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She came home from the battlefield and took his breath away, though his expression said nothing of the relief and pride and desires he felt as he cataloged the dirty and torn state of her clothes, white uniform stained rust with mud and blood, and the unharmed perfection of her skin. He had not wanted her there, among muskets and men, breeches and bayonets, but he saw then in the excited heaving of her chest and the fervent light in her eyes that she would have been nowhere else, as she stood before him, offering her victory as his salvation.
It is humbling and horrifying how much he had not known about his Hungary until this moment, how he much he had failed to understand about the power that he had unknowingly asked her to secret away beneath her dresses and polite expressions, all those refinements that brought him such comfort. Frustrated by his own blindness and lost in the wilderness of the forest of this discovery, he no longer wanted to set his eyes upon these ravaged clothes of war nor smell horses and gunpowder in the curls of her hair, needing to have her just as she was, without the trappings of the battlefield or the parlor room. With one hand he beckoned her forward and though he knew she still thrummed with the thrill of the fight, she followed without question.
In the privacy of the bath chamber he bid her to strip, watching with hungry eyes as the warrior fell away, revealing only the expanse of her skin; still so warm and soft and supple under the scrutiny of his touch as he ran his palms from the arch of her foot to the familiar slope of her thigh. With his own two hands he pushed at buttons and pulled at laces until there was no longer anything to hold back the swell of her breasts, to contain and suppress her curves and sighs, and she was wholly naked and woman before him.
It was a sight he knew well, and he took comfort in the fact that she still thrilled to his touch, eager and wanting, but now he knew that beneath her coquettish flutterings and shivering skin lie iron and fire; an intoxicating juxtaposition of sweetness and strength, more seductive than any he had known before.
Though he was not a man that was accustomed to rote and common tasks, on that night and for such a woman, (so beautiful and dangerous in her bold bravery), he would make an exception, leading his Boudica into her bath. With sleeves rolled up to reveal the white, untested skin of his wrists, he washed her hair, dirt and destruction spilling into the water as she hummed and murmured her appreciation, staying so still and permissive, he wondered where it was in her lovely body that she kept the fires of fury she had unleashed so magnificently on an unsuspecting Prussia.
He took his time with the cloth and soap, dragging his hand beneath the water to pull out each leg and arm, sliding the fabric along the slopes and dips of her delicate and deadly limbs, washing away all that she had willingly suffered on his behalf. He flushed under her devoted gaze as he scraped away the blood that had dared to set underneath her nails, kissing each finger as it emerged clean from his attentions, grateful for the happy sounds of pleasure that fell from her lips.
And finally, when there was no more dirt to banish from her precious skin, he moved to kiss her mouth, to chase away the remnants of war with his tongue, taking her breath as his own as he pushed his hand beneath the surface of the water once more to rest between her legs. Her lips and legs parted readily under his touch and he could feel her restraint and reserve, her false submission in the eager tension of her quivering thighs and the sharpness of teeth she could not keep from scraping against his lip.
He tasted it in her kiss and felt it in the heat between her thighs; the indomitable passion that she kept hidden away behind the patently false but pretty trappings of petticoats and prim responses that he had always thought he wanted of her.
But this, this woman who cast off her dress and donned a gun for him, for his safety and security, risking her own blood and bone and come back to him more alive and alluring than he'd ever known, this was something else entirely. A new piece he needed to learn to play.
As he slid two fingers inside her, he watched as her face opened to him like a book, the lines of her body unfurling to reveal a score that told him she was both adagio and allegro; and he never again wanted to forget all her complexity.
And when she rose up on her knees, water splashing over the sides of the bath as she took her own hand to guide his wrist to where she wanted his hand to touch, he watched with rapt attention as her cheeks flushed and her chest heaved, breasts rising and falling with the directed in and out motions of his fingers, he thought her beautiful and commanding in her inability to be anything other than she was; a woman unwilling to let him flounder when she could just as easily take him by the hand and show him the way forward.
And when she sighed and shifted impatiently, hips rocking against the heel of his hand, opening her eyes to smile at him with such unquestioning love, before leaning forward to kiss him with a keening gasp, shaking and tightening around his fingers as she brought herself to glorious, gorgeous completion, he knew that in this love, just as in battle, she would forever be the composer of their song.