Jayne Cobb was a man of simple pleasures: food and drink, coin to spend, a willing woman worth tupping, or a good fight, to name a few. To name a very few; he might be a man of simple pleasures, but he enjoyed life.

Jayne was also a man of simple tastes. He turned his nose up at fancy Core World cooking: a handful of victuals arranged like a flower bouquet, with a drizzle of sauce added more for color than flavor. That was nothing fit for a man to eat. He held that the best cooking he’d ever had came from his ma’s hand, and a good meal was hearty fare that filled the plate. And a good woman didn’t need to be a graduate of Companion school, with hands like birds and a body that moved like a sheet of silk in a breeze and a way of knowing what a man wanted when he didn’t know hisself; presentable, clean and willing would do right nice, thank you, so long as she had no problems with goodbyes. And his notion of a good fight was one that gave him a good workout without offering him any doubt of victory. He was particular about his weapons, but he looked on that as a workmanlike attitude, since they were the tools of his trade. As for drink, he’d try anything that didn’t make him blind. If it made somebody else blind, he might risk it.

Jayne Cobb was a man of simple pleasures and simple tastes, but he wasn’t a simple man. And he wasn’t simple-minded. So as he stirred awake in his bunk towards the end of his usual sleep shift, and he felt a weight greater than his coverlet would account for, and he opened his eyes and saw a sprawl of dark hair across his chest that could only be River Tam’s, he knew he was in rutting trouble.

He froze, and his eyes flicked to his arsenal, hung carefully on the wall beside his bed. Nothing was missing, but that just meant he wasn’t about to be killed with his own hardware. She might have brought all manner of hurtful implements with her, from one of her brother’s scalpels to that mare’s leg Zoë favored. Then he wondered if she’d need to bring anything with her at all.

I can kill you w