They moved to the floor by the hearth.

  The packed dirt was warm against Leo's legs, soaked through with hours of fire heat. The light was better here, steadier than candlelight, throwing amber across the entire room.

  Sera plopped herself down in front of him, her spear rested across her p. The resonance bone fragments on their cloth and Sera’s leather armor sat between them.

  Leo reached for the spear.

  The instant his fingers touched wood, Leo willed it, and the blueprint unfolded. Every detail and fw rendered in clean holographic lines before his eyes. The ash shaft was smooth from years of Sera's grip, the grain compressed and polished where her hands returned again and again.

  The new iron spearhead sat in its socket with what looked like a solid fit at first gnce, but it wasn’t.

  "This is solid," he said, tracing the socket with his thumb. The iron was cool under his skin. "But the spearhead has issues. The socket looks tight, but there's micro-movement under hard impact."

  "I've felt that," Sera didn’t rush him. Her voice was quiet.

  "I could fix it. Reshape the socket and tighten the fit," he tilted the spear toward the firelight. "Though... we could also just pay the bcksmith a few coppers for the same result"

  "And with the fragment?"

  Leo brought the resonance bone close to the spear, and the reaction was immediate. The blueprint changed, simir to what happened when Leo tried to use the bone on his crossbow.

  "If I go through with this, the spearhead will carry a vibration," his voice came out rougher than he intended. "On impact, it would disrupt whatever it hits - crack carapace, shatter shell. The fragment would be consumed, along with 500 energy. The downside is a drastic decrease in the spear’s durability."

  Sera went still. The firelight caught the side of her face and the strong line of her jaw.

  "That would have changed the fight with the giant beetle."

  "Completely."

  She stared at the spear for a long moment, her eyes bore into it and the fragment in his hand with obvious longing. He understood the temptation, and was waiting for her opinion.

  "Try it on the armor," Sera said finally, letting out a heavy sigh. “If the spear breaks easily after receiving such a huge boost…I’m not sure.”

  Leo set the spear down and picked up the leather chest piece. Stiff boiled hide, with shallow gouges ran across the front. The buckles were tarnished, the stitching fraying at one shoulder seam where the hide flexed most. He could smell it - old leather, and the faint sweet rot from the dungeon that hadn't quite washed out.

  "I tried imagining some upgrades," he said as the blueprint shifted, responding to his commands. "I can harden it, reinforce the buckles, or improve the flex at the joints. Costs are...well, normal. Not too far from my past uses."

  Leo then brought the fragment close.

  The blueprint flickered again. Leo’s brow furrowed as he looked at the result.

  "It’s not very good," he set the armor down and shook his head. "The post-upgrade leather can spread the force of an impact across a wider area. Useful, but not as much as the weapon upgrades."

  "So far, weapons seem to be the better choices," Sera was watching his face with those sharp hazel eyes. "I wish I could see what you see… How about the rope?"

  Leo held the fragment against the coiled hemp, and it was even worse than the armor. The blueprint didn’t change, and there wasn’t any new upgrade suggestion. The resonance bone might as well have been a river pebble.

  "Nothing," Leo said, putting the rope down and leaning back on his hands, the floor warm under his palms. "Though there might be other materials down there on the deeper floors that do different things."

  Sera was quiet for a long time as the fire inside the hearth popped and settled. She stared at the spread of equipment between them, her brow crunched up.

  "This is just a suggestion, since it’s your secret, but…we need to tell Marsh," she said finally. "If you need the kills for energy, then the way we fight has to change. Marsh and I can't be nding the finishing blows. We need to funnel the energy to you."

  "I know. I’m pnning to."

  "He's your brother, so your call," she held his gaze, steady and certain. The firelight turned her irises amber-gold. "I…well, I now have a different opinion about him when it comes to the dungeon. He deserves to know why we're asking him to fight differently."

  Leo nodded. Another person knowing was another point where the secret could leak and reach ears that would turn opportunity into danger. But Leo trusted Marsh to do the right thing for his own family. His brother just needed to watch his mouth in the tavern after too much ale.

  "Let’s call him over tomorrow," Leo said. “We’ll decide on the upgrade then.”

  Sera just nodded her head without saying anything. And she was still keeping her silence as they gathered the equipment and put it away.

  While Leo was hanging up the crossbow and stashing the spear under the bed, Sera rewrapped the resonance bones with careful hands, folding the fabric tight around the shard's edges. He caught her pressing her thumb against the crystal one st time before the cloth covered it, feeling the hum buzzing into the joints of her fingers before putting it into their only chest in the room.

  She looked up and caught him watching.

  "Are you still angry?" Leo asked.

  "Yes.”

  Sera leaned forward, taking his face in both hands, and kissed his cheek - firm and deliberate. Her fingers were callused, rough against his jaw. Her smell filled his nostrils - the smell of woodsmoke and the soap she used at the basin.

  She then pulled back and looked at him. Her eyes were bright with the st of her dimming anger and a spark of excitement.

  "And I won't forgive you if you keep a secret this big from me again."

  Leo y on his back, one arm behind his head, staring at the ceiling beams he could probably draw from memory by now. The hearth had colpsed to embers, throwing faint orange shapes across the far wall that shifted with the draft.

  His mind should have been on the pn to tell Marsh tomorrow. How should he frame it? What would he do if his brother got angry? How would this affect their retionship?

  There was plenty to think about, all of it important, but he couldn’t focus. Sera’s body - warm and soft - was curling up beside him.

  It had been nearly a week since the night they'd kissed in this bed and were stopped from going further by her injury. Five days of sleeping beside her, feeling her warmth through the bnket and listening to her breathe, all the while trying to keep his hands carefully still.

  Five days had never felt that long for Leo. He had read about this in novels, back on Earth. The slow burn and the tension that built between characters over chapters and chapters until the reader wanted to throw the book at the wall. He'd always thought those writers were exaggerating for dramatic effect.

  They were fucking underselling it.

  His mind wandered back to the images of Sera's hands on the spear shaft, her fingers running the length of the wood, the focused intensity on her face as she'd listened to him describe the blueprint. The way she'd leaned forward over the equipment spread, her shirt loose at the colr, firelight catching the line of her colrbone and the soft curve of her ample breasts. Leo'd tried to stop noticing, and had failed miserably.

  Think about…the turnips, or the Spore Shambler…or….

  He was thinking about the cheek kiss. Her hands, calloused and warm, cupping his face. The press of her lips lingering against his skin. The way she'd looked at him afterward - fierce, bright-eyed, the anger and the forgiveness braided together so tight he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

  He shifted, and the bedframe creaked, obscenely loud in the silence. The heat had settled low in his body, stubborn and persistent. Leo now knew that no amount of thinking about crops or the dungeon could quench the thirst he was feeling. He was aware of every point of contact between them.

  Just one or two more day…

  Then, to his surprise, Sera moved. She tturned onto her side, toward him, and her hand found his chest.

  Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, slowly. Each finger pressing in, one after the other, gathering the linen into her fist.

  "It's been long enough," she murmured against his colrbone. Her lips moved on his skin as she spoke, and the warmth of her breath sent a cascade of heat down his ribs, into his stomach, then lower.

  "H…hold on."

  "What?"

  "Hanna said a week…"

  "It's been six days," her fingers tightened in his shirt. She lifted her head and looked at him. In the dim ember light, he could see the desire in her dark eyes, and the flush already rising along her throat and across the freckles on her colrbones. "Close enough."

  Leo's hand found her hip. His thumb pressed against the warm skin where her shift had ridden up, and the small sound she made scattered every rational thought he'd ever had about recovery timelines and bandage schedules.

  Sera pulled herself up and over him, one knee on either side of his hips, her hair falling around both their faces like a curtain that shut out everything else. The shift hung loose from her shoulders. She settled her weight against him, and the press of her body against his drew a low sound from his chest.

  Sera leaned down until her lips brushed his ear.

  "Unless you'd rather wait another day," she whispered. “I don’t want to. It’s been too long since…st time…”

  Leo's hands slid up her thighs, gripped her hips, and pulled her flush against him. Sera found his mouth, and she kissed him like she was making up for lost time.

  Her mouth was hot and open against his, her hands pinning his shoulders to the mattress, her hips grinding down against him in a slow roll that pressed the heat of her through two yers of thin linen. Sera made a sound into his mouth - half sigh, half demand - that sent heat flooding down his spine.

  The Sera from their first night had been willing but uncertain, letting him lead, following his pace. This Sera had spent days lying beside him in this bed, knowing of the pleasure, but couldn’t have it. At this point, she was done with embarrassment.

  She wanted this as badly as I did.

  Leo'd spent the week assuming he was burning alone. He'd been wrong, and had never been more gd about that. Just knowing that his beautiful wife also desired him made the front of his trousers feel even tighter.

  Sera pulled back just far enough to yank his shirt over his head, tossing it into the dark. Then her mouth was on his neck, his chest, then his stomach. She descended slowly, and Leo's muscles jumped beneath her lips as she worked lower.

  She reached for his waistband and pulled the ties loose, freeing him - hard and aching. The cool air was a sharp contrast to the heat of her hand when it wrapped around his cock.

  Her touch was tentative at first. Fingers tracing the length, re-learning the weight and the shape of him. Then it got firmer, stroking, reading the sounds he made.

  "Like this?" Her voice low, almost shy.

  "Yeah… just like… nhh…"

  Sera’s mouth repced her hand before Leo could react. Wet heat enveloped him, her lips stretching around his cock, tongue pressing ft. The sight of her - dark hair spilling across his stomach, her head moving in a clumsy rhythm she was still figuring out as she went - made Leo's fist clench in the bnket until his knuckles ached.

  "God… Sera…"

  She hummed around him. The vibration traveled through his cock and up his spine and his vision went soft at the edges. Her tongue curled along the ridge beneath the head, and Leo's hand flew to her hair. He wasn’t pushing her, just holding it there and letting her do her job.

  "Sera…!"

  He managed her name and nothing else. His hips jerked, the release crashed through him in pulsing waves, and Sera made a small, startled sound around him but didn't pull back. He felt her throat work - a swallow, then another - sucking his cum out of him that made his toes curl against the mattress.

  Sera came back up slowly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. In the ember light, her lips were swollen and wet. Her cheeks flushed dark, and her eyes were still slightly dazed.

  And underneath all of it, was pride. The satisfaction of a woman who'd just wrecked him and was very happy about it.

  “My turn,” Leo exhaled a long and shaky breath.

  Calrel_04