“Arm harness. On or off?”

“Hm. Off, I think. Don’t want to risk jabbing you in a distracted moment.” The disquieting memory of her bleeding fingers weaving her wedding cord flitted through his mind, and he became conscious again of it wound around his upper arm, and the tiny hum of its live ground. Her live ground.

With practiced hands, she whisked the hook harness away onto the top of the clothes pile, and he marveled anew at how easy it was all becoming with her.

Except for, blight it all again, having no working hand. The sling had gone west just before the shirt, and he shifted his right arm and attempted to wriggle his fingers. Ouch. No. Not enough useful motion there yet. Inside his splints and wrappings, his skin, damp from the sweat of the warm day, was itching. He couldn’t touch. All right, there was a certain amount he could do with his tongue—especially right now, as she returned and nuzzled up to him—but getting it to the right place at the right time was going to be an insurmountable challenge, in this position.

She withdrew her lips from his and began working her way down his body. It was lovely but almost redundant; it had been well over a week, after all, and…It used to be years, and I scarcely blinked. He tried to relax and let himself be made love to. Relaxation wasn’t exactly what was happening. His hips twitched as Fawn’s full attention arrived at his nether regions. She swung her leg over, turned to face him, reached down, and began to try to position herself. Stopped.

“Urk?” he inquired politely. Some such noise, anyway.

Her face was a little pinched. “This should be working better.”

“Oil?” he croaked.

“I shouldn’t need oil for this, should I?”

Not if I had a hand to ready you nicely. “Hang should, do what works. You shouldn’t have that uncomfortable look on your face, either.”

“Hm.” She extracted herself, padded over to his saddlebags, and rummaged within. Good view from the back, too, as she bent over…A mutter of mild triumph, “Ah.” She padded back, pausing to frown and rub the sole of one bare foot on her other shin after stepping on a pebble. Was this a time to stop for pebbles…?

Back she came, sliding over him. Small hands slicked him, which made him jolt. He did not allow himself to plunge upward. Let her find her way in her own time. She attempted to do so.

She was getting a very determined look again. “Maidenheads don’t regrow, do they…?”

“Shouldn’t think so.”

“I didn’t think it was supposed to hurt the second time.”

“Probably just unaccustomed muscles. Not in condition. Need more exercise.” It was driving him just short of mad to have no hands to grasp her hips and guide her home.

She blinked, taking in this thought. “Is that true, or more of your slick patroller persuasion?”

“Can’t it be both?”

She grinned, shifted her angle, then looked brighter, and said, “Ah! There we go.”

Indeed, we do. He gasped, as she slid slowly and very, very tightly down upon him. “Yes…that’s…very…nice.”

She muttered, “They get whole babies through these parts. Surely it’s supposed to stretch more.”

“Time. Give it.” Blight it, at this point in the usual proceedings, she would be the one who couldn’t form words anymore. They were out of rhythm tonight. He was losing his wits, and she was getting chatty. “Fine now.”

Her brows drew down in puzzlement. “Should this be like taking turns, or not?”

“Uhthink…” He swallowed to find speech. “Hope it’s good for you. Suspect it’s better for me. ’S exquisite for me right now.”

“Oh, that’s all right, then.” She sat for a moment, adjusting. It would likely not be a good idea at this point to screech and convulse and beg for motion; that would just alarm her. He didn’t want her alarmed. She might jump up and run off, which would be tragic. He wanted her relaxed and confident and…there, she was starting to smile again. She observed, “You have a funny look on your face.”

“I’ll bet.”

Her smile widened. Too gently and tentatively, she at last began to move. Absent gods be praised. “After all,” she said, continuing a line of thought of which he had long lost track, “Mama had twins, and she isn’t that much taller than me. Though Aunt Nattie said she was pretty alarmin’ toward the end.”

“What?” said Dag, confused.

“Twins. Run in Mama’s side of the family. Which made it really unfair of her to blame Papa, Aunt Nattie said, but I guess she wasn’t too reasonable by then.”

Which remark, of course, immediately made his reeling mind jump to the previously unimagined idea of Spark bearing twins, his, which made his eyes cross. Further. He really hadn’t even wrapped his mind around the notion of their having one child, yet. Considering just what you’re doing right now, perhaps you should, old patroller.

Whatever this peculiar digression did to him—his spine felt like an overdrawn bow with its string about to snap—it seemed to relax Fawn. Her eyes darkening, she commenced to rock with more assurance. Her ground, blocked earlier by the discomfort and uncertainty, began to flow again. Finally. But he wasn’t going to last much longer at this rate. He let his hips start to keep time with hers.

“If I only had a working hand to get down there, we would share this turn…” His fingers twitched in frustration.

“Another good reason to leave it be to heal faster,” she gasped. “Put that poor busted arm back on the blanket.”

“Ngh!” He wanted to touch her so much. Groundwork? A mosquito’s worth was not likely to be enough. Left-handed groundwork? He remembered the glass bowl, sliding and swirling back together. That had been no mere mosquito. Would she find it perverse, frightening, horrifying, to be touched so? Could he even…? This was her wedding night. She must not recall it with disappointment. He laid his left arm down across his belly, pointed at their juncture. Consider it a strengthening exercise for the ghost hand. Beats scraping hides all hollow, doesn’t it? Just…there.

“Oh!” Her eyes shot wide, and she leaned forward to stare into his face. “What did you just do?”

“Experiment,” he gritted out. Surely his eyes were as wide and wild as hers. “Think the broken right has been doing something to stir up my left ground. Like, not like?”

“Not sure. More…?”

“Oh, yeah…”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s…”

“Good?”

Her only reply was a wordless huff. And a rocking that grew frantic, then froze. Which was fine because now he did drive up, as that bowstring snapped at last, and everything unwound in white fire.

He didn’t think he’d passed out, but he seemed to come to with her draped across his chest wheezing and laughing wildly. “Dag! That was, that was…could you do that all along? Were you just saving it for a wedding present, or what?”

“I have no idea,” he confessed. “Never done anything like that before. I’m not even sure what I did do.”

“Well, it was quite…quite nice.” She sat up and pushed back her hair to deliver this in a judicious tone, but then dissolved into helpless laughter again.

“I’m dizzy. Feel like I’m about to fall down.”

“You are lying down.”

“Very fortunate.”

She tumbled down into the cradle of his left arm and snuggled in for a wordless time. Dag didn’t quite nap, but he wouldn’t have called it being awake, either. Bludgeoned, perhaps. Eventually, she roused herself enough to get them cleaned up and dressed in clothes to sleep in, because the blue twilight shadows were cooling as night slid in, seeping through the woods from the east. By the time she cuddled down again beside him, under the blanket this time, he was fully awake, staring up through the leaves at the first stars.

Her slim little fingers traced the furrows above his brows. “Are you all right? I’m all right.”

He managed a smile and kissed the fingers in passing. “I admit, I’ve unsettled myself a bit. You know how shaken I was after that episode with the glass bowl.”