Steam

He could no longer tell apart the heat from the stream and the heat of his body. The heat that tingled between him and Asla as he kissed the Princess. He could scarcely believe that this was happening, that it wasn’t some strange, inappropriate dream. Their lips parted, and Asla began to speak. The heat of her words on cheek was as distracting as everything else going on. “Asla.” he whispered back, saying only her name. Uttering it quietly between them. He did not know what she struggled to say to him, but he was here. Loyal, hers. He would be whatever she wished him to be.

Despite that, he did not kiss her because it was duty, he kissed her because he ached to do so, and he had never tasted anything as sweet as her lips. Never felt the strange flipping in his stomach before now. Never felt such a roar behind his ears, a flame of emotion. Never, in the entirety of his life, had he felt so alive.

Her gaze moved downwards, then up again. Peeking at him from behind her lashes. The expression struck him as almost… bashful, a strange expression to attach to the Princess. It made his heart ache, it made her seem vulnerable. He wanted to crush her to his chest, and protect her from the world. From whatever had brought her home last night in tears.

He shivered as her toe brushed gently down his leg, finding the parts above the surface, and moving below. The soft slosh of water sounded from her motion, and from his, as he brought a paw down to her back, and tingled it slowly down her spine. “Anything, Asla Anything for you.”