Free By Chance Met by Eresse

youngling with no experience whatsoever in matters of the heart or bodily union supposed to convince so guarded and blasé a Deir to surrender to their mutual need?
    Chapter Six

Quandary
    There were times Reijir suspected his honorable, honest to a fault adjutant of underhanded dealings. Granted these instances were extremely few and far between, but they existed nonetheless. This was one of those times, the Ilmaren lord decided, as he tried to avoid noticing every move Naeth made. Or rather every move of the youth’s delectable posterior.
    Reijir shook his head and determinedly looked away from Ruomi’s work desk by the study door where Naeth was busy sorting a stack of recently arrived correspondence.
    What had possessed him to approve Ruomi’s suggestion that he take Naeth under his wing and allow the youth to help him with his myriad duties? Reijir stifled a sigh of frustration.
    Because he had not known how deeply Naeth’s constant presence would affect him.
    Save for the weekends, Naeth had spent most of each day at school and out of Reijir’s line of sight. Not so now when he was almost always around, as much at Reijir’s beck and call as Ruomi and eager to comply with Reijir’s every wish.
    Reijir muttered an imprecation. Not every wish , he firmly told himself. Not if the youth had any sense in that pretty, underage head of his.
    Naeth came to him and placed several letters on one side of the desk, murmuring that he would deliver the others to the rest of the household. Reijir nodded his assent, keeping his eyes on the document before him.
    The youth turned around and started to walk toward the door. But a few paces away, one of the letters he carried fell to the floor. Naeth bent to retrieve it. Whereupon a few others slipped from his grasp just as he straightened up and tumbled down as well. Softly cursing, Naeth bent once more to pick them up. The divided shirttail of his long shirt parted to accommodate the upward motion of his rump.
    Reijir had surreptitiously watched Naeth walk away, and he was now treated to a full view of the youth’s well-shaped backside, the material of his breeches stretched taut across his firm buttocks. He smothered a groan as images of what lay beneath Naeth’s breeches littered his mind.
    The Herun irritatedly wondered why Naeth had not donned a proper, arse-covering tunic before reason kicked in to remind him that an exceedingly warm summer day indoors discouraged anything more elaborate than a linen jerkin over a cambric shirt and cool cotton trousers. And after all, he had given his staff leave to dress as comfortably as possible while remaining within the bounds of propriety. He could hardly take Naeth to task just because his choice of breeches left little to Reijir’s unexpectedly active imagination. It was a relief when Naeth finally left the study, taking his inexplicably tempting body with him.
    It was utterly confounding, this attraction to his ward, Reijir sourly thought. And so very inappropriate. Whence this response to the charms of so artless a creature?
    Reijir’s many dalliances had by and large been with Deira as practiced in the love arts as he. But even the occasional virgins who came his way had been far from innocent in mind or virtuous in intent however unsullied their bodies.
    Naeth was completely outside his sphere of experience. He was innocence and temptation all wrapped up in one intriguing package.
    He swore again. He was being beguiled almost effortlessly by the minx! And worse,
    Reijir was quite certain Naeth was unaware of it. Veres help him if the youth ever realized just how enticing he could be without even trying.
    And it was not just Reijir’s body that had turned wayward against his will. Even his personality seemed to have undergone some changes, and Rohyr had taken pains to tell him so the previous morning.
    He should have known better than to bring Naeth with him to the Citadel. He’d never yet taken his ward to the royal keep