He remembered then, when Mother Mariesa found him, he had only been about twenty yards away from the forest’s edge.
“You can do it,” Celeste urged, his elbow cradled between her breasts, the length of his arm pressed against her belly, and if he wiggled his fingers… “Just squeeze.”
The narrow tunnel finally let Reeve go, but momentum being what it was, the freeing was actually quite violent. Coupled with Celeste’s shoving and how she was significantly smaller, all of it added up to a rather large tumble for the both of them.
Reeve rolled so he would land on his back and caught her before she met any damage against the rocky earth. Celeste clung on, her gentle laughter threaded with apologies, though he barely registered what she was saying at all with her laid out atop him and his arms wrapped tightly around her.
He wanted to slide his hands along her body, to tangle them in her hair, to cup her backside, to pull her mouth to his, and then he remembered he very well might have already, and by gods he should really just ask her, but maybe he was a coward after all because the thought of doing any of that was terrifying.
Celeste gazed down at him, her nervous smile falling away from lips he couldn’t stop imagining the taste of. She tipped her head, the tail of her braid tickling him, and her fingers did something near his collarbone that almost made him forget where they were. Tingles bombarded his skin, and if he didn’t separate them soon, he wouldn’t have to say a word, his cock would do all the telling for him. He opened his arms and rocked onto his side, and Celeste slid to the ground with a thump.
Reeve was quick to get to his feet, then offered her a hand. He pulled her upward with so much force he almost tossed her back in the opposing direction. With a muttered apology, he turned away to survey the space they’d found and think about death and dismemberment so any evidence of his arousal would shrink away.
The cavern opened up into a chamber, rocky walls that glistened with wetness under Reeve’s spell lining either side. Before them, the wider tunnel continued to decline until it met a pool that reached across the width of the chamber. As Reeve’s ball of light hovered out over the water, it illuminated the way ahead, which narrowed again and turned, nothing more to be seen from where they stood on the underground pond’s bank.
“Can you swim?”
“I’m from Bendcrest, of course I can—oh, Celeste, really?”
“Maybe it’s not that deep.” She was slipping off her shoes and hitching her skirt before he could suggest otherwise, and then she began to wade in. “I might be wrong about the depth,” she finally said when it reached her knees and didn’t look to be stopping. “I wouldn’t normally suggest this with that cut on your arm, but the water is shockingly clear, and I bet we can at least see what’s around that bend without too much trouble.”
“I don’t like the cut of this place’s jibat all,” said Sid.
Reeve agreed with a few grunts as he took off his baldric. “You believe the nest is up ahead?”
Celeste stood calf deep in the water, silvery eyes shimmering at him in the dark with that pre-panic look he recognized from his brothers and sisters just before being struck by some evil thing’s fangs. She nodded and shrugged at the same time like she thought so but hoped not.
“Do not go on without me.” He hurried to unlace his boots.
She returned to the water’s edge and removed her satchel, then began running fingers through her braid, pulling her hair free of the ribbon. “We should probably take our outer layers off and carry them in the bag so we have something dry on the other side—if there is another side. Do you think you could dim that light a little?”
“You want to see less?” Even with his light, the cavern was made up almost entirely of creepy shadows.
She cleared her throat and bundled up her hair atop her head, retying it with the ribbon. “Well, no, but I don’t want to show much more.” She plucked at the bodice of her dress.
Reeve’s eyes widened, and then the light went out.
“We do need alittlelight.”
He cast again but turned away. So, she was still happy enough to touch him but not to get undressed in front of him, which told him…absolutely nothing about what might or might not have happened the night before.
As he pulled off his tunic, he listened to the shuffling at his back and did his best to not imagine her skirt rising over her thighs, her dress slipping off over her head, Celeste standing there naked in the low light. He tried so hard, in fact, he completely forgot he was shedding his own clothes down to just the tight and short braies he wore beneath his leather pants until he turned back.
The outline of her bare feet was right beside the satchel, but he didn’t gaze upward to see where her eyes fell. That might have told him something, but his whole body flushed too deeply for him to think properly.
Once her satchel was fully stuffed and they had both very awkwardly moved about in the dark,notlooking at what they were doing, Reeve finally retrieved Sid and stood beside Celeste, gaze still cast down. The ground was terribly uninteresting, but it would have to do. She carried the satchel, and they waded in as he continued to not think about how her skin was about to be soaking wet and slippery and she would be cold—
No,freezing.
Any fear Reeve had that his thoughts of Celeste’s nakedness would grow obvious solidified into ice and shattered as he sank slowly and painfully into the water. “How in Empyrea did you walk into this?”
Celeste made an inquisitive noise. “Oh, I’ve been in colder.” Though the light was dim, it bobbed over them both, the pale outline of her neck and shoulders bare with only the thinnest strap of lace laying against her skin.
Reeve squeezed Sid’s scabbard tighter, focusing on the weight overhead and the slight pulse of pain in his arm. Ima’riel had healed the skin nicely, but the internal ache was a good distraction, as was the rising water. Once the still surface hit him mid chest, it seemed to go no deeper.
Poor Celeste was up to her chin though, and he grabbed away the satchel as it teetered overhead in her struggling grasp. Hands laden, he was glad she was hidden underwater, but a glance downward told him it was so clear it didn’t matter.
She wasn’t naked, which he supposed he should have expected, though he had no idea what women’s underclothes were like. It occurred to him that, at his age, he really should. His eyes lingered on the thin, white-turned-translucent fabric and then darted away. “We’re not wading into Briarwyke’s drinking water, are we?”
