The Grove(148)

“Yes, love, yesss . . . Find your release with me—enjoy my feet! You feel so hot and good against my toes,” she told him. “It’s making me tingle all over; I can’t imagine how good it must feel for you . . . yessss. More—more! Harder!” she added as he bucked upward. “More! Give me your love!”

He tried to say her name, but it emerged incompletely in a cross between a yell and a hiss. Pushing up between her clasped feet, he came. It felt glorious, and so satisfying—the first time in well over a year that any woman had been willing to fondle him this way. The other ways were good, even great, but this . . . this was a special treat. One made all the more special because it was a beautiful, precious gift from the woman he loved.

Sated and smiling, he relaxed into the moss and blinked sleepily up at the pastel-lit wickerwork of the Bower dome. His fingers stroked her ankles, then patted and released her feet in silent thanks. While she chuckled and dug her toes into the moss, wiping part of the mess he had made onto the green tufts, he focused on enjoying the afterglow while he stared upward. Beyond the brown-barked, blossom-dotted tangle, the sky had brightened to the vivid medium blue found on morning glory flowers.

Wait . . . blossoms? He blinked and stared upward in confusion. (Teral, am I imagining this, or . . . ?)

(No, I see them, too.) Teral started to say more, but Saleria rose from the mist-chair, her attention clearly still on Aradin’s body and not on the odd change in the dome overhead.

“Well, that was a lot more fun than I thought it’d be,” she purred, dropping onto all fours to straddle his hips and lower her head to his. Kissing him gently, she nibbled on his bottom lip, then deepened it for a moment. Ending it, she smiled at him. “I think we can do that again sometime.”

“Mm, yes,” he growled, twining his fingers in her soft, golden hair. Bower blossom questions could wait. Pulling her close, he kissed her thoroughly.

Teral took brief control of one hand, dismissing the mist-chair with a snap, then gave the limb back to Aradin, who rolled onto his side. Guiding Saleria onto her back, the younger Witch stroked his other hand down her body. He followed his hand with his mouth, nipping and kissing, licking and loving every inch he caressed.

Some of the areas he went to were ones he chose to please; others were suggestions murmured by his Guide. From her breathy moans and the fingers stroking and tugging through his sandy blond locks, both had a good idea of what the Keeper of the Grove found pleasing. Aradin didn’t stop until he had reached her feet, praising her generous loving and repaying it with a bit of foot-worship, kissing and kneading and stroking until she trembled and clutched at the moss.

Her thighs parted enticingly when he finally set her feet down, settling them to either side with her knees bent. Enjoying the sight, Aradin started to rock forward to worship her inner folds, but hesitated. Aside from his steady breaths and her uneven ones, beneath the twittering of birds and chirruping of insects waking up and greeting the rising dawn, there was one more sound. The intermittent plips and plops of sap-droplets falling into their collection pools.

Saleria frowned in confusion when he pushed back from her, rising to his feet. “. . . Aradin?”

“Stay right there,” he cautioned her. “Don’t move.” Casting around, he hurried over to a worktable with his alchemical supplies. One of them was a jar of clean glass rods, with smooth, impermeable surfaces perfect for stirring ingredients without fear of contamination.

Selecting one, he picked his way across the Bower to one particular vine, one with a clear, faintly amethyst sap. Touching the end of the rod to one of its droplets, he gently coated the very tip with a small bead. He carried it back to her, and found her still with her knees up and thighs parted, but with her gaze fixed on the canopy of the Bower dome.

“There are flowers up there,” Saleria stated quietly, frowning in confusion. “Not many, but there have never been flowers on the Bower itself. Well . . . not since the Shattering. Daranen says he’s run across occasional mentions of the gazebo-dome being covered in blooms, but I don’t remember the details. Do you think it’s because we’ve reconvened the Convocation of the Gods?”

“I think that’s a question you will have to pose to Them when you return,” Aradin told her, dropping to his knees between her feet. Sliding his hand up her shin to her knee, then down to rub her inner thigh, he recaptured her attention. He lifted the stirring rod, displaying the tiny drop of sap on its tip. “Do you know what this is?”

Saleria started to shake her head, then blinked and blushed, feeling his fingers shifting to the crux of her thighs. Breathless, she felt him gently part her folds, exposing the little pleasure-bud they concealed. A moment later, her blue gray eyes widened in comprehension. He grinned at her, leaning forward, and she held up a hand, trying to forestall him. “That’s . . . no. No, Aradin. That’d be too much. Don’t—ahhh . . . Bollocks!”