The Grove(147)

She smiled and ducked her head. Placing her hand against his chest, she felt his heart beating, and felt her own respond. Saleria looked up into his hazel eyes. “That is my desire, yes.” For a moment, she hesitated, then gathered her courage, leaned in close, and murmured into his ear, “Teral tells me you like it when a woman rubs you . . . there . . . with her feet.”

The twitch of his manhood against her thigh was all the proof she needed. She didn’t need the sound of Aradin’s soft groan, or his muttered, “That dead rat traitor . . . !”

Chuckling, she tickled his chest and stepped back, up onto the mossy ground. “Is he really a traitor, Aradin, when it’s something you want to receive, and something I want to give?”

He groaned again, because she had a point, and because her willingness made his whole body ache.

“I just . . . don’t know how to do it, is all,” Saleria admitted sheepishly. “I’ve never done that before with a gentleman.”

Moving away reluctantly, Aradin lowered himself to the ground, then patted his crossed legs. “We can get to that later, since it’s usually easiest done when both people are sitting in chairs or something. Come here, love, and sit on me. I want to kiss you thoroughly.”

Saleria stepped onto the moss, but did not straddle his lap. Instead, she balanced herself carefully on one foot and gently placed the other on his thigh. Checking his expressions to see if she was getting this right, she wiggled her toes. The movement inadvertently inched her closer to his groin.

Breath hitching, Aradin bit his bottom lip. Fire, delicious, impassioned fire, seared his nerves with each tiny shift of her foot incrementally closer to his loins. His manhood had been ready ever since seeing her naked—and always halfway ready any time he was in her presence, as if he were a full decade younger—but this had him jutting up proudly, blatantly.

She slid her foot along his thigh, caressing his skin and the soft hairs on it, but her balance wasn’t perfect. Seeing her wobble, Aradin held up his hands. Saleria accepted them with a grateful smile, then went back to concentrating on stimulating his body with her foot.

(You know,) Teral stated, startling both of them, (this would be considerably easier with your air-walking spell, so she could just sit on a floating bit of mist and play with you that way.)

Saleria blushed bright red. Aradin grinned . . . then lost it, mouth agape, when she spoke.

“Well, if you’ll kindly cast it, Teral, I can do just that, rather than wobble around like an idiot. Hand him control for a moment, love,” she ordered.

It took him a few seconds to remember how to breathe. Licking his lips, Aradin snapped his fingers, conjuring a little puff of mist. It expanded into a vague armchair-shaped cloud. “I can cast it myself, you know.”

“Well, I insist the two of you teach me it at our earliest convenience,” she stated, checking her position versus the mist before settling into the makeshift seat.

A little flick of Aradin’s fingers wafted it up against the backs of her knees and then some, bringing her feet very much into range of his groin. In fact, as soon as she was seated, he grasped her ankles, settled her soles on his hip bones, then stretched out on his back. Sighing happily, he tucked his hands behind his head.

Distracted by the way his muscles flexed and moved on his lean, fit frame, Saleria caught the arch of one of his eyebrows—a trick she still couldn’t figure out how to do—and realized she was neglecting her side of things. With the mist-chair supporting her weight, she was free to slide her feet everywhere. Up onto his belly, where his stomach muscles tensed with a laugh, down onto his thighs, where he spread them apart slightly, giving her access to trail her toes along their insides. When she gently nudged his bollocks, he gasped and arched his back, fingers digging into the thick moss.

Saleria played with him for a little bit, circling around the base of his shaft, then finally tipped her feet and slid her soles up along the warm, silken flesh jutting up from his groin. For her part, this was just a thing of curiosity, of different textures and the fascinating ways he reacted. But oh, how he reacted! Liquid seeped from the flushed-red tip, and the whole shaft throbbed and jumped when she gently caressed it with her soles.

Soft groans became louder ones, which mutated into helpless whimpers. Finally, his hands flew from clutching at the moss to clutching the tops of her feet. Cupping them around his shaft, he helped guide her up and down, up and down, his hips flexing in counterpoint. Face flushed, skin glistening with sweat, mouth open and eyelids strained shut, he looked beautiful to her.

That was the word for it: beautiful. Men were normally handsome, but lost in his passion, Aradin was beautiful. What had started out as a simple act of wanting to pleasure her lover, and which had become an act of curiosity along the way, morphed now into an act of pleasure for her, too. It excited her to see and hear him so needy, so urgent. Saleria found herself speaking aloud, encouraging him.