Mal awoke the next morning, stiff and sore from sleeping on Inara’s shuttle floor. Peeling his tongue from the roof of his mouth, he opened his eyes and looked around. Inara was gone.

Feeling strangely bereft without the weight of her draped across his body, he got up slowly. The skin on his abdomen felt uncomfortably tight, so he rummaged around trying to find the tube of ointment that had been the catalyst for the extraordinary events of the previous evening. Mal had not intended for things to progress as they had, and he was fair certain that it had taken Inara somewhat unawares as well. He smiled, remembering some of the more impressive moments of last night’s unexpected activities.

Finding his clothes before he found the ointment, he pulled on his trousers and laid his shirt across Inara’s couch, thinking that there was no need to put it on until he’d done some doctoring to the burn. Triumphantly, he pulled the tube of medicine from between the couch cushions, where it had apparently fallen when he’d jumped away from Inara’s intoxicating touch the first time. Rubbing the gel carefully across the sensitive skin, he couldn’t help but think how much more pleasurable it had been when Inara’s soft fingertips were doing the job instead of his own calloused ones. Sighing at the sense memory, he put his shirt back on and pulled up his suspenders.

As if conjured by his musings, Inara appeared at the shuttle entrance, balancing a tray filled with breakfast items gracefully on one hip.

“Mornin’,” he said, reaching to take the tray from her hands. He couldn’t help but notice that Inara was perfectly put together, face painted and not a hair out of place. He supposed it was a sign of his peculiar brand of perversity that it should disappoint him slightly. Somehow, when he had dared to envision this moment, he had imagined waking up with her lying in his arms, hair mussed and face patterned by the wrinkles in her pillow. Warm and inviting, open as she had been last night, not this perfectly coiffed,