36. Pony Rides

Pony Rides

T here was a chapel to the gods in the palace, but the temple of Ithronel that served the Clement Palace and the city of Taeskana was located near the base of the mountain, situated in a natural cave. Cass could easily have flown us there, but the whole point of this venture was to ostentatiously show obeisance to Ithronel. Given what the high priestess had told me the day before, I didn't think it would do anything to help us in the end, but it was a nice way to appease our Royal Seneschal and hopefully cool the fervor of the people encamping outside the palace.

That meant horses.

I had never ridden a horse. I had never even seen a horse, not in person. The moment the handler came around the side of the palace with the animals Cass and I were supposed to get on top of, all the blood ran out of my face. I stepped behind Cass without even meaning to, hiding.

Horses, as it turns out, are big animals. Horses big enough to carry six-foot-seven men, even ones with bird lungs and hollow bones, are fucking enormous.

"Nope. Nuh-uh," I said, while Cass tried to stifle his laughter. "No way. I have changed my mind on every possible conceivable level."

"It's not so bad," he said, his voice bright with humor. "I have to ride with my wings half-open and it's still not that bad. They're only horses."

He tried to step to the side to make me look at them. I did not comply.

"They're huge!" I protested. "It's like someone took a fridge and stuck it on stilts! Stilts with knives on the ends!"

"You're hiding behind wings made of knives," Cass pointed out in a reasonable voice.

"Yeah, well, you're not going to try to kill me with them." I grabbed onto the back of his shirt so he couldn't stop acting as my personal shield. "And don't tell me that I'll be fine as long as I stay on its back. That thing could reach around and bite me, and you know it. "

Cass started laughing, the feathers on his wings rousing and his head dropped back. "You're the one who wanted to do this, your majesty. I wanted to hide in the palace and hope people forgot I existed."

I peeked under his wing at the horses to see if they'd gotten any better.

Nope. Still enormous.

"I'm not even going to be able to steer that thing," I said, returning to hiding behind him. It was undignified and ridiculous, but my other option was getting tossed onto a horse by a handler who was obviously doing her damndest not to laugh at her Queen, and that was not going to happen. "I'll walk it right off a cliff and then we'll fall to our mutual deaths. You'll have to put 'crushed to death by falling horse' on my tombstone."

"As if I'd let you die," Cass said playfully. He bopped me in the sides with his wings, making one of the horses snort. "Come on, dove. You're going to make us late."

My fingers tightened on his shirt, very real fear burrowing into me under the silliness. I didn't want to get on that horse. I really, really, really didn't want to—

"You know," he said with an edge of wickedness, "you do have a bargain you could call in, if you wanted someone else to steer, and to be your personal bodyguard."

You could ride with me.

A picture of what that would look like flashed through my mind: me sitting between Cass' legs, my back up against his abs and his arms around me, hand holding the reins. He was strong and warm, and he knew how to move his body. His hips would be my guide, setting my pace, strong thighs along mine. I would feel his heartbeat against my spine and his breath stirring my hair. We didn't have to take two horses. We could take one.

The fear melted away. My grip on his shirt eased. "You'd let me ride with you?"

He glanced over his shoulder at me, one ear cocking down at me. "Once a day, whatever platonic touch you desire. All you have to do is ask."

I swallowed. Sure, it was theoretically platonic, but…

So's cuddling. Don't you remember what that was like? I told myself, as if I could have forgotten. "You won't be controlling our reactions?" I asked. There were creases on his shirt where I'd been holding on. I tried to smooth them out in an attempt to distract myself from the mutual problems of "get on a horse" and "sit between Cass' legs without combusting."

"That was part of the bargain, wasn't it? Freely given touch." He bopped me with one wing again. "I can't promise perfection, but I'll try not to."

"Okay," I said. I took a deep breath. "Okay. I can— I can do that."

"Surely," he said in an amused purr. "Maybe you'll even like it."

I whined in protest, but when he stepped to the side, I didn't try to stay in his shadow. I clung to his arm, trying not to hyperventilate, and let him lead me over to the horses.

Cass needed to use a mounting block to get onto his horse without hurting it, since he needed to hold his wing at an awkward angle to get it over the animal's back. He settled into the saddle with care, holding his wings lifted back so that they ran almost parallel to the horse's sides. "Alright," he said, looking sidelong at me. "Your turn."

I had to force myself to move, my palms sweaty and knees wobbly. His mount was a solidly-built one, and as wide as a barrel. It stood there stolidly, as if it was nothing to fear, while I stood on the mounting block, trying to puzzle out how on earth I was going to get on top of it. It was so big , and Cass was in the way.

Cass pursed his lips, looking amused, then turned in his seat and held out his hands. "Turn around, Quyen. I can help."

I gave him a pleading expression. He simply made a circle with one hand, the command clear. Embarrassed, I did, putting my back to him and the horse even though it made my spine prickle with sweat.

Big hands settled on my waist. "There you go," he crooned, and picked me up.

Embarrassment turned into glimmering pleasure at how easily he manhandled me. I grabbed his wrists out of reflex, but Cass set me in front of him without any effort at all. I might as well have been a feather. He moved me like one.

The heat of his regard rolled into me as he picked up the reins. "This isn't so bad, right?" he asked.

His thighs embracing mine. The strong wall of his body at my back. His heartbeat… his breath.

My hips against his groin.

Cass made a low sound of protest as my attention laser-focused on the heat of his body against my ass. "I can feel you looking," he said in that flirtatious purr, leaning closer. His legs tightened on the horse's sides, making it step into a walk. "This is supposed to be platonic, isn't it?"

I swallowed and tried to focus on something – anything – besides the twitch of his stiffening cock against my backside. I gripped the front of the saddle as if it could anchor me. "So platonic. Very platonic."

"You're cute when you're flustered." His hips shifted with the rolling walk of the horse. "I didn't expect that."

"Uh-huh," I said. Fuck. I hadn't been prepared for this. Cuddling? Sure. Lots of experience getting spooned by guys with boners. But this ?

He rumbled a laugh and rubbed his nose against my hair. "I can keep from having an erection if you prefer," he said. His cock twitched again. Fuck, there was a lot of it, and it wasn't even all the way hard. "I can still be feeling how enjoyable it is to have you up against me without having that particular reaction. It's somewhat unavoidable, otherwise, given that your hips are rubbing up against me." Hesitation touched his voice. "I'm enjoying this, but you ought to like it, too."

I let out a panting breath as we rode through the gates and onto the drawbridge. Soldiers lined the road in a row two men thick, keeping the worshippers at bay. "What happened to shy Cass?" I asked, a little desperately. "'Don't-touch-me' Cass?"

Another nuzzle. People called out to us, but I could barely hear them, focused on the man holding me up against him.

"Platonic touch, freely given," he said softly. He rested his mouth against me for a moment before returning to watching the road. "This is what you bargained for, lioness. Me trusting that you want what you asked for, and giving it to you without letting my self-consciousness or fears stand between us."

"Yeah? This still counts as platonic?" I asked. I made myself loosen my death-grip on the saddle and leaned back into his solidity. If I was going to be trapped on a horse so wide it felt like doing splits with my soulmate's erection in a hot line against my hips, I sure as fuck was going to enjoy it.

"Isn't that what you said?" he asked, with purring satisfaction. Someone cried out louder than the others. His head jerked to the side, spine going stiff. "Shit," he muttered under his breath.

I turned to look where he was, and caught sight of the way the flowers at the edge of the road had bloomed in our wake—and how the reckless worshippers were trying to shove past the guards to grab hold of them. One man thrust his child through a gap in the soldiers. The little boy staggered and came to a halt in the middle of the road, staring at us with an expression of awe.

Cass snarled as a guard snatched up the child. The pebbles on the road shivered as the ground vibrated underfoot, the horse prancing with its eyes rolling. "Hold on," he said grimly. "I'm going to try to get us out of here before someone gets hurt."

It was all the warning I got before Cass kicked the horse into a trot, and then some sort of thundering pace that had me jouncing out of the saddle. He moved with the animal, leaning forward. One arm went around me to hold me against his chest.

I hung on for dear life, the fear driving away any ability to see what was going on around me. My pulse hammered in my ears. Trees flew past us on either side of the road in an evergreen blur. Fuck, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die—

Cass' magic wound through me in a deliberate touch, softening the blind panic. His confidence settled into me: the strength of his body, the focus as he steered the enormous animal down the road, the sounds of the near-rioting crowd of petitioners vanishing behind us. People cleared the road ahead of us, not because they knew we were coming but because Cass was driving them off with his magic, making them want to be anywhere but where they would get trampled.

Oh, I thought, very softly. I was suddenly no longer afraid.

My whole body relaxed into his movement. This was the man who had healed a landscape while in agony—while overwhelmed by every stone and stream and living thing in Mercy. This was the man whose bone-deep understanding of bodies let him control his emotions and mine; who had been a secret weapon in a brutal war and who hundreds were flocking to worship as a god.

My fucking soulmate .

A heartbeat later, Cass reined in the horse. The animal slowed, breaking into a bone-jouncing trot, then dropped into a plodding walk with a heavy snort. Cass sat back down into the saddle. His grip on me eased. He dropped his hand and patted the horse on the shoulder, and it stopped breathing in such heavy gasps, the effort of the sudden run erased by a healer instead of time.

"Wow," I said, still dazed.

He tensed behind me. "I know it's not fair to others to affect them like that when it makes me so unhappy to consider that you might do it to me—"

"Oh, hush," I said with a laugh, leaning my head back against his chest. "Don't expect me to be weird about you keeping innocents safe. You didn't do anything different than clearing the streets with guards. You just did it with magic instead of manpower."

His wings chimed softly as he resettled them into a better position for riding. Cass didn't say anything for a while, but he relaxed, piece by piece.

I didn't mind the silence. Away from the encampment and the lingering collection of coronation celebrants closer to the palace, the road to Taeskana was a pretty one, overhung with ancient evergreen trees and with interesting chartreuse-green lichens clinging to the branches and bark. Black-furred squirrels darted through the dense canopy or dangled from branches, eating their way through pinecones. Even this late in the year, there were a few songbirds, drab wrennish things that warbled prettily from their perches.

I got to admire it all while sprawled back against Cass. If he could keep me on a galloping horse careening down the hill while also working complex magic through the Court, I didn't have anything to fear while we ambled the rest of the way. He had his arm around me and his thighs framing mine. The tension of fleeing from his erstwhile worshipers had put a damper on the sexual heat, but he was still male and my hips were still grinding against his with every step the horse took. By the time we turned off the main road onto the temple's spur, Cass was half-hard again, and I had my eyes closed, enjoying the feel of his body against mine .

Cass rested his face on my hair. His thumb kept steadily stroking my side, a gentle rhythm that soothed instead of roused. "This is nice," he said in a low voice, his breath warming my scalp. "It's a pity that we ought to fly back. Or maybe a mercy," he added with a soft laugh, "since I'll probably be anxiously re-assessing this whole ride from the time we dismount until the next time I have you in my arms and can tell, without a shadow of doubt, that you're enjoying being there."

"So self-conscious," I murmured back. I started tracing curves on his thigh with my fingertip, appreciating the echo of sensation I got in return. It felt like my skin was glowing in the wake of my touch, a glittery, glimmering feeling.

"It's been a week, and I've had five centuries of experience with how people typically react to my touch," Cass pointed out, sounding amused. "Is it my fault that you're a bizarre exception to the rule, who apparently enjoys an unfettered dose of my command healing?"

That got me to laugh. I gave his thigh a pat and sat up straighter, watching the world around us again as the temple came into view. "Fair enough. I guess I'll give you time to get used to having the one weirdo in the world who's into that sort of thing, sitting in your lap."

"Very kind," he said in a mock-serious voice. He stopped the horse outside of the entrance to the temple and gave me a gentle squeeze. "Shall we?"