Briar hopped up on the breakfast bar, accepting the plate Rowan handed him. Eggs, sliced cherry tomatoes, and a few rashers of bacon. He took a bite and forgot his worries. These were the best damn eggs he’d ever tasted. They’d probably been freshly laid and plucked out of the coop that morning.
Rowan had abandoned his own plate. He was still giving Briar a look over, brow furrowed in consternation. His eyes stuck on Briar’s bare thighs, revealed from the shirt hiking up when he sat down. “How’d you sleep?”
Briar set his plate down. Against all his better judgment, he shifted so his legs splayed a little farther apart. “Good. And you?”What am I doing?
“Good. Yeah, ehm—”
“Last night was?” Briar said cheekily.
Rowan locked eyes with him. Whatever lust they’d slaked the night before, it simmered between them still. “Very good.”
The heat in the kitchen seemed to rise by a degree. Briar leaned back on the breakfast bar, so that what was rising under his shirt could be moreclearly viewed. He said what he wanted to, even though he was tempting danger. “Do you want to make it a more regular thing?”
Rowan opened his mouth, a breath that never quite became a word whistling between his teeth. After a beat, he moved. He sat in the chair between Briar’s knees and dragged him closer by the hips. The shirt hiked all the way up, and the movement left Briar with nowhere to put his legs except to hook them over Rowan’s shoulders. He did. Rowan’s hot breath turned his thoughts in a spiral, but he managed the other important detail before they derailed completely.
“Just a casual thing, yeah?”
A brushed kiss and Rowan’s beard tickling his thighs. “Yeah.”
“We don’t tell anyone? Just friends—hngh—friends having a little fun, y-yeah?”
Rowan paused, mouth inches from its destination, the next words breathed where Briar could acutely feel them. “Sure thing.”
After that, Briar’s legs fell open, and he could only clutch Rowan’s hair.
CHAPTER 14
Briar didn’t tell Vatii or Gretchen about where he’d spent the night. When asked, he sidestepped these questions with a prim “none of your business.” He didn’t want to put up with even more scolding from Vatii, and Gretchen would be tetchy he’d made so little progress about her tether while distracted.
They found out soon enough. The next day, Rowan appeared with homemade sandwiches for Briar’s lunch break. It wasn’t the only reason he’d come, as his wandering hands and mouth soon made clear. Gretchen vanished in a blushing kerfuffle, and Vatii screeched so loudly in surprise that it stopped Rowan in his tracks.
Briar shooed her with an “I’ll explain later,” determined to enjoy their quickie now that this was something he could indulge.
Vatii laid into him viciously once Rowan left.
“Irresponsible! You will invite destruction on us both, behaving like this!”
“Good grief, it’s only sex, Vatii.”
“Is it?” she hissed. “What about the prophecy? What about Linden?”
“You don’t even like Linden!”
“I don’t. He’s a smug arse, and I wouldn’t mind if his cat went and played in traffic. I don’t like most people, though. And these two are meant to help you. I care more about your future than my fickle taste in the men you fancy! What if this thing with Rowan ruins that future with Linden? It isn’t like we have an abundance of time!”
She had a point. It complicated things to involve himself with Rowan.
“Linden hasn’t opened up much. I still don’t know if…”I feel that way about him.Had he really been about to say that? Linden was beautiful, talented—the talisman was the problem. If only Briar could get a read on him, perhaps his foretold feelings would follow suit.
“Rowan and I talked. We established it’s only casual. No strings attached.”
“Hm,” grouched Vatii. “Why doesn’t that comfort me?”
Whether it comforted her or not was of no consequence to Briar, who found his increasingly regular contact with Rowan very comforting. It became a ritual to share lunch hours. After a week, Rowan invited him for dinner, and that became a ritual, too. To the extent that Briar spent many evenings eating dinner with Rowan, kissing Rowan, sleeping with Rowan, and then having breakfast with Rowan before going to work.
Vatii worried, but she worried less when Rowan started making her a small plate of food, too. Some of her caution was even disproven. Well fed and sleeping better, Briar’s headaches afflicted him less. He only got the shakes on days he worked late.
Gretchen became scarcer, popping in to occasionally ask how his investigations were going. Vatii maintained that Briar and Rowan’s fraternizing traumatized her.
