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They continued conversing after dinner and into the night, retiring for bed long after the ghost moon had reached its zenith in the sky outside. Damon’s room was next to Vel’s, which made it possible to listen for the cessation of the creaking floorboards and rustling bedsheets that signified that she’d fallen asleep or was at least lying still on her mattress.

  Aside from finding the Turning Festival mask, there was one other obvious method through which Damon felt certain that he could confirm whether she’d been the woman from his intimate encounter. He’d already made an attempt at seeing her undergarments in the lake. There was a chance that Vel had already switched out of them, but what he currently had in mind was to look a layer deeper.

  If he could see her body, particularly her breasts and nude lower half, he would undoubtedly be able to know the truth with certainty. His memory of the encounter was still vivid enough to stir his loins just thinking of it. The comparison would only take a glimpse, and it seemed worth risking Vel’s ire and potentially Malon’s disapproval to know for sure.

  He slowly made his way out into the silent common room, drawing from his experiences sneaking around the tower house as a child to open his door without a creak, stepping lightly on the pads of his feet. He paused outside Vel’s door, feeling an odd conflict as he considered the potential outcomes and what they would mean.

  If Vel really was the young woman from that night, then there was no taking back the passion they’d shared. It would be like opening the front door during a raging storm. Even once the door was shut, the carpet and walls would still be soaking wet, a mess created in an instant that would take many times longer to clean up.

  Would they tell Malon, or would they keep it from her? Secrets carried a pull of their own, especially those with such inherent, forbidden emotions.

  Would they go back to how they’d been on that night, and if they did, would things between them ever return to normal?

  Damon listened outside Vel’s door. He slowly reached for the knob, feeling his heart pound against the inside of his ribs as the intensity of the moment began to affect him. He flinched, hearing a noise, and then froze.

  Not just a noise. A soft, shuddering moan. And not from Vel’s room, either.

  Malon had left her door open a crack, likely out of habit of living in the tower house on her own. She was in bed, covered by only a thin sheet, and otherwise completely naked. Damon shouldn’t have been able to see that much detail, and wouldn’t have been able to, if not for the eerie crimson light which was emanating from somewhere underneath her sheet.

  “Oh…” Malon’s voice was a passionate waver. Her eyes fluttered and she leaned her head back, hips bucking upward slightly in time with a pulse of that eerie crimson light.

  There was something moving between her legs, and it took Damon far longer than it should have to realize it was her hand. Her hair was out of its usual braid, red locks splayed across her pillow in a manner that, for no reason he could properly discern, made the scene a hundred times lewder than it already was.

  She started biting her lower lip and fell into a lusty rhythm that made Damon think of how aroused he’d been in the lake the night before. What would have happened if she’d gotten back into the water while he’d been stroking his cock? What would happen if he went to her now, closed the distance, and the simple nature of man and woman attempt to take its course?

  The crimson light pulsed again as Malon let out a breathy, feminine gasp. Damon felt himself struggling to focus on it, let alone think about what it might be, as though it was a minor aspect of a fluctuating dream, which was a possibility, he conceded.

  “Solas?”

  Malon’s voice was soft and surprised. Damon was caught in between trying to sneak back to his own room and staying where he was, eventually opting for the path of least resistance. Malon pulled the sheet around her, the strange light fading as she rose to her feet.

  Only the teal green glow of the ghost moon illuminated her as she padded across the floor on bare feet, wearing the insubstantial sheet as a cloak, her body covered, but anything but hidden.

  He could see it all, from the curves of her generously plump breasts, to the points of her nipples, to the subtle slope of her taut waist above her full hips.

  “What was that?” he asked. His voice sounded so quiet and boyish to his own ear. Malon smiled at him, her face still flushed from the scene he’d stumbled in on.

  “What was what?” she countered.

  “I heard something, and saw…” He shook his head, trying to search beyond a sudden blankness in his memory. “I was concerned.”

  “Ah.” Malon stepped forward, setting a hand on his chest. “Just a cramp in my thigh. Painful, but nothing serious.”

  Her touch sent warmth flooding over him, and it was as though he was hearing the echo of her pleasured moans again, except with her much closer, demanding his attention. He was aware of the fact that he had a serious erection, tenting his pants in a manner that she couldn’t have missed, pointing straight toward her like a notched arrow, ready to sing through the air.

  He reached his hand forward, touching first her hip, and then sliding his hand down over and across her thigh, settling his fingers high on the inside of it. He watched as she sucked in a quick, shaky breath, clearly as affected by his touch as he was by hers.

  “I could rub it out for you,” he said.

  A curious smile took up residence on her face. Damon wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw her eyes flick downward for an instant, taking in the full extent of his current state. She brought the hand she had on his chest up, gently and lovingly cupping his cheek.

  “It is nothing, solas,” she whispered. “I can handle it. You are so kind to offer, though.”

  She pulled him into a hug, somehow managing to ignore the hardness of his member as it poked against her stomach. Damon felt intoxicated by her current scent, a mixture of the crimson sap she was so fond of, sweat, with an illicit hint of the distinctly feminine smell so common to freshly frolicked beds and dens of seduction.

  “Aesta,” he whispered. He wrapped his arms around her, gently grinding his hardness forward, too horny to make any attempt at disguising what he was doing.

  Malon caressed his cheek, breathing against the sensitive skin along the edge of his chin and underneath his ear. She planted a gentle kiss on his lips, and then a longer one, rocking herself forward to match his movements without escalation.

  Damon was ready and willing to be the one to take things further. He ran his hands over Malon’s insanely soft body through the sheet, feeling a hunger take hold of him as her warmth radiated into his palms. He was about to cup one of her breasts when she stopped him, lacing her fingers through his and gently leading him away from the door.

  She pulled him out of her room and back into his. Damon knew from her posture that she had no intention of going down the path he so deeply desired, and that singular fact was enough to let him feel the full range of his shame and propriety.

  Malon pulled the quilt back from his bed, gently set him down, and then set a hand on his chest, guiding him to sleep almost as she’d done more than a decade earlier. Damon’s erection was still obvious, and he tried not to reach for it immediately as he watched her leaving, hips gently swaying in a manner that caused the edge of one of her buttocks to peek out from the fabric of the sheet.

  He began stroking himself, not bothering with a slow buildup. Malon had left the door open, and the same sound he’d heard earlier softly echoed in. The sound of her breathy, pleasured moans. She was of a state and mind with him, aroused and in her bed and taking care of her own lustful frustration.

  “Oh!” she gasped. “Mmm…”

  He had the forethought to grab one of his unwashed shirts from beside the bed as he unloaded. The pleasure pulsed through every inch of his body, forcing clenched muscles that he hadn’t known existed.

  He sighed and leaned his head back, confused and unable to dismiss the sense that he’d forgotten some
thing important.

  CHAPTER 17

  Damon helped Malon attach the horses to the wagon about an hour after sunrise the next morning. Their harvest from the day before, along with two casks of waterfruit wine, were already loaded up in the back, ready to be sold in Morotai’s market square.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Damon. Malon was staring at the front of the wagon with her arms crossed, her features written into a concerned frowned.

  “I didn’t stop to consider how little room would be left in the wagon with it completely loaded,” she said. “One of us might have to stay behind.”

  Vel was by the edge of the lake soaking her feet, but still near enough to overhear Malon’s words. “I refuse to stay here. That level of boredom would be simply unbearable.”

  “I need solas to help me move the casks, if not the rest of my wares,” said Malon.”

  “I’ll just walk alongside the wagon,” he said. “It isn’t that far, is it?”

  “The distance isn’t the issue,” said Malon. “It rained early this morning and the mud in these parts is stubborn enough to suck off boots.”

  Vel let out a disappointed groan, sensing which of them would end up being cut from the journey if it came to it. “I’m not staying behind. Please, aesta. There must be a way.”

  Malon glanced at Damon and then back at Vel, giving a small shrug. “Would you be willing to sit on Damon’s lap?”

  “What?” he snapped.

  “You did it a few times before as children.” Malon turned her palms up. “If you’re not comfortable with, I understand, solas.”

  “If that’s where I have to sit, so be it.” Vel had on a simple white summer dress with maroon embroidery in the shape of flowers and a draw tie made of red felt around the waist. Her hair was down, and she arched her back into a stretch before bending over to pull her shoes on.

  “I mean, I’m not sure if…” Damon trailed off, suddenly realizing the potential opportunity. “I guess it could work. But I’m not interested in you complaining about being uncomfortable.”

  “The ride isn’t that far, as you already mentioned,” said Vel. “I’ll manage.”

  Damon nodded slowly. He’d been considering attempting to peek on Vel while she was sleeping to get a sense of whether her naked body was the same one he remembered from the night of the Turning Festival. Having her on his lap could be just as good, assuming he got a chance to discretely feel around in the right places.

  The thought sent an odd flush of excitement in the direction of his crotch, which he immediately began forcing down, for Vel’s sake if not his own. Malon was already climbing into the front of the wagon, and he moved to do the same.

  “I trust that you won’t start complaining about my weight?” said Vel.

  A dozen different quips danced across the tip of Damon’s tongue until he noticed that Vel was being serious. She looked vulnerable, almost reluctantly so, as though she expected a quip, too.

  “Velanor, you’re tiny, and I doubt I’ll even notice your weight.” He smiled reassuringly, climbed into the wagon, and patted his thigh. “Hop up.”

  “Can you give me a hand?”

  He reached down and pulled her aboard. Vel let out a tiny squeak as she fell onto him unsteadily, her soft butt pressing down against his crotch as he took a firm hold of her hips to steady her.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “My pleasure.”

  “Are you both comfortable?” asked Malon. “We’re in no rush, so I’ll keep the horses at an even pace.”

  “I’m fine,” said Vel, adjusting her positioning with a few side to side movements that Damon was acutely aware of.

  “As am I,” he said.

  “Then we’re off!” Malon grinned and started the horses forward. They seemed to know their way, heading straight for the same path Damon had taken to reach the tower house a few days earlier.

  He realized how much bumpier the ride was going to be than he’d expected as soon as they were off the grass and onto the path. Vel bounced on his lap in a manner that felt far too familiar in all the dirtiest possible ways, so he tried pulling her downward, using his strength to lock her buttocks against his crotch.

  She set her hand on his knee to help steady herself, seemed to think better of it and try to hold the side of the wagon, and then grabbed his knee again. Damon did his best to keep his plan in mind without letting his thoughts of how interesting it felt to have Vel’s butt on his lap stir up memories of the encounter with the young woman in the cat mask.

  “Are you both comfortable?” asked Malon.

  Vel cleared her throat, absentmindedly stroking Damon’s knee and thigh. “Damon doesn’t make the best chair, but I’m managing.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers, Vel,” he said, shifting his hand a bit further up her side.

  He got the sense that if he could feel one of her breasts, even just for an instant, he might be able to match it to the woman in his memory. He was waiting for a bump to give him a plausible amount of deniability before making the attempt.

  “I was anticipating more fallen branches to be impeding our progress,” said Malon. “I had to move more than a few the last time I collected herbs out this way. An entire fallen tree, in one instance.”

  Vel cleared her throat, shifting in a manner that slid her rear along the length of Damon’s crotch. “My carriage driver and his guard were diligent about clearing the way. They’re used to backroads, and not about to let a hard tree trunk in the wrong place spoil their journey.”

  There was a hint of coyness and accusation in her voice, which was fair. He felt a similar conflict to the one he’d confronted seeing Malon the previous night stirring in both his heart and his loins, perhaps even just a new facet of the same one. Vel was nearly his sister, if not by blood, then most definitely by circumstance.

  For him to find her sexually attractive behind a mask after years apart was understandable, excusable, even. For Vel to turn him on to his current level of excitement, knowing full well who she was and how close they’d been growing up, was not.

  Which, bizarrely, made it that much more difficult to calm himself down. He felt Vel move forward a bit as she shifted her weight, and the sensation of her soft buttocks sliding along his hardening cock felt dangerously enjoyable.

  She tensed as she reset her positioning, back arching slightly as though she was caught in between recoiling and remaining where she was.

  Damon felt her pinch her buttocks together as though it might solve the problem for them. It had the opposite effect, gripping his cock in a lewdly cushioned embrace.

  He tried again to focus on the road, but it didn’t help. He watched as Malon failed to react quickly enough as the horses pulled the carriage over a hidden bump.

  Vel bounced a few inches out of his lap. Damon grabbed her and pulled her back down on his hard cock, lifting his hips slightly and grinding into her so blatantly that he half expected her to turn around and slap him.

  When she didn’t, he interpreted it as a sign that there might be some merit to his hastily conceived plan after all. He slid his hands higher up her body, feeling the warmth of her body through the fabric of her dangerously thin dress.

  He stopped as the skin of his index fingers brushed against the bottom edge of both her breasts, hoping that Malon didn’t choose that moment to look over.

  It was Vel who caught him instead.

  “I know what you’re doing,” she hissed.

  “Oh?” Damon smiled, despite the way his heart pounded in anticipation of disaster. “And what’s that?

  He flexed his hips up, burying his cock longwise down the length of her seductively soft buttocks and thighs.

  “I can feel it, Damon,” whispered Vel.

  He couldn’t understand what it was about those words, about that sentence, about her breathless voice, that turned him on so much. She was still squeezing his leg, not hard enough to hurt or even warn him off.

  “What can you feel, Vel?” />
  She rocked back and forth, stroking him off with her buttocks, emphasizing what she could feel without saying it out loud and nearly making Damon spoil his trousers in the process.

  Comparing her to the young woman in the cat mask had, at some point, become an objective secondary to indulging in his own perverted desires.

  “I’ll tell aesta,” she whispered.

  “What will you tell her?”

  Vel let out a tiny, almost inaudible whimper. Damon shot the briefest glance toward Malon before making good on his goal and cupping one of her small but wonderfully soft breasts.

  With his hand firmly on her chest, and his cock rigidly poking into the perfect, glorious lane formed by her buttocks and thighs, he was almost beyond thinking. Beyond anything other than his intense, illicit, actively throbbing need.

  “You’re disgusting,” said Vel, as she continued to rock back and forth, a complicit participant in whatever was currently happening.

  “Admit it and I’ll stop,” he whispered. He let his lips brush against her neck. Vel leaned her head back on her shoulder.

  “You’re a dirty commoner,” she hissed. “You probably stick your cock in cheap whores.”

  “Where do you think I’ll end up sticking it tonight?”

  Vel moaned and began undulating against him even faster. The wagon went over another bump, and for a split instant, Damon’s cock pushed point-on against her womanhood, testing the fabric of both his trousers and her dress in a dangerous game of accidental eroticism.

  He had a moment of clarity in which he realized that regardless of whether his suspicions about Vel were true, he still wanted her. The shame and guilt tightly wound around that thought only fed the flames of his sexual hunger. He slid his free hand down the length of her stomach, ostensibly to steady her, fingers exploring her crotch and the delicacies he could feel through the folds of her dress.

  “Are the two of you comfortable?” asked Malon.

  Damon froze, expecting her to look over and catch them. When she didn’t, he eventually realized that she still expected an answer.