In the cold light of tribal tradition, what they had done against that tree and in the moss was shameless, wild, and utterly devoid of decorum.
But in those hours, she hadn't felt like a weapon, an heir-bearer, or a sovereign carrying a thousand lives on her back. She had felt fiercely, breathlessly alive.
She had tasted a blinding, consuming pleasure she had never even known existed, a heat that had utterly rewritten her from the inside out.
It hadn't been what she planned when she walked down to the secluded spring.
She had slipped away from the roaring feast simply wanting to breathe, and seeing him there, naked in the moonlight, a calculating, selfish thought had crossed her mind.
