaway strand of her hair, the gentleness of the gesture at odds with his words. 

“What do we need to do to get it to pass?”

“Do you want to hear the plan now, or in the morning?” he asked. 

“Are you suggesting you’d make me wait?” There was something dangerous in her tone that made the hair on the back of his neck prickle slightly. 

“You did just get back from a long sea voyage,” he pointed out. “You might want to sleep, or eat something. Visit someone.”

“Kaz,” Inej said slowly. “Darling, treasure of my heart.”

“Yes?”

“Where are my gloves?”

Fierce joy lit up his chest, an excitement that was almost painful. 

“In the safe in the corner,” he told her, and then recited the combination. 

Between Inej’s healing injuries when she was last in Ketterdam and an unexpected turf war that had constantly caused interruptions to their time together, they still hadn’t had the chance to explore their desires. There were other small intimacies they had claimed. They had slept in each other’s arms. Inej had let him brush her hair. He had helped her dress and undress. One morning, when they were lying in his bed together, trading an ice pack back and forth between her shoulder and his leg, he had told her, in halting sentences, about Jordie. 

Now the mattress dipped slightly as she sat back down. Slowly, Inej pulled on the gloves. Kaz felt hypersensitive, electric. He shut his eyes, then changed his mind and opened them, then shut them again. 

Cool leather cradled his face as Inej cupped his cheek. He took a shaky breath and leaned into the touch. “Inej,” he whispered. The sensation was like water pouring onto parched ground. Kaz soaked it in. She stroked his face, traced the angle of his jaw and the line of his mouth. 

His head fell back and his mouth opened. A small, scratchy sound escaped his lips. He felt something brush against them -- not the glove. Inej had kissed him. Kaz felt a shiver of amazement run through his bones. She’d kissed him. Kissed him . 

“Darling,” Inej said again, still so close that he could feel her breath on his parted lips. Kaz opened his eyes and looked right up into hers. “I believe you have a plan to share with me,” she said. 

Had he ever, in his life, felt like this? The happiness was so intense that it was like physical pain. He reveled in it. “There’s a plan,” he said. His eyes roamed over every moon-touched detail of her face. She moved a hand down and lightly traced the tendons of his throat, the sharp jut of his collarbone. He arched into her touch. “Plan,” he repeated breathlessly. “The votes.”

“Tell me about the votes,” Inej purred. She carded a hand through his hair and he bit back a moan. 

“Thirteen votes. Council law requires twelve of the thirteen to vote in favor in-- aaah.” Her fingers stroked their way down the wiry muscle of his upper arms. “In order to change a law on -- on the books.” Her fingertips traced the veins of his inner arm. He wondered if she could feel the rapid clamoring of his heartbeat. 

“Go on.” Inej’s voice was like velvet. He ached. 

“We have Van Eck. Through him, we were... able to sway Radmakker to pledge his vote,” Kaz breathed. She carded a hand through his hair. It felt like heaven. 

“Van Verent has been replaced on the Council by Luuk Olberink. His family has been trying to take a Council seat for generations. They’re hungry for power. He’s been--” She ran gloved fingers over the shell of his ear, the close-shaved hair on the back of his neck. He made a soft sound, caught his breath, and continued. “He and the ever impressionable Dryden have been persuaded by a foreign diplomat that their vote on this referendum, as a token show of loyalty, will secure him some very valuable trade advantages with certain factions in Novyi Zem.”

Inej raised an eyebrow. “A foreign diplomat?” She threaded gloved fingers through his bare ones and pinned his hands to the bed. “I don’t believe you.”

“Jesper,” Kaz admitted. “In a very elaborate hat.”

Her radiant smile. The pressure of her hands holding him down. He felt his eyes prickle with tears and he didn’t care. All that mattered was this moment, her joy, her affection, her. Inej. 

“That’s three,” she said. “What of the others?”

“Hoede doesn’t leave his country estate these days. He votes by proxy. The gentleman who serves as his voice in Council was recently caught in a tryst with the daughter of Bert Aanstoot of Aanstoot Glassworks. The witness to it has recently sent him a letter indicating that if he does not ignore Hoede’s directive and vote in favor of the referendum, she will reveal everything to Aanstoot and the daughter’s fiance.” 

“So clever, Kaz,” she whispered. “Tell me more. What about the other Councilmen?” She released his hands and reached back, pulling out two hairpins and tossing them onto the crate beside his bed. Kaz’s mind whited out for a second as Inej loosed her hair and let it cascade over his chest and stomach. “Inej. Inej.” 

He clutched a handful to his face, baring his teeth, his breath ragged. “Please,” he mouthed, not even knowing what he was asking for. 

“Let’s see. That’s Van Eck, Radmakker, Olberink, Dryden, and Hoede. That leaves us with Boreg, Schenck, Grootens, Kalven, Ooms, Westerhof, Van Zandt, and Landuweers.” 

“Right.” He clenched and unclenched his hands. “Right. Landuweers. He made some unwise investments in the Southern Colonies. He’s looking to refit the fur trading ships his father-- oh, fuck.” Inej was touching his stomach. “Used, before… before the … tariffs were raised. He wants to … Inej.” His head thrashed to the side. “... recoup their losses. By making some voyages to Shu Han for … for …” Kaz no longer could think clearly enough to remember what. Inej moved her hands back up to his face and he struggled to reconnect his train of thought. “He needs kruge to do that. There’s... a lender willing to work with him. He’ll shave off half the interest on the loan if Landuweers votes our way.”

“A real lender?” Inej asked, and then destroyed his mind a little more by softly kissing his lips again. 

“Keeg with an expensive haircut.”

“Keeg doesn’t have that kind of money.” Her hands slid to his chest, and she waited expectantly. 

“I do.” Another, more passionate kiss, this time on his neck. He had to pull away from this one, gasping, a sharp chill hitting him. “Space. I need space for a second.”

Inej moved away immediately, and Kaz sat up, eyes shut, swallowing back the sudden cold and the memory of bloated, rotting flesh. 

“Keep talking to me,” she commanded, her voice grounding him. He held onto it, used it to make his way back to the present. “What’s our angle on Boreg?”

“Naten Boreg,” Kaz said, a little of his old grimness coming back into his voice, “Has some very dirty secrets involving Fjerdan girls. Very young Fjerdan girls. If anyone is going to vote against this referendum for personal reasons, it would be him. I thought that the Wraith might want to pay him a visit and give him an even more pressing personal reason to vote for it.”

Something deadly kindled in Inej’s eyes. “The Wraith,” she said, “would be delighted to.”

A smile, and not the nice kind, bloomed on Kaz’s face. “I had guessed as much.” He took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back. Slowly, he brought her hand back to his chest, lay down. 

“Schenck will be easier,” Kaz said, his breath hitching slightly as Inej traced patterns in the sparse dark hair on his chest. “He collects antique Shu oil lamps. For the past four months, in select circles, there’s been talk of a recently discovered lamp of one of the great Shu ceramic masters. Absolutely exquisite and verified by experts, with …” his head fell back and he moaned. “An unusual botanical pattern. He’ll be ... voting by proxy for this Council meeting while he inspects it ... personally before purchasing. The proxy is his son from out of town.” Inej continued caressing his chest, his abdomen, his arms, the trail of coarse hair that disappeared into the loose trousers he wore to sleep. His erection was coming back painfully fast. “I’ve arranged to have the son replaced with one of our people before the session.”

“The lamp is a clever fake?” she asked. 

“It doesn’t exist.”

“Even better.” 

“You’ll like this one,” Kaz told her eagerly. “Westerhof has been having an affair with a beautiful indentured maid. If this referendum …. ohhhhh... goes through, she’s... overheard her master, the cruel young Wylan Van Eck, telling his steward that... he will sell her indenture… since he’ll no longer be able to keep her by adding fees to it.” He arched against her hands. “He’s promised her that he will vote for it.”

Inej was smirking. “And this maid... let me guess. Jesper in a dress?”

Kaz snorted. “She’s a prostitute, an ambitious one. With the kruge she’s making from this scheme-- the money that Westerhof thinks he’ll be buying her indenture with--  she can--” his voice broke off and he made a deeply embarrassing sound as she toyed with the waist of his trousers-- “Set up. As a high class courtesan on West Stave. Fuck. Inej .”

“Kaz?” Inej tipped his chin with one finger to look her in the eye. “Where are you all right with me touching you?”

He opened, then shut his mouth. “Anywhere,” he managed to get out. “Just do one thing for me.” 

“What’s that?” she asked. 

“If I have a heart attack from this… stab my body, so it looks like I was murdered. And put my trousers back on.”

Inej burst into giggles at his perfectly reasonable request. “How do you manage to ruin every romantic moment?” she demanded through her laughter. 

“One of my many talents.” He closed his eyes for a moment, basking in her laughter and the warmth of her hands on his skin through the thin leather. 

“I know what you have on Grootens and Van Zandt,” Inej said as she untied the drawstrings to his trousers. 

"Y-you should,” he told her. “You were the one who got it for me.” She pulled the fabric down his legs, and he let out a shaky gasp as he was bared to the cool night air. Inej dragged her long hair over his hipbone. Her smile was warm and fierce and utterly irresistible. Her gloved hands traced the cut of his hip but stopped short of his cock and instead wandered down to his thighs. 

“Inej,” he begged. She leaned down, blew cool air over his erection, and he writhed.

“That leaves Kalven and Ooms,” she reminded him mercilessly. He shut his eyes and spoke quickly.

“Ooms murdered his wife last winter. He pays a Grisha Tailor to make his mistress look like her. If the Tailor suffers a sudden accident in the next week, Ooms will be looking for a new, discreet Tailor. Got any rescued indentures with Ravkan accents?”

“I see where you’re going with this,” Inej said. “The Ravkan Tailor came to Kerch to pay off the indenture of his fourteen-year-old brother, but his money was stolen on the voyage.” Kaz’s entire body arched hard as she gently cupped his balls in her hand. Thank Ghezen, she knew this type of con well enough to finish the story because he could barely breathe to speak. “If the referendum passes, his brother will be freed and the Ravkan will owe Ooms a life debt that he will gladly do any confidential job in order to fill.”

“But only,” Kaz managed, “If Ooms can... convince Councilman Kalven... to vote for it as well.”

Her hand moved, caressed, then slid up to wrap around his cock. Kaz nearly sobbed. 

“You did all this for me,” Inej murmured, and he nodded. She stroked him, spreading the moisture that leaked from the tip. He was dying. He was dying. He was intensely, impossibly alive. 

“All for you,” he rasped. Any detachment and restraint he had ever prided himself on was gone. His hands were clenched on the sheets. His chest heaved. He was not able to keep from thrusting into each firm stroke. 

“Look at me,” she ordered. He tore his eyes away from her hand on him. Looked up at her face. A hint of predawn light had crept across the sky and cast a dim glow over her features. Everything in him strained toward her.

“Inej--” The coiled need at the base of his spine tightened and tightened until the pressure was unbearable. “‘Nej.” 

She cradled his face and grazed her thumb over his cheekbone. Kaz turned his head, pressed his open mouth against her palm, and cried out into it as he came in long, shuddering spasms. As the searing pleasure ebbed, he clung to that hand with both of his.Then all the strength drained out of him for a moment. He sank back against the pillow and breathed. 

For a few long moments, he just lay there, his blood singing with pleasure and awe. He listened to the soft sounds of Inej pulling off the now soiled gloves and going to his washbasin to splash cool water on her hands. 

“Inej,” he said, his voice sounding even rougher than usual in his ears. “Come back.”

The mattress sank beneath them as she joined him on it, lying next to him, almost but not quite touching. He reached for her hand, remembered in time that she’d just washed it in cold water, and gripped her arm instead. 

“Once,” he said, haltingly, “You said that Kerch doesn’t have the right words for lovers to say to each other. You’re right. There aren’t any words I know that fit this.” He took a breath and risked sounding like an utter idiot. “Will you teach me? In Suli?”

Inej made a soft sound and suddenly she was in his arms, her hair and the fabric of her clothing all that lay between them. Words poured from her in a flood, throaty and beautiful, somehow sensual. Then she repeated them slowly for him until he could say each sentence after her, imitating her accent as best he could. 

“What did I just say?” Kaz asked afterward. 

“Your soul and mine are twined together in… the closest I can translate it is the making at the heart of all things,” Inej said slowly. “You are the undying love that puts strength in my veins. I revel in your joy as I do my own, sweetheart… it just sounds weird in Kerch.”

“You do,” he said, then realized that it sounded like he was agreeing that her words sounded weird. Quickly, he clarified: “You do put strength in my veins. You always have. And the part about your joy, that too.” He repeated the last sentence in Suli, then paused. “Sajna … I know that word.” He narrowed his eyes. “You told me it meant someone who thought too highly of himself. I can’t believe you called me sweetheart years ago and then lied about it.”

“You were being terrible at the time. You didn’t deserve to know I liked you.”

“Inej, I’m still terrible,” Kaz pointed out. “Considering how many people I’ve killed and swindled since then, you could argue that I’m more terrible.”

“Ruining the moment,” she scolded him. 

“Forgive me, sajna,” he said, his voice mocking. 

“ Sajnii,” Inej corrected. “You say sajna to a man, sajnii to a woman.”

“ Sajnii, then.” He held her tighter when she gave a little shiver of happiness. “Inej, sajnii, ” he said, stroking her hair, “We’re not done here. You seem to have forgotten the most important part.”

Inej drew back slightly to look at him. “What do you mean?”

He raised an eyebrow. “When we talked about what I wanted to do with you, what did I say every single time?”

He watched the blush rise in her cheeks. A slow smile crept onto her lips.

“You sure you’re up to the challenge, Brekker?” she asked. In response, Kaz grabbed his gloves and pulled them on with deliberate care, his eyes not leaving hers. 

“Do you want to keep any of your clothes on?” he asked. “Do you want me to put on any of mine?”

Inej bit her lip. “Put your trousers back on,” she decided. “Keep the shirt off. I like looking at you.” Warmth flared in his chest. He felt the corner of his mouth kick up. He pulled the sleep trousers back on, wincing slightly at the stiffness in his leg, and watched Inej as she stood and matter-of-factly removed her shoes, breeches, stockings, and quilted vest. She paused for a moment, then reached under her tunic and unbound her breasts. 

Inej was no longer the wisp-thin spider of their shared past. Three years had put flesh and muscle on her acrobat’s frame. She would never be voluptuous, but adulthood had given her hips and thighs the curves and thickness that spoke of a woman’s strength. Kaz silently admired the shape of her legs. They had talked about how she felt about being called beautiful. It meant nothing to her anymore, she’d told him. Beautiful was something men called a scared fourteen year old girl to justify wanting her. So he said nothing, but drank her in with his eyes as she returned to the bed. 

Inej carefully moved so that she was astride his lap, making sure not to jostle his bad leg. Then she took his hands in hers and placed them in her hair. 

“Go slow,” she said. “Pet my hair, then touch me with long strokes, all over my body.” He obeyed, carefully watching her. She sighed when his fingers brushed over her scalp. Her back arched slightly when he ran his hands from the nape of her neck to her waist. He let his fingers skate over her body, mentally noting which touches made her relax and sway into his hands the most. 

He did not slide his hands under her tunic, but he cupped her breasts gently through it. Inej tensed for a fraction of a second, then leaned into the touch. He kept his fingers gentle but firm, soothing rather than demanding, and he felt her relax. 

Kaz had worried that he might disappoint her in this way as he knew he must in so many others. He was a man who had never touched a woman, and he knew the scathing things women said about clumsy and inexperienced lovers. 

But this wasn’t just any woman. This was Inej, and he knew every tell she had. Her face and body told him more explicitly than words what felt right, what felt wrong, and what made her ache for more. It was intoxicating, and he lost himself in learning how to draw soft sounds from her and make her shiver and arch her body into his caress. Every reaction of her body was a revelation. He never wanted to do anything but this. 

“Kaz, please,” she breathed after he had spent a beautiful eternity finding and worshipping every sensitive spot on her thighs. Her legs were trembling, her breaths uneven. 

“Anything,” he promised fervently, not slowing the movements of his fingers along the back of her upper thigh. When he’d done it just right, her skin had risen up in goosebumps and she’d whimpered. He wanted to hear that sound again. “Anything you want.” 

“I want more,” Inej all but growled, and then she was grabbing his hand and putting it between her legs. Oh. Kaz swallowed hard. She was so hot there, and when he moved his fingers, so very slippery. He tried to map out the secret shapes of her as she rocked her hips, demanding. 

“Inej, let me -- please let me see what I’m doing,” he begged. With a sound of needy impatience, Inej flung herself off him and slid back against the headboard of his bed, then pulled him to her by the wrist. It was still not the easiest angle, and the light in the room was dim, but to a man who picked locks by corpselight, it was good enough. He lowered himself between her spread thighs and let her guide his fingers where she wanted them, watching intently. The scent of her made something primal in him go quietly insane. Every sound she made resonated in his bones. He forced himself to a state of pure focus. 

Now that he could see better, he was able to make out the little nub, the center of her pleasure that women joked about men being unable to find. He spread her more, brushed his finger delicately over it, and was rewarded by a keening moan and a jerk of her hips. 

“Like that?” he rasped, then tried a different motion, less direct but firmer. “Or like this?” She responded with something in Suli that was definitely a curse and grabbed his shoulder, fingernails digging into the skin. He froze for a moment.

“Sorry! Sorry, are you--” She let go, but he shook his head. 

“No. No, that... “ He had felt nothing of the corpse barge, nothing of the canal, in her touch. He’d been miles away, consumed in his discovery of her pleasure. “But you, did I hurt you? Are you all right?”

“No, it was good. It was really good and I don’t want you to stop,” Inej said, angling her hips to grind against his hand. 

“Tell me what kind of pressure feels best,” he insisted, and she moaned as he thumbed over her with exquisite care. 

“Different things, not just one thing over and over... different touches like you’re --- ohhh…” That didn’t entirely answer his question, but he let her reactions as he varied the angle and pressure of his strokes tell him the rest. She lapsed into Suli again and he let the sound of her voice flow over him, gauging what she needed from the tone and pitch rather than the words themselves. She liked it when he swirled his fingers like this, then like this, then teased with indirect pressure just there …. There was a pattern to it, an ebb and flow of sensitivity, and the first time he got it just right, she cried out his name. Hot pride swelled in his chest. He kept at it with renewed determination until she was bucking hard against him. It took all his efforts to keep controlling the exact angle and pressure of his caress with the erratic movements of her hips. 

He wanted desperately to try putting his mouth on her, but he knew better than to risk triggering the panic with her so close to orgasm. And they hadn’t talked about it, he didn’t know if she… instead, he worked his fingers faster until her entire body went taut and her mouth opened in a silent shout. He watched in triumph as her toes curled, her brow furrowed, and her muscles clenched and unclenched. It was so like his own release, yet so different. He drew it out longer and longer, easing up whenever she flinched from overstimulation, but never fully relenting, fascinated by how much he could give her. She was shivering now, little moans escaping her as he grazed his fingers down to where she was slick and open. 

“Can I touch here?” he asked, “My fingers, can I…”

“Yes,” she breathed, and with all the tenderness he could put in a single touch, Kaz pressed the tip of one gloved finger into her. She angled her hips a little and he gasped as his finger slid deeper. Hot, yielding flesh clenched lightly around it. Carefully, he pushed deeper, watching her face for any sign of discomfort. Inej opened her eyes and smiled at him. He got to watch another little shudder of pleasure go through her as he drew his finger back out. 

“You’re incredible,” he whispered. “I never want to stop doing this.”

“We should probably get some sleep,” she replied, giggling. Kaz looked at her incredulously.

“Why would I want to sleep when I can touch you?” he demanded, and she giggled harder, “What?” Her laughter was contagious, and he found himself laughing too, without knowing why. Every time he stopped, she started again until they were both breathless and unable to look at the other without cracking up. 

How about this,” Inej finally said when she could keep a straight face. “We sleep for a couple hours, go get breakfast, and then you can put your lieutenant in charge of business for the day and take me back to bed.”

Kaz tried to remember what his plans for the day had been, but the words take me back to bed had obliterated them. They had this together, finally. They had won. 

He looked up at her and then lightly kissed her inner thigh. “The deal is the deal,” he said.

They curled up to sleep the way they had in the room in the Geldrenner -- Inej wrapped in the sheet and Kaz holding her. He still couldn’t sleep properly with someone else so close, but something inside him whispered, you’ll learn. Besides, he was more than content to watch the dawn break over her sleeping features and turn her dark hair into a sea of reflected light. Kaz could not offer her a storybook ending. He could barely manage a romantic moment without ruining it by opening his mouth. But somehow it was him who she wanted. And as long as he was still breathing, Inej Ghafa would have what she wanted. 

As for him, it was enough to be hers, to fight by her side and rest in her arms. No armor could make him feel stronger or safer than the woman beside him.

In the meantime, there were details and contingency plans to see to -- he was determined to present her with a unanimous Council vote. And of course, when the referendum passed, there would be more work ahead, as the child traffickers were forced to resort to the criminal underworld in order to ply their trade in Kerch.

When they did, The Bastard of the Barrel would be waiting for them.