Inara has known some devils in her time. Men who abused their power, profited off the war, had killed without remorse. She has known them in ways few others – possibly even their wives – ever had.

They are familiar to her. She knows how to talk to them, how to handle their egos, how to make them feel as though they are not the monsters others make them to be. Perhaps even the monsters they actually are, now that she knows the truth of Miranda.

Men of that ilk she understands. She knows what motivates them and what drives them. Has learned how to use that motivation and that drive to her benefit. Smile, pour tea, make graceful small talk until he is ready. And once that moment arrives, make him feel magnificent. Make him feel every bit as powerful and strong as he believes himself to be.

Even if, in fact, you spend those two minutes staring at the ceiling, thinking, “Beige. I think I shall have the ceiling painted beige.”

Inara has spent much of her professional life contemplating the color beige.

These are the devils she knows.

Malcolm Reynolds, on the other hand, while most assuredly devilish, is the sort with which she has no experience.

He has little interest in power. Wealth captures his attention only insofar as it allows him to keep flying, rather than as an end unto itself. Furthermore, he believes himself a monster when he is nothing of the kind.

The things she knows, the skills she has practiced to perfection, all are dismissed with a wave of his hand or a thinning of his lips. “Got no need for wiles and games,” he tells her.

She wonders if that is all her life has been to this point. Wiles and games. Chess moves on a board. Check and mate.

It has come to this. This place where what she has learned matters less than what she wants of him. What he wants of her.

“What do you have a need for, Mal?”

He hesitates. A lifetime of not showing his hand plays across his face.

“You, Inara. Not yer trainin' or your skills. Just you.”

Mal is most assuredly the devil she does not know.

He’s not interested in tea. Or graceful small talk. In fact, he’s rather fixated on finding a way to remove her dress. In an odd way, this amuses her; his directness about his needs. The devils she has known would never dare be so direct about their desires. Under another man’s hands and lips, that directness would be animalistic and brutish.

Under Mal’s, it is honest and raw – knowing what he wants and not being afraid to take it. There is no pretending he’s not aching with his need for her. Nor that she’s not equally hurting for the same reasons.

They fall back onto her bed together. She does not have to artfully pose while he looks his fill. There is no time for that. There is here, and there is now, and there is that thing he is doing with his tongue. Not a bit of it artful or posed.

Mal gives a groan of relief as he slides into her. Almost as if he is grateful for the moment. Grateful for the two of them being where they are at this exact instant. She is not used to men being grateful for what they have paid for.

Inara looks up over Mal’s shoulder as he begins to slowly move inside her. There is red and gold cloth draped across the grey metal ceiling of the shuttle.

Inara thinks red and gold are quite pretty colors for a ceiling.