Jayne had never before in his misbegotten years paid much attention to women’s makeup. As long as it didn’t smell or taste weird, he really couldn’t care less either way. ‘sides, the parts of a woman that caught his attention the most rarely saw warpaint.

Until today, when he found himself in dire need of some way to cover up the giant hickey on the right side of his neck. It wouldn’t take much to suss out who had marked him, given that Kaylee was currently all addlepated for the doc, Zoe woulda belted him a good one and Inara was…well…Inara.

Which only left a bit of a crazy girl who had, the previous night, slipped into his bunk, had her way with him and left behind a sizeable present in the form of a bite mark.

Oh, he’d tried to fend her off, really he had. But a man can only fight so hard against a psychic teen-assassin spook-girl straddling him in the middle of the night. At some point, urges take over, particularly when you’ve been scurrying around in the black for the past six weeks.

Still, Jayne did not think that “She made me do it” would be a good argument against the doc’s prissy pursed lips, snide comments and sharp scalpels. Jayne had learned to ignore the first two – it was the latter one he was most afraid of.

So he turned to the one place he could to help hide the evidence. Inara surely had to keep all sorts of important secrets about her clients locked inside that pretty head of hers. So what was one more?

Inara answered his knock by barely opening the door – just enough to poke out that pretty head. Jayne stopped to consider for a moment. Her hair looked just a bit mussed, skin flushed and lips slightly swollen. Almost as if she had gotten play herself.

He shook his head to clear his guilty conscience from projecting what had happened the night before onto Inara. The odds of her having gotten some were less than his.

“Yes, Jayne, can I help you with something?”

Jayne pulled down the neck of his t-shirt just enough to show off the hickey.

“Got anything for this?”

Inara smiled.

“Well, I do have some salve, but Simon would likely…”

He cut her off.

“No, woman! I mean to cover it up. Makeup or the like.”

Inara’s smile widened.

“Wait here.”

Jayne thought it decidedly odd that she shut the door in his face at that juncture. Not like he hadn’t been in her shuttle. Huh.

She returned a minute or two later with a small silver tube and handed it to Jayne, who flushed with embarrassment.

“I dunno how…”

“Here, let me.”

She uncapped the tube and twisted one end until the concealer stick popped up.

Jayne did his damndest to hold still while she gently applied the makeup. Gorram if she didn’t smell like rutting. Which made no sense. He figgured the scent musta been still clinging to him instead.

Not that it didn’t fuel a few lusty thoughts about a threeway.

Inara stepped back to look at her handiwork. “OK, that should do. Here, you take it. You’ll need to apply it for at least the next week until that thing fades. And do watch out for River’s teeth.”

Jayne flushed even more.

“Between you and me, right?”

Inara drew a slender finger across her lips.

“My lips are sealed.”

As Jayne disappeared down the catwalk steps, Inara very gently shut the door behind him. She walked over to her dresser, sat down and pulled an identical tube of concealer out of one drawer. Glancing in the mirror at a sprawled Mal still asleep in a tangle of her satin sheets, she began to apply the makeup onto her own neck.