Comfort #2
“Sorry,” he said, dropping his hand to his side.
“That’s probably the concussion talking.
” The hint of familiarity probably was, too.
He took a deep breath, organizing his muddled thoughts.
“Anyhow, I could tell something amazing was happening, and I figured it was my path to tenure. Which is my path to…everything else I’ve ever wanted in my life.
” It sounded cheap and shallow, here in the desert.
Not enough of a reason for his stubbornness, his determination to go where Mara refused to allow him.
“I see,” Mara said quietly. “Here, up.”
The sand pushed beneath Ethan just enough for Mara to remove the untied pieces of his gambeson. Before the nausea could fully set in, he was horizontal again. “Thank you,” he said when he realized what had happened.
“I suppose I understand,” Mara said as she started to untie the armored skirts at his hips. “You have ambition.”
“It’s not just that,” Ethan said, a little stung.
Yes, he had ambition, but for fuck’s sake, he was a botanist at a state university.
It wasn’t like he’d set his sights on Congress.
“I need to know what’s happening. What makes barrel cactus flowers purple and saguaro flowers pink, how science can explain it all.
To satisfy my own curiosity, if nothing else. ”
“And if science cannot explain it?”
“Then…then at least I tried.” And now that I believe in magic, maybe I won’t feel like I failed.
“Hm.” Mara sighed. “In that case, there is one thing I yet do not understand.”
“How I was planning on figuring it out?”
Mara rolled her eyes. “I do not care for your science. No, I need you to explain that.”
She pointed right at his black and red codpiece.
His penis, encouraged by the attention, tried to point right back at her, despite the athletic cup.
“It’s a codpiece,” Ethan said swiftly. “I wear it for protection.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Like a condom?”
That made Ethan laugh, which made a stab of pain go through his head, which—thankfully—made his erection deflate somewhat. “Not that kind of protection. How do you even know what a condom is?”
She waved his question away. “It seems like it would protect your chastity quite well.”
“My chast—” God, was she trying to kill him for real now?
“It’s athletic protection. Protects from cup shots and cholla alike.
A cup shot,” he hurried to explain, “is when someone aims a blow at your groin, which isn’t the most chivalrous of strikes but, you know, can be kind of funny.
As long as you’re protected. Which I clearly am.
” That had been a lot of words; they seemed to swirl around his head, dragging him back into concussionland.
She furrowed her brow. “So why is it…decorated?”
“Trust me,” he said woozily. “This was the height of fashion in the fifteenth century…ish. If anything, this is tame. The Landsknechts—now they really go all out. Slashes and puffs and…” He cleared his throat. “Anyhow.”
“Like a peacock,” Mara said, curling her lip.
“Sure.”
She cast him a mocking smirk. “So will you be unmanned if I remove it?”
“No.” If you look at me like that while you do it, definitely not. “It’s just clothing. And armor. Armored clothing.”
“A pity,” she said.
And then her hands were on the ties of his codpiece and oh shit oh shit.
He was wearing jeans underneath, sure, but they weren’t going to hide much, not sweaty and damp as they were, and he had to do something, so he sat up suddenly, welcoming the rush of queasiness that engulfed his head and his stomach and sent his libido down under a wave of dizziness.
“Lie down, fool,” Mara bit out sharply, and a wave of sand passed over Ethan’s chest and dragged him back down onto the ground.
“Don’t talk that way,” he said, half-joking, half-serious. Because damned if he didn’t find that bitchy tone hotter than Phoenix in June.
But apparently his anti-erection ploy had worked, because Mara disposed of his codpiece without comment and moved on to untying his leg and knee armor.
He still felt somewhat aroused, but without the pressure of the codpiece and its plastic groin cup, it was harder to parse whether his attraction had again taken obvious physical form, and he wasn’t in a state to look.
His head was fuzzier than ever after his hail-Mary sit-up, and he didn’t feel connected to his body. Even Mara’s touch seemed far away now.
Mara hadn’t said anything, which was a good sign.
He hadn’t entirely figured her out yet—probably wouldn’t even if he had a thousand years to do it—but surely she would have registered a complaint if she’d noticed an unseemly bulge in his jeans.
So he must have successfully quashed his body’s natural reaction.
De-rected the erection. Unstiffed the stiffie.
It said something for how his day had gone that such a tiny, pointless thing felt like a victory. Or not even a victory. A silver lining to the cloud of his defeat.
Thank god Mara hadn’t noticed.
Mara had forgotten how obvious human male arousal was. It was in a way exhilarating, to know that a man suffering grievous injuries still had the energy to find her attractive, to know that his body wanted her, however chivalrous he insisted on being. Tristan had been the same, once.
If Ethan had been anyone else—and in his right mind—she might have acknowledged his arousal, perhaps admitted her own needs, followed by a joyful, simple union of bodies. Bodies were easy, joining and parting as whims caught and passed. Bodies were simple.
Sometimes she yearned for simplicity, for the days when grief was unthinkable.
But Ethan would never be simple. Not even when he was addled by a blow to the head. And she was not simple, either. Not anymore. She could not escape the maze of her own self, her feelings, her thoughts.
And so she kept her gaze lowered, pretending not to see the way Ethan’s jeans were bulging or to hear how his breath accelerated with her every move.
Especially when she leaned forward just right.
Which she did as often as she could manage.
It was petty, stoking fires she had no intention of quenching, but she refused to feel guilty. She had earned a little petty vengeance. It was like aphids on her skin, being kind and gentle to her enemy.
Dealing a bit of frustration back helped.
“Goddammit,” he said suddenly, his voice rough and slurred.
Mara frowned down at her hands, which had been undoing yet another fastener. So many ties to untie. “What did I do?”
“Oh, no no no. Sorry. Not you.” He laughed faintly. “A couple more brain cells came back online and I remembered the last time I had a concussion. It was awful.”
“Pain generally is,” Mara replied. “Was it much worse than this?”
Ethan waved a hand in the air. “Oh, not near as bad. I didn’t even lose consciousness that time. It was, like, a baby concussion. This one’s full grown.” He chuckled. “Wow. That’s an image. The life cycle of the concussion beast. No, I remembered what happened after. The doctor’s instructions.”