Page 140 of A Tribute of Fire

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I said.

“Is there anywhere else you’d like to trespass? The palace, perhaps? There might be a royal vault where you can steal the queen’s jewels,” he said.

Although he was teasing, his suggestion gave me pause. What if the eye of the goddess had been mistaken for a simple gem? What if it really was among the jewels the queen kept for herself?

It was something worth considering.

But the hour was growing late and the morning was approaching. “I should return to the temple.”

As we started our trek west, something flew up in front of me and lit up. “What’s that?” I asked.

“A firefly.”

“It’s on fire?”

“No,” he said with an indulgent smile. “It only lights up, like a tiny fire.”

“How?”

“No one knows. It is a bit late in the year for fireflies, though. This one is a straggler. Out past her curfew,” he said with a knowing look.

The light reappeared before blinking away. “It’s like magic,” I said, completely awed.

“I like how ordinary things seem special through your eyes.”

While he had spent the night saying things intended to inflame my physical passions, this was entirely different. It was sweet and warm and made me feel like he had wrapped me up in a thick blanket.

Jason seemed intent on inflaming my emotional passions, too.

Somehow that seemed even more dangerous. I kept reminding myself why this was a very bad idea. Oblivious to my internal struggle, Jason shared the details of his latest voyage to a city called Sestos, within the Thracian borders, and how he’d won enough money to clear his debts in Troas.

I was only half listening and instead was internally listing all the reasons why I needed to keep my distance.

It was an argument I was losing with myself.

We were close to the temple, only a street away, when he suddenly slammed me up against a wall, his body covering mine, pressing into me.

Out of instinct I drew my sword and held it against him. “Unless you want to become a eunuch, I suggest you move back.”

“That would be your loss,” he said as he glanced down at my xiphos. “And I’m not trying to take advantage of you. I’m hiding us.”

“From what?”

“Shh,” he responded. “Patrol.”

It was like earlier in the closet at the records building. He was close, touching every part of my body with his, so that every breath I took was also his.

I should not have been as excited as I was.

The patrol passed by, but I wasn’t paying any attention to them. All I could think about was the incredible sensations Jason was causing inside me. How he could create a spark with only a glance and with this much contact. I was a raging inferno, desperate to be set loose.

It was as if dreaming of this with him so often had prepared me for it, making it more likely to happen. It would be so easy to give in.

“They’re gone.” He breathed the words against my ear and I shuddered at the hot, surging feeling.

The still-working part of my mind thought he might step back, but he stayed where he was.

My xiphos slipped from my hand and I heard it land with a clank against the sidewalk.

---