COUNTRYSIDE of outer VIENDA | TEA TIME
Truth be told, Nauleth couldn't entirely remember the last time he'd at all been in the proper mood for intimacy. Even while it felt needfully necessary to share a bed with this lovely woman, if only to keep her as close and safe as possible, fear and stress and trauma had dampened so much of his desire. That wasn't to say they'd not felt moments of passion since all that panic and injury in the Deep, that they hadn't found comfort in each other's bodies when words weren't enough, but at the same time, it'd not been as emotional as it'd been physical.
There was something about her tone of voice against his ear, about the gentle wandering of her hands over his freckled chest, crammed in the carriage and attempting to balance just so in his lap, that carried with it some deeper desire for connection that wasn't just one body's response to being in the vicinity of another. It was ridiculous in its impropriety, but, as usual, Naul couldn't entirely be ersed to clocking care.
Especially not when her fingers drifted down from the buttons of his shirt toward his trousers, and he couldn't help but shift his body just a little bit more to accommodate her, to give her all the permission she wanted despite the fact that he very well knew they should be presentable for the City Clerk. A few wrinkles wouldn't be noticed, right? He'd moved her skirts as best he could, anyway, hands teasing along her inner thighs, his own touch light but now rather purposeful in their direction.
"Prepared for marriage. Hmm." The eldest Siordanti echoed in a whisper, meeting her verdant gaze with a smirk, watching the blush spread across her pale cheeks. He was made shy in her shyness, something about the way she spoke of her Ba Brieth revealing it to be far more special than perhaps he'd assumed. He wanted to apologize for his shallowness, some heat in stuck in his chest instead of coursing through his veins to the speed of his pulse, but found himself distracted. He couldn't help the stray thought even as she didn't hesitate with fastenings, with untucking his shirt, with whatever the roundness of the Circle she was planning on doing with him now that he felt quite helpless beneath her—details on the legal structure of being a woman, of property, of spousal responsibility all filtered into his too-busy mind and even if his voice was husky and coy, the words he said were quite the opposite.
Her fingers paused and he whined, huffing a chuckle at her surprised expression
"Your citizenship isn't Anaxi, correct?" Naul hummed, eyes wide and face flushed with anticipation and desire, freckles drowning in the heated color, "Then it doesn't matter, Athrym. Or, at least it shouldn't. Not that it should matter at all, really—Anaxas isn't a matriarchal kingdom. Women, despite having suffrage, are still tangled up in property and permission. But, uh—"
Gods, her hands moved again and he arched one ginger eyebrow—the only one that could tilt in such a way while the other sat mostly still above his bright, blue-green eyes,
"—I've never bothered to consider it—in the context of marriage—until this moment with you." He sighed, sliding his hands away with a taunting sort of slowness, dragging fingertips mischievously away from anywhere he'd been so coyly headed, back along her inner thighs and over her knees to hook thumbs between the finely tailored layers of his clothes and his hips, quite willing to tug his trousers down just enough—
If that was what she wanted, at least. Naul asked with a look, very enamored with those dimples.
"Are we making prenuptial agreements right now? Or would you rather wait so we can reward ourselves after enduring the paperwork that awaits us?"