The afternoon sun had moved past its peak, throwing long shadows from the chimney stacks across the cobblestone.
He watched her walk ahead of him.
The commoner dress — practical, thick-woven, the dark fabric of a woman who moves through working spaces — had settled back around her with the unconscious, total comfort of clothes that have been worn to the point of being a second skin. It sank into the cleft of her ass with the particular, frank honesty of fabric that has stopped trying to pretend the body inside it isn't shaped the way it is.
Her hips.
The full, unhurried swing of them. The dress pulling with each step, releasing, pulling again. The soft, comprehensive movement of a body that has no performance in it whatsoever — that walks the way it walks because that's how it walks.
Viktor's eyes spent three seconds on it.
Then he looked at the chimney stacks.
