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Then I try to move closer and knock my knee against the arm of his chair.

“Ow.”

Daurek draws back at once.

“The chair,” I tell him. “That was the chair.”

He looks down at the narrow space between us.

“I can move it.”

“Let me get out of mine first.”

I stand, rubbing my knee, and he rises beside me. Away from the table, there’s room to turn toward him without furniture in the way.

There’s also a great deal more of him above me.

I tip my head back. His antlers spread against the branches overhead. In the garden, I liked watching him bend beneath low boughs. Now I wish whoever grew this room had included a convenient step.

Daurek bends toward me.

“Better?”

I catch his shoulders. “Much.”

He puts an arm around my waist, and I let him draw me close. I can feel where his broad fingers rest against my back. His mouth finds mine again, and I stop trying to guess whether he wants this as much as I do.

He does. It’s there in how he holds me, in the small, reluctant pause before he lets me lift my head.

Beside the closed door, a white bud splits open on a bare length of vine.

I stare at it.

Daurek doesn’t look away from me. “I know.”

“You haven’t even looked.”

“I don’t need to.”

Another bud opens beside the first. I look back at him, unable to help smiling.

“I like them.”

“I’m glad.”

“I think I should go and read that letter,” I say.

His arm loosens. “All right.”

I haven’t stepped away yet. He waits while I work up the courage to make the rest plain.

“I’d like you to walk me back after dinner. And kiss me good night.”

“I’d like that too.”

I give him one more kiss, shorter than the others. Stopping turns out to be difficult even when I’ve decided to do it.

He lets me go, and I collect Karev’s letter from the table. Daurek watches me tuck it into my pocket. I wonder whether he’ll ask what it would take to make me refuse.