Chapter Four #2
I thought of what he said in the market.
He liked people with strong arms. Those were rarely attached to slim figures.
I thought of the people who had caught his eye in the Pavilion, and I recognized a pattern.
They were all stockier, built more like me than like him.
Another shot of warmth raced through my blood as I imagined him looking at me with that same heat in his eyes.
I was also stricken by the realization that the toy he held had been modeled, partially, after my own cock. Would he still look at it the way he was now if he knew that? Would he direct that gaze at me?
No.
Some questions were best left unanswered.
The Gods smiled upon me in that moment, offering forth a distraction in the form of a customer.
I heard someone call out, and I quickly ducked from behind the curtain.
Oleander trailed behind me, luckily no longer holding the pleasure device.
I unhooked the curtain, once again closing that section off to those who may not wish to see it.
I helped a few customers at the counter, and I was impressed listening to Oleander speak to them before they came to the counter with technical questions or to pay.
He had a natural talent for speaking with people, of determining what was important to them with nothing more than a few sentences.
He had a natural flair for flattery. Once the small stream of patrons disappeared, I realized something else.
For the first time in the years I’d been coming to market, every single person who had come into my stall had left with a purchase.
“You are amazing,” I sighed as I finished marking the last sale.
Pink spread across his cheekbones to the points of his ears, and he looked very pleased with himself. “Am I?”
“You are,” I repeated the praise. “Every person you spoke to bought something.”
“Maybe they were already looking to purchase.”
“No,” I insisted. It was him. His charms had convinced them to loosen their purse strings and spend coin at my booth.
No wonder the shops he worked at in Emberleigh kept him on.
I wished I could clone him, keep a copy of him at my shop in Gearwick and travel with him to the market every year.
“Perhaps you’ll find a merchant to marry. You would be a blessing to them.”
The pink on his face darkened. “If you ask my parents, I am no blessing in a shop.”
“What do you mean?” We had not yet dived into these deeper waters. I knew little about his life outside of the Everend Market, beyond the fact that he yearned for a marriage that fulfilled the desires of his heart.
“Mother and Father run an apothecary,” he explained. “They are the primary healers in their village.”
“Their village?” I repeated.
“Yes. I lived there in my youth, but no longer. I moved to Emberleigh once I reached adulthood.” I nodded, and he continued.
“They have asked me to help in the shop many times, and every time, it is a disaster. My bookkeeping was atrocious. I was unable to recommend even the simplest remedy. In fact, I had a terrible tendency of getting distracted and suggesting something that would only make the issue worse.”
I bit my bottom lip to keep from laughing at the anguished look on his face. “Perhaps they did not know how to best utilize your talents.”
“Or maybe I don’t have any.”
I did not like the casual way he stated this, as if it were something he not only believed but had accepted as fact.
It pained me, and I wished to travel to his village and tell his parents that they had done this.
That they had planted this seed of belief and watered it, allowed it to grow into something unpleasant.
“You have talents.” He shook his head again before looking down at the packed dirt floor.
I wanted to reach up and lift his eyes to mine so he could see the conviction behind my words.
“You do,” I repeated. I took a step closer.
If I could not force him to look at me, to see that I spoke only the truth, I could get close enough to guarantee that he could hear it.
“You are charismatic. You are a natural born merchant. You have an eye for beauty, and—”
My words cut off as I realized how close we were standing. He was gazing down at me, his eyes soft. A heat had grown between us, one I’d felt only a few times in my life. I swallowed hard, my eyes landing on his lips.
I had never paid much attention to anyone’s lips before, but his captured me. They were dusky pink, thinner on the bottom than the top. His tongue darted out between them and left behind a glisten of spit. My heart stuttered in my chest, followed closely behind by an almost overwhelming hunger.
I wanted to know what those lips tasted like, to feel them pressed against my own. I had felt them once before, tasted them, but we had been boys then. I craved a more recent memory. One of my hands began to move, almost of its own accord. I was moving as if in a trance.
And then, the trance was broken by the obnoxious sound of my sibling clearing their throat.
We jolted apart, and Oleander scampered from the stall, calling over his shoulder that he would see me tomorrow.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I interrupt something?” Acantha questioned, their voice an amused purr.
I picked up the ledger book from the counter and threw it at them. I might have hit them, had they not doubled over in laughter.
Siblings were a pain.