Damon picked up a tiny, smooth rock and flicked it at her. Her nose wrinkled as the harmless projectile bounced off her cheek, followed by a distinct narrowing of the eyes.
“You are such a child,” she said.
“You are such a child,” he repeated in a mocking tone.
She picked up the rock and flung it back at him. Damon caught it on reflex. He saw Ria trying to suppress a smile as she continued to glare at him from across the fire.
Damon pulled the cooked meat off the spit, and for a time, eating took priority over conversation. The meat had no salt or seasoning, and the bread he warmed alongside it was a bit stale, but neither of them complained. It was good food with good company. It was enough.
The snap of a branch came from within the darkness of the trees, and they went still. They came to a decision without words, carefully standing up and reaching for their weapons. Damon set the meat to one edge of the fire, not interested in burning their dinner while they investigated the threat.
It took his eyes a long span of seconds to adjust to the night, but once they had, it wasn’t hard to see what had drawn his attention. A woman stood leaning against a tree no more than fifty feet away from their campsite, and Damon recognized her from her posture even before he and Ria drew near enough to make out her features.
“Lilian,” he said. “It’s about time you showed up.”
CHAPTER 9
“Damon,” said Ria. “What in Jad’s grace is she doing here?”
“Stalking me,” he said.
Lilian let out a snort and shifted position, raising her arms above her head to hang partially from a branch. “There’s no need to be so dramatic. I’m here to help as much as I am to watch… or to stalk, if you must.”
“Your timing isn’t bad,” he said. “There is something you could help us with.”
Lilian leaned forward, letting her body language mirror her interest. Damon exchanged a look with Ria, who gave him a hesitant nod.
“I have a few questions for Wrath,” he continued. “Could you or Kastet let her know that I need a word with her?”
“You’d co-opt me as your courier?” asked Lilian. “You do realize my skillset extends far beyond the simple delivery of messages?”
“Then it shouldn’t trouble you to handle this,” he said.
Lilian took a step toward him, letting her arms slide up the length of her body. She wore a cloak that fluttered open to reveal the skintight clothing she had on underneath. Every curve, recess, and angle was accentuated in its alluring, feminine glory.
“I don’t mind helping you, Damon Al-Kendras,” said Lilian. “I can seek out Wrath and ask her to meet with you. I can even lead her back to you for the sake of expediency. The two of you could be face to face by tomorrow, perhaps.”
“How would you lead her back to us?” asked Damon. “We won’t be staying in one place.”
Lilian circled him, leaning her face in to sniff his neck. “I know your smell.”
He felt two conflicting emotions, the urge to cringe, and a hunger closer to what had possessed him to bed her during their last encounter. He didn’t let himself respond to either.
“Good,” he said. “That’s all we need as of now. Tell Kastet to look after Vel and my aesta. Ria and I won’t be back to Azurecliff for some time.”
“Oh, I’m afraid it will cost you extra if you want two messages delivered.”
“Enough of this, zanyadai!” snapped Ria. “Either speak plainly or move on!”
Damon held up a hand, signaling Ria to silence. “What is it you want, Lilian?”
“It would be more prudent for us to discuss this… in private,” she whispered. “Come with me. We might be talking for a while. You should tell your sister not to wait up.”
Lilian pulled Damon into an embrace from the side. She turned her head sideways, somehow managing to seem as though she was both searching for a kiss and chastely holding her lips back. Her body felt hot, and it was as though the layers of clothing between them were nonexistent.
“I need to speak with you!” snapped Ria. She grabbed his shoulder and tried to yank him away from Lilian.
“After,” he said.
“Perhaps in the morning?” said Lilian. “Fear not. I’ll return him to you in one piece.”
“Get away from him!” snapped Ria. “You have overstayed your welcome.”
Lilian sighed and reluctantly stepped back. She ran her hand down Damon’s chest and across his stomach, letting her fingers draw a suggestive line across his waist before breaking contact.
Ria didn’t let go of him, not even as Lilian disappeared into the night, and not even as she led Damon into her tiny tent next to the fire.
“Were you being serious?” she asked. “Would you truly have gone with her, young Damon? To have her feed off you and… use you to her own ends?”
“She can’t feed off me anymore, not if I don’t want her to,” he said. “My blood is too cold for her.”
“You seemed willing enough a few minutes ago,” she pointed out. “Are you really lacking in sense to such a degree that you would play her game?”
“We’re all playing someone’s game. I’m going to hear her out.”
He made to slip out through the tent flap. Ria growled and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him down onto her bedroll. Damon suppressed a chuckle at how similar his current situation was to when he and Lilian had wrestled in his tent a few nights earlier.
“It’s going to take more than an aggressive hug to keep me in this tent, Ria,” he said.
“You are such a pain!” she said. “I will sit on you and hold you down if I have to.”
She pushed him hard in the chest, dropping him flat onto his back, and then dropped her butt onto his crotch. Damon bucked his hips a few times, making her work to straddle him and keep herself in place. He started running his hands up her body, caressing along her sides before outright groping her breasts.
“Mmm… I’ve missed these.” He gave them an obvious squeeze.
“Mind your hands!” she hissed.
He gave each of her nipples a small caress with his index fingers before slowly sliding his hands elsewhere. He didn’t push his luck. He didn’t need to. It was enough to have her as close as this after the distance she’d kept the past few days.
“I could knock you off if I wanted to and still catch up to Lilian,” he said.
“Try it and see what happens.”
He was glad his grin was hidden by the darkness of the tent as he made an exaggerated attempt at rolling sideways. Ria pinned his shoulders, plopping her crotch down on his stomach and squeezing her glorious thighs inward. She had such thick, strong legs.
“True Divine,” he muttered. “Remember when we used to spar with one another, Ria?”
“This is not a joke or a game!”
“Neither was our training,” he said. “Remember how I used to put you through your paces?”
“I won as often as you did, if not more.” She leaned forward, getting in his face. “I know what you are doing.”
“Tell me,” he whispered, lifting his head upward.
“You are so immature. You never grew beyond your fifteenth year, always thinking with your… your…”
Damon flexed a certain, rapidly stiffening part of his body. His cock found the cleft of her buttocks and briefly nestled there, until Ria let out an annoyed gasp and slid farther forward.
“My most humble apologies, mighty queen Ria!” he said. “You’re so right! I’m just a horny little boy! It was me, all this time. You’ve always been an innocent Remenai maiden, beset by lewd harassment.”
“Enough with your mocking!” She pressed down on him, trying to go for a more aggressive pin as though it might leave him chastened.
Damon leaned backward, rocking them both off balance. They fell into the side of the tent’s canvas. Ria twisted, body undulating against his as she fought to maintain control. He gripped her shoulder and pulled her closer, s
tealing a quick kiss which reverberated through the moment like a well-struck bell.
She let out a huff as their kiss broke and pushed him flat. “You are impossible.”
“You can always give up if I’m too much for you to handle.”
Ria made a noise bordering on a snarl and fell forward against him, using her chest to pin him in a manner that was an incredible turn-on for Damon, if not an effective tactic. He started kissing her neck and letting his hands run over her butt, caressing soft flesh, fingers sneaking into the waistband of her leggings.
She didn’t stop him. The time for words seemed to be coming to an end as their lips met again. She seemed to spend her aggression on the kiss, sucking and biting at his lip. Damon got a hand into her pants and let his fingers trace across the slit of her womanhood, drawing a shudder out of her.
She started to pull at his shirt, lifting it up and over his head. He was tempted, briefly, to tease her about wanting sex as badly as he did. The idea faded into the background as they continued to kiss and undress one another, pretenses forgotten, boundaries demolished.
They were in a tent in the middle of the woods, horny and slightly irritated with one another. It was complicated, and simple. It was hard, in Damon’s case, achingly so, but it was easy, inevitable, even.
The movements flowed together as their clothes came off. Ria surprised him with aggressive movements, still seeking supremacy regardless of the nature of what they were doing. She straddled him and Damon found that all he could do, that all he wanted to do, was watch.
Neither of them said anything, but Ria glared while he smiled. She gently rocked forward and back against his cock, pinning it against Damon’s body rather than having it seek a tighter target. He reached his arms up, not to flip her underneath him or play with her breasts, but to pull her into a simple, naked hug.
He held her against him like that for what felt like an eternity, but could only have been a dozen seconds at most. Then he shifted his hips upward, searching through her thighs and letting his shaft eventually prod into her wonderful warmth.
She shivered atop him as he sank his cock into her womanhood. For good reason – it was cold outside. The pleasure of being inside Ria again was entirely secondary to the fact of it, the proof of their relationship. It made so much of what Damon felt on the inside—emotions for which the world always seemed ready to shame him—feel valid and sacred.
“Damon,” she whispered. Her forehead bumped against his, and he gave her a clumsy kiss in the dark. The fire outside was down to its embers, but it hardly mattered.
They began moving together in perfect, illicit harmony. Ria rose to straddle him properly, undulating with movements that sent tiny bursts of pleasure through Damon’s hard cock. He ran his hands up her body, cupping her breasts, letting them fall, watching them jiggle, silhouetted by the night.
Ria sped up, shifting from rocking and teasing her crotch against his to bouncing with girlish little movements. She had such grace and control over the way she did it that it would have seemed elegant if not for the horny little noises which continuously escaped her lips.
Damon was just as horny as she was, letting his fingers dig into her buttocks, taking a grip and making as though to guide her. She was strong, however, and made it clear from the way she pressed her hands down on his chest that the only way he would be allowed to lead was if he got on top.
He was about to do just that, or at least make an attempt at it, when Ria sped her pace up. She leaned forward again, falling into his embrace. Damon squeezed his arms around her and let his body flow with hers. He heard Ria’s breath quickening, pitching upward, and couldn’t resist teasing her in the moment.
He gave her ass a squeeze, followed by a soft slap, followed by a decent one. Ria gasped and let out a warning growl. Damon took a fistful of hair and pulled, not hard, but enough to shift her head and expose her neck, on which he immediately began sucking.
“Damon!” she moaned. “…Husband!”
She let out a pleasured, squeaking noise, collapsing forward atop him. Damon held her in his arms as he continued rocking his hips, feeding his cock into her womanhood with slow, stroking pumps. It took him longer to reach his release, nearly a minute, but he reached it.
He pulled out and rolled sideways, still holding Ria in a lover’s embrace, but angling his cock to blow his seed away from her womanhood and away from the bedroll. He gasped at the familiar, insanely intense pleasure and hugged her tighter against him.
CHAPTER 10
For a while, neither Damon nor Ria said anything. They’d been here before—many, many times before. Ria had never subscribed to the innate sense of shame that Malon and Vel had always harbored. Or at least, if she had, she’d long ago decided it was secondary to her own needs and judgment.
“You are such a foolishly challenging man,” Ria finally whispered.
“Only with those who know me,” said Damon. “You know me, Ria. You must have known this would happen.”
“Who are you to tell me what I must have known?” she said, poking him in the cheek with a finger.
Damon caught her hand and kissed the back of her knuckles. “Are you alright?”
“Yes… and no.” She ran a hand through his hair, staring past his eyes, into the distance. “Words cannot capture how much you being here, husband, means to me. It lends me confidence. It frees me of anxieties that would keep me from clear thinking and smart action. But it also… Jad’s blood. It makes all of this so much more complicated.”
“Just tell me what you need from me.”
“I have already told you. The Remenai world is different. The fact that we were raised under the same aesta and yet love each other as we do can never be known by my people. I am unsure how widespread the knowledge may be. I am not even certain of my own standing, whether I am respected or reviled or nobody in particular.”
She paused and shook her head, eyes thoughtful, but clouded. Damon smoothed a few strands of hair back from her face, catching locks of silver and black between his fingers.
“If you want me to be your brother while we’re among your people, then that’s what I’ll be,” he said.
“Is that what I said I wanted?” she snapped.
“Hey, don’t get grumpy with me just because the situation is complicated.”
“I am not grumpy with you, I just…” She let out a long sigh. “Even the fact that you are a Merinian might become a snag in the brush. I know not how my people will react to one of the colonizers stepping into Yvvestrosai, even if you are traveling with me, even if you are respectful.”
“Well,” he began. “Just because you don’t know for sure doesn’t mean you need to worry about what could happen with such needless stress. We’ll figure it out.”
“We will,” she whispered. “You will need to follow my lead starting tomorrow, as there is no way to know when we will begin encountering my brethren. Young Damon… you must control your flirtation. No kissing, no open affection, not even when it seems as though we are alone. Never during the day.”
“I thought aesta had the mandate when it came to ruining my fun.”
Ria’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
“That was a joke,” he said. “I’ll be on my best behavior. I love you, Ria.”
“I love you so much. Thank you.”
He kissed her, but his own words stuck in his head, prickling his thoughts in a way he couldn’t ignore. It had been a while since he’d heard from Malon.
“Where are you going?” asked Ria as he stood up.
“To get something from my tent,” he said.
“Come back after,” she replied. “We aren’t finished… talking for tonight.”
***
After a few more hours of talking with Ria, Damon pulled on the dreamspell amulet and fell asleep entwined in her embrace. He woke up alone on Ria’s bedroll the next morning, memory absent of anything resembling a dream.
He tamped his initial impulse to wo
rry about Malon and Vel. He hadn’t been gone from the inn for long enough to forget how busy the nights could be, and how endless the work often was. She was also caring for Vel, which brought along its own special challenge.
On top of that, Malon was no doubt still processing how far they’d gone during their last encounter, on the floor of the common room, possessed by love and lust. Damon could imagine her worrying what might happen between them in a dream, perhaps to the point of only considering the possibility of using her dreamspelling if it were absolutely necessary.
He dressed and slid out from the tent. Ria had already packed his away for him, empty as it was, so he returned the favor by breaking down hers. The two of them shared a small breakfast of leftovers from the night before and then set off into the forest.
“The eastern Malagantyan is split by a range of mountains,” said Ria. “We will be traveling across steeper terrain over the coming days.”
“Sounds as though we might have to do some climbing,” said Damon.
“Let us hope not. If we are where I think we are, we should be able to transit through one of the lower passes.”
Damon nodded, following after Ria as they ducked under the stiff branches of an old oak tree. The forest on the other side was slightly thinner, and the sky above peeked through as a patch of clear blue. It was cold, and the warmth promised by the sun seemed lacking in comparison to the late season's ambient chill.
The wind was surprisingly strong, blowing against them from the front with enough force to slow their steps. Ria had her cloak on and tied the hood tighter as the gusts blew at her face, whipping against the fabric of her clothes. Her teeth chattered as she glanced over her shoulder at him, furrowing her brow.
“Are you not cold, in just that?” she asked.
The question caught Damon off guard. He wasn’t wearing his cloak, and his shirt wasn’t one of his warmer ones. He felt the chill but didn’t feel beset upon by it.
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