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attempt?"
Nuvua began to cry again. "I am hopeless," she choked into the mattress. The word unraveled into a wet gasp, three centuries of longing compacted into a single, seismic fracture.
"Oh, my sweet girl, please take a deep breath and look at me. I know it feels like your heart is tied in knots right now, but you're anything but hopeless. Just the other day, he asked me why you avoid him." The girl stiffened. Her fingers dug into the cot's weave. Nuvua gasped and buried her face deeper into Nadine's shoulder. Nadine's "He" could only mean Mandla. "I have tried. Every day." The confession split her open—three centuries of aborted approaches.
Pete exhaled through his nose, slow as a melting glacier. When his fingers brushed her shoulder, his touch carried the same amused patience he reserved for spooked caribou. "Shyness isn't a cage, little artisan. It's just another muscle, one you've let atrophy." His thumb pressed into the knot between her shoulder blades, kneading warmth back into locked joints. "Hopeless would be if your hands didn't shake when you held those carvings." He lifted Arien's figurine, sunlight catching the deliberate groove where Nuvua had whittled Mandla's exact knuckle-dip. "These aren't hopeless. They're maps."
Nadine rose in one fluid motion, her kaftan whispering against Nuvua's shins. "We keep something that might ease the journey," she said, already moving toward the doorway. Her braid swung like a pendulum—left, right—marking time before Nuvua's next choice. "Back at our cabin. Something older than your blushes."
Pete pressed the figurines into Nuvua's palm and closed her fingers around them. "Come," he rumbled, his thumb brushing the fresh tear tracks on her cheek. "You've carried this alone long enough."
The path to their cabin was in the opposite direction from Mandla's. Nuvua's feet scuffed the earth between Pete's broad strides and Nadine's gliding steps, the figurines burned against her skin like stolen embers. Nadine hummed a gentle, comforting tune as they strode down the path.
They arrived at a structure woven from bamboo and tranquility, its sloping roof crowned with bromeliads. Pete held the door for his wife and their current patient. Inside, the air of comfort and healing. Nadine moved to a lacquered chest beside the bed, her fingers undoing the clasp with a click.
The vial emerged like a fragment of dusk trapped in glass, cobalt powder shifting inside. Nadine's hands moved with the precision of a priestess laying out sacred relics, as she poured a small mound onto a sheet of old parchment. "The Dust of Gentle Bravery," she murmured, folding the parchment into a tight square. "A whisper from Yggdrasil's roots." She pressed it into Nuvua's damp palm. The paper warmed instantly, as if absorbing the heat of her pulse.
Pete's cautioned, "one pinch. No more." His thumb and forefinger demonstrated a space barely wide enough for a blade of grass. "Unless you fancy explaining to Mandla why you're trying to lick the constellations off his collarbones." Nadine swatted his thigh, but the warning held the weight of glaciers.
Nuvua pressed the parchment to her sternum. "One pinch," she repeated, tasting the vow like iron on her tongue. Then she was moving, barely remembering to bow before darting out the door. The jungle blurred around her as she streaked to her hut, humming an Inuit melody about lovers in silent igloo nights.
Nuvua entered her hut and locked the door behind her. She exhaled, trembling fingers unfolding the parchment. "One pinch," she repeated the warning. But what was bravery measured in pinches? If one loosened tongues, three would crack them wide. And what if Mandla's collarbones tasted of salt and constellations? Her pulse jumped. The thought alone was intoxicating enough to send her fingers fumbling for her coconut cup. She filled it with passion fruit juice and giggled at the pun. The dust cascaded into the juice.
She hesitated. Then drank. She tasted only the fruit juice. The cup clattered onto the driftwood table.
Silence.
Nuvua stared at the empty cup. This it hit her. She hadn't asked the most basic questions. How long until the Dust unspooled her inhibitions? How many heartbeats until her tongue became untangled? The realization slithered down her spine. Too late now. She snatched up her charcoal, the rough snap of it breaking between her fingers startling a bird outside her window.
The sketch surfaced in jagged lines at first. Mandla's shoulders were emerging from the paper like icebergs calving from a glacier. Her hand moved without permission, darkening the curve of his bicep where it flexed when he lifted crates in the workshop. The charcoal smudged as she remembered the sweat clinging to his chest at last year's triumphant contest with Nick. The parchment filled as she remembered the many times she watched, from a secure hiding place, Madla bathe in the ocean.
Her knuckles whitened around the charcoal. It cracked, depositing flecks of black across the page. The lines grew bolder, reckless, chasing the memory of him wrestling with Aitor and Mandla dancing to Kaled's exotic rhythms. Her thumbnail dug into the charcoal, carving out the divot above his hipbone where seawater pooled when he—
The paper rustled. She blinked. Her breath hitched.
Somehow, in the hazed drift between heartbeats, the sketch had slipped its boundaries. Where there had been shoulders, there was now the full expanse of Mandla's chest, every ridge and valley mapped in charcoal, down to the precise cluster of scars from that long-ago battles. His nipples stood darkened to the exact shade she'd glimpsed once when his tunic clung wet after monsoon rains. And lower, oh ancestors lower, her traitorous hand had rendered the thatch of hair leading downward like an arrow, the proud curve of him jutting shamelessly from the page.
Nuvua inhaled sharply. The Dust. It had to be. She never would have ... couldn't have.
Her fingers moved before thought caught up, already loosening the ties of her tunic. The fabric slithered down her arms like melting snow, pooling at her feet with a whisper of surrender. The air kissed her bare shoulders, raising goosebumps that had nothing to do with the tropical heat. The silk and alpaca robe slithered over her skin like liquid moonlight, Sisa and Salma's gift, too fine to wear until now. Every brush of silk against her nipples sent electric jolts down to her toes. She'd never dared wear it before, not when the mere slide of fabric could make her shudder like this. Now, with the Dust humming under her sternum, she welcomed each whisper of silk against her nipples, each breeze teasing the robe's hem higher.
The figurines lay where she'd dropped them earlier. Tilion's and Arien's pleading to be delivered to their new owner. Dust-induced clarity burned through her veins: this wasn't just wood. It was a confession shaped by three centuries of stolen glances and sanded-smooth yearning. She clutched them tight enough to feel the grain bite into her palm.
Her feet crunched over seashell shards scattered like stars along the path. The robe slid against her skin with every step, the silk whispering against her bare thighs in time with her pulse. Each shift of fabric sent tendrils of sensation curling up her spine, the alpaca lining like tongues of flame licking her shoulder blades. She clutched the figurines tighter, their edges imprinting crescents into her flesh. Proof she wasn't dreaming. The Dust painted the world in hyperreal clarity—the salt-sting of sea air, the callused press of wood grain, the molten gold pooling between her ribs.
She paused at the edge of the same clearing she had fled from just an hour ago. Mandla was alone, eating a slice of starfruit. Roasted fish scales glittered like black pearls where they'd fallen beside his bowl. Nuvua's breath snagged. He wore nothing but low-slung linen trousers, his torso a topography of muscle carved by centuries of labor. Sweat jeweled the hollow beneath his collarbones, the same hollow her charcoal had worshiped moments ago. She resisted the urge to lick her lips.
The robe slipped as she adjusted it, silk pooling off one shoulder to reveal the swell of her breast. Too-small breasts, she thought bitterly, not like Maeve's glorious handfuls that swayed hypnotically when she danced, nor Lialani's high, regal curves that made men forget their own names, or even the twins' high, firm, and noticeably round bosoms. The Dust twisted her insecurity into physical sensation, a phantom weight tugging at her chest, an imagined whisper of fabric where there was none. She swallowed hard. The figurines in her hands pulsed with warmth.
Mandla's eyebrows lifted when she stepped into the clearing. Not the startled jerk of surprise, but the slow, deliberate ascent of a man recalibrating reality. His gaze tracked the sway of her robe's hem where it flirted with her thighs—once, twice—before snapping up to her face. "Nuvua." Her name sounded different in his mouth tonight, rounded at the edges like a river stone smoothed by centuries of water. "You're," His nostrils flared. "Dressed."
"May I sit?" The words tumbled out half-brave, half-plea. She held up the twin figurines like a shield, their polished surfaces catching the firelight. "I ... have something for you."
Mandla's smile unfolded slowly, like ice breaking underfoot. He set down the starfruit with ceremonial care. "Since the first steam engine hissed to life," he murmured, "I've waited for you to approach me like this." His fingers grazed hers as he took the carvings, turning them over in palms still dusted with sea salt. The roughness of his calluses snagged on the wood grain she'd sanded to liquid smoothness.
The figurines looked small in Mandla's strong hands. "These are exquisite. True artwork. They will stand proudly on my shelves."
Nuvua's fingers twitched toward her collarbone, where three freckles formed a constellation only she knew mirrored Mandla's arrow scar. "I ... I'm glad you like them," she whispered. The admission felt like pulling a fishhook from her tongue. She stood abruptly, silk hissing against her thighs. "I should ..."
Mandla placed a worn hand gently on hers. The disparity in size, his large, hers small, was striking. "Stay." Not a request. A bass command that vibrated through her sternum like a drumhead struck deep in the jungle. His fingers flexed around her carving, her confession in wood, thumb stroking the precise whorls she'd carved to mimic his fingerprints. "Unless this is a farewell gift?"
Nuvua's knees locked. The syllables dragged claws down her spine. Her robe clung to sweat, slicked skin as she turned. "I," The figurine in his grip caught firelight exactly as she'd imagined during three hundred winters of carving. "You know it's not."
Mandla rose with the fluidity of glacial movement—every tendon shifting under skin like tectonic plates realigning. Firelight gilded the scar bisecting his ribs, the one she'd traced nightly in her sketches. His linen trousers hung low enough to reveal the V she'd only dared sculpt from whispered descriptions. When his thigh brushed hers, the contact seared through silk hotter than forge coals.
His fingers found her jawline with archaeological precision, tilting her face up to meet his gaze, tucking a stray lock behind her ear, his fingertips lingering on the shell-shaped cartilage she'd once rendered in watercolor. "Little artist," he murmured against her lips, "what took you so long?" The kiss burned colder than Arctic dawn: a slow conflagration of starved centuries catching flame. His mouth moved with the same deliberate patience he applied to war strategy: testing, retreating, conquering in increments that left her breathless.
Mandla picked her up like a giant picking up a rag doll. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and her head buried against his chest. Their entwined shadows stretched across the driftwood floor as he carried her to the cabin door. Every step unraveled another thread of Nuvua's restraint. He laid her gently on his bed. When her calves hit the mattress edge, Mandla sank to his knees with earth-shaking grace. His exhale ghosted across her trembling belly as he untied the robe's sash. The silk parted like ice breaking under spring's first kiss.
The mattress accepted their weight with a sigh. Mandla rolled her beneath him with the same care given to precious artifacts, one hand cradling her skull, the other mapping the dip of her waist she'd always deemed too sharp. Their kisses were passionate and heated. Mandla traced his tongue along her collarbone, then lower to the hollow between her breasts. "Here," he growled against her sternum, "is where you hid your hunger." His knee pressed between hers, rough-woven linen dragging against bare inner thighs until she whimpered into his mouth.
Firelight painted their bodies in alternating bands of gold and shadow, his shoulders eclipsing the lantern's glow, her arched throat catching amber like spilled honey. When his fingers finally found the heat she'd only ever expressed through stolen sketches, Nuvua's back bowed off the mattress with a cry that startled nightjars from the canopy. Mandla swallowed the sound with another kiss. "Now," he murmured against her panting lips, "show me how deep your artistry goes."
Silk pooled around her waist like melted ice as she surged upward, all the centuries of pent-up need. Her teeth found Mandla's lower lip in a bite that drew blood and a ragged groan in equal measure. She rises herself from the bed, and the robe slithers free. Moonlight through the thatched roof dappled her bared skin with silver, illuminating the constellation of freckles Mandla's mouth was already charting. She gasped when his thumbs brushed her nipples, the same light touch she'd seen him use to polish raw gemstones, and realized with dizzying clarity that he was treating her body like another of his precious materials.
She laid a small hand on his chest and directed him to lie on the bed. Her tongue crawled up his body as she moved to straddle him. Their hip bones ground together as she rocked against him, linen trousers the last barrier between skin seared by three hundred years of mutual hesitation. When she leaned down to trace his arrow scar with her tongue, his hips bucked upward with enough force to send one of the figurines clattering to the floor. The sound barely registered over the roar of blood in her ears, the drumming of her pulse where his teeth now grazed her collarbone. His growl vibrated through her sternum.
Nuvua's answering whimper dissolved into the salt-sting of his skin as she pressed her naked body flush against his. Every nerve ending screamed at the contact: the abrasive drag of his chest hair against her breasts, the slick heat where their stomachs slid together, the unbearable pressure of his erection straining against damp linen. Her fingers were so precise with chisels and charcoal. She stood and fumbled blindly at his belt until Mandla caught her wrists again. "Slow," he warned through gritted teeth, even as his own hips jerked involuntarily. "Unless you want this to end with me spilling like a boy who's never ..." Her nails raking down his chest cut the sentence short.
Nuvua ripped his linen pants open. Not the delicate parting she'd imagined during feverish sketching sessions, but the visceral rip of fabric surrendering to impatient hands. Mandla's cock sprang free, thicker, darker, more brutally veined than any graphite rendering could capture. Nuvua's eyes were wide open as she stared at Mandla's manhood. "Alianait!" she whispered, falling back to her native language as she recalled her sketch and realized she had far underestimated the reality.
Nuvua tentatively slid one small finger down Mandla's erect shaft. A drop of precum glistened at the tip, catching firelight like liquid amber. The scent of him—musky, salt-edged, male—flooded her nostrils and pooled molten between her legs.
Mandla exhaled sharply through his nose when her fingers brushed his length. "Careful, little artist," he growled, but didn't stop her exploratory touch. His hips jerked as she traced a prominent vein with her thumbnail—the same one she'd drawn curving proudly along the underside. Reality proved hotter, harder, and more alive than parchment could convey. When her thumb swiped over the leaking crown, Mandla's entire body locked. His biceps trembled against her ribs, sweat dripping from his jaw onto her peaked nipples.
"Look at you," he ground out, watching her smear his wetness in slow circles. "Taking measurements for your next carving?" His jest dissolved into a groan when she squeezed experimentally. Her lust sang in her veins—not just emboldening her hands, but sharpening every sensation until even the air between them felt charged. She twisted her wrist the way she'd seen him polish jade, earning a curse that vibrated through her pelvis.
His fingers tangled in her hair as he hauled her up for another bruising kiss. "Enough," he panted against her lips. When she whimpered in protest, he nipped her lower lip. "Unless you want me to disgrace myself before tasting you properly." He pulled her onto the cot, and his palm slid down her torso, pausing to thumb her nipples before continuing southward. Fire followed his touch, leaving her skin oversensitized and trembling.
Kneeling on the floor, Mandla gently spread Nuvua's legs. The first brush of his tongue between her thighs drew a sound from her throat she didn't recognize—something raw and ancient and thoroughly ruined. Mandla's answering chuckle gusted across wet flesh before his mouth sealed over her, sucking with the same focused intensity he applied to battlefield strategy. Nuvua's vision whited out. Some distant part of her noted that his nose pressed exactly where she'd once sketched an arrow's fletching against her pelvis, another subconscious prophecy carved into existence.
His fingers joined the assault, spreading her wider than she'd ever dared depict in charcoal. The rough pads of his fingertips circling her entrance, the scrape of his teeth against inner flesh, the obscene squelch as two fingers breached her without preamble. She arched violently when his thumb found her clit, her heels digging into his shoulder blades hard enough to bruise. His fingers crooked sharply, dragging a scream from her lungs as they brushed something deep and electric.
When she came, it wasn't the graceful unraveling she'd imagined masturbating during those lonely Arctic nights; it was a seizure of limbs, a sob ripped from her chest, her nails carving crescent moons into his scalp. Mandla rode it out with ruthless patience, drinking her down like a man starved, his free hand pinning her hips to the mattress as she bucked. Only when her whimpers tapered off did he withdraw, wiping his glistening chin on her inner thigh. "First proof," he declared hoarsely, surveying her wrecked body with the same calculating gaze he used to assess supply routes. "Now for the final draft."
He lifted her effortlessly, flipping her onto her hands and knees with a single smooth motion. The position bared her completely, the sweat-slick dip of her spine, the swollen pink of her rear, the glistening evidence of his earlier attentions. Mandla placed his palm gently between her shoulder blades and flattened her chest to the mattress. His other hand gripped her hip hard enough to leave fingerprints as he positioned himself at her entrance. No teasing now, just the blunt, unyielding pressure of him notching against her. Nuvua's breath hitched. Some primal instinct recognized this as irrevocable. Her fingers scrabbled for purchase on the sheets as Mandla leaned over her back, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. "Breathe, little artist," he murmured, right before thrusting home.
The stretch burned. Not the gentle yielding she'd imagined while carving the figurines, but the visceral tear of flesh accommodating something fundamentally too large. Her choked gasp dissolved into a moan when his hand slid around to press against her lower belly, as if confirming the impossible depth of their connection. Mandla stilled, his whole body trembling with restraint. Sweat dripped from his chin onto the dimples of her back. "Look," he growled, forcing her head up with fingers tangled in her braids. The wall before them reflected their joined bodies in polished obsidian, her smaller frame bowed beneath his, their skin gleaming gold and bronze in the firelight. The sight punched through her: this was her centuries of yearning made flesh.
Mandla withdrew almost completely before slamming back in with enough force to make her cry out. The second thrust came faster, then the third, until he settled into a punishing rhythm that rocked the driftwood platform. Each snap of his hips jolted her forward, her nipples dragging against silk with delicious friction. His fingers found her clit again, callouses catching on oversensitive flesh as he matched his strokes to his thrusts. Nuvua's vision fractured, every nerve ending alight with the dual assault of him filling her and rubbing her raw. Somewhere beneath the pleasure-pain, she registered the slap of skin, the creak of wood, the animal grunts Mandla couldn't suppress.
His pace faltered when her inner muscles clenched around him. "Hlase!" His Zulu curse ended in a groan as his fingers dug bruises into her hips. The mirror showed his face contorted in pleasure, eyes screwed shut as he fought to prolong the inevitable. Nuvua reached behind herself blindly, her fingers finding his balls and squeezing in silent command. Mandla's control was shattered. His final thrusts came rough and uneven, his release hitting her depths with enough force to make her sob. She followed him over seconds later, her orgasm ripping through her like a sheet of ice giving way beneath spring's first heat.
Collapse came not with dramatics, but in quiet increments: Mandla's hands loosening from their vice grip; Nuvua's legs collapsing as she fell onto the sheets. Sweat cooled on their skin in the night's breeze, sending chills down her spine. Mandla slid down onto his backbeside her. He reached his arm under her as she rolled into his arms. She placed a gentle kiss on his lips and rested her head on his chest.
His breath deepened first, the measured rhythm of a soldier trained to snatch rest wherever possible, but Nuvua fought sleep a moment longer. Her fingers still trembled when she laced them with his. Proof lingered everywhere: in the dull ache between her thighs, the salty tang of him still on her tongue, the way his pulse jumped when she pressed closer.
As the dawn blossomed, Nuvua woke. She slipped from bed with practiced quiet, an artisan's precision applied to stealth. Dawn painted Mandla in molten gold, catching the scar along his collarbone that she once sketched. The figurines lay where they'd fallen, Tilion's and Arien on their side, facing each other as if in an immortal love embrace. Nuvua hesitated and looked back at Mandla. Reality had outstripped art last night, his sweat-damp back arching beneath her nails, the hoarse Zulu endearments she'd never dared sketch, yet here sat her winter ghosts, frozen mid-gesture.
Her body ached deliciously as she gathered her sandals and scattered silk. The robe clung damply across her shoulders. Outside, birds orchestrated their morning cacophony as she stepped into boots still crusted with sand from yesterday's panic. The cabin door groaned, just once, when she eased it shut behind her.
Dew jeweled the ferns brushing against her ankles. Each step sent new awareness pulsing through muscle groups she hadn't known could feel this alive. She walked lightly through the jungle. Humming that same Inuit tune she hummed the previous evening. She did not notice her hut as she passed and only stopped when the scent of roasted breadfruit and vanilla wrapped around her. She looked up and there, on their veranda, sat Pete and Nadine sharing a steaming gourd between weathered hands. Nadine's silver braid caught the sun like glacier melt.
Nuvua's bare feet left prints in the damp earth as she sprinted toward them. Pete barely had time to set down his drink before she collided into them both, her arms circling broad shoulders and yielding curves simultaneously. The massage oil scent clinging to their skin, sandalwood and something alpine, flooded her nose as she buried her face between them. Nadine's chuckle vibrated against her temple. "Well now," Pete rumbled, his calloused palm cradling the back of her head, "someone's positively incandescent this morning."
She pulled back just enough to see their twin expressions; Pete's crow's feet deepened with amusement, and Nadine's gaze flickered to the love bites peeking above Nuvua's collar. Heat bloomed across her chest. "It was ... more than I dreamed," she admitted, fingers fluttering to cover the marks before abandoning the gesture entirely.
Pete's laughter rumbled like distant thunder as he pressed a kiss to her temple. "Sugar always did make you sweethearts bold."
Nuvua blinked, her fingers still tangled in Nadine's shawl. The confession settled between them—not with the weight of deception, but with the buoyancy of revelation. Nadine admitted that the powder had been nothing but finely milled cane sugar, spiced with cinnamon to mimic a magical scent. She touched her lips, remembering how the granules had dissolved instantly on her tongue, sweetness without substance, courage without a chemical crutch.
Pete lifted his cup, grinning at her stunned silence. "Told you our girl had fire in her belly," he murmured to Nadine, who was already pouring a fresh cup of ginger tea. The steam curled around Nuvua's face as Nadine pressed the clay cup into her hands, warmth seeping into fingers that had traced every ridge of Mandla's scars last night.
"It wasn't the Dust, my dear." Nadine's thumb brushed the same wayward lock to bind her ear. "Just permission to unfurl." The older woman's gaze dropped pointedly to the crescent moon bites visible above Nuvua's sarong. "Though I see you took that permission rather ... thoroughly."
Sand shifted underfoot as Nuvua swayed, the memory of Mandla's teeth sinking into her inner thigh flashing hot behind her eyelids. Pete's chuckle snapped her back to the present as he plucked a crushed hibiscus blossom from her tangled hair. "Sugar didn't make the fire, little one. You did." He twirled the flower between thick fingers before tucking it behind her ear. "Turns out had it in you all along. Just needed a little encouragement."
Nuvua inhaled sharply, the scent of Mandla's skin still clinging to her wrists. In stunned excitement, Nuvua cried, "Well fuck me," dropped the cup, and bolted back down the path to Mandla's cabin, stopping only pick up a fallen branch of teak wood.
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