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Days gathered long into weeks, which together coalesced into something verging on a month since his return from the shores of Soudul, and Detraeus felt like a man anticipating death: an inevitability, but unpredictable so far as timing and circumstances were concerned. He was happy, but it couldn’t last. It never lasted. Yet so far, it had, and the feeling was both thrilling and terrifying.

It also produced in him a strange sense of guilt, as though he didn’t deserve to be happy, or certainly not yet. He hadn’t earned it yet. He had work left to do. Blood left to spill. His entire driving purpose to his goddess remained stagnant at the wayside of his priorities, festering unattended, and a stubborn, bitter part of him accused him of cowardice for leaving it there. Weakness. Laziness, incompetence, and sacrilege that he chose a pretty, warm, easy distraction over satisfying his purpose as he had always understood it.

But he quietly buried that thought.

The part of him still certain that now that he had her, Araceli would inevitably be taken from him combated the voice accusing him of cowardice with the argument that he was not avoiding his fate, and certainly not forgetting it. He was only savoring this fragment of good fortune while he had it in his grasp, well aware that the fates would in their time wrench it away, and at that point, he would return to his purpose all the more ready to meet death if need be.

For now, he had sunlight spilling through an open window over his shoulders, Araceli’s slight body tucked into his lap and against his chest, and all her dark hair loose between them. They were seated on her living room couch, nested together as an unspoken exercise in accustoming him to more frequent, full contact. She had her book in her lap, and Detraeus could spy the words over her shoulder and read together if he so chose, but found himself more interested in the shape and spread of scales across her bare shoulders, the narrowness of her fingers as she turned pages, and the scent of her hair, freshly dried after a bathing session.

At first, he made an effort to keep up with the reading, but she moved far too fast for him anyway, and as his attention wandered, he let touch supplement his study of other things. A grazing brush of a thumb over the back of her shoulder. A light run of his knuckles down her arm. A sweep of his tail following curiously up the shape of her tucked legs. He kissed the mass of black hair at the nape of her neck and then guided it aside like a curtain, baring her throat so that he could brush his lips there, too, and feel the steady, reassuring beat of her pulse against his skin.

He shut his eyes, and lingered there.

‘Mine.’

When Araceli first turned in his lap, drawing him forward and into a kiss, Detraeus returned the gesture eagerly without a moment’s regard to the fact that he had ‘interrupted’ her reading. This, he knew. By now, they had shared hundreds of kisses — or thousands — and her lips were a safe haven, a refuge, and a blessing forged by the gods to be savored. So he did so.

At her shift and press, her weight settling over him in a straddle, he shuddered, but did not pull away, and allowed his hand to be guided to her waist where he gripped and held fast as his pulse picked up. This, too, he could handle, and he shut his eyes, swallowing back the low groan that gathered in his throat as her lips traversed his throat and ignoring the slow, rising burn in his face and ears. Here was where his body began to war with his mind.

He opened his mouth, but shut it again soon after, opting instead to slide his hand up along Ara’s side and then back down, grounding himself in the familiar knowledge of her body’s shape under his fingers. His tail — always approximately ten steps ahead of the rest of him — slid in, the smooth edge tracing the inner-back of her thighs and skirting up dangerously close to the rise of her arse. He grit his teeth, forcing it back with a deliberate mental push and a frustrated grunt.

“Ara…” Hands already at her hips, Detraeus hesitated, resolve wavering before he let them dip, the barest tips of his fingers tracing the upper side of her thighs. His tail, stubborn as ever, coiled possessively around an ankle as compromise.

Two things happened in such rapid succession that they could almost be interpreted as simultaneous. First, when Araceli rocked herself downwards, providing a shock of friction and pressure to Detraeus’ already far too interested body, the rest of him went rigid as gravestone, a strangled fracture between a whine and a growl clawed its way out of his throat, and he grit his teeth. Second, the instant her fingers touched the upper line of his pants, his heart slammed into overdrive. Panic swamped him within a fraction of a second, and his hands jerked out, snatching up her wrists.

In a matter of moments, he was upright on the couch: Ara still in his lap, his tail coiled around her waist, pulse wild in his chest, and grip shackled around her wrists, his body simultaneously painfully aroused and trembling with the remaining ripples of his panic. He swore beneath his breath. Biting back an embarrassingly high pitched, frustrated mewl of a sound, he settled instead for squeezing his eyes shut and tucked his forehead against her shoulder.

“I can’t,” he panted, breath still quivering on the exhale as he shook his head. “I can’t—I’m sorry, I can’t…I’m sorry…” With a push of willpower, he forced his grip open, releasing her wrists one finger at a time and then setting them somewhere safe, at his hips, before laying his own hands at her waist and uncoiling his tail. “Nnh.” ‘Goddess, help me.’

Detraeus breathed, gradually letting himself relax under the more familiar string of touches and easing back into a state closer to calm. It did little to help his ‘other’ issue — which was clearly going to have to wait for quite some time if his heart was to remain in his chest and functioning at a liveable level — but he was more than used to that by now, and found the ease with which Ara accepted the withdrawal comforting. When she brought up Ayr, however, he blinked and leaned back, entirely thrown out of his previous train of thought.

“Ayr…?” he repeated.

Abrupt as the topic came, he found he was grateful, in a way. No string of questions. No lingering on the subject of his insecurities or pushing for more information. Instead, it presented a clear, concise change of subject which allowed him to dismiss his failures all the more quickly. He shifted his weight on the couch, arranging himself more comfortably beneath her and studying her face as his thumb began an absent-minded sweep back and forth over the curve of her hip.

“When?”

He’d never been, personally, and though he abhorred sea travel, the idea of exploring a new continent appealed to him greatly. Exhilarated him, even, and he found himself already investing himself in the idea, wondering where they might travel, why Araceli wanted to go specifically — now of all times — and what it might be like when they got there.

Detraeus nodded, making mental note of the time frame and already thinking ahead. If she had set the date as the following morning, he would still have followed through. Since his return, he had avoided the pit, avoiding Casseth, primarily, and taken to providing income through the spoils of hunts in the neighboring area. Creatures, large and small with various assets, supplemented by the occasional dragon on ‘lucky’ days.

Eventually, he intended to return to the pit, and perhaps pick back up on his habit of taking on the role of a sellsword, but for now, he was loathe to travel too far from town, putting priority instead on whatever it was he had with Araceli and making his arrangements around that. Gripping her waist, he lifted her off of him — an easy task, given that her body seemed to agree with her element in terms of weight and density — and rose from the couch. There, though, he hesitated.

After a moment, he leaned back down. “A week,” he repeated, and dipped to press a fleeting, barely-there kiss to the corner of her mouth. An apology for his earlier failure? A last excuse to kiss her before moving out of her way? He wasn’t sure, but afterwards, he backed up, standing straight again, and moved for his room to gather his bow and other various weapons not strapped to him. Only once he reached the front door did he pause again, lingering in the threshold. “Enjoy your book,” he said. “I’ll return.”

And with that, he was out. A hunt, he thought, would be a good way not only to stretch his muscles and give himself breathing space, but also to consider what he might like to accomplish on Ayr, if Araceli’s plans were not absolute. It would, he thought, be a very welcome adventure.