“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 myselffocusing 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 theloft, 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.
Oleander and I ascended the ladder to the loft. I placed his chosen device and the vial of lubricating oils on the small bedside table. When I turned around, Oleander was behind me. His lips found mine again, and he kissed me with an unmatched passion. If the kiss downstairs held potential, this one held promise. Promise of a night spent in pleasure and exploration.
We stumbled backward onto the bed, kissing and touching each other. We stripped each other until we were bare. Even then, we didn’t stop touching. We didn’t stop kissing. My cock ached and leaked, desperate for touch and friction. When he wrapped his fingers around me, it only made me more desperate.
I had never felt a hunger like this in my life.
Oleander proved himself to be a skilled lover. He took control over our encounter, flipping us over so that I was on my back. He began to kiss down my torso, drawing my nipple into his mouth and flicking his tongue over it. When he had me gasping and moaning, he repeated the process on the other side. The hunger grew and grew until it consumed me, and only then did he travel further down my body. He kissed down my hairy stomach, and he kissed along my thick thighs. He sucked a mark onto my pelvis, and I cried out. Desperate and needy, begging for him to take me in his mouth or hand or anything.
The first contact was a lick of his clever tongue over my slit, gathering a bead of precum and humming at the flavor. He licked a strip along the bottom of my shaft, and the pressure sent chills down my spine.
“Please, Oleander, please,” I begged.
I was rewarded with the wet heat of his mouth wrapping around the head of my dick. His tongue had the right amount of pressure as it drew circles under the base, and then he took me deeper. His mouth worked my dick with the same skill his hand had in the forest. He knew how to touch me, how to work me into a desperate fervor. The best part was the look in his violet eyes as he worked me over. He was happy. He was lust drunk solely from the taste of me. He did not act as if this were a burden or something he did only because it would bring me pleasure.
No, the expression in his eyes was that of someone who was getting just as much pleasure as he was giving me.
