Stavanger Bay she brought the sugar and the mint

Oh! I fixed it. Sorry about that ♥ I also have never had lemongrass, so that’s why Szymon can’t figure out how to describe it — mwahaha. Using my character’s ignorance to cover my own!

Gingerly, Szymon took a blade of lemongrass into his mouth as Doe had done, his tongue touching carefully the prickly plant as he worked it cautiously between his molars. The flavor was initially somewhat bitter or sour in the way that most plants seemed to be to his taste buds, primed as they were to blood and pelagic fare, but this plant was unlike anything he had ever tasted before and he found himself helpless to describe it. He didn’t quite know how long to chew it, but he watched as she unfurled a coiled ball of the stuff onto the dish and used his best judgment to create something that resembled the same texture. A low murmur of wordless pleasure slipped from his jaws as she leaned against him; bending his muzzle, he dropped the small parcel of plant material into the dish with the rest.

Then, licking his scarred lips — the flavor was refreshing, he decided, if wholly unfamiliar — he responded to her touch in the only way he could. Tremors slid down his spine and fluttered through his tail in an electrical current of twitching at the touch of her tongue upon his fur; he found himself frozen in wonder as she groomed him, not yet trusting himself to groom her back. What he did was almost involuntary as he used the close proximity she had provided to investigate the creamy fur that lined her tender throat. That she would put herself in such a vulnerable position floored him — although he had given her the same trust, he thought himself a monster. He was a Cairn, bred and raised to kill and conquer — and though his heart had never really been in it, he remained very good at what he did. The thought of his muzzle, which had bathed in the blood of Warsaw’s invaders, being so close to Doe’s precious neck was almost painful.

“Doe,” he rumbled, the one foolproof word he could produce with ease, drawing out the vowel into an appreciative hum. There was witchcraft in the touch of her tongue, in her nearness, and, by all the seven Seas, he hoped she had set a timer for the julep because he’d already forgotten about it.