(356 words.)
"Honestly, never?"
"No," he answers, and there's a hint of irritation in his voice that tells her she's pushed the questioning a bit too far.
It surprises her, though. Daud may not be a particularly attractive man, at least by the usual standards, but he has a way of drawing people in and commanding attention. She doesn't doubt he's had offers. She's seen strangers in the streets slow their steps and turn to watch as he passed by, even before his face was adorning every other wanted poster in the city. Billie did it herself, that first night, dropped what she was doing to trail after him across a few miles of rooftops and light posts from just a glimpse of him at his work.
And now she's here, half-undressed in his bed, watching that alluring confidence of his waver, however slightly, for the first time. It stirs something within her, low and hot, that she can't quite name.
She slips in closer to him, hands on his chest, knee between his legs, and she likes the way his own hands feel when they come to rest, after a moment of uncertainty, at the top of her hips. Strong and steady as always but slow to move, fingers tracing tentatively over lines of bone and muscle.
More than that, she realizes as she leans in even closer and presses her knee against him, watching as his eyes shut suddenly, hearing him suck in a sharp breath. She likes the whole sensation of this, the strange, half-drunk sense of power of being his first. She'll be the only one in all his years to see him like this, to know the feel of him under her hands, between her thighs, deep inside of her, to watch him come apart at her touch.
Billie has often imagined what it would be like to have Daud at her mercy, idle fantasies of standing above him with her blade in hand, the tip of it under his chin, forcing him to look up at her.
She rests her hand at his throat and thinks this might be just as good.