It’s the hand on my wrist and the guiding touch on my arm that distracts me, eventually.

I’m sketching, or trying to sketch, a glyph freehand. It’s a pretty simple rune; not the simplest, that’s the Void rune and I can more or less do that without any help, but one of the sort of shorthand versions of the Fire glyph, with none of the frills and not even all of the relevant bits. I’m absolutely awful at it, I’m absolutely awful at any kind of visual artform, and Zidanya is trying to fix my form and help me get it right.

With her hands, not with Phantasmal Guide, and her fingers do a lot of lingering, and eventually I’m starting to get the hint.

She’s kinda smirking at me when I turn to face her, and I feel like my heart skips a beat, or maybe just beats faster. She’s sitting in that same chair, but she’s got it spun around again; her pose has her arms resting on the chairback, and I’m pretty sure the reason she even spun the chair around again at all is just to have her breasts pressed and raised between those bare arms. The rest of her is more obscured by the mostly-open filigree of the chair than her clothing, fabric running down from a quarter-cup bra and taking the shape of vines that trail down her stomach to wrap around her hips and down maybe a decimeter down her thighs.

“Dame Ashborn said, and by the Thousand and One I bethought her mad for it, that no hint, unsubtle may it be, would get your attention.” The robe she had been wearing is in her hand, and that hand opens; the fabric flutters down towards the ground in the corner of my eye, and I swallow almost convulsively.

“Hey.” My mouth is dry and I’m staring, and I do my best to shift my gaze up higher, towards her face. “You know, I… you don’t have to -”

“She said, too,” Zidanya says archly, “that you’d say that.” She’s rising slowly out of her chair, leaning towards me, hips swaying side to side. Her hands move down from her the chairback slowly, running slowly down her sides, pressing into her skin with her fingers. “I said no, forfend it. That you’d take what’s on offer and naysay later, if at all; said I’ve seen the Reca his mind built, I told her. I’ve seen her tits, and he’ll jump at these, said I, near to bursting out as they are, glorious as this form is.”

She’s standing close enough to me to touch, but somehow, I can’t reach out. “Shouldn’t -” I clear my throat. “Shouldn’t have bet against Amber, I guess?”

Her laughter ripples and bounces up and down her body, and I’m mesmerized. “She did give me some advice, as a companion to another. For the man I bound myself to, how to get what I want out of him, after I told her what it is that I want.”

She doesn’t seem to expect an answer, which is good, because I don’t have one to give. Instead, she takes the last step towards me and takes my hands. I follow her pull, dream-like, standing up; putting my hands on her waist, she steps another half-step in, pressing her body against mine. “I should like it very much,” she says, with a smile even I can’t misinterpret, “if you would kiss me now.”

Her lips are hot against mine, almost feverish. I kiss her gently at first, but as empty a vessel as I was after pouring myself out last night, I’m filled to the brim with desire now, and I pull her body into mine and snake one hand up behind her head to kiss her fiercely. My tongue parts her lips and tangles with hers as I fill one hand with the silk of her hair and the other hand with the feel of her ass, grinding her hips into mine, and she moves with me, moaning.

Her body is a feast for my senses, and for a moment I just glory in her, running my hands everywhere I can reach. She’s soft and lush in every centimeter of pliable flesh, all give in her body as I push her towards the couch. I support her as she descends, careless and heedless and trusting in me to guide her, and I’m still kissing her as I drop with her, my weight on a knee beside her hips and her body arched into my kiss.

I practically can’t get my clothes off fast enough. Her hands, clever and precise, are at my waistband as I strip my shirt off and cast it aside, and my pants fall free. I step out of them and out of my underwear in enough of a hurry that I almost unbalance, and that’s enough of a reality check for me to pause, laughing at my haste, and take my socks off with more dignity and less risk of falling over, kissing her all the while. I kiss my way down her jaw to her neck and down further to her breasts, and her moans are music in my ears; I kiss my way down her stomach and around the curve of her inner thigh, and she gasps and wraps her hands in my hair, pulling me up and inwards.

I let her. My tongue traces lines and curves towards her hips until my mouth is poised over her clit, thumbs parting her thighs as I let my head fall in towards her, hands moving to rove up towards her breast. She bucks, hands twisting in my hair, and the taste of her arousal on my mouth and tongue is so strong I moan with her, feeling her legs clamp around me, glorying in how much pleasure I’m able to bring her.

It’s barely a moment before she’s pulling me up towards her face and I kiss her, pushing her back flat on the couch. There’s enough space for it, if only barely, and my weight comes on top of her as I run a hand up the inside of her thigh again and slide a pair of fingers inside her. She bucks again when I twist my wrist and curve the fingers upwards, bucks and gasps and twists to get my fingers in exactly the right place.

I flex my fingers when the orgasm hits her, more in reaction to how hard she clamps around them as for any other reason. She’s still breathing hard when I bring her legs up to rest on my shoulders, one hand rubbing her breast in circles just shy of her nipple and the other guiding the head of my penis just so, teasing at the folds of her clit.

“Demons within, Adam, if it’s not within you to stop teasing -”

I kiss her, and my hips thrust inside her.

I almost lose myself in that single thrust. She’s almost uncomfortable in her warmth, tight around me and wet enough that runnels are coating her inner thighs, and everything about her is arousal and heat from her expression to the curve of her spine to the way her legs do their best to pull me farther in. I kiss her, barely breaking off for breath, and both of my hands are full of her glorious breasts and rolling her nipples between my thumbs and forefingers, while her legs shake on my shoulders.

I bury myself in her, every thrust as deep into her as my hips can take me. Her legs come around my waist, and my hands shift her thighs and stomach and hook around her shoulders for leverage, and when I feel her clamp down again and give an almost screeching hiss of pleasure, the orgasm leaves me shaking and shuddering with my head on her breast.

We cuddle for a bit, there on the couch, wordlessly. She growls at me when I make as if to get up, and then notices that we’re something like covered in sweat and dripping fluids; she makes a series of grumbling noises, and suffers me to chivvy us both into the shower.

We don’t rush. Very much not; I kiss her under the hot water and steam, as she works her soap-covered body against mine. She asks me to scrub her back, and I do, and her ass and breasts and thighs; I rinse her off with the high-flow showerhead, laughing as it practically jackhammers in my hands on the staggered setting, and bend her over the bench in the shower. Her breasts sway side to side and I fill my hands with them as she maneuvers the showerhead into position between her legs, and I fill her with me as I fuck her again, hands gripping her hips as we take our time with things.

It’s a long shower, but we’re clean by the end of it.

Amber’s there when we stagger out, my knees feeling like jelly and Zidanya’s hampered by how my hands aren’t exactly there to support her. Amber bursts into snickering, and Zidanya blushes a dark, almost purplish red, and I don’t understand either of them in the slightest but I don’t care.

“I made lunch,” the Paladin says, hugging us both. She doesn’t seem to care that we’re damp even after toweling off, or maybe it’s the nakedness making it good anyway. There’s a pause, like there’s something she wants to say, and it’s taking her a while to say it. “I’m glad,” she finally gets out, and hugs us again, and my stomach takes that moment to growl loudly.

It’s laughing that we head to the table, and in joy that we sit down together for our second meal with all three of us together.