41. Forty-One - A Midnight Swim
Forty-One - A Midnight Swim
Viggo
Every so often, I am forced to reckon with the fact that Penny has a job that sometimes requires him to work nights.
It’s odious.
But with Ana’s arm looped in mine, it’s a little less so.
“Where are we going?” She pinches my sleeve as I lead her into the forest.
“I told you. It’s a surprise.”
“Will you at least tell me what’s in the basket?”
“Patience is a virtue.” I tell her softly and she pretends to pout.
But we don’t have far to walk. The path from the manor house to the lake winds through dense foliage and no one can see us when we finally step out onto the bank of the lake.
If anyone is on the distant shore, they’ll need magic to spot us in this little cove cut into the bank.
The water glitters black, even under the bright moonlight.
But there’s enough light to see the place set out for us.
Blicks came out to place the blanket personally.
“Oh! What a beautiful spot!” She says as I set the basket down.
“Come here,” I say.
She had started to wander toward the water, but we’ll get to that. She walks into my open arms and when I have a hold of her, I fall back onto the blanket and she comes tumbling down with me.
“Careful. Broken bones take time to mend, even with my potions.” She slings her knee over me and kisses my throat. “And I don’t want to give up any of my time with you.”
“I would wait on you hand and foot, if you needed it.” I pull her fingers to my lips and kiss their tips. “You would have more of me, not less.”
She flops onto the blanket beside me. “If I broke a bone now, my mother would use it as a fingerhold to try to turn the village against you.”
“She will come around eventually.”
Ana frowns and I don’t like it.
“I don’t think she’s going to.” Her hand slips in mine. “I don’t think she even expected me to leave home. The two of you have clearly given me a reason to start thinking about it.”
The stars glitter overhead and she smiles up at them, sighing softly.
“My father used to love stargazing.” She rolls her head to the side until it’s resting on my shoulder. “He’d bring all five of us out to the big meadow on the other side of the windmill…”
“I thought there was a swamp on the other side of the windmill?” The craggy plateau-like hill the windmill sits on makes it impossible to see what lies west of the village.
“That is several miles to the southwest.” She bats at me and I snatch her hand, kissing it once more before holding it to my chest.
“Did he teach you the constellations?”
“Not the real ones.”
I don’t have to look down to know she’s smiling. I can hear it in her voice.
“He liked to make up stories about the creatures trapped in the sky by the Goddess and no one loved them more than Mina did.” Pressing her cheek more firmly into my shoulder, she says, “I wish you could have met him.”
“Would he have liked us better than your mother does?”
“I think so. He’d definitely like Penny. He liked all elves.” She laughs, but it’s a soft sound. “Sometimes, I wonder if there was an elf in the city... If not for my mother and me waiting at home, he might never have come home from the war. He might have stayed... a knight in the Queen’s castle.
“Maybe he was in love with the Queen. Maybe the fairy tale he always told us was a dream he had for them... Is she as beautiful as everyone says she is?”
“She’s pretty… anyone who tells you differently is lying, but if you ask me who the most beautiful woman alive is, hers would not be the name I spoke. ”
She shakes her head against my arm, but she doesn’t tell me to stop being fanciful.
“Do you remember any of the constellations he taught you?”
Pointing up to the flickering cluster of stars to the left of the moon, she says, “That is the swarm… celestial bees that tried to steal the great brown bear’s cub after she ate all their honey. The Goddess froze them, eternally buzzing, and placed them in the sky as a reminder that good creatures don’t harm children.”
“That sounds better than any of the stories I was told.”
“I can’t find it anymore, but there was a giant rabbit that he said watched over us while we slept. It was the kind of constellation where I could only see it once he pointed it out to me… no matter how many times I tried.”
She sits up, eyes narrowing as she glares into the dark sky.
“Maybe it’s not there anymore,” I suggest.
Her brow is pinched when she looks back at me over her shoulder. “Where would it have gone?”
“Maybe it’s watching over him now.”
She looks at me and swallows. Her eyes shine, bright with the start of tears. “There’s a family of rabbits that live in the cemetery. Maybe the Goddess brought his rabbit protector down for him.”
I kiss her to keep her from shedding those tears.
It’s a kiss as soft as she is.
“You are trying to distract me,” she says softly against my lips.
“Is it working?”
“Yes.”
She lets me distract her for a little while longer.
“If you had told me where we were going, I could have brought a towel and we could have gone swimming.” She says with a little sigh.
“What do you think is in the basket, sweetling?”
Her eyes go wide and she smiles up at me before turning around and pulling her hair out of the way of her buttons.
She bounces a little as I get them open, sparing the threads for Loric’s sake. As soon as I have the one below her waist undone, she starts to shimmy the dress off and I let her finish by herself.
I might be fast when it comes to undressing myself, but Ana… I have just managed to get my boots off when she splashes into the water, giggling the whole way.
My cock presses against my lacings, slowing me down, but when I drop the last of my clothes on top of hers, I’m glad it gave me the chance to see her like this.
She spins in the water, her wet hair almost perfectly straight as she smiles up at the night sky.
When she catches me looking, she says, “What are you waiting for?”
I don’t have an answer… so I tromp into the water to join her.
The lake is cold, but that has never bothered me, and when I get to Ana, she’s treading water, but I can still stand. So, I sink a little lower, wrap my arms around her waist and hold her close.
“How is it possible that we haven’t gotten you in a bathtub yet?”
“Because the two of you are too exhausted to help me.” She kisses my jaw. “Yenna has been wonderfully helpful when I’ve been too exhausted to help myself.”
“She likes you. They all do.”
“Blicks offered to come work for me if the two of you do something to make me leave you.”
“Of course he did, the traitor.” But I laugh and kiss her throat and keep spinning her around the way she’d spun herself.
Arms wrapped around my neck, forehead and nose pressed to mine, she sighs. “I’m so glad I don’t have to hide you anymore.”
“You can’t get rid of me now.” I lift her up and she squeals a little as I hold her out of the water and spin her around before sinking back down below the surface.
“I don’t plan on it.”
In the silence of the night, the water makes soft sighing sounds, and I wonder how much she can see when she looks out toward the center.
“Did you know, there’s a legend that a mermaid lives in the deep parts of the lake?” She turns back to me with a mischievous smile. “So, we need to stay in the shallow ends so our toes don’t get bitten off.”
“If there was a mermaid in this lake, we would all know about it.” I hold her closer. “Creatures that old don’t care about those of us who can only live for centuries.”
Her smile falters. “What is it?”
Shaking her head, she says, “Just your sister in my head.”
I tap her forehead. “Get her out of there.”
“I’m not going to live forever, Viggo.”
I don’t want to think about that.
“Are you worried about being gray and having wrinkles?” I ask, pulling her close to nip at her ear, “because my cock is both and we all love it.”
She laughs, which was all I was hoping for.
“No… I actually kind of like the idea of baffling people who think you’re making out with a grandmother.”
“I will be making out with a grandmother… assuming you let us father your children.”
Her hand slips below the water and she strokes my cock. “I think we all know that is a matter of when, not if, anymore.”
It’s my turn to shiver when she kisses me.
When.
Not if.