The captain hadn't left.
She stood there, her amber eyes moving over Viktor with the slow, appreciative, entirely unsubtle hunger of a woman who had seen something she wanted and was not accustomed to wanting quietly.
"It's nice to meet you," Viktor said.
His voice was calm, composed, the voice of a man who had stolen bloodlines and impregnated innkeepers and was now standing in cheap armor discussing pleasantries with a woman whose tits were trying to escape a strip of cloth.
The captain's hand came up.
Her fingers found his biceps — squeezing the muscle through the armor, testing it, her thumb pressing into the gap between the plates to find the flesh beneath.
"You don't look like you belong here," she said.
Her voice had changed. Lower. Warmer. The commanding tone of a moment ago had softened into something more personal, more intimate, the voice of a woman who was no longer assessing a soldier but evaluating a man.
