Chapter 128: Tamsin's Honest Anger

"I am not angry that you fucked him. I am angry that your report sounds calmer than your face."

Tamsin said it in Lina's bedroom with the forge report on the table between them and two untouched cups of tea going cold. Lina had washed before coming home. She had changed clothes. She had written the report in precise language because precision was respectful, and because if she wrote Garron's mouth made me come so hard I forgot the first three versions of my own name, she had suspected the evening would become difficult.

It had become difficult anyway.

Tamsin sat on the chair by the bed, arms folded, hair loose, mouth tight. She looked tired, not betrayed. That almost made Lina more afraid.

"The report needed to be useful."

"Useful to whom?"

"To the work."

"And to the part of you that wanted to come home tidy."

Lina did not answer quickly enough.

Tamsin accepted that with a short, assessing nod. "There. That is the bit with teeth."

Lina sat on the edge of the bed. "I did not hide the sex."

"No. You hid the pleasure under good handwriting."

The sentence embarrassed Lina more than any explicit detail could have. She looked at the report. It said orgasm achieved through oral stimulation. It said heat retained without Stone compulsion. It said no command response observed. It did not say Garron had looked at her like wanting did not require performance. It did not say she had liked the simplicity. It did not say coming under his mouth had felt different from coming under Tamsin's because it carried less history and therefore less terror.

Tamsin watched her find every missing line.

"Say it," Tamsin said. "Not to punish me. To stop making me read your omissions like a jealous accountant."

Lina had to swallow around the sudden tightness in her throat. "I liked that he wanted me plainly. I liked not being the center of his whole emotional weather. I liked that sex with him felt steady and narrow. Not small. Narrow. Like one room instead of the whole inn."

Tamsin's face shifted. Hurt, then recognition, then anger again. "Good. Horrible, but good."

"Do you want me to stop?"

"Do not make me decide future policy while I am busy being human."

"Sorry."

"Do not apologize yet. You will use it as a curtain."

Lina shut her mouth.

Tamsin stood and paced once. "I thought I would be jealous of his hands. I am, a little. I thought I would imagine his mouth on you and want to throw a chair. I do, but not enough to damage good furniture. What I did not expect was envy."

"Envy?"

"He gets a room with you where the past is not sleeping under the bed. He gets your body without every old fear arriving with luggage. That is not his fault. It is not your fault. It still makes me want to be unkind to a wall."

Lina's eyes stung. "Tamsin."

"No. Let me have the ugly sentence. We keep praising ugly honesty until it enters the room wearing clean boots, yes?"

"Yes."

Tamsin leaned against the wall. "I am angry that part of me is relieved. Relieved you had something simpler. Relieved I did not have to be every kind of wanting for you. Relieved and hurt, which is an irritating duet."

Lina took that in carefully. "I do not want simpler instead of you."

"I know. That is why I am not leaving."

"What do you need?"

"First, a better report. One for the work and one for me. The one for me does not need every thrust and swallow unless I ask, but it does need the emotional truth. Second, no more reports that hide pleasure to protect my feelings. My feelings have survived worse than nouns. Third, I get to decide later whether I want to watch next time, forbid details next time, or ask for a scene of my own with you before any next time exists."

Lina gave a small, practical nod. "Accepted. My need: I want to be allowed to have enjoyed it without that enjoyment becoming evidence against us."

Tamsin's eyes softened. "Accepted. With grumbling."

They sat in silence for a while. The room did not become sexual. That was important. Lina wanted to cross the space, kneel, put her head in Tamsin's lap, be forgiven through touch. She named the impulse.

"I want comfort through your body because words are hard."

Tamsin nodded, practical approval softening her mouth for a breath. "I want to give it and withhold it for being too easy. So we split the difference."

"How?"

"Hands. Table. No bed."

They sat at the table and held hands across the forge report. Tamsin's thumbs moved over Lina's knuckles. Not erotic enough to become repair sex and not distant enough to become punishment.

After a while, Tamsin said, "Was his steadiness perfect?"

Lina shook her head. "No. He was nervous. He asked well. He almost laughed when I told him to breathe like a person."

"That is promising."

"Why promising?"

"Perfect would scare me. Nervous I can work with."

Tamsin picked up the first report again and tapped the phrase heat retained without Stone compulsion. "This is true, but it is not enough. I need to know whether you wanted to be different with him."

Lina's fingers tightened. "Yes."

"How?"

"Less clever. Less watched by our history. I wanted to be a body he desired and a mind he respected, and not the keeper of every room we have survived."

Tamsin nodded as if each word cost her and she intended to get full value. "That hurts. It also makes sense. I do not want to be every room either."

"You are not."

"No, but I have been acting like if I held enough doors, nothing could enter without me measuring it first. That is not love. That is unpaid security work with kissing."

Lina almost smiled, then saw Tamsin's eyes and stopped. "What do we do?"

"We make categories before resentment makes them for us. Garron is not secret. Garron is not substitute. Garron is not proof that you are less tangled with me. If he becomes lover, he becomes lover under terms, not a quiet room where you go to avoid our harder rooms."

Lina felt her throat close for one betraying breath. "Accepted."

"Terms need shape," Tamsin said. "No visiting him after a fight with me unless I know the fight happened and the visit has its own reason, no making me read public reports to learn private truths, and no asking for my permission when you are really asking me to carry your guilt so you can walk lighter."

Lina winced. "I have done that?"

"You have stood near it. I am drawing the chalk line before your boots arrive."

"Fair."

"Also, if I ask not to hear details, you respect that without deciding I am fragile. If I ask to hear details, you tell them without turning them into a performance meant to prove I am still wanted. I know I am wanted. I need to know I am not being managed."

Lina breathed through the sentence. "I can do that. I will need reminding."

"I will remind you with legal clarity and unpleasant facial expressions."

"Your unpleasant face is very effective."

"It has trained for years."

Tamsin looked at the first report again. "Also, no tidy phrases like outside attachment unless we both agree the phrase earns its supper. If you mean lover, say lover. If you mean desire, say desire. If you mean you are afraid this will change how I touch you, say that, and I will answer the real fear."

"I am afraid this will change how you touch me."

"It will," Tamsin said. "Not by becoming less. By becoming more awake."

The humor helped because it did not erase the hurt. Tamsin stayed by the wall, and Lina stayed on the bed. The space between them did not have to close every time love survived a sentence.

"And I get to be angry even when I accept."

"I hear it and accept it."

"And if one day I want to watch, that is not me becoming generous for your benefit. That is my desire, if it arrives. You do not invite it before I name it."

"Accepted, with the room hearing it."

Tamsin finally smiled, tired and sharp. "You are accepting very well. It is unnerving."

"I am afraid of losing you."

"I know. Do not make fear obedient either."

Lina smiled through tears. "You are generous in strange directions."

"I am building a very complicated family against my better judgment."

There was that word again. This time they both let it stay.

Before sleep, Lina wrote the second report:

For Tamsin: I liked Garron's plain wanting. I liked one-room desire. I did not love him instead of you. I did not become safer because the sex was simpler. I became more honest because you required the truth afterward.

Tamsin read it, folded it, and put it under her pillow.

"Now," she said, "we sleep before generosity develops ambitions."

Lina got into bed beside her.

They did not touch until Tamsin reached back in the dark and found her hand.