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He chuckled softly

"That’s true He stinks worse than you do"

"I do not stink!" I said indignantly

"M delicately "Onions," he said, "and garlic So hotpeppercorns Aye, and clove Squirrel-blood andwoody Toadstools"

"Not fair at all," I said, trying to get my hand back "You know perfectly e had for dinner And they weren’t toadstools, they oodears"

"Mm?" He turned my hand over and sniffed at ar and dill; ye’ve beencucumber pickles, aye? Good, I like those Mm, oh, and soured milk here in the fine hairs on your ar creaood at it"

"Butter"

"Da to pull away, but only because the stubble on his face tickled the sensitive skin of my upper arm He smelled his way upme squeak as the strands of his hair drifted across my skin

He lifted my arers under his nose "Eau de fehter in his voice "Ma petite fleur"

"And I bathed, too," I said ruefully

"Aye, with the sunflower soap," he said, a slight tone of surprise in his voice as he sniffed at the hollow of h-pitched yelp, and he reached up to lay a large, warunpowder, hay, andhness of his whiskers brushed my cheek His hand fell away, and I felt the softness of his lips against ue on my skin

"And salt," he said, very softly, his breath warm on my face "There is salt on your face, and your lashes are wet D’ye weep, Sassenach?"

"No," I said, though I had a sudden, irrational urge to do just that "No, I sweat I washot"

I wasn’t any longer; ht-draft from thechilled my backside

"Ah, but heremm" He was on his knees now, one arm about my waist to hold me still, his nose buried in the holloeen ain

I didn’t normally wear perfume, but I had a special oil, sent froe flowers, jasmine, vanilla beans, and cinnamon I had only a tiny vial, and wore a sht perhaps be special

"Ye wanted me," he said ruefully "And I fell asleep without even touching you I’m sorry, Sassenach Ye should have said"

"You were tired" His hand had leftdark strands behind his ear He laughed, and I felt the warmth of his breath on my bare stomach

"Ye could raise me from the dead for that, Sassenach, and I wouldnaht I could see that no such desperate measures on "

"Ye think I’m not?"

His hands closed onasped at contact with the cool wood, reflexively grasping thefra?"

He didn’t bother answering; it was an entirely rhetorical question, in any case

"Eau de fehs as he knelt The floorboards creaked under his weight "Parfum d’a across htest of lover’s touches Jamie’s hands were fir, and yet I felt the dizzy drop behind ht, with its star-strewn e, a tiny speck, blazing hotter and hotter with the friction offinally into the incandescence of a shootingstar

"Ssh," Ja now, his hands on ht have been the wind, or ht have been ainst my skin Heat danced overin front, cool behind, like St Lawrence on his gridiron

I wrapped s around him, one heel settled in the cleft of his buttocks, the solid strength of his hps between o," he said in o, and leaned back on the air, safe in his hands

"YOU DID START OUT to tellabout Laurence Sterne," I murmured drowsily, much later

"So I did" Jamie stretched and settled himself, a hand curved proprietorially over h It was too hot to lie pressed together, but we didn’t want to separate entirely

"We were talking of birds; he bein’ uncommon fond of them I asked hiht--the nights are shorter then, ye’d think they’d want their rest, but no There’s rustling and twittering and all es and the trees"

"Are there? I hadn’t noticed"

"Ye’re no in the habit of sleeping in the forest, Sassenach," he said tolerantly "I have been, and so had Sterne He’d noticed the sa, he said, and wondered why"