Isabela smiled as a sigh escaped Aveline’s surprisingly, as she had found out earlier, soft lips when her nimble fingers danced across the freckles that dotted the warrior’s shoulders.  Watching the red-orange hair spread over her pillow in the candlelight for a moment she felt it, that familiar mix of feelings that, when she least expected it to, would occasionally strike her like a fist in her gut.  She could be watching a ship leave the harbor or see a hint of a sunset through the high buildings in the city and that mix – longing, regret, lust, jealousy – would flare up for a moment.  Giving in to the least of her current temptations she planted a quick kiss on a freckle near Aveline’s neck before covering it with her thumb, laughing as the other woman weakly batted at the pirate straddling her back.

“I told you no funny business back there.  Just do what you said you’d do and be done with it.”  

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