#41: Pillow Talk — Sword Master, Now Serving as a Nanny

So this is what he meant by sleeping together.

Lying side by side with Keith, Pai felt more than a little like trash. The way he told it, once the two of them were in the bed the romantic mood would take shape of its own accord. Spend one night jostled up against each other and they would feel physically closer, or something to that effect.

That strikes me as far too much a mercenary’s way of looking at it, though.

He could not seem to tell the bond of comrades-in-arms apart from eros.

That must be why he’s still a virgin at his age. Or no — is it because he’s a virgin that he thinks that way?

A chicken-and-egg problem, then.

At any rate, she was one worry lighter. When she had sounded out Keith’s intentions the other time, she had braced herself as far as a kiss and given no thought at all to anything past it. She had allowed the kissing only because no display of affection convinces an audience so easily, and anything beyond that could hardly be done in front of a servant, could it?

They say the nobles of the old days got through their wedding night with the staff looking on, but… that’s pure perversion.

So long as they were not actually doing it, his proposal was perfectly reasonable. It was about time, too, that the pair of them let themselves be seen once in the morning, rumpled and pressed close together.

“Ah, so diligent.”

She marveled at her own industriousness. Granted, working diligently does not guarantee that everything turns out well, but when she was going so far as to burn up her own body (?) like this, surely a little thing like an Archdemon summoning could be stopped?

The Duke’s bed was wide.

Well, it would have been built on the assumption that a married couple or a pair of lovers would use it.

And not one of those couples would have been a fake. All at once, lying in this bed in the capacity of Keith Paragon’s lover struck her as a serious business. Something like a sense of responsibility was spreading through her like mold when Keith spoke.

“I am grateful to you.”

“Not at all. I’m only performing a contract in accordance with the principle of good faith. And it isn’t as though I have no experience… if anything, I’ve been thinking rather seriously about whether it’s all right for me to take Mr. Keith’s first night in a bed with someone like this.”

“…”

“Haha… That was a bit too much talking, wasn’t it.”

Guilt always talks too much.

The awkwardness was still on her when a rustling reached her ears, the sound of the mattress shifting. Keith had been lying flat on his back; now he seemed to be turning onto his side.

“…”

To show someone your back. For anyone who carried a swordsman’s identity, that was no different from surrendering your own life into another’s keeping. And Keith Paragon had just handed her the thread of his life.

For some reason the feeling was more than Pai could bear, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

I absolutely must not open them.

“In truth, that was not what I was talking about.”

Oddly, Keith’s voice reached her from very close by, low and softly measured.

“Of course it’s also true that I’m grateful to you for taking such pains, like this, with a man you don’t even want.”

“…”

“I meant your persuading me. If it had not been for Miss Pai, I would have gone back to the Black Hawk. And then Count Husslix would have become Regent Duke, and Ardine…”

His words trailed off, as though it pained him even to imagine it.

“Honestly, I did not know he was so foul a wretch. Not that ignorance can serve as an excuse. In any case… the White Castle would never have contracted with a capable mage, and Ardine would never have awakened as a mage, none of it.”

The grave, stuffy way he said it pulled a laugh out of Pai, her eyes still shut.

“Pfft. Just how far back do you intend to be grateful?”

“Well. If I keep tracing it back this way, I shall have to be grateful starting from the fact that Miss Pai was born into this world.”

“Isn’t that just an ordinary birthday wish?”

“It is different. A birthday is a celebration of the day someone was born, and in my case I am celebrating Miss Pai’s birth itself.”

“Aha.”

“A celebration of someone’s birth can be given at any time, even without knowing when their birthday falls.”

“…”

She was an orphan with not a soul in the world. Of course she did not know her own birthday; she had never once given such a thing a thought, and no one had ever congratulated her on it. Keith had surely spoken with that in mind.

“Thank you for being born, Miss Pai.”

“That does seem awfully grand, awfully…”

Pai could not hold out any longer, and opened her eyes.

“Ah.”

Keith, who had been lying with his back turned to her, was looking down at her before she knew it, propped up on one elbow against the mattress, chin resting in his hand.

Had she ever looked at him this closely before? The last time she had stolen a look at him, unconscious, it had been from the bedside, and even then she had not been near enough to pick out the down on his skin.

“Lately… meeting you feels exactly like something fated.”

The low, affectionate voice broke against her ear like a wave washing softly over white sand.

“And I find myself thinking that if all cause and effect is woven together of weft and warp, perhaps I’ve been caught in a net someone adjusted with great care.”

“Then is Mr. Keith a butterfly caught in a spider’s web?”

“If I am the butterfly, does that make Miss Pai the spider?”

“That depends on how Mr. Keith thinks of it. Do you take it that I spun that thread?”

“What do you think I think?”

Each of them dodged the duty handed to them and threw the question back at the other, and went on doing nothing but throwing it back. The game of one question chasing the tail of the next wound a fresh sort of tension tight and lifted the mood at the same time.

Keith Paragon was not trusting her vaguely or unconditionally.

He lay in comfortable nightclothes beside her, bound, having softened her utterly… and then he whispered.

How far am I to trust you?

A current ran prickling up through Pai’s whole body. Keith’s questions were a challenge, and a challenge had always set her heart racing. And his taking her measure was not an attempt to cut the lie out of her and push her away; if anything it was closer to tightening his grip on the hand he already held and pulling her in.

Pai did not avoid the gaze pouring down on her. She met it head-on.

“I can’t trust someone who trusts me endlessly without questioning a thing. It’s no fun, either.”

“That is rather savage, for pillow talk.”

Pillow talk, he says, when nothing has actually happened. The shamelessness of the man. Pai did not hold back her laughter as she spoke.

“I like it when Mr. Keith takes my measure and tests me and prods at me.”

“And if I prod and you get hurt?”

“Then you’ll have to prod gently, won’t you? So that I don’t get hurt?”

“…”

It must have been an answer he had not expected, because the conversation broke off. His mouth, with all that deliberation locked away behind it, stayed shut in a neat line.

His upper lip is shaped like a heart…

The silly thought lasted no longer than a moment. The man’s hand came carefully toward her and cupped one of her cheeks; that big hand had to be calloused, and yet it did not feel rough in the slightest.

“How is this much?”

As he said it his thumb rubbed lightly over the soft give of her cheek. It set her back teeth itching. She bit down on the tip of her tongue, let it go, and answered.

“Well… I’d like it just a little gentler than that…”

“In that case.”

He tipped down toward her with a rustle. The heat pouring off his warm body and the smell of the man circled strangely at the tip of her nose, waking her senses to a fine sharpness. The round tip of his thumb worked at her earlobe and the hollow behind it, then slid down along the line of her jaw. And then it caught hold of her hand where it lay below.

“Would you like to touch?”

“Sorry?”

“The other time… it seemed as though you wanted to touch.”

I’ve been found out.

She clamped her mouth shut in embarrassment, then thought better of it and nodded gamely.

“Yes. I’d like to touch.”

“Which part were you most curious about?”

“Are you only going to let me touch the one place I was most curious about?”

“Yes.”

He murmured it with a laugh held in his mouth.

“I’m a man who has his stages, you see.”

“In that case, your lips.”