Chapter 15 Sage #3
Until she parts Araphi’s thighs and tucks herself between them.
There, she finds the core of Araphi with her tongue, tasting the silk and salt of her until the bard bucks against the blanket, lifting her hips to meet Sage.
It’s all she can do to keep hold. Araphi reaches down to bury her fingers in Sage’s hair, tightening her grip as though clinging to a rope above a canyon.
Sage feels the answering clench between her own thighs, the growing ache at the center of her, and groans against Araphi’s skin.
It tips Araphi over the edge.
The bard claps her hand over her own mouth as she arrives, stifling herself thoughtfully so as not to alert the whole encampment—sensible, but a pity. Her voice is so very charming.
If Sage thought she’d have to wait for Araphi to recover to find her own relief, she’s quickly proven wrong.
Shoving her hair back from her damp forehead, Araphi slides her body down the blanket until they’re again face-to-face.
Then, with more of that surprising strength, she hooks one leg around Sage’s hips and throws her weight to the side.
Sage lets herself be rolled onto her back, where she grins up at the bard straddling her.
“Why are you still wearing these?” Araphi asks, still out of breath as she tugs impatiently at the waistline of Sage’s breeches. All of her teasing and composure are long forgotten.
“Can’t think of a reason,” Sage replies, reaching for the laces.
“Wait…”
With great reluctance, Sage does.
“Can I ask you something?”
She squirms impatiently against the needy thrum of her sex; a taste of her own medicine. “What is it, then?”
“When you left the capital…did you find happiness? Did you find what you were looking for?”
Sage could dissemble. She should. Now is not the time to speak of whatever satisfaction she has managed to scrounge up in the world.
Or rather, the lack thereof. There must be an easy line to keep the night on track.
But Araphi, for all of her dangerous beauty—the flush across her cheekbones, her mussed and unraveling braids, and her wide pupils that seem to defy the lamplight—is looking down at her with such vulnerability.
Some emotion perched between fear and hunger and hope.
And how can Sage lie in the face of that?
“Not yet,” she admits, clearing her throat. Then, equally true: “But I haven’t given up.”
The answer seems to satisfy, as Araphi leans down for a lingering kiss before she reaches for her laces once more.
Long trained to wake at dawn, Sage opens her eyes when faint golden light begins to seep through the walls of the tent.
The first thing she feels is a satisfying ache in every joint, as she would the morning after a successful but strenuous hunt.
The next is the less satisfying twinge in her right knee, the bad knee—the consequence of sleeping on hard ground on her right side.
The third thing she feels is Araphi’s arm draped heavily over her waist, and the soft heat of her against Sage’s back, pressed so close together that their legs are intertwined at the knees.
They’ve slept together on Araphi’s blanket all night, with Sage’s pulled over them for warmth. And they’re still entirely naked.
Sage never meant for them to sleep together.
But the night had unspooled from the first climax into the next, and countless whispered promises of pleasure were soon fulfilled.
(Oh, the things we could do with one more day in Briarwall, Araphi had said with a sigh, nipping at the curve of Sage’s breast just hard enough to feel the unyielding press of the bard’s teeth test her skin, while unbearable pressure built down in the depths of her yet again.
Perhaps I’d keep you here just like this all night, and listen to you beg until morning.
I think that would be my new favorite song.)
From Sage’s pack there comes a soft chime, like very distant temple bells.
It’s the sound of her best friend, Margot Greenwillow, and at any other time, she’d welcome it.
Now she stifles a groan as last night’s delicious memories recede, then extricates herself as quickly as she can; it should be impossible, tangled together as they are.
But Sage has always been very good at moving stealthily.
She’s freed herself, dressed, and grabbed her pack almost before Araphi rolls over to occupy the space Sage has left behind, murmuring happily in her sleep.
Hardly daring to breathe, she unties the door flaps to slip out into the frozen morning, where she stands in ankle-deep snow.
(It’ll be calf-deep north of here in the mountains, she’s sure.) Dropping her pack onto the ground, Sage stoops to dig frantically through its precariously arranged contents until she comes up with the prize she seeks: a heavy silver compact, scuffed through rough use and tarnished by exposure.
But when she undoes the clasp, the mirror inside is unblemished.
Except it doesn’t reflect Sage. Instead, there’s a message scrawled across the glowing surface of the glass as though ink has somehow bled through from behind.
Greetings, friend! I find myself missing you fiercely. Are you still in Kingfisher? We’re preparing for the First Frost Festival next week, and I’ll hide a bottle of Clementine’s blackberry mead for you if you can make it.