32. Thirty-Two - An Afternoon Picnic
Thirty-Two - An Afternoon Picnic
Ana
I snick the lock in my shop’s front door and turn the little sign in the window to “closed”. Anyone who needs me will know I’ll be back later.
Anyone who wants to catch me before I go... I’d rather not see.
Slipping out the back door, I weave my way through the small alley behind shops and houses and slip into the woods, taking the quiet paths around town and into the Queen’s forest.
Memory and longing tug at me as I pass the fork that would lead me to the manor, but that is not where Penny asked me to meet him, and so, I force myself to follow the directed path.
He waits for me in a clearing, a bouquet of dewdrops and figspray dotted with fairy moss in his hands.
“Hello,” I say, lifting up on my toes, as he bends to meet my lips.
We linger in that kiss a little longer than we ought to.
“One would think I hadn’t seen you for days.” It’s only been a few hours. “Are you sure it isn’t some elf magic that makes me miss you when I don’t need to?”
He laughs and brushes his nose against mine. “The only magic I’ve ever used on you has been to give you pleasure. If missing me is anything like missing you... I would never use my magic to induce that kind of agony.”
“Good.” I kiss his chin and drop back onto my heels. “ Because nothing good ever comes from magic made for misery.”
He offers me the flowers. “These are for you.”
“Did you pick these on purpose?”
Dewdrop blossoms weep the morning after they are plucked, the liquid they excrete is a neutral bulking agent for a number of potions, and figspray... it’s not easy to find but once dried, it can go into a powder with arrowroot and jasper crystals to soothe hawkfly bites. I know a centaur or two who will be searching for relief come spring.
“I know they have a purpose... and if the bouquet I gave you was going to die, I figured that death ought to be useful.”
“Thank you.”
I don’t smell them. They are pretty, but not fragrant.
“Where are we going?”
“Just over here.”
He takes my hand and leads me a very short way down the path to a small patch of grass, half covered with a blanket. He holds my hand as I sit and then I lay the flowers on the grass beside me while he drops to the ground on the other side of a picnic hamper.
“This is a lovely spot.” I can see a sliver of the lake through the trees, but it’s quiet. Open and yet secluded.
It’s lovely.
He pulls out a full meal, more likely to feed six than simply two.
Penny shakes his head. “Murdoch out did herself with this.”
“Is that whole pheasant?”
“Yes.”
I chuckle as he pulls out even more and hands me a plate. “She wanted us to have options, I suppose.”
Penny looks at me as he puts a bowl of berries in front of me. “She wanted you to have options. I would have been given a sandwich and told that if I wanted a proper meal, I would have to come home to get it.”
“Surely not.” I can’t imagine her saying that.
“They like you.”
“They like you too.”
“True,” he agrees, “but they already have me.”
“So, when I agreed to let you woo me, I was agreeing to the whole house’s concentrated efforts?”
“Yes.”
I chuckle and pluck a piece of the pheasant from the plate, eating with my fingers because there is no other option.
“It’s funny…” I say, as he pours a glass of wine. “I’ve almost begun to resent the daylight.”
“That doesn’t go away. You’ll be out one random morning and suddenly wish you could show him the way that dew glistens on a particular spray of leaves…”
“It’s always a little bittersweet how things change because you love someone.”
He looks at me, green eyes searching my face. “I see the forest differently because of you.”
“Do you?”
“There is a tree about a mile that way with bark covered in dyer’s lichen from its roots all the way up to the very top branches.”
“That... sounds like a tree in need of a breather.”
“And it’s my job to make sure that tree can breathe.”
Previous lord protectors of the forest would have let that tree suffocate and die, dealing with it after the poor thing had fallen beneath the weight of the lichen and the barest breath of wind.
“Would you like me to show you how to remove it?”
“When you have the time.” He glances around us and a small smile quirks at the edge of his lips. “I would like to walk these woods with you, again, when you have time... there are so many things I see, but I have a feeling you would see more.”
I nudge his shoulder. “Are you trying to get me to do your work for you?”
He catches my hand and kisses my knuckles. “As an agent of the Queen, I am very happy to pay you for your expertise.”
“Then I suppose we’ll see when I have time.” I pop another berry into my mouth and look back the way he had originally pointed. “But the lichen comes first.”
“And you’re welcome to keep it for your potions as well.”
“Oh, that was a given.” I smile at him and take a sip of the wine he set before me.
The afternoon is cool beneath the thick boughs and as we eat, Penny tells me about his mother’s home in the Verion region, how she cultivates hanging gardens and how she loathes his father to the point that they have not been in the same province as each other for the last ninety-five years.
The sun shifts, reminding me I’ve been here far longer than I intended, but I’m not upset about it.
Penny has packed the uneaten food away and he watches me with a soft smile, leaning back against a tree trunk.
A smile that reminds me of how soft and sweet he can be.
Which reminds me how hard and voracious he can be as well.
I go to my knees and ruck my skirt up so that I can straddle his lap and settle down over him.
“I think I like pretending like I’m taller than you.”
“Do you?”
I nod and he smiles. Hands holding him upright, Penny doesn’t reach for me. He sits there, watching and waiting.
“Will Viggo be mad?”
“No.” He tips his face up to mine. “Especially if I let him suck my cock when I get home.”
He leans forward, nuzzling my breasts and tracing the line of my bodice with his tongue. “He’ll smell you on me the moment I walk through the door and I imagine I’ll be on my back in the first five minutes of getting home, whether I intend to be or not.”
“Do you want to?” I ask, slipping my fingers down his stomach and toying with the buttons that hold his pants closed.
“I’ll let you in on a secret, Ana... Viggo likes to pretend that he’s the more promiscuous of the two of us... but when it comes to the two of you... I am an insatiable slut.”
That makes me laugh and I lean forward to kiss him as his cock presses more firmly against the fabric.
“What would you say,” I ask as I slip his cock free. “If I told you that it feels... right to fuck my elf out here in his forest?”
“I’d tell you there is little I’d like better.” He lifts one hand, supporting all his weight with the other and slips his hand beneath my skirt. “I would tell you that your elf would happily fuck you in every forest in the realm.”
“We’ll get a map and start crossing them off.”
He guides himself into me and I sigh as I sink onto him. He was made to fit me. They both were.
I rock on him and his lips go to my breasts, fingers tugging at my bodice to free one nipple and then the other.
My elf licks and suckles and when he pushes me to that perfect precipice, the sharp moan sends birds flying.
His hands go to my hips, but I can’t let him do what I know we both want, so I wriggle off of him, taking hold of his cock and guiding it between my lips.
He says my name as a curse, but his fingers still twine in my hair and he guides me when my rhythm starts to falter.
His groan is low and deep and I shiver at the sound as he fills my mouth and I drink him down.
I don’t come up until I’m certain I’ve gotten all of it and when I sit back on my heels, he scowls at me.
“That is not the expression I want to see after I suck a man’s cock.”
“I would have liked,” he says, kissing me before he finishes the thought, “to come deep in your pussy, Ana. That is where our cum belongs.”
“You are not wrong, but we can’t be a mess when we get back to town,” I say, licking my lips and snatching a napkin up from the picnic hamper. “I have to go back to work, and you are supposed to be a respectable gentleman.”