He’d get better at it. For her.
“I didn’t plan to do it like this,” he informed her seriously, still holding her.
“I don’t think people plan to get carried away, Aevrin,” she told him. “That’s sort of the point, isn’t it?” She shifted her hips back, sliding him out of her. The rush of cool air on his softening, wet cock wasn’t pleasant after her warm grip. “You don’t… do you regret it?” she asked, her voice growing nervous.
He laughed once, silently, and pulled her body tighter against him.
“I can’t regret nothing aboutyou, Cassia,” Aevrin told her roughly. “I wanted you, and I still want you, maybe even more now than before. But mostly I just don’t want to get it wrong. I shoulda done this whole thing differently. You deserved better than this.”
“I was as much a part of this as you,” Cassia reminded him, taking his hand.
“Yeah. I guess,” Aevrin said as he wove his fingers in with hers, though he wasn’t quite convinced about that. “But… what do we do now?”
For a moment she was silent, thinking, her head resting against his chest, them both still in a state of half-undress.
“Now we go back home,” Cassia said, straightening suddenly as if a thought had startled her more awake. “Because neither of us look even a bit respectable, and we’d better sneak in before the house gets any busier.”
He didn’t think Mavek or his father would be in from the fields for another hour at least, but she had a point.
It was the opposite of what he wanted, to let go of her when he needed to hold her so much longer, and maybe talk about what had happened a little more, and what it meant. But if he couldn’t give Cassia the proper experience she deserved, well, he could at least have a little mind for her dignity. And just now she looked mighty disheveled. In a delicious way that had his arousal building again, hungry to explore every inch of her. He was getting stiff again.
But if anyone saw them, it would be no great mystery what they’d been getting up to. They both reeked of sex.
“Alright,” he admitted, suddenly extremely conscious that his trousers were down around his ankles and that the window, though nobody really came by this way, was wide open and pointed at his ass. “But we are gonna talk about this tonight, aren’t we?”
She smiled, pressed a tender kiss to his muscular neck, and pushed him gently back away from her so she could set all her clothing back to rights.
Cassia
Cassiabreathedasighof relief the moment her foot hit the stairs up to the bedrooms. Prisca hadn’t poked her head out to check on them when the front door opened.
Aevrin was right behind her. She felt keenly aware of his presence, from his footsteps on the stairs to the comfortable ache between her legs and the warmth everywhere his hands had roamed. He’d been so certain, insisting he knew what he wanted. And she wanted him back so badly that it had been impossible to refuse.
She was two steps away from her door when Aevrin’s hand reached out and grazed her back, sending a line of fire straight through her. As Cassia turned he pulled her back into his arms, his hands around her hips. Her stomach fluttered. She rested her forehead against his chest, every inch of her skin wide awake and wanting.
“Hey,” he whispered, low enough nobody on the floor below would hear. “You wanna just talk now?”
“I need a shower. And I have to start cooking,” she apologized softly, unsure what the rules were of their new situation.
“I can help you cook,” he offered.
Her mind flashed back to the first terrible meal she’d had.
“Oh, that’s alright,” Cassia told him airily. “I’ve got it. You don’t mind if we talk later, do you?”
They’d made a mess together. He’d spilled himself right inside her, and the insides of her thighs were coated with it. She didn’t think they were risking a child, given the timing of her monthlies, but the memory of it made her pulse quicken, the way he’d fallen right on her. The way she’d been so swept up in Aevrin’s touch and the press of his body that logic hadn’t mattered.
She’d enjoyed it, in the moment. But it couldn’t happen again, Cassia realized. Not like that. The type of lust she felt for Aevrin was dangerous.
“Course not,” Aevrin whispered. “But… are we telling people?”
“What, that we just had…?” Cassia’s head spun. Surely he wasn’t suggesting telling his family that they’d just had sex on top of the sideboard of the old house. She knew the Rivekers were awfully close. But heavens, if they werethatclose…
Aevrin’s head jerked back. Then his shoulders trembled with a suppressed laugh. She pulled back enough to look at him, not leaving his arms.
“Saints, Cassia. I mean that we’re an item. Not the details.”
She laughed quietly too, biting her lips to keep the sound in, and rested one of her hands over Aevrin’s calloused knuckles on her hip, heart still beating fast. Could this really work? Aevrin had seemed pretty certain.
