Madeleine sat next to Hæra on the bed because her knees didn’t want to support her anymore. That was the only reason.

Their knees bumped. Their thighs almost touched. Madeleine could barely breathe.

“What do you think?” Hæra asked softly.

Madeleine looked at their touching knees, both covered in denim that might as well not exist, given how she seemed to feel the contact against her skin. The pressure was warm, firm, because she and Hæra were close together on a bed. “Um…think?”

“About the bed. Is it comfortable?” The mattress moved beneath Madeleine’s bottom as Hæra bounced on it again. Their knees bumped some more.

“It seems fine,” Madeleine said, her mouth dry. She couldn’t look up.

A pause. Then Hæra said, “What’s the matter?”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Madeleine had to do better than this. She looked up to see a frown on Hæra’s face: a look Madeleine had long since learned to recognize as one of concern.

“Nothing,” she said, her breathless tone giving the lie to that. “I guess we should get…”

“Something’s wrong,” Hæra said firmly. “Was it something I did? You have to tell me, or I won’t know.”

Those eyes missed nothing, when they cared to look. Amber-colored again, in this light. Would they be the same color in Hæra’s horse form…her real form? Madeleine still hadn’t found the courage to watch her transformation. Too much, too hard, too real.

She said slowly, “When a human invites another one into a bedroom, sits on the bed, and asks the other human to join them, that’s usually…I mean, maybe not usually, but often…”

Hæra looked uncomprehending.

“I mean, that kind of invitation is...intimate. A lot of times it means you’re asking someone to—to have sex.”

Dear God. Had those words just come out of her mouth? Madeleine rose from the bed at once, even though her knees had grown no steadier in the past minute. It was better than letting them brush up against Hæra’s.

Behind her, Hæra said quietly, “I didn’t know that.”

Madeleine’s face heated as she stared at the wall. She really was ridiculous, clutching her pearls and worrying about her virtue. “Of course not. Why would you?”

“You set boundaries with me.” Hæra’s voice was tight. “I wouldn’t ask such a thing of you, even if I…”

Madeleine couldn’t turn around. She couldn’t move, except for the hot throb of her heart in her chest. She croaked, “Even if you what?”

The bedsprings creaked. Hæra was standing up. Then her heat was behind Madeleine’s back, their bodies nearly touching, as close as they’d been in the tunnels of Skara Brae.