Nicu veered in every direction, his eyes clinging to each majestic sight. Because Briar taught her son to ride well, he clasped the reins with ease, his attention spirited away by the speckled fawns leaping across a glen belted in mist, their spindle legs kicking up leaves.
It required diligent effort to keep the lad seated. Were my liege to dismount and sprint into the forest, he would fail to perceive the distance expanding between us. Indeed, one nerve-wracking time, he did hop off the palfrey and raced to greet a pack of squirrels, prompting Aspen and me to retrieve him. In short, I had suffered multiple heart attacks since our departure.
The Royal Son had no technical idea how extensively he traveled from his family. Otherwise, this journey would have afflicted Nicu’s sensitive conscience. No one on this pure earth was kinder or more empathetic than he. Unfortunately, explaining the logistics would only get us so far, and the scale of this odyssey would not hold for long before my liege forgot the impact.
As dusk became afternoon, my concentration fluctuated between Nicu’s trajectory behind us and Aspen’s ass bouncing between my thighs. Withholding several jagged noises, I shifted to prevent her buttocks from chafing my cock.
“We should seek a place to rest.” I contemplated the wind’s direction. “No one shall disturb us tonight.”
“You know, in all these years you’ve never given a name for that trick,” Aspen prompted. “Ready to confess you’re a visionary?”
I pursed my lips. “Seers do not walk this earth.”
“Only because they went extinct along with the faeries, giants, and merfolk.”
“Nor am I a fae.”
“I know,” she mock-sighed. “It’s depressing, isn’t it?”
Wholly out of character, my stallion made a puffing noise of amusement. Evidently, he’d decided to be magnanimous, leave the palfrey alone, and pick on his commander instead. Switching allegiances to Aspen, it appeared he found this exchange uproarious.
Grimacing, I steered the courser through a winding brook.
I would not take the bait. I would not engage. I would not—
“In any case, none of that means those mystic beings didn’t fuck humans,” Aspen continued, “which tends to produce ancestors.”
My posture straightened. Her astute observation had been voiced before by many. Winter scholars theorized the same hypotheses, arguing that such traits skipped numerous generations, if they didn’t fade entirely.
Until now, I never cared to address it. Yet Aspen’s curiosity roused a dormant place in my mind. Very well, Iwanted to indulge the female, as much as I wanted to ask her questions of my own.
“There was a woman in my lineage,” I confided. “A sylph who read signals in the wind. I’m the only one in my bloodline who inherited this ability, but there’s a distinction between that and clairvoyance.”
Aspen uttered a sound of surprise. “You’ve never told the clan.”
“No,” I murmured against her crown. “I have not.”
She endeavored to conceal a shiver. We fell quiet, processing the confession. Every dip and rise of the terrain thrust our bodies against one another. Her spine dragged against my pectorals, her tailbone caressed my abdomen, and the crescents of her breasts skated over my biceps. Heat coursed to my sac. Another mile of this, and my dick would require a girdle to keep from rising.
As I drove the stallion along more suitable turf, my riding companion took pity, scooting her curves nearer to the pommel. “So… um, nice weather, yeah?”
As long as a storm didn’t produce a mudslide, I did not give a shit about the weather. To illustrate that point, I made a noncommittal sound. Most would take brevity as a request for peace and quiet, whereas this female translated my withdrawal as an opportunity for harassment.
“Oh come on,” she baited. “Work with me, Aire.”
“I have no use for chitchat,” I declared. “And neither do you.”
“Fine, but either we pipe down and let the awkwardness of our kiss get in the way, or something’s got to give.”
“Not for a second do I believe you have the slightest interest in waxing poetic about the ambience. You are not that kind of woman.”
“Hey, now,” she chided. “I fancy a good setting.”
“Only if it includes a furnace and tools to forge a deadly object.”
Now it was her turn to grunt in acknowledgement. Triumphant, I hid my smirk. This female had a talent for provoking my competitive side.
“Sure, but it’s different out here,” she admitted, marveling at a toadstool grove where the caps had darkened to a fatal ruby shade. “We’re miles from civilization, surrounded by mushrooms that spark the good kind of mind trips for free, and—”
