For Nicci’s sake, not to mention the other three, Amber knew she really ought to do some of the standing up that Eric found so praiseworthy, but the idea of privacy was a powerful temptation. “So,” she said, beginning to smile. “Did you have any ideas on how to pass the time until the water heats up?”

He changed out the stone in the pouch for a hotter one. “We can walk down to the stream, if you’re feeling strong enough. We’re going to need more water if you want a bath too.”

The sight of her words going over his head made whooshing sounds in Amber’s mind. She waited a second or two, then stood, moved the stewing pouch out of his reach and sat down on his thigh.

“What are you doing?” he asked, by all appearances with genuine surprise.

Amber wordlessly took his favorite bone-handled knife out of its sheath and stabbed it meaningfully into the back of his chair, above his head.

He looked at it. “Ah.”

She caught him by the jaw and aimed his face back at her so that she could kiss his rough mouth. He allowed it, but certainly did not encourage it, and when she was done, he said simply, “It is an unforgiveable sin to lie with a woman in her sickbed.”

“I don’t appear to be in it at the moment.” She loosened her tunic and slid it off one shoulder so he could see his bite-marks. “You made me certain promises, lizardman.”

He eyed the scars with distinct pride, only to glare at her. “Your humans are right above us.”

“We’ll be quiet,” she promised.

“I don’t like being quiet.” He paused, frowning as he watched her unbuckle his belt. “And I don’t think you can be.”

“Then we’ll be noisy, but we’ll be quick and finish up before they come down to investigate,” said Amber, now at work on his breeches-ties.

“My desires come from God. They should not be hurried.”

“Then they shouldn’t ought to be denied, either,” she said piously, and slipped her hand beneath his loin-plate.

“You may have a point,” he said after a moment’s meditation. “Are you sure you’re strong enough?”

She kissed him again. This time, he kissed back at her, his broad, dry tongue nudging at her lips and into her mouth to taste her. His hands caught at her thighs, kneading lightly before moving up to wrap her waist. He didn’t try to undress her; he’d probably never heard of doing it in a chair, she thought, remembering Zhuqa.

She broke the kiss with a shudder and looked away, waiting to feel arousal curdle into shame, but it didn’t happen. Meoraq, oblivious, saw the sudden exposure of her throat as an invitation and leaned forward to nuzzle at it, reaching beneath her wrap to cup her breast. He was never quite sure what to do with it once he had it in his hand, but at least he tried.

She looked down at him, faintly smiling, watching his spines flex and quiver with restraint as he fit his teeth into the impression of his scar, nuzzled, fit them again.

He was never going to be Zhuqa, no more than Zhuqa could have ever been Meoraq. It didn’t matter what he did, what he said, how he looked. Zhuqa had tried to be her lover as part of his little game, but his gentlest touch was loathsome. He didn’t deserve the hold he had on her memories now.

Amber brushed the back of her hand over Meoraq’s brow. He grunted pleasantly without opening his eyes, lost in her shoulder. Nothing they did together could ever be ugly, she thought. Nothing they did together belonged to Zhuqa.

She knelt down.

He started to move out of the chair and join her on the floor, but stopped, puzzled, at her silent insistence. When she started in again at loosening his loin-plate, he tried to help.

“Let me do this,” she said, pushing his hands firmly away. “I want to please my man.”

“It does not please me to see my woman on her knees.”

She looked at him, crookedly smiling. “I want to please my man. Whether I’m on my knees or on my feet or standing on my head.” ‘And I want to take every ugly thing he did away from him,’ she thought, but didn’t say that. It was bad enough that she could still see Zhuqa with them in this moment; she didn’t want Meoraq to see him too.

“This is a human mating technique, is it?” Meoraq asked uncertainly, watching her peel away his loin-plate. “Do I take my boots off or do you remove them for me?”

She leaned back to look at them, then up at him.

“Humans take their boots off for formal matings,” he explained, looking very mildly embarrassed. “This is a formal mating, isn’t it?”

“Do I dare ask why you were watching humans have sex?”

He mumbled something, scratching at his snout, then shook his head and snapped, “I am not to be blamed if humans insist on mating in the open wilds where anyone can see them! Do you want the boots off or not?”

“Take them off,” she said decisively. “Take everything off. Let’s do this right.”

Muttering under his breath, Meoraq stood up and shucked out of his clothes. Amber did the same, still giggling now and then, even though she honestly didn’t know what struck her so funny about the whole thing. It wasn’t the concept of Meoraq as a Peeping Tom, which was pretty ludicrous all on its own, as much as it was the idea of human mating techniques (step one remove boots step two insert penis), formal and otherwise.

“And now?” Meoraq asked, standing naked and proud above her with his hands on his hips and his best glare on.

“Now sit down again.”

“Sit?” He looked at the chair and back at her. “In the chair?”

She nodded, trying to hide her grin under her hand.

“I thought we were going to have sex.”

“We are. Sort of.” A sudden sobering thought occurred as he gingerly lowered himself into the chair. “Is it, um, against God’s laws to do things that can’t, strictly speaking, produce babies?”

“Things?” He frowned. “How strict do you mean?”

She put her hands lightly on his thighs and leaned between them to lick all along the tight crease of his slit, penetrating at the crown to tongue at his sa’ad.

He watched her very closely. Apart from the immediate and forceful extrusion of his slick cock, he did not move and did not make a sound until she leaned back to look at him again. “I have to pray about this,” he said seriously.

“I’ll wait.”

He tipped his head back and closed his eyes.

A few minutes ticked by. She changed out the stones in the stewing pouch. Meoraq breathed.

His eyes opened. “You are mine,” he told her. “And I am yours. Nothing we take as our pleasure together offends the eye of God.”

“Really?”

“He was quite clear.” He looked upwards, thoughtful. “Unusually clear, one might say.”

She cupped the hot swell at the base of his cock and bent again, this time sucking the nub of his sa’ad between her tight lips to flick it with her tongue. His taste was strong, yes, and sweet and intoxicating and entirely his own.

A pair of heavy feet came across the ceiling and started down the stairs.

“If no one has been killed,” Meoraq called, “someone is about to be.”

The feet stopped, turned, galumphed away.

Amber giggled around his clit, which made the muscles in both his thighs jump.

“Ease off a moment,” he ordered, resting both hands on her shoulders. “Just a moment. This is…this is very different.”

“Do you need to pray again?”

He tried to glower at her, but was too obviously flustered to be effective. His eyes closed. His breath deepened and slowed. He appeared to fall asleep.

Amber rolled off her knees and sat cross-legged. The floor was very cold on her ass. She dragged her discarded wrap over and sat on that instead. She traded out the stones again and waited.

Meoraq’s eyes opened. “Proceed.”

“Everything’s still all right with God?”

“Yes.”

She weighed the pros and cons of her next nagging doubt while she stroked his shaft gently in her fist, but in the end, felt she just had to ask. She wasn’t sure how…but she really felt she had to.