She gave a low laugh. “Fast, too.”
“Starts fast, ends fast. I never really saw any harm to it, as long as a man was finished before he came on watch.”
He watched her awkwardly move the plug in her lip. “My father said that men used it when they should have been sleeping instead. Then they came on watch all used up. And if they were still on it when they were working, they'd be too confident, and take unneeded risks.” Her voice trailed off. “ ‘Risk-takers endanger everyone,’ he always said.”
“Yes. I remember,” Brashen agreed gravely. “I never used cindin aboard the Vivacia, Althea. I respected your father too much.”
For a moment silence held, then she sighed. “Let's do this,” she suggested.
“Right,” he agreed. He took up the needle and thread again. She followed it with her eyes. Maybe he'd made her too alert. “There's no room in here to work,” he complained. “Here. Lie down on the bunk and turn your head. Good.” He crouched down on the floor beside the bunk. This was better, he could almost see what he was doing. He dabbed away the sluggishly welling blood and picked out a few stray hairs. “Now hold the gash shut. No, your fingers are in the way. Here. Like this.” He arranged her hands, and it was no accident that one of her wrists was mostly over her eyes. “I'll try to be quick.”
“Be careful instead,” she warned him. “And don't stitch it too tight. Just pull the edges together as evenly as you can, but not so they hump up.”
“I'll try. I've never done this before, you know. But I've watched it done more than once.”
She moved the plug of cindin in her lip, and he remembered to shift his own. He winced as it touched a sore from earlier in the evening. He saw her jaws clench and he began. He tried not to think of the pain he inflicted, only of doing a good job. He finally got the needle to pierce her scalp. He had to hold the skin firmly to her skull as he brought the tip of the curved needle up on the other side of the cut. Drawing the thread through was the worst. It made a tiny ripping noise as it slipped through, very unnerving to him. She set her teeth and shuddered to each stitch, but did not cry out.
When it was finally done, he tied the last knot and then snipped away the extra thread.
“There,” he told her, and tossed the needle aside. “Let go, now. Let me see how I did.”
She dropped her hands to the bed. Sweat misted her face. He studied the gash critically. His work was not wonderful, but it was holding the flesh closed. He nodded his satisfaction to her.
“Thanks.” She spoke softly.
“Thank you.” He finally said the words. “I owe you. But for you, I'd be in the hold of the Jolly Gal by now.” He bent his head and kissed her cheek. Then her arm came up around his neck and she turned her mouth to the kiss. He lost his balance and caught himself awkwardly with one hand on the edge of the bunk, but did not break the kiss. She tasted of the cindin they were sharing. Her hand grasped the back of his neck gently and that touch was as stimulating as the kiss. It had been so long since anyone had touched him with gentleness.
She finally broke the kiss, moving her mouth aside from his. He leaned back from her. “Well,” he said awkwardly. He took a breath. “Let's get a bandage on your head.”
She nodded at him slowly.
He took up a strip of cloth and leaned over her again. “It's the cindin, you know,” he said abruptly.
She moved it in her lip. “Probably. And I don't care if it is.” Narrow as the bunk was, she still managed to edge over in it. Invitingly. She set her hand to his side and heat seemed to radiate out from it. A shiver stood his hair up in gooseflesh. The hand urged him forward.
He made a low sound in his throat and tried one last time. “This isn't a good idea. It's not safe.”
“Nothing is,” she told him, almost sadly.
His fingers were awkward on the laces of her shirt, and even after she shrugged out of it, there was a wrapping about her chest. He unwound it to free her small breasts and kiss them. Thin, she was so thin, and she tasted of the salt water, oakum and even the oil that was their cargo. But she was warm and willing and female, and he crammed himself into the too-narrow, too-short bunk to be with her. It was likely the cindin that made her dark eyes bottomless, he tried to tell himself. Startling it was that such a sharp-tongued girl would have a mouth so soft and pliant. Even when she set her teeth to the flesh of his shoulder to still her wordless cries, the pain was sweet. “Althea,” he said softly into her hair, between the second and third times. “Althea Vestrit.” He named not just the girl but the whole realm of sensation she had wakened in him.
