Chapter Eight
Castien
My breath caught in my throat as I waited for Oleander’s answer.
My pulse pounded in my ear, and I could feel my blood racing through my veins.
What was I thinking, asking him back to my cabin?
It was one thing to kiss in the market or by the river, to touch each other under the cover of the trees.
It was another to invite him to my temporary home, but I did not want our evening to end.
Oleander studied me for a few moments, and I wondered if the words had come out in another dialect, one he did not know. Then his face brightened. “Do you mean it?”
“I do.”
“Then yes, I’d love to see your cabin.” We took a few steps toward the northern exit of the market before he stopped. “What about Acantha? Will they mind the company for dinner?”
My sibling had not returned after their afternoon off.
I did not know if they’d gone off to the pub with friends again, or if they’d gone back to the village ahead of me.
Either way, I would not be seeking them out once Oleander and I got there.
My thoughts would only be on him. As we walked through the exit of the Everend Market, I reached for his hand. “They have a cabin of their own.”
“That must have cost a fair bit of coin.”
“It is a worthy investment,” I assured him.
“I like my private space.” I saw a flicker of something akin to disappointment behind Oleander’s eyes, and I felt a strong desire to comfort him.
I did not want him to think that he was an intrusion on my time.
“I’m thankful that I can share that space with you tonight. Uninterrupted.”
The smile was back on his lips, and I was struck by his beauty.
I did not understand why he had spared even a single glance in my direction, but he had.
I wanted to bask in the glow of his attentions and his affections while I had them.
Soon, someone would catch his eye and offer him all that he dreamed of: a small home and a future and a life full of love together.
The glimmer of a vision formed in my head.
It was him, sitting at my kitchen table in Gearwick, leaning forward onto his elbows, listening to me talk with that interested expression in his eyes that I’d seen when I’d shown him the contents of my journal the day before.
As quickly as it formed, it faded.
His interest in my inventions was a passing, fleeting fancy.
I had experienced this before. I’d met a man who caught my attentions and I’d thought, for a moment, there might be something there.
We’d begun a courtship, and within weeks, he’d decided that I was too dull, too focused on my shop and my creations, and he’d walked away.
I’d been left with an aching heart and a cold bed and the knowledge that whatever attraction my physicality drew, my personality pushed away.
It would be the same for Oleander. It was best to leave this as a passing fancy, an attraction with an expiration date.
“You’re quiet,” Oleander commented, pulling my thoughts back to him and away from our inevitable finish line.
“I’m often quiet,” I reminded him.
He nudged me, and I smiled up at him. “You’ve mentioned dinner,” he started. “Are you a good cook?”
“I’m an average cook.” There was no point in disguising a truth he would soon discover. “Are you?”
He looked down at his feet and shook his head. “No,” he admitted. “I am just as terrible at reading recipes as I am anything else with numbers.”
I squeezed his hand, seeking to offer him comfort.
He did not see his positive traits the way I did.
I did not understand it. How could he not comprehend how amazing he was?
I wished I could convince him, but we only had a few more days together.
It would not be long enough to change the way he saw himself.
Not even the best magic users in the realm would be capable of that.
We kept a steady flow of conversation until we reached the village.
I watched the way his head turned to every angle as we walked to my cabin, trying to take in as much as he could of the surrounding area.
It was not as though the village was particularly interesting, at least not compared to the market we’d spent the day in.
There were small cabins and a few inns. There was a pub, lit up and loud with smells of food wafting through the open door.
There were a few closed shops, including one that sold food supplies.
I’d visited it the first day I’d arrived, stocking my larder with food so I did not have to eat at the prepared food stalls or the pub every meal.
I led him to the small cabin I’d rented.
It was a simple structure of roughhewn logs with a small porch.
I’d seen many elves enjoying the sunrise on the porch, sitting in wooden chairs as they sipped tea and ate their morning meals.
I had yet to take part in these simple pleasures.
My mornings were spent eating a quick bowl of porridge and taking off toward the market early.
The interior of the cabin was simple. There was a small area for food preparation and a table for two off a large area meant for relaxation.
There was a loft overlooking the main part of the cabin where I slept on a bed both larger and softer than the one I had at home.
There were a few tapestries along the wall, meant to keep out the cool air from the evenings and add color to the small room.
The wall of the cabin was lined with crates of my stock, unopened and waiting to be loaded onto the cart on days we needed to put more on display.
Oleander seemed impressed at the small building. His eyes darted around, drinking in the details, and a smile formed on his face. “This is so much nicer than my tent.”
“And you cannot even hear the crickets,” I teased.
“That sounds like bliss.” His voice sounded decidedly less teasing than mine. Did he not enjoy the song of the crickets singing him to sleep?
We talked more as I cooked, and the conversation carried us through our dinner. He gushed over my food in a way that felt unearned. Nothing that I cooked warranted the way he spoke about it, and I wondered if perhaps it was something else. If he was praising me more than my food.
I liked the thought.
After dinner, I washed the plates while he dried.
I had told him it was unnecessary, but he was unmoved and determined.
When we finished, we sat together on the cabin’s sofa.
Despite it being large enough for both of us to sit comfortably, we found seats near the middle.
Our legs pressed together, and I found myself focusing more on the feeling of his leg against mine than the words he was saying.
My focus was instead upon his lips, on the way they moved when they formed words. My focus was on the warmth of his body next to mine. My focus was on his eyes and the way they captured me. His words stopped, and we held that look for a moment. A fire began to rise between us.
I do not know if I moved first or if he did, but our lips met in the middle.
The kiss matched the intensity of our kisses in the forest the day before, but they held more promise.
They held more want and yearning and potential, and I did not know if it was due to the privacy of our location or the day we’d just spent together.
I knew nothing beyond the fact that I needed more.
I pressed against him until he laid back on the small sofa.
My body draped over him, and the kissing intensified.
His hands explored my body. Want coursed through me, overwhelming and all consuming, and I knew that I needed him.
I felt his hardness press against me after a short time, and I rolled my hips.
I needed him to feel my reaction to his body, to his touches.
I needed him to know that he was causing lust to consume me.
I also wanted to draw those sounds he’d made in the woods from his lips.
He rewarded me with a soft gasp after a few rolls of my hips.
The sound traveled to my cock, and I needed more.
I needed to touch him, and I wanted to explore his body without clothing.
I did not want the limits of the small sofa or the confines of fabric.
I pulled away from the kiss. “Would you care to join me in the loft?”
“Please,” he agreed, pressing his hips up against me.
It took every ounce of strength inside me to rise from the sofa and remove myself from the inferno of heat he’d created.
I reached down and helped him up. We started toward the loft, and I paused at the ladder that led up to it.
We needed lubrication. There was no guarantee that our evening would progress to that point, but I did not wish to descend the loft naked and wanting. It was better to be prepared.
I expected Oleander to climb up without me, but I felt his body press against mine as I pried open the lid to one of the crates.
I dug through it until I found a vial of lubricant.
Oleander reached around me and pulled out one of the boxes beneath.
It contained one of the phallic pleasure toys.
He lifted the lid, and I saw the sparkle in his eyes.
Lust coursed through me as I studied the look in his eyes.
“Do you wish to take it upstairs with us?”
He looked down at the toy and then back at me. “You wouldn’t be able to sell it.”
“No,” I agreed, “but if you want to test it, it doesn’t matter.” I would mark it down as a tester product. It would not be the first time. Acantha took product to ‘test’ with their partners at home frequently. I had a few testers of my own at home, one of every model I’d ever created.
Testing it with Oleander would be different, a dream and a memory that would never fade.