A/N: Spice ahead! Caspian at his absolute finest himbo gives me so much life.
Chapter 7 Content Warnings: sexual content, hickeys / love marks, brief reference to sexual assault (in the context of asking for consent)
Chapter 7: wanna know that body like it's mine
Caspian
After the kiss, they return to the same easy pattern. Before he leaves for breakfast (if he deigns to eat instead of making straight for Doctor Cornelius' study), Caspian leaves a small book out for her. After a few days, Addie returns the book at the same window cushion. In the brief hour before dinner, Caspian picks out a new book to leave for her, never mind that her mini library stacked in the windowsill is at least seven books tall by week's end. And late after dinner, often when the sky is dark and the moon shines bright in his window, Addie knocks twice and stays long into the night reading in the window seat.
Sometimes, Addie's hand touches his shoulder as she passes by his chair. Sometimes, her skirt brushes his leg and sends a current from his calf to his spine. Sometimes, their eyes meet over his flickering candle.
His pulse jumps every time, even if the distance between them stays the same. Some nights when Caspian lies awake sweaty and restless and staring into the blank canvas of his bed canopy, he wonders if he ought to close the distance. He wonders if Addie would mind.
In his imaginings, she welcomes his advances. But every time Caspian tries to imagine how to make the first move, it's too easy to believe she would mind. He hasn't forgotten the circumstances of their third meeting, how skittish she once was in his presence. No, it's far safer to bury his desires. If Addie wants something from him, Caspian has little doubt she'll ask for it.
Addie's later than usual tonight. It's nothing to worry about; she mentioned the long cleanups that come with many of his uncle's preferred dishes. He'd be foolish to worry. Doctor Cornelius made it clear he's to recite the full litany of Telmarine relations (and lack thereof) with the Ettins first thing in the morning; he should while away the time with his nose in his books.
A soft click sounds behind him. A moment later, Addie's hand curls over his shoulder and trails down his arm. Caspian catches her fingers in his on instinct. Such a simple twining of digits shouldn't wash over him as soft as a morning mist, but he can't be blamed for mooning when Addie stops before her hand slips out of his grasp.
"What's your topic tonight?"
"Relations with Ettinsmoor. The Professor is quite determined to finish the lessons in international relations by month's end."
Addie steps closer, her skirt brushing the back of his knuckles. Thank the Lion her hand occupies his fingers. "Ettinsmoor?"
Caspian unrolls the cartograph in the centre of his desk and points to the north. "The land of the Ettins in the northern wilds, east of the Northern Mountains. They're said to be a race of Giants."
"Giants? As in…?"
"They're not Narnian, not technically," Caspian murmurs. "Old Narnian royalty fought a war against them long before we Telmarines arrived."
Addie's fingers loosen and she shifts so her skirt no longer tickles his hand. "Some much-needed perspective then?"
"Precisely."
Addie retreats to the window seat - her seat, really - and hunches over the collection of Calormen poetry. The language is elaborate and fanciful, but the letters themselves are not. It seemed better than another book of children's stories. Perhaps she'll enjoy the lyrical rhythm of poems, if she has the patience for it.
Ettinsmoor. Giants. Old Narnian history - his favourite of all his schooling topics. He should be devouring his book, scrawling notes, imagining how different Narnia used to be. Instead, his eyes keep straying to Addie. Is she enjoying the poetry? Or is her frown displeasure rather than concentration?
Caspian moves the book from his lap to his desk and leans over far enough he can't look up without moving his head. That should force some focus.
Time crawls.
Caspian gets as far as the Ettinsmoor War in 1014 of the Golden Age. After High King Peter's last victory, it's all boundary negotiations and iterations of the treaty. Interesting material any other time, but Caspian's neck is sore already and Addie is so close.
He sits back in his chair and brings his book with him. The change in angle eases his sore neck, as intended. It also places Addie directly in his line of sight.
She's still hunched over the same page where she opened the book. The first chapter is mostly prayers to the sun or litanies to the sands, but Addie scans the words over and over, her finger tracing each line as she reads and rereads. Her finger is moving faster across the page than it used to, but she retraces words much more than she did for the children's stories.
When her finger reaches the bottom of the page for the third time, she catches him. So it's to be one of those candlelit nights. Caspian smiles to himself and glances back to his book. As long as he knows the main contours of the treaty, Doctor Cornelius will consider his task done; the Doctor has a much keener eye for the details than Caspian.
Movement in the corner of his eye distracts him as he tries to commit the rough border line on the map to memory. Addie's curls tumble free from her cap as she combs her hair absently, her finger lingering at the end of the page once again.
Caspian focuses on the map until his eyes nearly cross. The border sticks close to the mountains, cutting right along the River Shribble. The marshes on the river's south delta are Marshwiggle territory. The foothills of the Northern Mountains are a hard day's ride across the eastern plains.
Addie flips to another page near the end of the book. Her finger descends the page much faster, and her other hand pulls free from her hair. Her thumb traces the bow of her lips and travels down until her nail catches on her bottom lip.
After the treaty, High King Peter cemented his status. The Ettin raids on Narnia's northern border finally stopped, and the Marshwiggles enjoyed more peaceful lives; they even helped Queen Lucy craft her ship for her adventures on the Eastern Sea. Queen Lucy's seaward adventures are some of Doctor Cornelius' most entrancing stories.
Addie slides off her seat. Her skirt snags on the edge and bares half her leg in the half-second before she stands and it falls back into place. Caspian clutches the chair arm until the wood creaks. Addie slips up to his chair as quietly as the castle mouser and kneels off to his left, claiming the other chair arm.
"For all their stuffiness, these poets have their moments." Addie's thumb leaves her lip at last as she extends the book out in front of him.
Tash's talons. It's a love poem, and none too chaste either. He forgot his collection contained such writings. Caspian wills himself not to read too much into the words, to not split the chair arm into splinters.
"I'm sure the sands have their magic," Addie murmurs, "but isn't this one more suited to tonight's particular occasion?"
Did she lean in closer? She certainly seems closer. The tips of her curls graze his shoulder. Caspian's throat works valiantly to swallow with his tongue dry and stuck to the roof of his mouth.
"A, ah, particular occasion?"
"Must I spell it out for you?"
Caspian eases his book closed, places it carefully atop the map, and edges back in his chair. If he keeps his legs still, perhaps his growing situation won't become as obvious as it feels. Caspian trades his grip on the chair for his left thigh, crossing his forearm over his lap just in case.
"I don't wish to presume."
Addie pulls back with a question he would kiss from her mouth tonight and every night if she wanted.
"Don't wish to presume or don't wish to at all?"
Caspian clears his throat and grasps one last time for courtesy and control. "I wouldn't wish my desires to cause an adverse… to bring up any unwanted memories."
Addie's teeth sink into her bottom lip and Caspian divines a new meaning of torture then and there. "Caspian, you're very courteous, but you're an idiot."
Her fingers brush his chin, pull him in, and the world narrows to the insistent, welcoming heat of her mouth as she devours him. It occurs to Caspian that if this sort of thing becomes a regular occurrence, he'll have to stop being an idiot and figure out when she wants to be kissed.
He's barely mirrored the messy tangle of tongues when the angle shifts and sinful pressure settles onto his lap. Caspian remembers too late that his right arm is in the way thanks to the tent in his trousers he was doing a passable job of dissuading before now.
He pulls his arm away. The back of his hand grazes between her legs through the layers of her skirt. The groan that tears from his throat is inhuman, madness, a need he doesn't have the courage to ask satiation for. Caspian whispers apologies into her mouth, but her tongue sweeps them away as easily as sweet wine. She tastes of moonlight and smoke and the same entreaties that hammer against his ribcage with every beat of his heart, every thrum of blood through his veins.
Addie's hands are everywhere - sweeping through his hair, curling at the back of his neck, gripping his shoulders, pulling him closer by his waist until the arousal tightening his pants meets the apex of her thighs. Caspian swears as the last modicum of rational thought tumbles from his mind. He throws his arms around her, his hands roaming her back and the pert rounds of her ass. It's instinct to roll his hips up into hers, to nibble her lip and shudder as her moan reverberates across every nerve. It's madness, a blissful inferno, as every stroke of her fingers across his skin scorches him with the heat of a thousand desert suns.
Addie's curls fall like curtains, tickling his cheeks. Her hands leave his jaw to push them back, and it's nothing less than criminal to have her mouth still dancing with his while her hands are elsewhere. Caspian stills her right hand with his left and cards his fingers through her hair. She's wreathed in the smell of smoke and lye, heady and sharp as he breathes her in like a man bedevilled. On a whim, he stops and curls his fingers before her hair falls free. His fist rests behind her ear and at last her hands return to him, gliding effortlessly from his shoulders to the nape of his neck.
"Addie," he sighs.
There's no warning but the question in her eyes. Her fingers tangle in his hair and pull, yanking his head back and baring the column of his throat. He chokes on a groan as she laves kisses across his skin, sucking just enough to sting before her tongue soothes it into pleasure.
When Addie finds the pulse point under his jaw, his cock throbs.
Strength surges back into his legs. Caspian pushes off from the chair and stands, his right arm tight around Addie's hips so she doesn't fall. Her legs wrap around his waist with no hesitation, no flicker of confusion, and the heat of her against his pulsing length is too much and not enough. It's a graceless stumble Caspian makes to the wall; he miscalculates and his arm collides with his bookshelf, sending a cluster of books raining down around them. Addie's legs tighten around him, her hips grinding down as she finds a pace she likes. All the while her mouth never leaves his neck, never stops pulling at his skin until it's just this side of overstimulated.
Caspian repeats her name, hoarse and raw.
"Yes?" Her breath puffs over his wet skin, sending goosebumps racing down his arms. She's stopped, waiting to hear what he's trying to say, and Caspian wouldn't be surprised if he burst into flames right then and there.
He manages one word as he grinds into her, his hands clumsy and staccato as he paws across her body, desperate to learn every line and curve even through all these clothes.
"Please," he begs.
It's the only encouragement she needs. Addie moves to the other side of his neck, finds his pulse again. Her lips and tongue drag a wide path over his skin as her fingers tighten in his hair and wrench his head back, back until vertigo tilts his world. Addie rolls her hips, and only then does he realise that the change of position bunched her skirt up to her waist. With so few layers between them, her core rocks against his length once, twice. On the third, he breaks.
It feels inevitable - like a wave crashing on the shore, like lightning felling a tree, like clinging to a loose stone on the edge of a cliff and falling into oblivion. Caspian lets go and falls gladly, gratefully, into the abyss.
He floats in the ether as her fingers loosen from his hair and trace gentle patterns on the back of his head, as she nuzzles his cheek and peppers gentle kisses anywhere her lips reach. His name has never sounded so sweet as it does from her lips, coaxing him back to the world of the living.
"Lion, Addie." Caspian's every muscle is loose and sated and thoroughly, sinfully exhausted. Addie's legs loosen from his waist and their absence is a cold, cruel thing. In an instant, his legs give out. He sinks to tremulous knees, her skirt following his path down as the space between their bodies widens. Caspian's head tips forward, falling until his forehead collides with her thigh and he can only think how stupid it is that skirts have so many layers, that the shape of her is a phantom beneath the fabric. There is only the smell of kitchens and cleaning solutions; he can't find her scent. It ought to be a crime.
Absently, his hands find her ankles beneath her skirt hem. The simple connection of fingertips on heated skin soothes the pangs of the afterglow like balm to sore nerves. Caspian strokes along her leg and the downy hair on her lower calves while her fingers card through his hair, untangling the knots as his heart rate slowly calms to some semblance of normal. As if normal could ever compare to this. His fingertips find a vein and just like that, the echo of her heartbeat skitters against his skin. If Caspian concentrates, her legs seem to quiver.
"You're right."
Her smile is a tangible thing, bright around the edges of her voice. "About?"
"I am an idiot."
Addie's fingers push harder, so he lets the pressure tilt his face upward. The sight of her with her hair loose and her cheeks red as a summer sunset is a benediction all its own.
"You are," she whispers. "But so am I."
Addie sinks to the floor with fluid grace he can only wistfully admire and plants herself in front of him with one leg slung over both of his, stretching the fabric of her skirt taut. She kisses him soft and slow; a lazy, post-coital kiss. But if Addie is trying to hide the shivers echoing beneath her tenderness, she fails.
Realisation sparks low in Caspian's belly, reigniting the need he so recently, so accidentally sated. It shouldn't be possible to feel the stirrings so soon after he exploded in the front of his trousers.
This time, his hand starts a steady path full of purpose. The tremors in her muscles grow more apparent as Caspian's hand climbs past her knee and oh, to touch this much of her skin is a deliciously wicked indulgence.
When he's halfway up her thigh, she stops him. It's a gentle touch, just her fingers lacing with his through her skirt, but the meaning is clear.
"Just you," she whispers. Then, wicked thing that she is, Addie smirks down at him. "Besides, I'm sure you'll want to clean up sooner or later."
Thankfully, she brushes a kiss over his mouth before his blush can spread entirely across his skin. Caspian has the good sense to pull his hand from under her skirts. This time, with her hands light on his waist, he's free to cup her jaw in his palms and hold her like he's wanted to since the moment she first pulled him to his feet from the kitchen floor. Her skin is velvet beneath his touch, flushed and real and perfect.
When she pulls away, he doesn't chase her. Caspian lets his hands fall away as she disentangles herself from his lap and awkwardly gets to her feet. This isn't the first time she's helped him up; how many times will he fall to the ground for her?
Not nearly enough, even if he falls every day for the rest of his days.
Addie kisses him again when his feet are finally back under him, as steadily as can be expected given the circumstances. Caspian expects a simple, sweet peck. Instead, the hunger brimming just under the surface surges in the brief, blinding flash of her lips. A breath later, they're gone and Addie is disappearing through the bookshelf door, leaving him alone in his study with a truly spectacular mess he can't regret making.
Caspian cleans up quickly, expecting a long night of unsuccessful studying ahead of him. Yet when he cracks open his study book, Caspian finds he retained much more than expected. Perhaps Addie's method of solving the tension is more helpful than he thought.
Addie
She makes it less than ten strides into the servants' hall before it's too much.
Addie collapses against the wall in the darkest shadow between torches and prays to every god she knows that no one happens along at this hour. It won't take long.
The inferno she began in the study still ripples through her, hotter than any flame that's burned her before. She doesn't bother hiking her skirts; the heel of her hand pressed between her legs is enough. She probably could have got off on Caspian's leg if she'd wanted to.
Addie claps a hand over her mouth and bites the flesh where her thumb meets her palm. She'd known she could start something luminous and damnable when she found that colourful poem last night, but she couldn't have predicted an outcome like that. There she was, kissing a prince with her back to a bookcase and rocking against the proof that he wanted this as much as she has, and after a broken "please" he was shattering against her, shaking like a man utterly ruined. She did that.
She finished what she started. She wanted to.
Her hand rocks against the aching pressure as it sharpens to a knife-point between her legs, white-hot and so fragile, so close to breaking and sweeping her over that sweet edge. Addie chases after it, her fingers curling to rub circles through her skirts.
The prince's voice echoes in her mind, rough with a promise she would die to draw from his lips until his voice fails.
I assure you, Adelina, you will never have to fight for anything you want from me.
So close, she's so close the tremors flash in brilliant colour behind her eyelids.
Anything.
Please.
The wave crests and she falls, her release shuddering through her limbs and stealing the strength from her legs until she's leaning boneless and spent against the wall.
Slowly, the aftershocks fade from deep pulses to the soft, dewy afterglow. Addie locks her knees and pushes her back into the wall until the limp feeling bleeds away and leaves only the smouldering relief of muscles well-worked. Just then, she realises she left something behind. She forgot the book.
No matter, Addie muses as she brushes down her skirt and straightens it around her hips. She'll fetch it tomorrow.
Addie makes it all the way back to her room, out of her dress, and into her bed before she realises something else far more annoying.
She forgot her cap.
Caspian
Though every bone and muscle in his body is soft with exhaustion, Caspian still passes a long, sleepless night. He's slept alone his entire life, but suddenly the bed seems too large, too empty, too cold.
It's entirely inappropriate. He should not be wondering if Addie would sleep in his bed if he asked, nor if she would curl up against him in her sleep or sprawl across half the bed, nor if she would rise quickly with the sun or if, given the opportunity, she would sleep late. He shouldn't wonder if she likes lazy kisses in the morning, or if she would snap the linens off to wake him up with a mischievous grin.
He should especially not wonder if she would sigh against him after finishing, or if she'd run her impulsive, glorious mouth through whatever occurred to her in the moment. She doesn't seem like a woman who censors the path between her mind and her lips.
Caspian groans and buries his face in his too-soft, too-empty pillow. The sun will be up any minute, and all he's done is tossed and turned. Though he managed to burn the brief history of Narnian-Ettins relations into his memory, it will be a miracle if he can recite more than three sentences without yawning. And with no astronomy lessons in the North Tower, he has no real excuse for Doctor Cornelius.
He'd do it all over again. Every night, if he could.
With a stretch and a groan, he's out of bed, dressed, and on his way to breakfast. Perhaps even his uncle's snide comments won't be so targeted this morning.
Addie's been coming by nearly every night; all he has to do is get through the day.
Simple enough.
The endeavour becomes much more difficult when Doctor Cornelius takes one look at him and his bushy eyebrows nearly pop off his brow.
"I do hope you've come prepared for your recitations, my boy," says the Professor, gesturing at Caspian's neck.
Lion, he's an idiot.
A/N: The poem I had in my head writing this was "Natural Map" by Nader Naderpour.
Chapter 8 Preview:
"I realised I know little about you," he explains. What she would give to kiss the corners of his mouth where they turn up, boyish and shy. "I thought I ought to start asking."