3
It had been several minutes, at this point. Nearly half an hour alone in the tavern.
She had said she would wait and she intended to, but it had never taken Erryc this long to bank the stove fire and lock up the tavern for the night before. Fawn had half a mind to get her fletching out and work a little more, splitting feathers and whittling arrow shafts. She’d already pulled her winter cloak on, layering the straps of her bag and her bow over it.
She thought she heard Erryc call her name, however faintly, from the backroom.
The tavern was empty, the fire in the hearth burning low. Her heart squeezed to imagine that he had knocked over one of his many stacks of crates, and was buried underneath it, calling for help. She hadn’t heard a crash, but Fawn crossed to the back of the counter, supposing he could need her assistance on something less dire.
The door to the backroom was just barely ajar, a thread of candlelight poking through.
She hesitated, her palm on the door. Her heart beat to remember the kiss she and Erryc had shared in there just an hour earlier, the heat it had lit under her skin. She was always willing to do any favor Erryc asked, but perhaps she had taken advantage of his predicament with Oona.
Under the slight touch she gave it, the door drifted silently on well-oiled hinges, offering a few more inches of sight.
The breath caught in her throat.
Erryc’s back was mostly to the door. Her eyes caught first on the tension in the broad expanse of his shoulders, then movement of his arm, and the slack in his belt.
Fawn stood, frozen, eyes wide. Her stomach contracted in alarm, but the rest of her body took other interest.
His breath drew ragged and heavy with each stroke, his large hand bringing his cock into view, the green of his skin flushed a deep purple at the dual-slitted tip, veins pulsing.
Fawn’s mouth went dry as she watched the way his thumb circled the head, squeezing out the already dripping seed.
He bit out a groan, body stiffening, shuddering, his head tipping back with his eyes squeezed shut, fist curled around his throbbing length as it twitched and spurted his release, one long arc of seed after another. He stroked his cock until the flow lessened, merely dripping from the tip, his shoulders relaxing.
Fawn tugged the door back to mostly closed, fleeing as silently as she could. Perhaps she’d imagined hearing her name. She had to have.
Her heart and thoughts racing, she crossed absently to the other side of the bar. He’d said he was closing down the tavern, but clearly that wasn’t what she’d seen. Alone in her own bed, she might dare to dream, to imagine his self-pleasure while indulging in her own, but this was something else entirely.
It was as much of a trespass on their friendship as the kiss had been, but how could she apologize without first telling him she had in fact witnessed his private moment?
“Ready to go?”
Fawn whirled around. Erryc. Oh gods, she wasn’t ready to face him at this moment.
He seemed perfectly normal and at ease, despite having just climaxed a few minutes ago. Perhaps she could have convinced herself it was a trick of the light, she hadn’t really witnessed that. His belt was buckled, his pants in their usual state, it could be believed.
But there was just a hint of sweat by his temple.
Her eyes couldn’t help but closely follow the way he picked one of the dishrags he used to clean the counter, scrubbed it over his palm and tossed it in the to-wash bin.
She realized, then, that he was waiting for her to answer him. She shook her head, “Sorry, what?”
He gave a little confused chuckle, putting his hands on his hips as he looked at her. “Everything alright? I asked if you were ready for the festival.”
“Oh. Um. Yes. I am. Sorry, my stomach growled and I was thinking about what food they might have tonight,”
she lied quickly. She’d rather gather her thoughts for now and figure out how to apologize later. If she even could gather them, it seemed all the blood in her body had ventured away from her head.
Stepping out into the wintery night cooled her body some, but as Erryc locked the tavern door and took her hand in his, the heat low in her stomach quickly rekindled. They followed the other villagers to the festival, Erryc pulled Fawn into the thick of the crowded street. Everyone was walking towards the festival in the heart of the village, talking about what prizes they might win at the games, the prayers they would utter as they lit candles. All she could think was if she held the same hand that had just gripped his cock.
The lust-addled part of her brain suggested putting one of his fingers in her mouth to see if there was some residual taste, the normal part wondered why she didn't just let go and hold onto his sleeve instead.
She barely wanted to let go to cross the old bridge over the creek outside the tavern, but the local carpenters had warned everyone to cross only one person at a time over it, at least until the new bridge could be installed, when the ground was thawed enough to dig the new supports into place.
She felt herself in a daze as he led her to the village square, lit with bonfires and lanterns strung over intersecting paths, ribbons and snowflakes blowing in the wind. There were stalls filled with little games and others full of hot steaming food and drink, all busy.
There was a traveling troupe of halfling actors that had set up a puppet show out of the back of one of their caravans. Most of them were strangers to her, but she still recognized plenty of faces from the tavern.
A blond woman who came up only to Fawn’s middle stood in line for the hot spiced ale, a look of wonder on her face as she hefted a hewn wooden tankard as big as her head.
“It comes in pints?”
she asked, peering down as if to confirm it was full.
“I come in pints,”
an older, grizzled orc nearby joked under his breath with leer, and the halfling elbowed him. Fawn knew him loosely, a bounty hunter who often stopped in the tavern with a crass joke as he plucked another job off the village board.
Fawn normally rolled her eyes, but her mind was still preoccupied with everything that had happened in that back storeroom in the tavern. Pints. Gods. A ripple of heat drew through her nethers, sending a pulse of pleasures as if to remind her that her body was ready and waiting. Surely not.
“What do you think of that one?”
Erryc asked, leaning down over her shoulder to murmur in her ear. Every hair on her cheek and the back of her neck stood on end. He gestured to one of the games, a stall where people threw rings at various empty bottles, landing over the bottlenecks for a prize.
“S-sure,”
she nodded, immediately biting her mouth closed again. Her tongue felt more of a mind to lick and explore than speak coherent words.
Fawn was too aware of his presence beside her, even as he leaned over the counter to hand the stall attendant a coin for the game.
She played the game badly, tossing the rings even as most of her mind was on other things.
What had fired his blood so thoroughly that he couldn’t wait until after the festival to relieve himself of his lust? She swallowed that question back. Then again, if she were alone in this moment, she might have ducked into any alleyway, any dark corner to touch the little needy bud of nerves insistent on making itself known each time she brushed against Erryc.
“Here,”
he said, handing her one of the steaming drinks. “Cheers.”
The moment the cup was in her hands she tossed a mouthful back, hoping the drink would temper her nerves. She never felt this uptight and nervous around him.
The alcohol spread through her throat, her stomach, burning all in its path. Tears pricked her eyes as she choked down against the sensation, knocking most of the drink back in a single gulp.
Erryc raised his eyebrows at her, looking mildly concerned. “Everything alright there?”
“You said cheers, did you not?”
she replied a little hoarsely.
“It seemed like you might have misheard me for ‘chug’,”
he sighed, shaking his head. He still smiled gently around his tusks for her, holding her gaze with his warm brown eyes.
“You’re all rosy cheeked already,”
he murmured, so quietly it was more like a thought than something he meant to say aloud. The heat of his gaze flickered across Fawn’s cheeks, catching like sparks over tinder, spreading down her neck and under her collar.
He brushed the back of one of his large, rough knuckles over the soft part of her cheek. The cool back of his hand against the toasty warmth radiating off her face suddenly became the only thing in the world.
“It, uh, it runs in my family,”
she mumbled, staring up at him, wondering if she was drifting closer to his face, or if it still was just the wine. “My sister’s kids have it too, last I saw them.”
“I see,”
he nodded, dark brown eyes remaining on her.
The intensity of holding his stare became too much, and she glanced to the side of him. “Look! They’re frying things over there.”
As soon as she pointed them out, she was heading over towards the food cart.
“If you had let me know you were hungry earlier, I could have made you something,”
Erryc said, sounding surprised.
“I said I wanted festival food, didn’t I?”
“They’re not making anything complicated, I’m just saying, I could have made you the same thing and not robbed you half a silver for it.”
“But then it wouldn’t be festival food,”
Fawn insisted. Fair food was always oily and crunchy, or soft and sticky. Whether it was vegetables fried in a flour and herbs batter, or the blackberry-syrup drenched hotcakes right off the griddle, it was deliciously indulgent in a way no other food was.
The sweet smell of simmered and spiced fruit entranced her in a haze until one sticky hot cake wrapped in a large dried out leaf was in her hands, almost too hot to hold.
“I didn’t know you had a wife,”
the hotcake vendor said, eyeing Fawn as she took a bite of one.
She nearly choked on the sweet confection trying to speak and swallow at the same time, her words lost against the mouthful.
“Not his wife,”
she repeated after a painful swallow.
“Not yet,”
Erryc chuckled, tugging her against his side. How many people were they trying to deceive?
“Just how many favors am I doing you?”
Fawn half laughed, if only to conceal what those words did to her.
The vendor spared the two of them a skeptical glance. “How long have you known each other? I haven’t seen you two together before.”
“Oh, years. She’s a little quiet. I’m afraid I overshadow her sometimes,”
Erryc said with a bashful chuckle, running a hand through his hair.
“I don’t mind,”
she replied. She couldn’t help herself, or all this giddy energy. She found herself looking up at Erryc with stars in her eyes. It lasted a moment too long, before she remembered herself, clearing her throat and repeating herself for the sake of clarity.
“He can talk and talk. I don’t have quite so many things to say,”
she added cheekily, both elated and nervous from participating. “I’ll be right back.”
She turned the corner of the little maze of stalls and games, and found the carrot dumpling cart she had smelled from afar. She held up two fingers for the seller as he counted up orders from the people standing around his cart, taking a number of skewered carrots out of one bowl of batter and dunking them in a fired pot of oil, the surface roiling with bubbles instantly.
“You two are a strange match,”
the man selling the hotcakes remarked, apparently not realizing she wasn’t out of earshot. Fawn’s shoulders tensed, and she stopped behind one of the banners to listen.
The carrot dumpling seller took the coin out of her hand and gave her two dumplings on a stick with brisk efficiency, moving immediately onto the next round of orders.
“He might not have picked her purposefully,”
another villager replied before Erryc could say anything. “Don’t orcs have some sort of mating frenzy?”
“Yes, the Blood Fever. I’ve seen the games in the spring, the hill camp, all the young people participate in roughing each other up,”
the hotcakes vendor laughed loud, boisterously. “I didn’t realize it extended to the rest of us–”
“You can go a whole lifetime without cutting someone,”
Erryc responded rather curtly, cutting him off. “And I left the hill camp. I have no desire to make anyone bleed.”
There was a moment of awkward silence, before the hotcake vendor gave a skeptical laugh, adding with a leering tone, “Well, I wouldn’t mind a bloody fever if it meant I could snag the baker’s daughter with it.”