Chapter Seven Adela #2
Cecelia whistles low beside me. While we match skulls with novitiates for all three orders, the Order of the Huntress has more ceremonies and people than the Pupil and Spinner orders, and so they control our funds. And they’ve become stingy.
They obviously have some sort of agenda to make such a generous offer.
Extra hands, extra lodging, and extra funds will make life easier for all of us.
Especially now that we have a rogue dragon with a taste for people to worry about.
I wonder what strings come with the money, or what their plans are for Kian.
“Will you try?” Cecelia’s tone clearly says she thinks I ought to.
I stare at her, shocked that rule-abiding Cecelia is the one to encourage this. Not that there’s any sort of official rule against trying to sway the skulls. It just feels like an exercise in futility.
“If you do this, just be careful,” Dad says, always ready to protect me.
These two are cut from the same cloth. They want to protect me—and our whole community. But that means being aware of the present and looking toward the future. Something strange is happening, but also, the valley is in decline. The extra resources would be a lifeline.
I make my decision.
“I’ll try and I’ll be careful,” I say. “Not that I have any idea at all how to pull it off. But that’s a dilemma for tomorrow’s Adela.”
For now, all I want is to put aside my worries and enjoy the feast. Still sitting, I move slightly to the music while focusing on my food and, specifically, my mead. Which is why my face is basically still in my goblet after my last large gulp when I ask Cecelia, “Want to dance?”
Before she can agree or not, someone takes the goblet from me and gently places it near my plate. The sleeve of his robe falls back, revealing Huntress markings trailing up a muscular forearm. His voice is husky and laughing when he says, “I’d love to.”
Typically, I’m not much of a dancer, I have little sense of rhythm and worry too much about stomping on toes or looking awkward. With Kian, I am even more atrocious than usual. Something buzzes in my head and hands, distracting me. Him? His nearness? The mead I was just gulping down like water?
But no. I know what it is.
My wanting.
He’s not a lot taller than me, but he is broad and distractingly firm. Our bodies fit together well.
“How are you?” I ask, trying for gentle, but my voice is a bit squeaky even to my own ears.
He’s in new white robes now, clean and smelling like the lemongrass soap we make specifically for the orders.
I want to lean in closer and inhale. Instead, I lift my hand slightly from his shoulder, realizing he may be sore or wounded.
He’d been very dirty and his back had a little blood on it earlier from the trek through the valley.
“Not breakable. You can touch me,” he replies gruffly. He pauses briefly, and the corners of his lips quirk up. “In fact, I’d like it if you’d touch me.”
I relax my hand, resting it again on his shoulder, which is firm and warm. Involuntarily, I flex my fingers, gripping him slightly. His smirk deepens. “Good girl.”
Something deep in my belly—or lower—clenches. An involuntary, but not unwelcome, flush blooms across my skin.
“Ooh,” he says, noticing the reaction. He traces the flush across my face, down my cheek and neck, with his eyes. “You liked that, eh?”
I give a small nod. I wonder again at what the high priestess wants from this smirking, irreverent man who wears the robes and tattoos of a proper Huntress novitiate but somehow feels as wild as a newborn gryphon.
I cannot imagine Kian leading Huntress rituals as he’d do as a high-standing priest wearing a dragon’s skull.
He moves me around the dance floor. The song is long and exuberant, chosen by our musicians specifically for the Huntress’s order.
Like all the goddesses’ religious houses, they are a confusing mix of standards and priorities.
On the one hand, the Order of the Huntress is the most hierarchical of the three orders.
It demands the most obedience from its novitiates and junior priests.
On the other hand, they enjoy pleasure more than most.
Dancing is one of those pleasures.
They like to move. In this, Kian fits his order perfectly. He is so… solid. Present. Physical. I do my best to keep up as we twirl until I find I’m not trying at all. I’m just following, feeling the music.
The longer we dance, the more my mind lets go. It’s exhilarating. I am laughing and sweating and out of breath when one song, then another, and then a third ends, and he finally releases me.
He is smiling and breathing hard, too, his broad chest rising and falling quickly. There is a sheen of sweat on his forehead that matches my own.
We step apart, and I move to bow, the traditional departure for a dancing pair. Behind him, I see three of my fellow keepers milling about not quite casually, obviously eager for him to notice them next.
But he does not let go of my hand.
“Thank you for the dances,” I say, pulling gently to escape his grasp. The want is flaring; another moment of his touch and I will be past the point of intentional thought and into pure, impulsive need.
His grip tightens further, but it’s no longer flirtatious. He’s holding me too tightly. So tightly his knuckles are turning white.
“Kian?”
I look up at his face, expecting a smirk, the indication this is a game of some sort, but his expression is slack, his lips slightly parted. More disconcerting, his eyes are rolled back in his head so all I can see are the whites.
“Kian?” I repeat. Then I realize he must be having a vision. It happens sometimes, just before the matches. Not with the jackalopes and more typical creatures, but with the rarer, more powerful ones.
Maybe we will be able to fulfill the high priestess’s request to match him with the dragon after all.
I try to move him to the edge of the dance floor, but he wobbles and half-collapses in my arms. It’s a good thing I am not petite like Cecelia, or I’d collapse beneath him and we’d both be on the floor.
But I wrap his arm around my shoulder and place my hand at his waist, managing to keep my feet beneath me.
He remains conscious enough to grip me and follow my firm instructions as I navigate us out of the great hall and into the much quieter kitchen and then beyond into a small pantry.
It’s cooler here, which I sense he needs. His skin is on fire.
I get only a couple of slightly jealous glances as we go.
When we’re free of the stifling laughter and warmth, I plop him down on a low bench before closing the pantry door to protect him from any prying eyes. If I were out of my body, unaware to the world around me in the midst of a vision, I wouldn’t want busybodies observing me.
He grips my waist tightly, his fingers rough but not pinching.
His eyes focus for a moment, taking me in. Devouring me. They look feral, and I see the strength he’d need to wield a dragon.
“You are fucking perfection,” he says. His words are thick like honey, and he’s obviously still being affected by whatever vision he sees. But still, they go straight to my core and light a fire there.
Perfection.
Me.
Who has messed up so much in the last two days; who has the blood of creatures and people on her hands. I am foolish. I am impulsive. I am not anything close to perfection.
And yet, I believe him. And it makes my wanting flare.
His hands flex on my waist. He moves his legs farther apart so that when he tugs me closer, there is space for me to stand between them.
My breasts are practically in his face, and a wicked, reckless part of me wants to arch my back to close the small gap.
I want feel to his lips and tongue and teeth on my skin.
But he is still not himself. His eyes are unfocused again, his breath comes hard.
I shiver in the cool air.
“Kian?” He still grips me, but he doesn’t respond. This vision is lasting too long. Or perhaps it’s something more. Trying to get through to him, I lift my hand. When my thumb grazes his cheek, his eyes snap into focus.
On my breasts.
There’s a moment of surprise that jolts through him.
I can feel it in his hands at my waist, see it in the slight widening of his eyes as he looks up into my face briefly.
And then, it’s gone, replaced instantly by a smug sort of satisfaction.
His eyes go heavy-lidded, and those lips twist up once again.
Wherever the vision took him, he is back to himself, fully.
His face a hair’s breadth from my breasts, he whispers, “Hello, beauties,” against my skin. It pebbles instantly, covered in gooseflesh, which makes him chuckle.
He pulls me slightly closer, and I lose my balance, falling forward.
He inhales sharply as he leans back into the pantry shelves.
He adjusts quickly, sitting forward and half-lifting me.
Suddenly, I am not between his knees, but straddling him.
The slits on either side of my dress part, exposing my legs.
He sees and growls, finally letting go of my waist in order to grip a thigh in each hand.
“Goddess,” he whispers again before he dips his head forward and kisses me.
For once, I don’t even want to do what I ought to. I want to just be. Reckless. Wild. Present.
His kiss is sweeter and more intoxicating than the mead. Wet and hot and wanting. There is no hesitation, no coyness. There is none of the awkwardness of many first kisses, where two new partners are unsure what each other likes.
Not that we’re partners. At least, not the long-term sort. This is a casual, one-time fling.