Paths of the Chosen

Aidan
The Realms
Fifthday, 2nd week of the 11th month, Age of the Chosen 1
Late Evening
Caer Macht, Mistvale Highlands

Aidan closed the door behind him and erected a Sound Barrier to keep any pesky eavesdroppers at bay. It'd serve them right to wonder what the results of their machinations were. By the time he turned around, Eldrid lay prone on a cushioned table, her modesty preserved only by his shirt draped across her butt and upper thighs. She watched him approach with a serene half-smile and hooded silver eyes. Despite the covering on her lower half, she made no effort to shield her breasts from Aidan's gaze. With her arms crossed beneath her head, Aidan had an unobstructed view.

He didn't bother hiding his appreciation of the sight. If Eldrid didn't want him to look, she wouldn't give him the opportunity. As if to confirm his thoughts, she shifted on the massage table, lifting a couple of inches until only her nipple remained hidden. "Ah, you're here finally. I thought you'd chickened out."

Aidan snorted. "It's been two minutes. And why would I run? I get to rub my hands all over a gorgeous, mostly-naked woman. What's not to like?"

"Flattery will get you... well, no further than you're already getting, but I appreciate it anyway." Eldrid's lips quirked up in a grin. Then she settled back down onto the table. "As for why you'd run? I'm not sure either, but you seemed quite reluctant a few minutes ago."

"Not to give you a massage." He left the rest unsaid but figured Eldrid would get the gist of it. Aidan didn't mind the chance to feel the blue-haired Chosen up in the guise of a massage, not one bit. He'd ogle her and rub her down with oil. No problem. His problem came with the rest of what Aoife and the others suggested he do.

Did he really need or want another bedmate? There was no question in Aidan's mind that he could fuck Eldrid tonight if he wanted to. She was giving clear signals. But should he? He lusted after her, thirsted for her, but was there more than that? Beyond that, was it a good idea while she was still under the effect of his Intent? Wasn't this a half-step from mind control? Making her want to want it was no different from an ethics standpoint.

Then again, Sunnild wasn't wrong. Eldrid came onto him from the moment she pulled herself out of the river and hadn't lifted her foot off the pedal for a second. Even before he spoke the Word, she'd been all over him in a literal sense.

"Ah. You know, your fiancees have been talking you up." Eldrid's husky purr broke Aidan out of his thoughts. "You have quite a reputation to uphold."

He strode over to a cabinet at the side of the room. "I'm not that good a masseuse, so I hope you don't need the genuine article." Ah, there it was.

"I wasn't talking about your massage skills, Aidan." A bright pink tongue flicked out across midnight blue lips.

"That's funny," Aidan said as he approached the table, flask of oil in hand. "From what I recall, you were very specific about the kind of massage. No happy ending required. Those were your words."

"Phbhbht!" Eldrid stuck her tongue out at him and blew a raspberry. "You're telling me, after what happened between us, that you don't want me? If I spread my legs and invited you in, you'd turn away?"

"What we want isn't always what's best for us."

"That wasn't a no, Aidan." Aidan trickled some oil onto Eldrid's back straight from the flask. "Ooh, cold! Warn a girl next time." 

"Sorry." Not really, but she wasn't looking at him. He'd done it to shut her up.

"Anyway, great masseuse or not, happy ending or not, I'm looking forward to a handsome guy rubbing me all over my mostly-naked body." Eldrid wiggled her cloth-covered bottom at him. "That being the case, it sounds like I'm still in for a great evening."

"Well, I hope so. Are you ready?"

Eldrid scoffed. "Oh, sure, you ask that after pouring cold oil on me. At this point, if you don't get started warming me back up, I'll have to complain to management."

"Okay, Karen," Aidan said with a snicker. He rubbed his hands together, then placed them palms-down on Eldrid's back.

"Hazel, not Karen."

Aidan blinked. "Pardon?"

"My name back on Earth." Eldrid's tone was matter-of-fact, despite the trust she was showing. Assuming, of course, she was telling the truth. Was she expecting him to reciprocate? Should he? "You don't have to tell me yours," she said as if in response to his thoughts. "And no, I can't read your mind. It was just the obvious thing for you to wonder."

"That's what you'd say if you could read my mind." That earned Aidan a giggle and another wiggle. The motion caused the towel to shift a hair, revealing another half-inch of pale skin. He considered tugging it back into place, then decided there was such a thing as being too much of a gentleman. Instead, he stroked his palms up Eldrid's back on either side of her spine.

"Mm. Tingly. I can already tell what Brighid meant when she said you had magic hands."

"Heh. Not yet, you can't. I told you before, you don't get those until you ask."

Eldrid looked over her shoulder at Aidan. "You're holding out on me?" She gave him a pouting look. "Will you make me beg?"

Yes! The lurking dragon deep in his psyche raised its head and roared. Beg for my touch. "A simple, 'please,' will do. I'm not unreasonable."

Eldrid's night-black eyelashes fluttered at him. "Please, Aidan?" Her voice was mulled honey. "Please give me your magical touch." Her words and expression sent a bolt of arousal through Aidan's system. He pushed those thoughts back down and dug his thumbs into Eldrid's shoulderblades.

"All you had to do was ask." With a thought, Aidan summoned an extra pair of hands and placed them on Eldrid's hips. She squeaked, an unexpectedly adorable sound coming from her, and rose onto her elbows.

"What in the world?"

Aidan gave Eldrid a gentle push until she settled back down. "A trick I picked up along the way." He continued the massage, working through Eldrid's shoulder muscles with his real hands while kneading her back and sides with the fake pair.

"Mm. I admit I wasn't expecting literal magical hands for some reason. Earth bias, I guess. Mmph." She let out a soft moan in reaction to Aidan's phantom fingers dipping into the small of her back. "Can you feel through them? You must be able to, right?"

Aidan nodded, though Eldrid wasn't looking at him. "Yeah, I can. And the best part," he said, sliding his conjured appendages down her back, then through the shirt onto Eldrid's butt, "is that they only exist to the target. They ignore everything else, including clothes."

"Ooh." Eldrid's moan was deeper this time. "I begin to see why your women are so enamored of this ability. If you can touch them like this at any time without anyone else knowing... Mmph, that's hot. So is it some kind of illusion?"

"I'm not sure," Aidan admitted. "It's not illusionary because I can affect inanimate objects. Its properties are illogical and impossible, so I chalk it up as magic and move on."

"Probably—ooh—smart." Eldrid arched into Aidan's hands. If this was a therapeutic massage, he might have fussed at her. Instead, he kept his Magic Hands working up and down Eldrid's back while shifting his personal attention to her legs.

"You know," Aidan said, "for some reasons, I never realized how muscular you are." 

Eldrid let out a full-throated laugh. "Mission accomplished, then. I was nowhere near this top-heavy back on Earth, but I always wondered what it would be like. And, as a merchant who mostly deals with men, it's so much easier to get good prices when they can't keep their eyes off my chest."

Aidan stroked his hands down the back of Eldrid's thighs with long, firm motions, pressing in with the heels and letting his fingers trail behind. "Now that I think about it, you always dress to show off your breasts and hide the rest of your body."

"Mm-hmm." Eldrid's voice held notes of deep satisfaction. Whether at Aidan's massage, his comments, or both, he didn't know. "The Tide's figurehead is misleading, too. Softer, rounder, no muscle definition. She's got my face and general figure, but she ain't me. The more people underestimate me, the easier my jobs are."

Aidan let the conversation lapse into silence for a few minutes while he worked his way down Eldrid's legs with one pair of hands and up her back with the other. When his thumbs pressed into the arch of her right foot, Eldrid let out an ecstatic groan. The muscles in her thigh and shin twitched in sync with his motions, drawing attention to their sleek, silky splendor.

After finishing both feet, Aidan said, "I need better leverage for this next part."

Eldrid opened the eye facing him. "You're the masseuse. Do whatever you need to keep it up."

"Hah. With you around, keeping it up is never the problem." Aidan climbed up onto the massage table and straddled Eldrid's thighs.

"Mm. You've already got your hands on my naked body. You don't need to keep up the flattery."

"In point of fact, you're only mostly naked." Not that the shirt counted for much.

Eldrid gave him a smoky look. "You could change that, you know."

Aidan poured more massage oil into his palms and rubbed them together. "I could. I wouldn't even need a free hand to do it. You might not even notice right away. But I won't. Not unless you tell me to." He leaned forward and pressed his hands into Eldrid's rhomboid muscles along her upper spine.

"Why do you do that?" Eldrid's tone was somewhere between confused and frustrated. "You keep jailing yourself in a cage of good intentions. I know you haven't missed my signals. You're seeing them and ignoring them."

Because if I didn't, I'm afraid of what I might do to you. What I already did before I put up those bars. "I have trouble controlling myself around you, Eldrid, in ways I never have before. Here or on Earth. I never meant to go as far as I did in our bet."

A short, sharp exhalation answered his apology. "Oh, quit it with the pity party. I brought that on myself. When it comes down to it, all you did was give me the best orgasm of my lives. Considering the knife I had against your ribs, I got off easy." She snickered. "Pun intended."

Aidan shook his head. "That still doesn't excuse the way I forced myself—"

"If you make me turn over before you're done on my back, I will be very upset with you, Aidan. Listen to me." Eldrid waited a moment, then, when he didn't say anything, continued speaking. "You didn't force yourself on me. I agreed to the terms of the bet. The entire wager was about whether you could make me climax or not. It might, might," she placed heavy emphasis on the repeated word, "not be considered explicit consent by the most radical feminist, so let me be clear. I didn't expect you to succeed, but I was willing to accept that you might. So, yes, Aidan, I consented. You just happened to blow my expectations out of the water."

Aidan remained silent for a while after that, concentrating on the massage. He dug his fingers into Eldrid's calves, marveling again at the unexpected definition and tone in her legs. When he finished with her lower legs, he moved on to her thighs. Thick, but with muscle, not fat. Aidan made slow progress upward, switching back and forth, drawing ever closer to the cloth preserving what there was of Eldrid's modesty.

"Eldrid?" he finally asked.

"Mm?" She turned her head toward him, but her eyes were closed.

"May I remove the shirt?" Do you forgive me?

Eldrid's eyes opened, slow, languid, imperious. She observed Aidan for several seconds. Then, she smiled, the same genuine, beautiful smile she'd shown him earlier. "Yes." Having given her answer, she turned away from him again.

Aidan kept his hands moving, teasing at the edge of the shirt above and below. His real fingers on Eldrid's legs dipped under the cloth to tease her inner thighs. The phantom appendages above dug unreal thumbs into the muscles along the outer slopes of her magnificent ass.

"Mmmmm. You're teasing me," Eldrid said, half-complaining and half-moaning.

"Do you want me to stop?"

"Stop, and I'll kill you. You still have a spare life, right?" Eldrid's voice was as deadly serious as Aidan had ever heard from her.

"I think it would be unwise of me to answer that question right now."

Another snort showed Eldrid's thoughts on his answer. "That being the case, I'd advise you to continue. You may not be any good at therapeutic massage, but this still feels quite good, and I am not ready for it to end."

Aidan chuckled. "As you wish."

"'Mnot Buttercup either, you know. I already told you my name."

"Of course, Hazel." Aidan tried her name out, letting it roll across his tongue. She just didn't seem like a Hazel to him for some reason.

A sigh came from Eldrid. "From the ancient Hebrew hazael, not the tree. Means 'God sees,' more or less. A vicious joke, as it turned out."

Sensing that a response was unnecessary, Aidan remained silent, continuing to rub Eldrid's upper thighs and lower back while she spoke.

"My parents didn't know it at the time, but I was born with what's called retinal dystrophy. Or 'a' retinal dystrophy, anyway. It's a whole category of diseases. The long and short of it is that I was legally blind at eight years old." There was pain in Eldrid's voice, but it was the dull, scabbed-over kind. Nothing fresh or raw. Aidan maintained his silence, knowing that any expression of regret or empathy he might give would hurt more than it helped.

"I lived for twenty years without eyesight. Graduated from one of the most exclusive colleges in the South with a dual major, earned myself a job, made my way in the world. It's hard to say whether it's crueler to lose your vision or be born without, but either way, I adapted and overcame. Then," Eldrid shifted, freeing one hand to wave at the world around them, "The Realms came along. A miracle for me. There was nothing wrong with my optical nerves or my brain. IVR was a Godsend, I thought."

A short, sharp, bitter laugh from Eldrid mocked her own words. "Turns out I was right. It just wasn't from any God I knew. This was supposed to be a game, you know? An escape."

"I know." What else could Aidan say? He did know. That first death still gave him nightmares, and they didn't end with the Taig's mocking rhymes.

"You do. You're trapped here like me. And your sister, too. I'm not sure whether that's more or less cruel." The sympathy in Eldrid's voice did not make it hurt any less.

"More," Aidan said with absolute conviction. "I know my parents are safe. Eve could be anywhere, in danger, even dead. Maybe she even died before I had any chance to find her."

Eldrid twisted her head around to look at him over her shoulder. "I'll help you find her, I promise."

"Thanks." There wasn't much else for either of them to say on the subject.

"Sorry, I didn't mean for things to get so heavy. I just wanted to say, well..." Eldrid's voice trailed off, her visible eye slid closed. She swallowed, then said, "There's a lot I hate about this world." A flutter, a flash of silver as she focused on Aidan again. "You're not part of that. Rocky start aside, you've been a bright star in the night sky for me, Aidan. And that's coming from a blind girl."

Aidan felt his throat tighten. This wasn't how he'd expected things to go. He expected teasing, flirting, some taunts. Eldrid would flaunt herself at him, get him worked up, maybe convince him to go down on her, then she'd flounce off and leave him to work out his frustrations on Brighid, Sunnild, and/or Aoife.

Instead, she was opening herself up, baring herself to him in ways far more meaningful than her naked skin beneath his hands. He could hurt her now, wound with words in ways sure to leave scars deeper and harsher than any dagger.

Eldrid reached back and threw the cloth covering her aside, then turned over onto her back. Aidan pulled his hands out of the way and sat back on his haunches, looking down at her. Later, he would find it ironic that, for as often as he'd been distracted by Eldrid's breasts, now that she was bare before him, it was her shimmering, vulnerable eyes that captivated him.

"Aidan." Eldrid's voice was soft, almost inaudible. "I know you aren't in love with me." Aidan wasn't so sure of that, not anymore. "I'm not asking for forever. But as one stranger in a strange land to another, as someone who understands what I've been through. Please, Aidan? Can you love me, just for tonight? Tomorrow we can go back to our usual teasing. I don't want to give that up. But tonight, I need you."

This was it. This was the turning point. If Aidan turned her down here, no matter how gentle, he knew he'd never get this close to Eldrid, to Hazel, again. She offered up her soul to him, no less so than Brighid had, if in a different fashion. How else could he respond? A crazed fragment of his mind told him he could ask if this meant she wanted him to stop the massage, but he throttled that impulse and tossed it where it belonged.

Instead, Aidan leaned down, eyes locked with Eldrid's the entire way. He propped himself up on his hands, looking down at her, then closed the final inches. Her lips were soft, warm, and welcoming. There was no heat, no passion in their kiss, but it was no less rewarding for it. 

Aidan felt Eldrid's body shudder beneath him as the tension he hadn't noticed fled from her. Her right hand drifted up, touched the back of his neck, feather-light, then flowed down onto his upper back. Her head bent to the side then, her mouth parting a fraction beneath his. Not enough to invite him inside, but it broached the possibility. "Daniel," Aidan breathed into that opening. 

Eldrid's eyes widened, then squeezed shut, tears now spilling down her cheeks. A notification popped up at the corner of Aidan's mind, but he ignored it. Eldrid's left arm joined her right on his back, pulling him down onto her, then seeking out the laces keeping his shirt on him. Now came the fire, Eldrid's tongue darting out to flick across Aidan's lips. Eldrid twisted her hips, pulling her knees up then aside. Her legs parted around Aidan instead of being trapped between his.

"Just for tonight, Daniel," said Eldrid's voice, laden with emotion. Don't let me go, begged her eyes. Never, replied his lips against hers. Aidan kissed her until they both fell short of breath, then sat up and tugged his shirt off over his head. Eldrid's hands darted down to his waistline, but he batted them away. 

Working with practiced haste, Aidan undid the laces, wishing, not for the first time, that he could convince Siwan to make him a belt and pants to put it in. He suspected Brighid's interference in her refusal. Pulling one leg, then the other, then his tail, free of his pants, he tossed them to the side. 

Eldrid's silver eyes seemed almost luminescent in the dim light. Once again, Aidan was unable to look away from them despite the splendors on display. A smile appeared on Eldrid's face as he stared, tremulous and vulnerable. She reached up and ran her fingers through Aidan's hair. Gentle pressure tilted his head down—but not to renew their kisses. "It's okay," Eldrid murmured. "I want you to look. To touch."

"Consider your obligation discharged and your reputation upheld," Eldrid murmured. "Thank you, Aidan. I don't know how to tell you how much I needed that."

Aidan stroked his fingers through Eldrid's long blue hair. Telling her that she was welcome felt... inadequate. Cheap. "It was my pleasure," he said instead, "and I don't mean that as a joke. This wasn't how I expected this night to go, you know, but I hope this isn't the last time."

"The first night's free," Eldrid told him, the corners of her midnight blue lips tugging upward. "You'll have to earn anything more."

"Oh? I get the whole night? Then I'd better make the most of it," Aidan said. Eldrid laughed, then rolled onto her back, her legs and arms parting to welcome him between them once more.