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Sirus seemed as he always did. Calm, cool, and collected. It unnerved her even more. Her heart raced as she tried to come up with something to say. She didn’t want this to be it. She wanted there to be more, but she couldn’t seem to form words. Instead, she slipped his jacket off her shoulders and held it out to him. He hesitated for a moment before he took it. When he ran his hand up through his damp hair, a sinking feeling hit the pit of her stomach, and all her insecurities slammed into her like a freight train.
“I enjoyed it too,” she admitted awkwardly. Her whole face felt scorching hot.
He dropped his hand, and whatever he’d been about to say seemed to be lost. Gwen leaned up onto her tiptoes, bracing her hands against his chest. Sirus leaned into her touch, and all her paranoia evaporated. She pressed her lips to his, and he wrapped his hands around her waist and slid them to the small of her back, pulling her closer to give her balance.
The kiss was soft at first. Gwen shifted her hands up to his neck, and Sirus responded with satisfaction, opening his mouth to her. She happily flicked her tongue along the edge of his lip, and a soft growl vibrated through him, sending a swarm of butterflies through her stomach.
Gwen felt his hunger. She felt her own. Sirus pulled away suddenly from their kiss but didn’t remove his hold around her waist. “Barith is coming,” he warned.
The butterflies vanished, and dread smashed into her. Without thinking, Gwen immediately stepped away from Sirus, all the way to the other side of the hall. He didn’t try to stop her, but he watched her as she pulled away. Her stomach twisted in knots when she saw the coldness take hold of him once more.
“There you are,” Barith commented as he lumbered around the corner. He stopped dead in his tracks when he realized Gwen and Sirus were both there. Suspicious, the dragon looked at Sirus, then at Gwen, then back to Sirus.
“You’re late,” Sirus remarked.
Barith cocked a brow. “I don’t recall having a curfew,” he snarked. “What were you two up to?” He looked at the clear remnants of snow and damp in the hall around them.
“Sirus found me in the woods,” Gwen explained. “Just a walk. It’s snowing.” She said the last two things far more shrilly and pointedly than she’d intended.
Barith looked her up and down, then eyed Sirus. “I noticed,” he grumbled. Sirus glared back. Gwen swallowed the lump that felt like glass in her throat. “Levian and Niah are back,” Barith added after a few seconds of weird silence.
Sirus nodded.
“G-great,” Gwen stammered too excitedly. “Are they okay?”
“Peachy,” Barith replied, still not looking at her. Gwen felt her face grow hot. There was no way Barith could know about what happened between them, but it didn’t make this whole thing any less awkward. Clearly, he suspected something. “Lunch is ready,” he added.
“Great!” she repeated.
Barith glanced at her, then back at Sirus again, before turning to head back the way he’d come. For a second, he lingered, clearly thinking Gwen was going to follow, and she nearly did but stopped herself.
“I’ll be there in a sec,” she told him.
The dragon glanced back over his shoulder. “Aye. I can take a hint, but at least give me a few seconds to get out of earshot.”
Gwen cringed. She wasn’t sure what this was, if it was anything. She wasn’t really ready for anyone else to know that they’d…Her cheeks flamed.
“Gwendolyn—” Sirus began, that ice seeping back into his words.
Without thinking, she closed the space between them, leaned up, pecked him on the cheek, and said, “Tonight. Come find me.” Then she turned and ran down the hall after Barith as fast as her legs could take her.
She’d be damned if she let either of them ruin this before they even got a chance to figure out what in the hell this was.
“It was a horse,” Barith declared, downing the remnants of his glass.
“You were drunk,” Levian snapped, crossing her arms curtly and leaning back in her seat. “It was a donkey.”
“So they were both dressed like a donkey?” Gwendolyn asked, her face scrunched in confusion.
“Yes,” Levian confirmed, in tandem with Barith’s, “No.”
The mage and the dragon scoffed at the same time, and Gwendolyn laughed. It made Sirus’s blood stir, that sweet, simple sound like the song of morning birds.
Over the last week, he’d found the group’s shared evenings in the den to be pleasantly diverting, even if most of the conversation had mainly consisted of Barith and Levian recounting poorly remembered escapades from their past.
“I’ll bet you a hundred florin,” Barith challenged the mage, leaning over the table between them.
The mage huffed. “A hundred? I’ll bet you five hundred!”
