Noctisardor Bypass reshwe

It was one thing to openly watch someone as they metaphorically undressed by the river. It was something else entirely to meet their gaze, and hold it. 

Anselm felt a shiver rake through his fur as their eyes interlocked. There was so much communicated in Heda’s gaze, so many things he knew he needed to say and yet, couldn’t. 

That shiver ricocheted down through his body as he felt the fierce burn of her gaze. He too wondered what it meant, and recalled how she responded the first and last time he’d pressed his belly to the sharp ridges of her spine, and felt her move underneath him. In his mind’s eye he touched the flame of her fur, heard the soft gasp from her mouth as he found her — 

And perhaps if Anselm had not then remembered how furious he was with Etienne — if he had not remembered with a bitter inward laugh that this was his ‘lover’ — he might have looked away. 

Instead Anselm took one step forward, and then another — until his outrage with Etienne became an assertive arrow in which notched itself directly to Heda, the stoat left behind in the rain-trodden grass.