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Author's Note: Written for Hawkmoth's birthday, because one good turn deserves another.

Enumeration
by Tara O'Shea

It wasn't their first kiss.

She knew she shouldn't really count it—after all, Mal hadn't exactly been an active participant. It had been little more than an expression of profound relief that he was alive—that that pofù Saffron had merely drugged him into unconsciousness, rather than killing him outright. It had been a kiss which had made her swoon, to be sure. But for all the wrong reasons.

Neither was it their second kiss, which had been full of passion fuelled by a year of longing and desire they'd both done their best to bury and ignore until it had become impossible. He'd kissed her to shut her up—to rattle her, to stop the endless flow of words in whatever argument that had them practically screaming at one another in a deserted hallway yet again. That kiss had been violent in a way that still made Inara's heart beat faster at the memory of it. Made her flesh warm and her breath grow short as she relived how his hands had clutched at her arms, almost but not quite to the point of bruising. She couldn't remember, now, what they'd been fighting about. She just remembered the hunger. The heat that had flared between them, burning them both with its intensity. Burning the carefully erected bridges and walls.

It was not their fifth kiss, which had been a simple peck up on the catwalk before he'd gone out on a job. Jayne had asked where his kiss was and before she could even fo