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The problem with Rydia, Edge thought as he stared up at the crews working to rebuild the ruins of Mist — the trouble with Rydia was that she was impossible to comprehend.
He'd known other women in his life, women who tended to be — well, who tended to be somewhat impressed with the fact that he was a prince. It wasn't that he required women to swoon at his title; in fact, he found women who did that annoying, either because they were kind of . . . simple, or, because he had the feeling that they were doing it in an attempt to impress him. It was very much part of Rydia's charm that she didn't.
. . . but.
. . . but he couldn't help thinking that maybe it would be nice if she was a little bit impressed with his title. Not swooning, no. Not overawed. Rydia's charm lay in her fire and her independence, the way she was just a little bit . . . odd. Rydia's charm lay in the way she went, "Prince? . . . What?" and then summoned a monster that could pick his flesh from his bones if it wanted to.
(Not that he wanted a monster to pick the flesh from his bones. Quite the contrary. But it was kind of . . . cool, that she could.)
But . . . sometimes, it seemed like it'd be nice if she'd be maybe a little bit impressed that he was a prince, and wealthy, and the ruler of an entire, albeit somewhat small and idiosyncratic, kingdom.
"Edge!" Ah. And there she was — leaning over the top of one of the buildings-in-progress, her hair a banner of shocking brilliant-green against the clear blue sky. She looked like the forest at midsummer, birch-pale skin and oakleaf-deep green hair, and if he'd made such a comparison out loud she would have rolled her eyes at him. "They could use your help rebuilding the mill."
"Not even a 'hello,' my lady? Not even a 'well met'?"
"I'll say 'well met' after I've seen you help!" she said, and then vanished behind the rooftop to speak to one of the builders, one of the Mist-refugees who'd returned to help rebuild her hometown. She was more cheerful than perhaps one would expect . . . but then, if she was to be believed, it was ten years from her city's destruction, from her point of view.
Magic, as far as Edge was concerned, was considerably more trouble trouble than it was worth.
He worked for some time—he was, after all, also a ninja, and not without physical prowess of his own. He worked long enough that he lost track of exactly where Rydia was, which was silly because, ultimately, Rydia was the reason he was here. So when the people working the mill took their break, he slipped away, into the forest, in search of her.
And found her.
He didn't mean to spy. He really didn't. It was just that before he could step out of the bushes and make his presence known to Rydia, she had lifted her hand in the air, and he knew what that meant.
(The slow spin she made was beautifully dancerlike — but he didn't get the impression she was trying to be appealing in that moment. Her expression, eyes-closed and smiling, was entirely inward-turning: lovely in its focus, lovely with its faint smile, but not, ultimately, for him or anyone else.)
The air shivered with the unmistakable smell of magic — something he was pretty well familiar with, at least. Mist thickened on the air, congealed above Rydia, and then the dragon was there as Rydia's magic made a place for it in this world.
He was a prince, and he shouldn't admit to being overly impressed, but still, Rydia's summons were far enough beyond his experience to awe him.
The mist dragon swirled on the air as if it was weightless, and, just as delicately, settled to the ground on four feet widely-spaced by its pearly white body. Edge watched as Rydia embraced it, her arms around the slenderest part of its neck, behind the whiskered wedge-shaped head — watched as she lay her cheek on its rainbow-sheened snowy scales and spoke to it.
He was too far away to hear her words. He wasn't too far away to hear the dragon's replies, but he couldn't understand them — eidolons were only comprehensible to individual humans if they wanted to be, and as this one was speaking only to Rydia, he could hear its voice only as the rumble of a distant waterfall, the haunting hollow sound of distant winds.
He shouldn't be watching. He shouldn't —
Rydia said something else, and then kissed the dragon on the end of its long white nose. It rose into the air and vanished with quiet ease, and then Rydia said, "You can come out now."
"No one can detect a ninja of Eblan if the ninja doesn't want to be found," he said, because he didn't know what else to say and bravado was as good a reply as any.
"No human can," Rydia said, and there was a smile in her voice, "but the Mist Dragon can see through barriers and past disguises."
"Your dragon is a telltale."
"My dragon is my mother's dragon, and he watches over me," Rydia said, and Edge winced inwardly because he always seemed to find exactly the wrong thing to say to Rydia. WIth other women, he could always figure out what to say — with Rydia . . . ?
But maybe that was because he actually cared whether he impressed her.
"It's too hot, and I've been working hard," Rydia said. "I think I'm going to take a bath."
"Do you want me to leave?" Edge asked. The honorable thing to do would be to just leave. Cecil would have just left. Edge wasn't that honorable, and to be honest he doubted he'd be that honorable as long as his balls were intact and working.
Rydia turned a little and looked at him from under the shadow of her thick green hair and said, "Stay or go, it doesn't matter to me."
(It had taken him a long time to realize that it wasn't just that she was coy or a tease or an exhibitionist, but that she'd reached sexual maturity in the presence of people who took the form of serpents or giant flaming cat-goats or with four heads or six arms. Modesty had been, at best, an academic subject. Which explained why she blithely wandered around in about two square feet of diaphanous green, plus thigh-high boots. Not that he was complaining . . . .)
"I think I'll join you," he said, after a long, thick-throated moment while she slipped off her detached sleeves and let them drop to the riverbank. He reached off to remove the concealing scarf from the lower half of his face, and saw her smile. He smiled back at her, now that she could see him do it.
He'd bedded virgins before her. He hadn't bedded anyone before her who treated sex as something interesting and fun but who didn't have much context beyond that for it. It made him regret all the times, as a rash youth, that he'd said that he wished more people took sex less seriously. It would be nice if Rydia took it a bit more seriously . . . .
By the time he had his shirt off, Rydia was naked and waist-deep in the river. By the time he was naked, she'd already dunked herself, and rose up with water clinging in a sparkling veil over her fair skin, her hair almost black where the water had darkened it — almost black except where the light hit it, and there the rich dark-green of pine needles.
He was already hard when he waded in to join her, and he didn't try to hide it. What was the point?
"Eager, aren't you?" she said. Her body bowed back as she rinsed her hair again. He couldn't help staring: she was so lithe and muscular, small perfectly-shaped breasts and soft curvy hips and thighs . . . .
"You could say you were just that inspiring."
"Flatterer."
"Cynic."
"I know perfectly well that you've used your lines on other women before me," she said, but she still stepped toward him. The sway of her hips in the water caught his attention and held it. He could just almost see, below the waterline, the exotic deep-green patch of hair between her legs . . . .
"I haven't helped any other woman rebuild her village," he said, dragging his gaze back up to her sharp, amused face.
"If you'd courted other women who needed to have a village rebuilt, I think I'd wonder about you."
"You wound me, lady. You reject my flatteries, you mock my sacrifices — what do you want me to do?"
"Shut up," she said, and slipped her warm, wet arms around the back of his neck and kissed him.
Okay, that he could do.
Her body was so warm and smooth beneath the cold wet of the river that he couldn't control the way he pressed himself against her — couldn't help the way his hands slid down from the muscles of her shoulders to her narrow waist to draw her tight against him. She tasted like — Rydia, the inexplicable unique taste that was all hers, that he thought must be a side-effect of breathing Feymarch air and drinking Feymarch water and eating Feymarch food for ten subjective years. The heavy weight of her wet hair pressed against the backs of his wrists as her drew her close, and she squirmed, made a little noise, fitted close to him.
And then broke the kiss — because Rydia could never do anything good for his ego without doing something bad for his ego to balance it out — and said, "Okay, so you seem to be good for something."
"More than one thing, I should think," he said, sounding more wounded than he felt, into the dripping curtain of her hair.
"Prove it," she said, and slid her thigh up — up — up to rub against his testicles in a way that made him squeak. She laughed, a low rich sound, and he decided it was time he reasserted a little dignity and slid his hands under the lush curve of her ass to pick her up.
Rydia was surprisingly light — lean and wiry, just the faintest overlay of softness on a slim build (she wasn't nearly as curvy as Rosa, although he was far too smart to make that comparison out loud — not that he minded, he liked her small and strong). So he could pick her up easily with his hands hooked under her beautiful muscular thighs and carry her to the riverbank. And she wrapped her arms around his neck for balance and laughed, her breasts warm against his collarbones and if he just angled his face down a little he could kiss the upper slopes. So he did. No point in wasting an opportunity.
Then he dropped her on the riverbank, on the heavy ferns and soft moss that grew so close to the water, and she said, "Hey!" But he hoisted himself up and crawled over her before she could complain any more, and kissed her, and apparently the 'good for something' factor counterbalanced the dropping her thing, because she didn't complain anymore.
One of the lovely things about Rydia's forthrightness, her lack of peculiarly human modesty: she'd made it clear the first time they'd made love that Rosa made her potions to keep both disease and pregnancy at bay. (Rosa was considerably more encouraging on the subject of Rydia's sex life than her innocent face would let on.) So he didn't have to worry about asking awkward questions or finding a sheepskin as he rubbed eagerly against the silk-soft inside of her thigh and moaned into her mouth.
He stroked his hands between their bodies, down over the swell of her breasts, petal-soft and petal-sweet for all that she wasn't sweet at all, herself—over the fluttering muscles of her stomach to her thighs, beautiful thighs, wet and wonderful—and then up, up to the lusher jungle-hot wetness between her legs. She made a little noise, shivered, said, "You tease."
"You like it," he replied, kissing her once, twice, again. She ran the tip of her tongue over his lips; a tease of her own. "Anyway, I am a ninja. We're not known for just diving in."
"And yet you're not exactly subtle," she said, running her hand down his ribs to his flank, and then in to grip his erection in her hand. He couldn't help thrusting into her touch and crying out, couldn't resist as she urged him up and in.
And he was so stunned, as always, by the feeling of being inside her—tight and wet and so good, so good it threatened to take the top of his head off—that he didn't have any resistance when she braced one foot on the riverbank and flipped him over. And rose up over him, still tight around him, to straddle his hips and grin at him with her beautiful, sharp, confident smile, so that for all that she'd just flattened him onto his back, still, all he could do was give her a goofy, delighted smile.
Then she began to move—rising up slow, sinking down fast, tight and close and amazing, and his mind fuzzed out beyond that point and all he could do was move back. Well, and touch her—down from the pale column of her throat to her hard pink nipples, the dimple of her navel on her flat, muscled belly, down to the sensuous curve of her hips where she spread her legs to straddle him, her body moving on him, and the wetness between her legs that made her cry out when he touched her there —
— and the damp of the river on both of them, the smell of her mingling with the smell of the water, the crushed greenery beneath his back as fresh and clean as the green of her hair curling in over her pale breasts —
— and then he couldn't think of anything as he heard her cry out, cry out, cry out and come, and he followed her a little later as she moved on him more slowly, river-wet with her orgasm and smelling as good as the rich damp air.
They lay together a little while, his heart thundering and his body limp and very satisfied. Then she lifted herself off him, and looked down at them both and said, "We need another bath."
"I could help you clean up, beautiful."
"We'll just get messy again."
"Well," he said, and touched her chin, and gave her his best flirty smile, "maybe that wouldn't be so bad."