Mal awoke with a start, his eyelids feeling like sandpaper across his sensitive eyes and his throat raw from the recent shedding of unaccustomed tears. The bed beneath him was covered in smooth satin, and he realized with a jolt that he was still in Inara’s shuttle. Glancing quickly over at her, sleeping peacefully beside him, he cursed silently.

The events of the previous evening spooling out into his conscious mind, he hastily got out of her bed and began to look around frantically for his clothes. He was embarrassed beyond all reason as he thought of what he’d done, of what weird perversity on his part had brought him yet again to her bed. Each time he’d succumbed to the temptation of relieving his pain inside her willing body, he’d been filled with revulsion at his own lack of control. And last night, to make matters even more twisted than they were, he thought bitterly, he had broken in her arms, weeping like a child with all the grief and guilt he’d been carrying since Miranda.

Catching sight of himself in her mirror, he was horrified by what he saw. Four days growth of beard and red-rimmed eyes stared back at him mockingly. When once he had dared to dream of having Inara, he had never imagined ever letting her see him like this, so desperate, so needy, so dishonorable. Thinking back to the way he’d been using her body, just like she was a common whore, he could have wept again at the memory. There was no way in all of the nine hells he could think to make this thing between them anything close to right.

Shoving his fists into his pockets to avoid hitting something in her shuttle and adding insult to injury by breaking something valuable, he walked toward the door as quietly as he could, hoping he would not have to face her in the light of morning. His step faltered as he passed her table. He wondered with disgust for himself if he should at least leave coin as he had on his other nights with her.

“Don’t,” she said softy, sitting up in bed and fixing him with a burning gaze. “Don’