When they woke again, it was what passed for morning in an unbroken long run in The Black. Jayne’s sleep had remained unquiet; he couldn’t remember any of what disturbed his rest after he and Shy had fallen back to sleep, but judging by the circles under Shy’s eyes, she hadn’t fared much better.

Jayne looked her over critically. “Woman,” he finally observed, “You look like hell.” And the damned thing was, the thing Jayne couldn’t have explained even at gunpoint, the sight of her mussed hair and weary eyes still made him every bit as hard as an honest apology was.

“Feel like it, too,” she yawned, and then shoved at him with one playful arm. “You’re looking pretty slagged yourself, pirate.”

Jayne frowned down at himself. “That so?”

“It is.” She looked him up and down carefully and then met his eyes evenly. “All sorts of hunted and desperado-like, like Feds were chasing you in your sleep.” After a long look, when he said nothing at all, Shy sighed and raised her hands, began working her fingers through the tangles in her hair, setting the pictures on her skin into smooth motion; “Works for you, though,” she murmured behind her hair.

Jayne was captivated, transfixed by the sight, once again. He watched as long as he could stand it and then his fingers joined hers, working through the cool, heavy strands until her hands fell to resting on his forearms. Shy closed her eyes. “If you were thinking of doing anything else today, you ought to stop that right now.” Turning her head, she smiled against the palm of his hand.

Jayne watched that hand like it belonged to someone else, disentangling itself from her hair, sliding along the long smooth length of the line of her throat, her shoulder, her waist, over birds and stars and sailing ships and landscapes and phrases in alphabets he couldn’t read, all of them vivid shades of every color he’d ever seen or imagined. Jayne brushed his fingertips lightly over the pictures, fascinated by how some of the inks raised her skin a little--black and th