Tarian laughs despite himself.
"Too late for that, don't you think?" the Loessian stallion hums teasingly against her neck. His mouth is still preoccupied with the graceful arc of it as he starts to move along her spine. Tarian can hear her breath hitch and his heart catches on the sound.
As much as he jokes about it, he had been serious about Altissima and how she had bewitched him.
She had done it in a myriad of little ways, in the few encounters that they had shared. And she continues to do it, because when she pauses for a moment, Tarian turns his pale head to see Altissima with her eyes closed. He had remembered thinking once that she belonged everywhere; that wherever Altissima wished to be, she would carve a place for herself until the next great adventure beckoned her. Nothing has changed in that regard: Tarian still considers Wildling an heiress of the seas and the skies and the stars.
So what had changed?
He had considered himself like stone, once. Tarian had thought himself cold and unforgiving and unyielding. It had gotten him through battles and long months of solitude. It had gotten him past his youth. And he had always thought that the way he had been would be his way forward. But as Wildling tugs on his pale mane, the winged horse gives her a dark look in reply; his lips curve in a waiting smile before Tarian gets the chance to repay Altissima the same favor. Somehow, the slender mare has managed to smooth some of his rougher edges and bring forward a more polished, warmer version of him.
And he doesn't mind, he thinks, as he readily meets her indigo eyes.
"Do you know how much I hoped you would prove me wrong?" he asks her, recalling their conversation about her crossing Loess' borders. His blue eyes shine at the memory. "Each patrol had me hoping that you'd snuck in again." Tarian looks at her a moment, listening to her low voice and he wishes that he was better with words; there are a thousand of them in his head and none of them seem to adequately explain how she makes him feel.
Her next words leave his mouth dry while his mind remains full of thoughts. The pale pegasus draws his wings carefully up from the water and presses them against his sides as he returns to pressing a kiss against her neck, another near the base of her throat. They travel up towards her spine, continue down her side and Tarian forgets all about the snow. He forgets about the spring or the steam that has enclosed all around them. There is only Altissima and the way that she is burning him from the inside out.
"Wildling," he says in a voice heavy with desire; a question, a plea and a command all tied together in a single word.
TARIAN
@Altissima