Huge massive thanks to my two beta readers, TheElfOfLorien and Mireia! Couldn't have done it without you two.
They arrived in Prox worn-down and ragged, not looking at all like the group of heroes they were supposed to be. The minute they saw the slightest sign of civilization, Sheba started craning her neck for an inn—luckily, it was right near the entrance to town. She grabbed at Felix's sleeve, and he handed her the coin purse to take care of it. He, Isaac, and Kraden went to find Puelle—or at least, Felix said he hoped it was still Puelle that was in charge, as he might be a little more sympathetic to their situation.
Jenna and Mia had trailed after the boys, but soon split off across a bridge and up to a lone house on top of a hill. They were just in time to catch the tail end of a conversation between two of the Proxian natives.
"Puelle's going to be upset that we didn't follow his order to free them, though."
"He was very clear about it, too... 'When Felix returns to Prox, set his parents free.'"
Jenna felt weak, and it was only Mia's hand on her shoulder that brought her back to the real world.
"You okay?" There was concern in the Mercury adept's eyes, and Jenna almost hated her for it. People had a tendency to look at her with pity and worry, like she might burst into tears at the slightest provocation. She knew deep down, though, that the other girl only meant it as sympathy.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. I just... We were so close." Despite her best efforts, she didn't seem to be as good at concealing her emotions as she wished she was. Mia's hand on her shoulder slid around as she pulled the other girl close.
"They must still be alive. At the very least, they haven't been gone long."
"What's going on?" That was Kraden's voice, and Mia explained what they'd overheard. Felix instructed Mia and Jenna to meet the rest back at the inn, while they got as much information as they could out of the two Proxian natives.
By the time they got back to the inn, Jenna had pulled herself together, which came in handy, as Garet was arguing with the poor innkeeper.
"You don't understand. There are nine of us, and we need—"
"Garet. Shut it. What's the problem?"
"Well do you want me to shut it or do you want me to explain—"
Jenna rolled her eyes. "Explain, please."
"They only have four beds at this inn. There are nine of us, and no one's sharing with Kraden, so for this to be even remotely comfortable we need at least five. Five beds means we're all sharing, though."
"We could go back to the ship," Piers said, voice trailing off as Jenna shook her head.
"Sorry, but that thing's not exactly insulated. We'd have to burn it on the water to stay warm, and that wouldn't last long." She shrugged. "Any other ideas?"
"Two of us could sleep on the floor," Ivan offered after a pause, but Garet vetoed the idea immediately.
"Hell no. Because one of those people is probably going to be me, and I'm not doing that the night before we climb the goddamn lighthouse—"
"You're going to what?" the innkeeper cut in, and things could've gotten a whole lot worse if Felix, Isaac, and Kraden hadn't shown up, followed by Puelle. He explained their situation, and that they would be staying for free. Garet wasted no time in exclaiming to Isaac about the bed situation, leading Puelle to again step in and offer up the other house at the top of the hill, explaining that there were two small beds available there as long as they didn't mind being on the opposite side of town.
Felix quickly made the executive decision—they couldn't afford to turn down the free space, so two people would have to go. Which left the issue of who, exactly, was going.
"We could draw straws," Ivan suggested, and after Garet ridiculed him briefly, that ended up being exactly what they did. Although since Prox had a predictable lack of straw, they instead used sticks.
Jenna pulled hers. Short... She looked around, and there was Isaac, with the matching one.
Sheba grinned, and just that was enough to make Jenna worried. "There are two beds," she snapped, before the younger girl could say anything. "And we're adults."
She turned to walk away, but instead nearly ran into her brother, who was staring Isaac down and probably being very intimidating. Jenna herself had long since grown past the belief that her brother could be any sort of scary, especially since she'd seen him pulling Sheba by the hand all around Weyard so they could read the minds of various animals. ("Piers, do we still have that rock that the penguin gave us?" "Jenna, where did you put that red scarf from the cow?" "Oh no, do we still have milk?" "Sheba, I know you're attached to that baby turtle, but...")
Regardless, Isaac looked a little bit scared.
"Sleep well. You'll need it for tomorrow," was all Felix said before walking off to stake his claim on one of the inn beds. Isaac blinked.
"Come on, it's not getting any warmer out there," Jenna said, tugging at his scarf to get him moving towards the door as she tried to hide her laughter.
They'd just been outside a few minutes earlier, but it somehow seemed to be snowing harder as they walked to the cabin. Sticking close to Isaac's back, Jenna wrapped his scarf around her neck.
"Isaac?" She nearly had to shout to be heard over the wind. He turned, and though she couldn't see his mouth she knew he smiled—it was in his eyes.
"Getting comfortable there?"
"Hardly. Just don't run or you'll strangle me."
"Don't think I could run if I wanted to." He had a point. The snow and ice covered everything and made it slippery, so Jenna was grateful (not for the first time) for her new boots from the blacksmith in Yallam and their traction. Her old boots from home had long since worn out—and she was sure that those, made for Valean weather, wouldn't have lasted long this far north, anyway.
When they finally arrived at the house, he gestured for her to go through the door first. She unwound his scarf from around her neck and did so, ducking inside and stepping out of the way to let him in. Isaac shoved his entire body weight against the door to make it close, and then locked the deadbolt. Jenna toed her boots off and kicked them towards the door, then grimaced and pulled her wet socks off as well.
"Think they'd care if we laid out our clothes to dry?" she asked, and he shrugged.
"Nobody around to care, is there?" He turned his back to her as he started to undress. She followed suit, unlacing her vest with slightly numb fingers and fervently hoping that the beds, at the very least, were warm.
The punctuated thunk of his chest piece hitting the floor made her jump, and she looked back over at him just in time to see him pulling his shirt off. Her own state of undress forgotten, she was mesmerized by him. He wasn't exactly ripped, she noted, as the shirt slid over his shoulders and above his head. Toned, definitely, but not ripped—not that it was a problem either way. The muscles in his back became more defined as he bent to dig around in his bag, and she took the opportunity to appreciate how smoothly his hips became his extremely well-formed ass. In the back of her mind she wondered if she looked that good naked. It would certainly explain why Sheba had stopped ribbing her about her stomach.
She had to actually blink and shake her head to clear it as he pulled a fresh undershirt over his head, obscuring her view of his back. He half-turned, then almost as an afterthought said, "You decent?"
She was in her bra with her skirt half off. She'd been paying too much attention to what he was doing and not enough to herself. "Ah, not yet. Sorry."
He snorted in mock derision as he tilted his face away again. "You girls, always taking so long to get ready."
"What would you know about that? Mia's the fastest of any of us girls to get ready in the morning," she said as she dug around in her bag to find her pajama top—a spare silk shirt that Felix had won at the slots in Contigo. After finding it and buttoning it all the way up to where it stopped above her bust, she started to take her hair down and said, "Okay, I'm dressed."
He turned, and rather than continuing the banter as she'd expected he would, just said, "Oh."
She stopped finger-combing her hair and looked up at him. "Oh? Oh what?"
"I just don't think I've ever seen you with your hair down."
"So what, does it look weird?" She grinned, then slid her fingers into her hair, and made a sort of embarrassing half-moan as she started to massage her scalp.
He quirked an eyebrow. "Did you have your hair up for too long?"
"Yeah, I guess." She couldn't figure out if he was reacting to the noise she'd made or to her pain.
"Well then, let me help. Sit down." He took her hand and pulled her over to one of the beds, gesturing at her to sit on the edge. When she complied, he sat behind her and attempted to imitate her earlier massaging motions. "Like this?"
"Oh! Yeah, that's perfect..." She let her eyes slide shut and fought the urge to lean back against him as he continued his ministrations.
After a while, she spoke up. "Hey, Isaac?"
His hands in her hair stopped their movement, then slid down her neck to rest on her shoulders. "Mm-hmm?"
She scooted backwards to sit in the middle of the bed, crossing her legs and twisting her hands together in her lap. "Do you think... Do you think we're going to die tomorrow?"
He reached out and took one of her hands in both of his own; she imagined he did it both to comfort her and to stop her from fidgeting. "Jenna, if there's one thing I'm going to protect tomorrow, it'll be you. You're not going to die."
"I didn't say me, I said we. Are we going to be okay?"
Isaac just looked at her for a moment, eyebrows drawn together, his blue eyes dark with worry. Then, seemingly on impulse, he lifted her hand and kissed it. She inhaled sharply at the touch of his lips, and he looked up, eyes tracing down the length of her arm to meet her gaze.
"I hope so."
She'd never seen him look so—so—despondent. So lost.
In a split-second decision, as much in reaction to the pain on his face as in reaction to the long-repressed feelings she had for him, she fisted her hand in the front of his shirt, pulled him across the bed, and kissed him. It scarcely took him a second before he was kissing back, wrapping his arms around her waist, as she reached up and locked her arms behind his neck.
After a minute, he pulled back, resting his forehead against hers. "Why didn't you say something?"
"Well, I..." She blushed, and hid her face in his chest. "Sheba kept saying it was so obvious, and I thought that you knew and you were just pretending not to."
"Might I remind you that Sheba is a literal mind-reader? What's obvious to her might not be so obvious to...well, to people like me."
"Don't be so self-deprecating," she said, laughing a little and then growing serious, raising her head up again to look at him. "So, is this okay, then?" Despite the compromising position they were both in, she still felt embarrassed about being so forward. Being outspoken in speech was one thing, but confessing to someone she'd cared about since she was very young was another thing entirely—and then to do it the way she had...
"Oh, yeah," he said without an instant of hesitation, pulling her close to kiss her again, repeatedly.
His thumbs skimmed up over the edge of the boy-short panties she wore as pajama bottoms and under her shirt, rubbing small circles into the bare skin and then squeezing her hips when she ground her body forward into his. She grabbed the end of his undershirt and tugged on it, and he obediently pulled back to let her strip it off him. Her eyes flicked appreciatively up and down his body again, and there was something much more erotic about knowing he'd seen it this time. Barely thinking, she leaned in and traced her lips up the line of his jaw, ending it by running her tongue along the shell of his ear. His hands squeezed her hips again.
"Nngh. Venus." His voice was huskier than she'd ever heard it, and it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
She laughed, a little breathless. "Did I find a weak spot?"
"I'd be careful there, if I was y—oh." He choked as she flicked her tongue against his earlobe, and then nipped at it. "Seriously, Jen." He pushed her back to look her in the eyes. "Seriously, I might not be able to stop myself."
Her eyebrows went up, and she licked her lips again. If that heat low in her belly and the dampness between her legs meant anything, she was so ready for this. "Maybe I don't want you to stop."
He swallowed, and then with light pressure on her shoulders pushed her down on to her back on the bed. She let herself fall backwards and laughed at him as he cursed under his breath about the buttons on her shirt.
"Don't push me," he warned, pausing above the third button. "I'll rip it off you if I have to."
"Don't you dare, this is the only spare shirt I have!" she exclaimed, laughing and moving his hands away to unbutton it herself. She let him remove it, though, and then toss it across the room to who knew where. His calloused hands slid down her body, and she moaned as his hands brushed across her breasts. He ignored them for the moment though, apparently preferring to focus on her hips as he had before.
"Do you like my hips, or what?"
"Curves," he clarified, as his hands moved down her thighs. "I'm discovering I have a thing for curves."
Jenna pushed herself up on her elbows to get a better look at him as he continued to caress her hips and thighs. And hey, it looked like she actually did have some abdominal muscles. "Well, I've got other curves that need attention, too," she said, with a mock pout.
"So pushy," he said, smiling teasingly as he slid up her body to do as she asked. As he ducked his head to press his lips to her nipple, his hair brushed against her skin, and she sighed and dropped back down flat to the bed. The heat of his body above hers was intoxicating, and the suction of his mouth brought on a heady, dizzy sensation that made her fingers tingle. A light scrape of his teeth, and she arched her back and moaned.
"Too much?" he asked, breath rushing over the sensitive skin. She shook her head, panting, and he lowered his head again, this time over her other breast. Her hand lifted from where it had been on the bed to curl around his head, brushing over the short hairs at the nape of his neck, then traveling down to slide across his shoulders and upper back. Seeing his muscles earlier had been one thing, but feeling them flex under her hand was something else entirely.
Isaac surged back up to kiss her on the lips again, one hand cupping the side of her face. He pulled back and rested his forehead against hers, waiting until he had her full attention before he spoke.
"You okay with this?"
"Obviously," she snorted. "I'm half-naked, and you're lying on top of me."
"Fair point," he said, and slid a finger under the hem of her panties to remove them. She grabbed his wrist to stop him.
"Would you mind if I got something? To help," she said, and he nodded and sat back. She slid off the bed to get to her bag, fishing around for a moment before coming back up with a small jar. "Massage oil. Snagged it from a specialty shop in Izumo."
"That's about half-empty," he observed, raising an eyebrow and then smirking. "I hope you were thinking of me while you used all that."
She laughed, not wanting to admit that he'd hit the nail on the head. "Maybe I was. Boxers, off."
"Yes ma'am." Isaac obediently kicked off his underwear, then dropped back to lie down on the bed again. Jenna didn't quite look away from his very erect penis fast enough, and he raised an eyebrow at her. "You know you don't have to be embarrassed."
Jenna realized her sudden dizziness was probably due to all the blood rushing to her face. She was probably blushing so hard she was glowing. "Mars, you're...not small."
"You shouldn't be stroking my ego," he said, laughing a little and throwing his arm across his face in embarrassment in spite of what he'd said earlier.
"What, would you prefer I stroke something else?" She barely got through the words without laughing, sitting back down on the bed and twisting the lid off the jar of massage oil. "Seriously, do you want me to do this or would you prefer to do it yourself?"
"I've got it," he said, taking the jar from her and dipping a finger in. "Ugh, that's cold."
"Oh, sorry. Lemme see it for a sec—" She put her hand on the jar and heated it with a quick flash of Psynergy. "How's that?"
"Yeah, that's better." He poured some of the oil into his hand, leaned back, and set the jar aside.
The sight of him slicking up was oddly arousing—she wasn't sure exactly what it was about the motion that set her off, but her eyes followed the stroke of his hand so intensely that he faltered and glanced up at her. "What?"
"Nothing, just... Well, how do you want to do this?"
"Hmm. Well—" he said, and rather than explain, he grabbed her hand and pulled her to lay underneath him again, so he was kneeling between her legs. "Like this, maybe? How we were before?"
"Seems easy enough." She lifted her hips off the bed to pull of her panties and tossed them aside.
He guided himself inside of her, and she sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth. "Sorry," he said softly, kissing her on the forehead. "Breathe."
She was definitely wet enough for him to move fairly easily inside of her, and the oil helped, but it was still a bit uncomfortable. There was a sensation of being overfull, especially since all she'd ever handled before this was her own fingers—and even that wasn't common. Traveling in groups as she had been meant she rarely got a moment to herself.
He grabbed her hand and squeezed, lacing their fingers together as he looked down at her with those blue eyes. "You okay?"
"Yeah. There's just a lot to handle..."
"What did I say about stroking my—" She squeezed her inner muscles experimentally, cutting him off, and his eyes fell shut again with a deep exhale.
A few easy thrusts of his hips, and true to her element she could feel her body temperature increasing. Suddenly overcome with a desire to move, she hooked her leg around his and rolled so she was on top. Caught off guard, he laughed and then slid her hair off to one side to get it out of the way, though that was hardly the first thing she was thinking about right now.
She held still a minute, acclimating to the new position, then lifted her hips and pushed back down, trying to find a rhythm. He thrust up in time with her, running his hands across her back, and she whimpered and bent down to press her face into his shoulder. She couldn't hold back the noises she kept making, completely involuntarily, and it was sort of embarrassing. At least no one would hear them way out at the literal edge of the world.
Isaac, on the other hand, was almost too quiet. She'd thought that because he was so quiet normally, he might be louder in bed, but that didn't seem to be the case.
"Is this okay?" she hazarded in a whisper, trying to get a feel for whether or not she was actually doing anything for him.
"Yeah, perfect," he said, hugging her close. "Actually, let me try something. Sit up, just a bit." He took her hips and lifted, and she pushed up so her hands were on either side of his head. Glancing up at her for a quick confirmation, he reached between them to where they were joined. His knuckles slid over the hair between her legs, and then brushed against her clit—lightly, but it was enough to make her jerk her hips forward in surprise and gasp. He made a pleased noise and rubbed against it again, causing much the same reaction. (She'd always heard women complaining about how their men couldn't find the clitoris, but then again she supposed Isaac had always been perceptive. And at the very least, he was good with puzzles.)
A few more repetitions of that in combination with him inside of her, and her head was spinning, limbs tingling, achingly close. Her arms could barely support her anymore. "Isaac," she said, and somehow he understood, using one hand on the small of her back to push her down as he thrust up, sliding his finger hard over her clit and it was perfect. She collapsed forward on to his chest as the world splintered and flew apart, and she came with a high-pitched moan. He thrust deep into her and came as well, a sound almost like a growl leaving him, and then a deep exhale.
She floated down from her climax as the world rebuilt itself around her, and her entire body felt tingly and heavy. She slowly became aware of Isaac's hand stroking slowly up and down her back, and the way her entire body felt sweaty. Maybe it was some of his sweat on her too, she couldn't tell. Lethargic, using about all the energy she had left in her body, she rolled off of him, and the loss of him inside her made her cuddle right up against him again. He kissed the top of her head as he pulled the blankets up around them both, and she ducked down and pressed her face into his chest, inhaling deeply.
"Did you just smell me?" he asked sleepily, and she giggled.
"Yeah. You smell like...hmm. Kinda like pine trees."
"Guess that makes sense," he said, gently pulling her close to him and pressing his nose into her hair. "Woodsmoke. I guess that should disturb me a little bit more than it does, huh?" She giggled again and snuggled down into the blankets.
"We never did hang up our clothes," she mumbled after a bit.
"They'll dry fine on the floor. Go to sleep, silly."
A few seconds later, she jerked away and sat bolt upright, with an exclamation of "Oh, Iris!"
Alarmed, Isaac sat up with her. "What? What is it?"
"Our parents... We just had sex in a bed that either your father or my parents have previously slept in."
He blinked at her. "You're right, I... I completely forgot. That's..."
A pause, as they stared at each other.
"...That's really funny," she finished, dissolving into giggles. Apparently her laughter was infectious, because he was laughing with her and pulling her into a hug.
"I love you," he said, and suddenly he grew serious. "Jenna, whatever happens tomorrow..."
"We'll be fine. I know we will." She kissed him, softly, and said, "I love you, too."