Choose Your Own Romance

(pg. 21)

"Well..." I muttered, glancing back and forth from the knight and the comedian, "Red is a very... masculinecolor, and... and I think that anyone who wears it is... is, well..."

"Masculine." Jester nearly whispered, then hung his head, "So... so you do not prefer... blue?"

I shook my head, not meeting my friend's eyes, but intensely aware of my enemy's gaze at my reddening face. "I am... I am afraid blue has... has never quite caught my attention the way that..." I allowed my gaze to drift up to Gunther's amber-brown eyes and stay connected with his disceifering stare. "...the way that red has."

The raven-haired man's mouth tilted to the side in a sly smirk, one that gave me chills, and he turned to glare at the bewildered juggler, who was still standing there, blinking back tears and clenching his jaw to keep back a wimper. I could not meet the blue-clad boy's eyes for all the courage in the kingdom.

"Jester, would you give me a moment with this fair lady here?" Gunther asked in a voice that was more demanding than questioning, and the gypsy's shoulders slumped and he sloughed his hat from his blonde head in defeat.

"Of course..." He muttered, and wandered off in search of his mandolin to craft a new, doubtlessly melancholy song. I sighed as he slunked off, but as the red-clad man in front of me turned his playful gaze to me, all my regret for rejecting the Fool became evanecent.

My heart fluttered and all I wanted to do was escape his gaze, but somehow still be in it. The desire to stay and the longing to flee somehow blended together in an emotion that swirled my stomach in ways it had never been twirled.

"So..." he said, offering a hand to me, "...I have a morning patrol down in the village."

"Would you be interested in a little back-up?" I heard myself ask in an almost pleading manner, and Gunther's smile made my throat clench up with nervous joy.

"Yeah," he told me, lifting my hand up to hover beneath his mouth, "I would enjoy that." With a deliberate slowness, he pressed his pair of warm lips to my freezing hand, and I felt a tremor rip through my body like an electric shock. "I would enjoy it thouroughly."

With that, he was gone and I was alone in the nearly empty couryard, but I was left with a delicious promise, tingling on my fingertips...

The End!

A/N: Yay! This is my first Gunther x Jane story... sort of. It is the hardest pairing to write, though there is so much material for it to work! Gunther is really hard for me to write... his character always turns out really OOC for me!

But tell me what you thought of him!

Love,

Stor-E-Phool