ruled

enthusiasm. Not that I didn't enjoy that more than anything I've ever done before in my life."
The smile remained, but her gaze became solemn again. "Come back to me, Patrick. Please."
There was no sensible answer to that. Driscol would survive the coming battle, or he wouldn't—and very little that he did would have much effect on the matter. Battles were chaos incarnate, ruled by whimsical gods who struck down whomever they wished.
But he was pretty sure Tiana understood that. The plea was just her way of expressing her own love.
He slid out of her, finally. Half regretting the softness, and half cherishing the prosaic intimacy of the moment. If he survived the next few days, there'd be many such moments in the future.
Tiana, obviously, shared his sentiments. "Next time—and all the times after that—let's get all our clothes off first." A long, bare leg stroked down his own, twitching a bit once it got past the knee. "Wool's itchy. And I'm not too fond of all those buttons and hooks on your tunic, either."
He hadn't had time to remove the coat, beyond pushing it up and out of the way. It did, indeed, have a multitude of buttons— purely