Mal and Inara’s courtship dance consisted of precisely three steps: one up and two back. One-two, cha cha cha. Three-four, back to start.

Repeat as necessary.

This particular dance was so familiar to Mal, he was damn near doing it in his sleep. Save for the part where in his dreams, he didn’t say something monumentally asinine involving the word “whore” and she didn’t throw teacups at his head.

As it was, they’d made some progress. Gotten as far as some pretty heavy-duty makeout sessions that, frustratingly, seemed to end at second base. So imagine his surprise when she finally made the offer, loud and clear, in terms that even got through his thick skull. He’d tried to duck and evade, but she had him pegged in her sights with a flash of what might happen in her eyes.

“My shuttle, 10 pm.”

If there was one lesson Mal had learned from his Ma, not long after the one about branding the buyer instead of the cattle, it was to never ever keep a lady waiting. If you were fool enough to do that, you deserved your fate.

Malcolm Reynolds was done playing the fool when it came to Inara. Which was what lead to him being outside her door, promptly at 10 pm. He’d even gone so far as to kipe one of the dozen roses that the doc bought for Kaylee like they was goin’ out of style. Not like Kaylee’d toss the bouquet back in the doc’s face if there were only 11 anyways.

It had taken long enough. Sweet Baby Buddha knew that for certain. And not like, in those dreams where he never said anything stupid and she never tossed crockery at him, that things didn’t get just a bit on the steamy side.

He had himself a pretty good idea of what she looked like under all that finery. Her in that filmy, see-through negligee the night she gave him a fencing lesson still stayed with him. Thong panties, as he recalled, along with an intense desire to pull them off. With his teeth.

Under almost any other circumstance, that particular desire would get saved for 3 am, in his bunk alone, when he tries to come up with a compelling