Oona gave a little chuckle, and Fawn wondered how forced it was as the old woman left, the door swinging shut behind her.
Erryc separated from Fawn quickly, immediately turning to the messy table beside them, gathering up the tankards with one hand and adjusting his apron with the other.
“I don’t know why I bother procuring glasses. They keep breaking,” he sighed, scooping up an errant shard of glass and dropping it into his apron pocket. “I’m… sorry you keep getting roped into things with me.”
“It’s fine. I mean, you’re buying.”
He ran a hand through his hair, and it did that thing where it flopped back over his forehead that made little moth-wing flutters in her stomach.
“I need a few minutes to sort things out in the back before we go. I need to close down the kitchen, send the barflies home, and uh…” he said, and Fawn waved him off.
“Take your time, do what you need to. I’m always content to sit here for a while.”
He made an expression somewhere between a smile and a self-effacing grimace. “I won’t be very long.”
“I’m not timing you,” she called after him as he disappeared into the back room again. A stirring like feathers and otherfluttery things began low in her stomach, and Fawn swallowed against it. She tried to insist to herself, it wasn’t truly a date, it was just a favor between friends.
3
It had been several minutes, at this point. Nearly half an hour alone in the tavern.
She had said she would wait and she intended to, but it had never taken Erryc this long to bank the stove fire and lock up the tavern for the night before. Fawn had half a mind to get her fletching out and work a little more, splitting feathers and whittling arrow shafts. She’d already pulled her winter cloak on, layering the straps of her bag and her bow over it.
She thought she heard Erryc call her name, however faintly, from the backroom.
The tavern was empty, the fire in the hearth burning low. Her heart squeezed to imagine that he had knocked over one of his many stacks of crates, and was buried underneath it, calling for help. She hadn’t heard a crash, but Fawn crossed to the back of the counter, supposing he could need her assistance on something less dire.
The door to the backroom was just barely ajar, a thread of candlelight poking through.
She hesitated, her palm on the door. Her heart beat to remember the kiss she and Erryc had shared in there just an hour earlier, the heat it had lit under her skin. She was always willing to do any favor Erryc asked, but perhaps she had taken advantage of his predicament with Oona.
Under the slight touch she gave it, the door drifted silently on well-oiled hinges, offering a few more inches of sight.
The breath caught in her throat.
Erryc’s back was mostly to the door. Her eyes caught first on the tension in the broad expanse of his shoulders, then movement of his arm, and the slack in his belt.
Fawn stood, frozen, eyes wide. Her stomach contracted in alarm, but the rest of her body took other interest.
His breath drew ragged and heavy with each stroke, his large hand bringing his cock into view, the green of his skin flushed a deep purple at the dual-slitted tip, veins pulsing.
Fawn’s mouth went dry as she watched the way his thumb circled the head, squeezing out the already dripping seed.
He bit out a groan, body stiffening, shuddering, his head tipping back with his eyes squeezed shut, fist curled around his throbbing length as it twitched and spurted his release, one long arc of seed after another. He stroked his cock until the flow lessened, merely dripping from the tip, his shoulders relaxing.
Fawn tugged the door back to mostly closed, fleeing as silently as she could. Perhaps she’d imagined hearing her name. She had to have.
Her heart and thoughts racing, she crossed absently to the other side of the bar. He’d said he was closing down the tavern, but clearly that wasn’t what she’d seen. Alone in her own bed, she might dare to dream, to imagine his self-pleasure while indulging in her own, but this was something else entirely.
It was as much of a trespass on their friendship as the kiss had been, but how could she apologize without first telling him she had in fact witnessed his private moment?
“Ready to go?”
Fawn whirled around. Erryc. Oh gods, she wasn’t ready to face him at this moment.
He seemed perfectly normal and at ease, despite having just climaxed a few minutes ago. Perhaps she could have convinced herself it was a trick of the light, she hadn’t really witnessed that.His belt was buckled, his pants in their usual state, it could be believed.
But there was just a hint of sweat by his temple.
