So, since my Fall In Love Fic Exchange fic wasn't actually fall-themed, at least this kiss is? A little? Anyway, happy Wednesday everyone!
A Casual Kiss
Times like these, he was almost certain they might get away with this.
Everything about her was pale light. Her complexion so milky the blue veins stood out against her skin. Her silver hair that in the warm sunlight seemed almost a glittery, light, so light, blue-ish purple-white, shimmering as the fine, delicate strands fluttered with the autumn winds. Even her clothing was almost fled of color - the small, narrow soft, cream colored fur cape, those surprising leather breeches a beige so light they almost matched her skin.
It was all in stark contrast to the richly colored world around her. The red and yellow and orange foliage, the rushing rivers, the golden afternoon light. Everything about her pale and ethereal except the bright golden moon insignia on her forehead that seemed to want to jump amongst the autumn forests as if it belonged there instead.
She was the most beautiful being he was capable of imagining. A goddess among men. No one else would ever compare. He would love her beyond death, he felt it in his soul and in his bones. And right now, for this little enclave of paradise, she was about to be pressed up against him until the eve if he would just have his way.
And he always had his way.
She stood hovering, warily looking between the guards, Jadeite, the horse, and him.
"I've never done this," she'd confessed with wide eyes.
"What?!" Jadeite had sputtered, forgotten his manners, and earned Endymion's dark glower until he sputtered out a more subdued, "Pardon, your Highness…"
"It's just not common on the Moon, you see…" she said unsurely, licking her lips.
The mare was a bred as beautiful as they come. The most beautiful he knew. He'd picked it out himself from the royal stables. Yet of course it didn't help if she knew not how to ride.
And so he'd argued his case. Argued it well.
"I insist," Endymion hushed again with glowing, intense eyes.
It was unheard of, he knew.
The guards were whispering, he knew that also. This was too lowly a job for a prince.
They'd been whispering all day. And they were doing it loudly, almost unguarded. A princess in breeches. A princess who could not ride a horse. A princess who would not understand a word they whispered about since she did not speak the common tongue of Earth.
But he had the best excuse. The best excuse in the world. Princess Jupiter, her escort for the visit, was sitting clumsily on her own horse. She had learned to ride many a years ago. Yet the horse was not an animal native to the Moon, and so to put the heiress of the Silver Millennium in the saddle of someone not capable of guarding her in this moment was downright treason to commit.
He was the best equestrian in the region. She would ride with him.
And she did.
Even under Jadeite's disapproving glare and the guards whispering, no one stopped him as he put his hands around this petite vision who held his world and soul and heart and yet no one must ever be allowed to know, and lifted her into his saddle. No one stopped him as he swung up himself, no one stopped him to enjoy the thrill of her small fingers as the laced around his waist and settled on the waistband of his own breeches, no one stopped them as she pressed against him, her thighs against his.
He would have Serenity pressed against him for hours, in the middle of a royal escort. He felt so agitated and excited all at once it almost made him high.
Yes, days like these, he was almost certain they would get away with it. That they would get to grow old together right under their noses, that he would get to wed her and call her his wife and no one might ever be the wiser as they hid in plain sight, staging state visit after state visit just so she might press her entire body against his back until the morrow.
It made him feel giddy. It made him reckless. Careless. Stupid.
It was that very night that the end started. That very night that they slipped.
Too comfortable. Too careless. Too casual.
He'd been pressed up to her for hours, gotten drunk on her proximity. At one point, as the sun had begun to set and the shadows grew thicker and they'd ridden through the narrow passages of the wine valleys as they were stripped for the harvest, that her hands had strayed and he had shuddered, wanting nothing more than to urge his steed into the fields instead and ride with her into the sunset until they were lost, until no one would recognize them, until they could run.
He was drunk on her and he was sloppy and thoughtless and he took too many risks because they always did, because he wanted to, and this time it was too much.
They'd trotted into a clearing for the horses to rest before the last full gallop. They'd almost arrived. He'd thought no one saw. He didn't even think anything of it, didn't even do it consciously. It just happened.
When he lifted her off his saddle, hands on her hips and cradling her too intimately, his lips brushed against her cheek almost thoughtlessly. The most innocent of all the kisses he'd ever bestowed on her in all those months of secret, forbidden, stolen intimacy. A moment of mindlessness.
She'd frozen in panic the second his lips touched her skin.
Behind them, Jupiter gasped and spooked her horse, causing it to whinny.
Serenity's eyes exploded in fear, and she was with her guard and out of his embrace before the horror even started to sink in for him.
"You promised it was nothing," Jupiter hushed in High Lunarian, with intensely frightened eyes.
"It is!" Serenity promised and it gutted him instantaneously, opened up a crater in his gut.
He whirled back around to hide the hurt.
They made it back to the northern palace before nightfall. Serenity did not ride the rest of the journey with him. And the next time a state visit was scheduled, the Princess Venus came in Serenity's stead. And the next time, too. And the one after that.
Obvious Setting Tag: Silver Millennium
And thank you guys who are reading these and reviewing for me or kudos-ing. I know these are small and to feel you are interested either way makes me feel all the warm! Thank you!