Chapter 6 #2
I put my hand on his waist.
It was a practical decision, a matter of safety, as the man was going to bounce off the horse if he wasn’t stabilized. If only he hadn’t chosen to wear such a ridiculous garment, I wouldn’t have had to put my hand on the bare skin of his hip.
“Mm.” Pip settled more firmly into me, which did not help at all. In fact, it made everything considerably worse.
My magic stirred. I could feel it in my chest, a low vibration that I had not invited, humming through the iron fittings on Bram’s tack. The buckles on the saddle were trembling, faintly, and if Pip noticed, he didn’t say anything.
Bram noticed. His ear flicked back, a slow, deliberate rotation that communicated, with perfect clarity that he knew what was happening.
Pip was talking again, saying something about the clouds or a type of bird he didn’t recognize. While he talked, he moved in small, constant increments: a squirm, a shift of weight, a wriggle that pressed him deeper into my lap.
I might have thought he was unaware of his effect on me if he hadn’t made a soft, breathy sound after a particularly forceful bounce. It was the sort of half-swallowed exhale that couldn’t possibly be caused by the scenery.
He was enjoying this. The bastard was enjoying grinding himself against my cock.
I tightened my grip on his waist, which was meant to hold him still and which instead slid lower, because Pip chose that moment to bounce in the saddle with a particularly enthusiastic gesture at a passing hawk.
My hand slid to his hip, and my thumb was hooked over the waistband of his ruined trousers.
The next bounce of the canter pushed my hand down another inch and I felt him.
He was hard, his cock straining against the fabric, and I wanted to chase the sensation. My palm pressed flush against the length of him for one full stride of the horse. The sound he made in response was delicious.
I pulled my hand back, because something had happened at the point of contact, a jolt through my palm that went straight to my core.
Bram’s bridle rattled, and the buckles on the saddle hummed, and I realized with a distant, horrified clarity that I was losing control of my magic because a human in tiny trousers had an erection from sitting in my lap.
I slowed Bram to a walk. For a long moment neither of us spoke. The countryside rolled past and a sheep looked up from its chewing.
“That was—” Pip started.
“We will not discuss it.”
“Your hand just—”
“I said we will not discuss it.”
“Fine. We won’t discuss it.” A pause. “But for the record, you can put your hand back on my dick whenever you want. My dick likes your hand.”
“That was not … not discussing it.”
He snickered.
“I realize that made no sense, but you understand my meaning.”
“Mm, you shouldn’t be afraid to discuss sex. It’s a natural instinct. A way to connect. A—”
“Pip,” I cautioned.
He sighed, defeated, and slumped back against my chest. I stared at the road and thought about incident reports. I mentally drafted three of them. I recited the entire Grey Guard oath of conduct in my head, which took four minutes and normally instilled a sense of duty and calm.
Thankfully, before things got even more out of hand, we arrived at the stretch of road where we had found him. I recognized the curve, the oak tree, the field of wildflowers. Pip did not.
“Was it here?” I asked.
He looked around. “Maybe? There was a tree, the fluffy kind.”
I gestured at the landscape, which contained approximately nine hundred trees.
“And grass,” he added. “I remember grass.”
“You are describing the entirety of Clovermere County.”
“It was a very specific tree. And specific grass. I had a mouthful of it.” He was craning his neck, looking in every direction, and every twist of his torso was a fresh torment. I dismounted before the situation became any more untenable.
I reached up to help Pip down. He put his hands on my shoulders, swung his leg over, and slid down the front of me.
The full length of his body slid against the full length of mine, every inch in a slow, controlled descent that hinted at his strength.
His chest dragged down my chest and his stomach slid against my stomach until his hips caught against mine.
He paused there, feet not quite touching the ground, suspended between the saddle and the earth with his body pressed against mine.
He looked up at me, his blue eyes wide and not even a little bit innocent.
“Thanks for the lift,” he said. His breath was warm against the base of my throat. “I never could have gotten off that horse without you.”
My hands were on his waist. I did not remember putting them there.
My fingers curled against the bare skin above his hips, and the vibration in my chest was no longer a hum.
It was a roar. I could feel every iron fitting on Bram’s tack singing, could feel the old horseshoes buried in the road beneath us resonating, could feel the nails in the fence post ten feet away trembling in their wood.
My magic was reaching for everything metal within a hundred feet.
I looked at his mouth. It was right there. Pink, slightly parted, the lower lip full and soft and exactly the right distance from mine for what would have been the easiest thing in the world.
Pip was very still. Waiting, with those blue eyes on mine, and I understood in that moment that if I kissed him, he would let me, and if I let go, he would smile and make a joke, and either way, something between us would change.
Bram stamped his hoof, the crack of his foot on the hard dirt of the road cutting through the moment like a stone through glass.
I set Pip on the ground and stepped back.
“We should search the area,” I said. My voice was level. Seven hundred and fifty years of training was good for something.
For a second, I was completely certain Pip was about to cry. Then the smile returned, bright and easy and utterly impenetrable.
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s look at some grass. I just need to see it up close to see if it’s the right stuff.”
We found nothing. There were no marks, no residual magic that I could feel through the iron in the soil, no scorched earth or shimmering portal or convenient glowing circle. Just a field in Clovermere, indistinguishable from every other field in Clovermere.
I watched him from a distance while pretending to examine the road.
He was picking flowers. He had arrived in this world through impossible means, survived an interrogation, been detained by a military force, and now he was standing in a field selecting wildflowers by color and weaving them into a little crown.
Bram came up behind me and pressed his nose against my shoulder, shoving me forward.
“Don’t,” I said.
He shoved me again.
“You don’t understand,” I told my horse, and went to collect the human before he wandered into the next county.
The ride back was worse. Or better. I could no longer tell the difference.
Pip sat in my lap and talked about the flowers he’d picked and the birds he’d seen and the way the light caught the hills, and his body moved against mine with every stride, and my hand stayed firmly on the reins where it belonged, and by the time the towers of Feravael came into view, I had recited the Grey Guard oath of conduct four more times and it had continued to help not at all.
When we reached the stable yard, I dismounted first. I lifted Pip down by the waist, at arm’s length, placing him on the ground with the care of someone handling an unpredictable explosive.
“Fun outing,” Pip said. He was wearing the wildflower crown, and it was difficult not to think he looked pretty. “Same time tomorrow?”
“We’ll see,” I said.
Pip grinned at me. Then he turned and walked toward the Grey Guard wing, his ruined trousers doing something unconscionable to his—
I looked away and found Bram watching me.
“Not a word,” I said.