[private] and I never saw you coming

[Tarian]

He loves the way that she relaxes against him, loves it in a way that he has never loved anything else before.

Hearing her sigh makes the tension that had been coiling in his gut smooth out and it feeds a surge of adrenaline that floods every corner of his body. She brushes her muzzle against his gray skin and every inch that Altissima touches sings in response. She chases away his aching muscles, his lack of sleep with a mere touch - a magical caress that Tarian thinks every Magician in Beqanna should envy.

Tarian contents himself with running his dark mouth over the lovely arc of her neck, playing with the fine silk of her pale mane before he replies: "Well, there's a family of dingoes that lives over there." His head inclines distractedly to the gently rolling hills on one side of them. Then his dark lips quirk in a wicked smile when it returns to lightly graze against Altissima's skin, "and don't get me started on the koalas."

It is all nonsense; Tarian enjoys teasing her but not as much as he enjoys having her close.

When Wildling explains that she has been dreaming of ways to make him blush, he (very badly) wants to tell her that he has been thinking of much more than making her blush. But where it concerns Altissima, the pegasus knows he will always be a willing participant. (Though he wonders if she had been paying attention to the tales of his youth. Tarian had never blushed but as a boy, conversations with the opposite sex had often left him flustered and taught him early that he much preferred the sparring field than the 'banter' his peers called flirting).

"Certainly," Tarian hoarsely tells her and then realizes the thundering in his head. It had nothing to do with the way that he moved closer to her or lifted the wing nearest her so that it might pull her close. It hadn't been the splashing steps he had taken to approach her or the way that the warm water rippled around their movements. It was his heart, Tarian realized, and though he had felt it plenty of times - hammering like a war drum before battle, soaring at the highest pinnacles that his wings have ever taken him - never before had it beat like this.

@Altissima