fallout
At least it stopped raining, he reminded himself sourly as he trudged across the training grounds. Giving Taline her way had gotten him nothing but headache and an overloaded work schedule. Selim had been, eventually, persuaded to take on Ingeborg, but at a much heavier toll than Ezio ever would have agreed to had it not been for his wife’s unreasonable animosity towards that particular student. To be fair, Ingeborg had flirted outrageously and heavily hinted that she wanted Ezio to take her to bed, and while he may have been tempted by the offer back when he was in Roma, this was Alamūt, and he was now married and expecting his first child, with his wife. His German speaking students had become more cautious of what they said around him. He could tell they had been talking about the recent situation with Ingeborg when they all went silent at his approach. Alain was bereft without his companion and was becoming sullen and withdrawn.
“Keep as many as you can out on contracts and work the remainder harder,” Kadija had advised with a disinterested shrug. “Your little fräulein needs to learn to take no for an answer.”
“She’s not my little fräulein,” he mumbled defensively. He wished Taline could have been persuaded to wait until after they all returned from Italy for Ingeborg to be reassigned, but even suggesting it had set off an inferno of hurled objects and accusations, tears and silence and withheld affection. She’d thrown out all his coffee and left their bed in the night to sleep on the ridiculously expensive couch he’d let her special order. In the end, he’d reluctantly turned to Kadija for help pushing through the reassignment since Altaïr was out on a contract and wasn’t expected back soon enough to please his wife.
Kadija snorted and leveled a disapproving look. “Selim is far too soft hearted to manage that one. I have a contact we could assign her, and rest assured she won’t be returning to make more trouble.” She didn’t even bother pretending to be at all unsettled by making the suggestion; it was an uncomfortable reminder of just how cold-blooded his eldest cousin could be.
“Altaïr was going to look into getting her transferred to Argentina,” he replied stiffly. “A silly infatuation isn’t reason enough to end her career.” He knew Taline probably didn’t agree with his sentiments; she wanted Ingeborg gone – and she didn’t seem to particularly care where or how.
“Are you sure it was never more than that? She’s making quite a fuss.”
He gritted his teeth and reminded himself of all the reasons why it was a bad idea to swear at his cousin.
“Quite sure. Contrary to popular belief, I’m rather discriminating over where I put my cock.”
“I’m sure,” Kadija replied, in a tone that suggested she really meant quite the opposite. She then gave him a rather sympathetic look before she sauntered away. He puzzled over that look for a long while before finally shrugging it off. Kadija wasn’t the first person to question his prior behavior with Ingeborg after all, and she had a rather bizarre sense of humor sometimes.
The believability of his denial that anything beyond the relationship of mentor and student had occurred between them was undermined by the way Ingeborg continued acting so excessively heartbroken and confounded this long after she had learned of the reassignment. It also didn’t help matters that, somehow, everyone seemed to know that Ingeborg had been transferred to another Master to appease his wife, which certainly fueled the gossip further. He was beyond ready for the gossips to sound out some new scandal, preferably one that had absolutely nothing to do with him.
He caught sight of Ingeborg angling to place herself directly in his path and abruptly detoured towards the training ring where two of Altaïr’s most senior-ranking Veterans were overseeing a large group of clearly underage Assassins’ training exercises. He racked his brain to remember their names. Mari would know; she mentioned having dinner with them.
“Effendi,” the young man greeted him, echoed by his female companion. He had nondescript brown hair and eyes, the type of pale skin that tanned extraordinarily well, and a broad shouldered, stocky frame. The feathery edges of a brackish hex-scar were just visible above the collar of his robes. He wasn’t particularly tall, the woman lounging against the training ring beside him may, in fact, have been a shade taller. His companion was blonde, a particular shade of blonde that every Eastern European woman Ezio had ever met dyed their hair, but the color was a close enough match to her eyebrows and eyelashes that it might have actually been natural. He could tell she was sizing him up, gaze cool and calculating, her eyes a frosty glacial blue-gray. A ridge of scar tissue marred one side of her face, slicing across her upper lip and up her cheek. She went back to cleaning her nails with the tip of one of her hidden blades while her companion continued to study him.
“It’s Kostya, isn’t it-” he asked, after returning their greeting and received a confirming nod. “-and… I’m sorry, it takes me awhile with names sometimes-” he admitted with an invitingly apologetic smile “-a few too many knocks to the head, my mother says.”
“Irika, Irika Viktrova,” Kostya’s companion supplied coolly, apparently not susceptible to casual charm. Which was probably for the best, really, because she was attractive enough to become problematic for him if she was.
“How may we be of service, Effendi?” Kostya asked as he fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket; the writing on the package was in Cyrillic.
“I just like to check in with my cousin’s students from time to time while he’s away on a contract,” he replied, declining the cigarette Kostya had wordlessly proffered with a shake of his head.
“Is that so?” Kostya drawled around the cigarette clamped firmly between his teeth as he conjured a flame from the tip of his finger to light it. He managed a single deep drag before Irika plucked the cigarette from his lips and brought it to her own.
Ezio folded his arms across his chest and arched a brow. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“Of course not.” Kostya reclaimed the cigarette from Irika and took another deep drag. “But it looked an awful lot like you came over here to avoid that girl over there.”
He acknowledged the accuracy of the Veteran’s observation with a shallow tip of his chin.
“How long have you two been sleeping together?” he parried. It wasn’t exactly a shot in the dark, their body language practically shouted that they were screwing and they weren’t even trying to be subtle about it, but it would be interesting to see if either of them attempted to equivocate or deny it.
“Some weeks,” Irika replied, exhaling a thick stream of smoke. “Isn’t that about right, Kostya?”
“Thereabouts,” Kostya agreed, accepting the cigarette back from Irika.
“What does it matter to you, Effendi? You’re married, aren’t you?” She smiled at him like a sphinx.
“It doesn’t.” He rolled his shoulders, stretching and loosening his muscles. “Matter to me,” he clarified. “And yes, I am married, as I’m sure you both know.”
He’d missed interacting with high-ranking Assassins – fellow fidā'ī with enough skill and experience to not hold him in awe and even talk back to him almost like an equal. The Roma Motherhouse was a smaller, more tightly-knit community than Alamūt and he’d known the majority of his fellow Assassins there for years, at least. Despite the much denser Assassin population, he found Alamūt rather lonely at times; he really knew so few people here compared to Roma. I should make more time for visiting with Mari. He shrugged away the pang of guilt that accompanied the thought.
The three of them instinctively turned at a cry from within the training ring. Irika and Kostya exchanged a quick look; Kostya jerked his chin towards the presumably injured student, which Irika acknowledged with a brisk nod before vaulting over the railing into the ring.
“I’m going to miss her, when I go back to Moscow,” Kostya commented, eyes on Irika as she investigated the source of the disturbance.
“She won’t follow you?” he asked, stepping forward to brace his arms against the rails of the training ring.
“She might come for a visit,” Kostya shrugged. “But before the year turns again we will both most likely have risen to Master.”
“That will make seeing each other difficult,” he admitted, thoughtfully scraping the nails of one hand along his jaw. “But not impossible.”
“You are a romantic, Effendi,” Kostya observed with a wry smile. “How do you manage?”
“I’m Italian,” he replied with a shrug as Irika vaulted back over the railing between them.
“Italian?” she repeated, quirking a brow. “Not Persian? Aren’t you related to Altaïr Effendi?”
“What gives it away, the overwhelming family resemblance?” he asked sardonically.
“He calls you cousin,” Kostya replied, trying to push Irika’s hands away as he brought the cigarette to his lips.
“That girl, the one you were avoiding, she’s approaching,” Irika announced. She pinched Kostya’s thigh and grabbed the cigarette from his mouth when he hissed in surprise. “Didn’t she used to be one of your students?”
He glanced over his shoulder and then quickly looked away. Cazzo.
“Effendi?”
Merda. He’d been going out of his way to avoid interacting with her. Of course she runs me to ground here, out in the open, where she can make a scene in front of everyone. Of fucking course she does.
“He’s busy, Novice,” Irika said when he didn’t immediately respond, deflecting Kostya’s half-hearted attempts to reclaim the cigarette. He didn’t understand her motivations for running interference for him, but he was grateful for it nonetheless. Loyalty to Altaïr, perhaps? His socially awkward cousin’s ability to win and maintain the absolute loyalty of those who trained under him for any length of time never failed to amaze him
“Now run along, like a good little girl, and leave the Master to his work,” Irika added with a dismissive flick of her wrist.
“I wasn’t talking to you, slawisches kaninchen[1],” Ingeborg retorted.
“Suka rodilas,” Kostya swore. “Ochistit' kol'tso,” he bellowed over his shoulder at the students he and Irika were supposed to have been supervising; the youths scrambled to obey him and clustered on the other side of the rail, watching them with wide excited eyes. Irika dropped the cigarette and carefully ground it out with the toe of her boot, eyes narrowed and mouth tight.
“We are all Assassins here,” he said, taking satisfaction at the way Ingeborg flinched at the tightly coiled anger in his tone. Her infatuation was no longer annoying but excusable; it had become problematic, and his patience with her had met its end. “And that was not behavior befitting an Assassin to say what you just said to any member of the Order, and especially inexcusable to one so superior to you in rank. Get in the ring.”
“Lehrer-” Ingeborg pleaded.
“Effendi,” he savagely corrected her. “Get in the ring. Don’t make me tell you again.”
Ingeborg gnawed her lower lip and nodded and then darted around them to enter the ring. He felt a fresh bolt of irritation at the way she managed to brush her breasts against his arm, graze her fingers along his thigh; if she meant to flirt her way into his good graces she had wildly miscalculated his mood. He gripped Irika’s shoulder, pulling her closer as he leaned in to whisper advice into her ear. Ingeborg’s expression twisted with jealousy.
“She tends to attack high,” he murmured. “Hurt her, embarrass her, but not so much that she can’t be assigned out; Kadija Effendi has a special contract earmarked to deal with this one.”
“I hear and obey, Effendi,” Irika replied and then leapt into the ring, teeth bared in a nakedly predatory smile.
Kostya leaned against the rails beside him to watch. They both knew Ingeborg was far too outmatched to have any hope of winning, but there was always the chance that she would comport herself admirably under the circumstances.
“You have to know Irika will go for her pretty face, carve her a smile from ear to ear,” Kostya murmured. “She’s done it before.”
His stomach twisted. Accidents happened on contracts, everyone expected that. He already had no business ordering Ingeborg into the ring against an opponent who so vastly outranked her, and, from the look in her eyes, Irika had no interest in treating this like a controlled training exercise. As the supervising Master, that would reflect poorly on him. Altaïr needs to have a talk with his pretty student about not letting anger or frustration cloud her judgment. But right now, he needed to rein in Irika.
“No blades,” he raised his voice to instruct the two women and the milling bystanders. “No other weapons. Show us how well you fight hand to hand.”
It was brutal.
Ingeborg never even stood a chance; Irika pounded her to a bloody pulp in less than two minutes. It was almost too painfully embarrassing to watch. Almost. His Sudeten German students had flocked over to the training ring the moment they had seen Ingeborg enter it and were shouting encouragement and futile advice. Alain’s voice was sharpened shrill with anxiety and genuine fear as he screeched for her to dodge left, left, your other left,Scheiße, Scheiße Ingeborg, links!
It wasn’t helpful. Kostya sighed.
He wished Taline was there beside him, watching the slaughter unfold. His demure and dainty little wife had a ruthless streak a mile wide. The metallic tang of blood mingled with the bouquet of other training scents in the air. His body stirred in response and he silently cast a glamour to keep his physical reaction private.
“Enough, Irika,” he commanded sharply.
Irika stopped mid-swing and Ingeborg collapsed onto the churned up ground with a moan. Irika glanced down at her with a dismissive huff before she leisurely strolled towards the rail and leveled a serrated smile at Ingeborg’s now silent supporters as she licked the blood off her knuckles with a lascivious sweep of her tongue.
“Remember what you’ve seen here today the next time some voice on the wireless tells you that you’ll win any fight simply because you’re German,” she said and then vaulted the railing with one fluid motion. She then said something in what he assumed was Russian to the youths she and Kostya were supervising. He clenched his teeth.
“We are none of us German or Russian or Italian,” he said, raising his voice to a sonorous and carrying tone. “First and foremost, we are all Assassin. That is your identity, your culture, and your heritage. We belong to no Kuffār Empire or State. We are Assassin, one Order spanning many nations, bound not by their low laws but only by the Creed. Remember that as the lesson of this day. To think or suggest anything else is disloyal to the Order, and a betrayal of your vows.” His eyes settled on Ingeborg, now huddled on the muddy ground, shivering and pale. Irika really didn’t hold much back. “Summon the field medics and get her to the infirmary. And you,” he turned a hard look on Irika. “You are going to be doing my paperwork on this incident.”
“As you desire, Effendi,” Irika murmured, tone neutral and perfectly even. He doubted she was at all pleased that he’d just saddled her with his paperwork, but one would never tell from the way she responded. Altaïr knew what he was doing when he singled this one out.
“Alain,” he called.
“Yes, Effendi?” the young man answered, approaching with dragging, hesitant steps.
He’ll take it badly when Ingeborg doesn’t return. He felt a momentary swell of sympathy; he’d lost many friends over the years, but he still remembered how hard it had been when the first one hadn’t come back from a contract.
“You show your emotions far too freely,” he said, tempering his tone to soften the reprimand. “It hands your enemies a powerful weakness to exploit, and it places your loved ones in danger. Do you understand what I’m telling you, what you need to do?”
“Yes, Effendi,” Alain mumbled, eyes downcast and digging the toe of his boot into the ground.
He sighed. “Accompany Ingeborg to the infirmary, stay with her until she is discharged, then escort her straight to her room and make sure her condition is stable. You are excused from training until this task is complete. Think on what I’ve told you.”
The young man shot him a surprised look, which he returned stonily. Alain dropped his gaze again after a moment with a fiery blush.
“I will. Thank you, Effendi-”
“Dismissed,” he bit out.
He’d undoubtedly regret this decision later, but he had more pressing matters to deal with at the moment; such as arranging Ingeborg’s contract with Kadija and emptying his balls with Taline. He was particularly invested in accomplishing the latter, but the contract would have to come first. Mannaggia. He drew both blades and concentrated as he scraped edge against edge. Kadija. He waited for a responsive tremor in his own blades and then tried again. She acknowledged his call the second time. It might have been fanciful thinking, but he swore he could feel her annoyance at being interrupted vibrating through his blades.
“Excuse me,” he said to the milling fidā'ī in general, with a more specific nod to Irika and Kostya in particular. “I have business with Kadija Effendi to attend. Safety and peace.”
He turned away without waiting for a response and willed his vision to slip into the Order’s second sight. Kadija. The Assassins all around him glowed blue, varying in shades and intensity. He concentrated harder. Kadija. He caught a shimmer of gold out of the corner of his eye and headed in that direction. He would have found her more quickly if she had also been searching for him, but, as he had suspected, she had decided to continue supervising the mixed group of Recruits and Initiates she was training instead. Good thing she didn’t head down to one of the lower levels, he thought with a mild thrill of irritation.
“Effendi,” she acknowledged him coolly, without so much as a confirming glance, when he reached her side.
“Effendi,” he replied. When it became clear she wasn’t going to say anything further for the time being he shifted his attention to watching her students.
They were a mix of ages, ethnicities and genders; individuals who, one way or another had found their own way to the Order. While the Order sometimes recruited skilled individuals as dā‘ī or dapīr, or, less often, vicīr, those who became fidā'ī almost universally grew up within the Order – from Assassin families or those surrendered to the Order as children.
Many in this particular group of students were still learning how to channel and control their magic through their blades, obviously having come from the wizarding world by the way they waved and flourished their blades and muttered nonsense under their breath. He sighed.
“You can’t be seriously training this lot as fidā'ī,” he commented. “They’ll get themselves killed in a minute on a contract.”
“They’ll need to know how to use their blades, however they serve the Order,” she replied, still watching her students. “I take it you’re interrupting me for a reason?”
“About the contract you mentioned. For Ingeborg,” he confirmed, glancing towards the sky to check the time. Taline will be between her afternoon classes soon.
“So you’ve changed your mind then? Good. She can leave today. That should please Taline.”
He winced, already anticipating Kadija’s reaction to what he was about to say.
“Actually, I don’t know that she’ll be able to leave today.” He looked everywhere else and dug the toe of his boot into the hard-packed soil. “She may have sustained some substantial injuries in the training ring just now,” he added when Kadija allowed the silence to stretch expectantly.
“How did that happen?”
“She mouthed off and seriously insulted two of Altaïr’s fifth-tier Veterans-”
“Which ones?” Kadija demanded, eyes narrowed dangerously. He quickly looked away.
“Kostya and Irika.”
He could feel Kadija’s eyes narrowing further. “Which of them was in the ring with Ingeborg?”
“Irika-”
“Olagh,” she swore, cuffing him sharply. “How many careers are you going to tarnish before you learn to keep it in your pants?”
He bristled but choked back his anger – he had done nothing wrong – and letting Kadija’s needling get to him would only give her an excuse to unload more of her bad mood on him. She always got testy when Altaïr was out on a contract; they were both like that, possessive, co-dependent, clingy – if one was brave enough to actually say that aloud. Based on her mood, he’d estimate it had been at least twenty-four hours since Altaïr last checked in with his sister.
“Porca puttana, I wasn’t sleeping with her,” he snapped defensively. “I wasn’t doing anything with her-”
“Why is it, I wonder, that everyone finds that so hard to believe?”
“Why is it that other people’s disbelief is somehow my fault?” he retorted. “Besides, the only woman I want to be with is my wife-”
“Like an animal in rut,” Kadija editorialized with a curl of her lip.
“I’m not a fucking animal,” he shot back, willfully squelching the guilty twinge he felt at the memory of Taline crying as he made love to her that morning.
Kadija harrumphed derisively and ran a critical eye over him. “Is that what the glamour you’ve cast is disguising, your purely cerebral desire for your wife’s company?”
Cazzo.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he replied with all the dignity he could muster. Saint Ambrose, patron saint of bees.
“Allahu akbar, you’re a terrible liar, Ezio,” she huffed. “It’s not even all that good of a glamour. I’m almost embarrassed for you.”
Don’t rise to her bait. Whatever you do, don’t rise to her bait, he repeatedly reminded himself. Saint Barbara, patron saint of those who constantly live in danger of a sudden death. His fingers positively itched to hex his cousin. Saint Catherine of Siena, patron saint of Italy. Saint Bartholomew, patron saint of Armenia. Saint Margaret of Antioch, patron saint of pregnant women.
Kadija removed an invisible piece of lint from her robes with a blatantly self-satisfied smirk.
“Anyhow, we’re supposed to depart for the visit to my mother soon; will you see to the contract, or should I delay our departure?” he asked abruptly, forcing a wide, disingenuous smile. “Mother is most impatient to meet Taline, and-”
The smirk was gone. “I’ll take care of it,” she bit out. “Altaïr needs a break from cleaning up your messes anyway, for a short while, at least. Think you can restrain yourself from creating any more while you’re all in Italy?”
“Of course.” He widened his eyes innocently. “It’s Mari’s turn.”
Taline wasn’t in the Garden, or she was doing an astonishingly good job of hiding from him if she was.
She has no reason to hide from me, he reminded himself. She’s sweet and kind and faithful. The weak afternoon sunlight was barely warm on his skin. He couldn’t wait for summer with its hot sun and long days, and then autumn, when he would finally become a father.
And very good at letting people think she’s whatever she needs to be to survive, a nasty voice in the back of his mind commented. It almost sounded like his sister. He chose to ignore it.
The Garden was aggressively shaking off its winter hibernation with an explosion of bright green new growth. The air was heavy with the scents of damp earth, flowing water, crisp tender greens, and sweetly subtle wafts of apple blossoms when the breeze came from the right direction. He drew it hungrily into his lungs. Altaïr had told him about the Garden when they were growing up, how it changed scents from season to season, day to day. There was a dreaminess to Altaïr’s voice when he tried to explain how the Garden smelled and felt that Ezio had had trouble understanding until now. He wanted to run into the heart of the Garden, so fast and deep his responsibilities and duty, his ghosts and burdens, could never find him and he could just be free. This is how Eden must have felt, except Adam lacked the knowledge to fully appreciate it until it was taken away. He paused, rubbing the pads of his fingers over the pale silvery-green leaves of a branch just in front of him, the tender leaves still crinkled as they unfurled from the firm buds they had been only days before. Taline. His breath caught and his blood warmed at the thought of her as Eve to his Adam, his nubile young wife alone and naked with him in the Garden. Fucking paradise. He shivered, suddenly remembering that his wife was a Cather, and they had their own story about Eden, in which Eve was a simpleton and Adam a bestial rapist and brute. He reflexively rubbed the heel of his palm across the front of his trousers; he was still half hard. He’d been taking the potion Asad had – grudgingly – prescribed when he and Taline had first gotten married fairly regularly, admittedly far more often than he probably should have been. He loved being able to make love to Taline multiple times a day, and, secretly, was a little worried what she might think if his performance were to suddenly wane. Cazzo, this practically borders on priapism. The longing to be with his wife intensified at the thought.
She’ll have a class starting soon. He confirmed the angle of the afternoon sun and left the Garden with a wistful sigh. We should have at least one picnic dinner here over the summer. It wasn’t a particularly long walk from the Garden, and pleasant daydreams of intimate summer picnics distracted him until he suddenly found himself outside the door of Taline’s classroom. He glanced inside; she was alone, hunched over her desk doing paperwork. His throat tightened with a swell of tenderness as he watched her. My wife. The door hinges were silent when he slipped inside. He reminded himself to make some small noise – the scrape of his boot against the stone floor, the whisper of his clothing as he maneuvered around student desks – so as to not startle her; Taline tended to react violently when he caught her unawares.
“Hey Mogliettina,” he murmured as he closed the last of the space between them. She smelled like sugared sweet violets and fresh baked bread, ashes and musk and hints of tangy brine. He touched the tip of his tongue to her jugular, traced the hammer of her pulse. The delicate skin of her throat tasted like rosehips and saltwater and iron.
“E-Ezio,” she gasped, squirming away from his lips against her neck, turning to face him. “What are you doing here? I have a class starting soon, Varpet.”
“I know. I just needed to see you is all,” he replied, urging her up enough to insert himself between her and the chair. “Kadija has a contract in mind for Ingeborg; she’ll need to leave immediately.”
“What sort of contract?” Taline asked as she settled onto his lap. He loved it when she sat in his lap; loved how warm and solid and real she felt, pressed against him with layers of clothing between them. It was sweet torture; he suspected she knew it.
He toyed with the ring on her finger, the one he’d had made for her, and willfully squelched his guilt at the thought of sending a student off on a contract he knew they weren’t equipped to complete. After Cesare and Armenia and the miscarriage, he owed her this, at least; his own finer feelings about the situation be damned. He’d do his duty.
“The sort that ends careers.”
“Oh.”
She was wearing a whisper soft sweater set, the thin material clinging to the curves of her breasts and shoulders. He sucked the cluster of pearls from her earlobe. She giggled, hands toying with the collar of his robes.
“Give it back.”
He spit the earing out into her outstretched palm and watched as she carefully refastened it.
“You look beautiful,” he murmured. She tensed at the compliment and he wondered why. He rubbed his cheek against her sweater and cuddled her closer.
“My next class will be starting soon,” she said, carding a hand through his hair. He bit back a moan; it felt amazing. Saint Valentine, patron saint of lovers, please help her like it this time.
“Too soon for a quick thrill?” he asked, easing a hand up her thigh.
“Ezio,” she gently scolded, pushing his hand back down. “My students-”
“I don’t care. We’re married. We’re going to have a baby. I think your students know enough about how that all works to realize that we must be having sex.”
“I would prefer not to give them an eyeful of our private life, Varpet,” she replied. Her breath caught when he nipped her bottom lip and she let him kiss her, with tongue.
“I can lock the door,” he offered. “Wouldn’t you like me to make love to you on top of your desk?” She squeezed her thighs together when he reached up her skirt again. “Il pensiero si eccita, Mogliettina?”
“Ezio-”
He silenced her with a kiss.
Later – when he was alone in their bedroom, after he’d bathed but before he’d dressed, he mentally replayed that moment and ached to be with her – he was certain that she’d been kissing him back, hands clutching the collar of his robes and pulling him closer, that she’d unclenched her thighs and encouraged him to sheath a finger inside her. He remembered a half-hitch in her breath and a bitten off moan against his lips urging him deeper. And then she’d startled and sprang away from him at the sound of an inkpot clattering against the wooden top of a desk, blushing and breathlessly smoothing her skirt down her thighs. He would have gladly smote the underage interloper on the spot. Taline prevented him.
“You’ve come so early, Hanifa, are you waiting for something or someone?” she asked, visibly struggling to regain her composure.
The girl blushed painfully red as he unsubtly sucked the finger he’d had inside Taline only a moment before and avoided meeting his resentful gaze. He wanted her to know what they’d been doing, wanted her to tell everyone what she’d seen. He wanted everyone to know how passionately attached he was to his wife. Let them all gossip about that for a change.
“Tarek sometimes studies alone before class … and we talk,” the girl explained awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to-”
“Of course not,” Taline quickly reassured her. The door opened and boisterous group of boys sauntered in. “My husband was just leaving, isn’t that so, Varpet?” She turned and rubbed her palm over his marriage scar. Even through multiple layers of clothing he could feel the magic. He stepped closer and pressed her body against his.
“Come home straight away after class,” he commanded. “We need to get you packed for Italy.” He chucked her under the chin, pressed a quick, open mouthed kiss against her lips, and then strode from the room. He didn’t think to recast the glamour to disguise his rampant erection until the door closed behind him. Merda. Why couldn’t she have been with the ankle biters? Teenagers notice everything. He sighed; he couldn’t actually obliviate a whole room full of teenagers all at once, not properly at least. Taline’ll have to take care of it then. He headed back to their assigned quarters; he needed to wash, and, in his current state, it would be far less awkward to do so in the privacy of his own bathroom.
[1] German, “Slavic rabbit”