Both hands now occupied. Gia on his lap — his left. Nara at his side — his right was managing two things simultaneously with the specific, unhurried competence of someone who was used to managing simultaneous things.
He looked across the fire.
At the three shapes visible through the trees.
The seated silhouettes of Celia and Aisha and Meijin, watching, not watching, watching again.
He could see them.
He returned his attention to the immediate.
The three women around him were making sounds that were attempting to be quiet and were not quiet. The specific, collective, barely-managed sounds of three bodies receiving things and trying to keep the sounds below a certain volume because the other camp was twenty feet away and they could be heard.
This effort was failing.
"'Your boobs,'" he said to Gia, with the specific, warm directness of a man giving a rating, "'are very soft.'"
She made a sound.
