As they had kissed, each finding a journey over the other’s skin, they had naturally begun to sink backwards, Persephone had used her hold on Iason to support herself, but Iason had had nothing. So, at the moment their centres of gravity couldn't hold and their journey towards the mattress was too acute to keep himself in place, Iason had fallen against her, breaking his connection from where he had been trailing soft kisses over her collarbones - touches that had sent her eyelashes feathering back down over her cheeks and drawn a soft purr from her tongue - and upsetting his balance. The disruption had Persephone falling back from where she had held onto him, her back dropping the last few inches to the mattress. Disorientated from the slight fall, Persephone's eyes flew wide and the first thing she noticed were Iason's arms shooting out on either side of her, to brace his weight above and save the both of them from a collision of bodies.

She noted the shape of his physique then, for the first time. The strength that corded his arms, the tendons that ran from wrist to elbow, the swell of his biceps, the sweep of muscle that filled out his shoulders and banded over his chest... The ribbed, secular muscles in his lower belly, the shape of each pectoral. With his hair over long and his beard grown in from their voyage, Iason hardly looked like a nobleman... But he had hardly gained his strength in but a week. What had he been doing - toiling with the common man? Performing manual labour? How had he carved his body into such a shape of fitness?

Persephone felt the very foreign and entirely bizarre desire to taste the strength from his very skin...

A desire that was only encouraged and set aflame as her gaze came level with his. His eyes; a soft sky blue that were almost startling in their paleness against his dark brows, had deepened in shade. The pupils of his eyes expanded to engulf the blue, his gaze hooded and his lips parted. She noted the speed of his pulse in the hollow at the base of his neck, the way his chest rose to draw closer to her and then fell back away. Over and again. He was breathing as hard as she was.

"I'm sorry..." He said now, as they had shifted, his hip pressing into the bed beside her own and his body turned to hover above hers. His arms held her captive and his gaze even more so... A strange sort of discomfort had started to heat something between Persephone’s legs and she felt a natural urge to part her thighs, to cool the warmth that bloomed from within...

Whilst her hold on Iason hadn't kept her upright, her touch had never left him. She moved her hands over him: the one from his hair shifted to his shoulder and slowly stroked its way down his arm. The other moved down and over his spine, where it found a home in the small of his back.

"For what?" Persephone asked with a soft smile before, in a moment of pique, she followed her instincts and allowed her knees to fall apart. The cloth wrapped around her frame was pushed up by her movement, rolls of white now wrinkled around her belly and hips, hiding her exposure from both their gazes, as she pulled forwards and guided Iason to naturally fall in the opening cradle of her body.

The collision of the two held no impact for they had moved bare inches but the effect seemed to hit both of them hard. Persephone gasped at the sensation of a man's weight upon her frame, supported by her hips. Her breasts felt on fire with the friction from her towel as they seemed to want to nothing more than to meet with Iason's bare chest. The space between them had become but an inch between torsos and suddenly Iason was everywhere. His frame above her, his arms either side of her, his lips a breath from her own, his...

Her eyes widened as she felt... something... clothed in towelling, meet up against her bare womanhood. She gasped and her breathing hitched in her throat. She tried to swallow but there was a lump there now... A moment of panic tried to creep its way in. A nervousness that she wouldn’t allow at the feel of a man’s body against her own. For that was what she could feel. She knew enough to know the shape to be Iason’s… but she hadn’t thought it to be so… firm…

To avoid the worry and the virginal dread in the back of her mind, Persephone’s only thought and instinct seemed to be to hold onto this man and reach up to seek his mouth with hers, searching for that connection again... The one that felt safe, secure and fiery enough to burn away all doubt…

This time when they came together, there was more noise... gasps, moans... as if she had done away with all embarrassment and was a victim to vocalising her physical reactions to his touches. Which left, for the first time during their kisses, her mouth open to his ministrations...

As Iason kissed her, Persephone kept her eyes closed. Not only did blindness feel more natural in such moments - so that the mind could focus inwards on the delicious sensations such connections fraught - but it also helped her to block out distraction. To close off the world from her mind. To think only of this moment. To think not at all, in fact. Her twenty-two-year-old and, so far, untouched body was now in control and it seemed to know what it wanted. It moved and drew itself towards Iason as if he were some goal. As if he held an answer that she sought without ever realising the question it belonged to. How could it be that she physically behaved in a way that suggested knowledge when she herself had no idea what she was doing; no experience or rumour to rely upon?

Repressed and controlled since long before her years of puberty, Persephone had not even exercised the scandalous notion of touching herself let alone allowing a man to do such a thing...

As they kissed, the exchanges turned harried. The lack of air and pace of breathing that seemed to torment the both of them had them gasping around each other's lips, the moans that she could hear, pulled from Iason's mouth began as groans that she could now feel reverberating against her chest, through the single layer that separated their skin. With a need to break away to illicit such sounds and claim the air they both craved, the kiss had lost all structure. Instead, they came back to each other with open mouthed need.

It was in one of these meetings that Iason deepened the kiss. There was a wetness as his tongue touched her lips and her own instinctively moved to meet it.

It was in that moment that the kiss suddenly turned carnal.

Persephone reached up and drove her fingers into his hair, her mouth turned strong against his, giving as much as she was taking. Her body seemed to shift beneath him, writhing to get closer in a manner she never knew, her legs spreading wider. She felt his body respond in kind and push forwards up against her pelvis in a way that had her break their kiss, a noise more guttural than she'd ever made before, breaching her lips.

Embarrassed by the noise, Persephone flushed and turned her face to the side, one of her hands moving to place her knuckles over her mouth as she gasped for air.

But odd exclamation seemed only to excite Iason though as, suddenly, he was ripping away the fabric from her body, as if he couldn't stand to be without skin to skin contact a moment longer. Blushing deeper, any of her concerns and fears were soothed away as Iason reached into her hair, his stroking touch bending her nerves into submission as she braved to open her eyes and watch him as he stared down at her in turn. She smiled with womanly pleasure as he trailed a finger down her side, appearing to pause at each dip of her ribs as if he were counting. His gaze trailed over her breasts, across the flat belly - a little hollow from the stress of the last few weeks and down to the soft swells of her thin thighs and the womanly V where they met.

His gaze journeyed back up her body and Persephone felt herself wriggle a little in anticipation of the lack of touch - even if it was only for a few heartbeats. Soon he was taking her back in hand - literally - as he reached up to cup her breast. A gesture she had not expected! A woman's breasts were for feeding the young were they not? What was to be done with them in such a moment...?

But Persephone soon realised that this was a miscomprehension as Iason lowered his head to suckle against her. The draw and suck of his lips around her nipple had her gasping - "Oh m-" - words and phrases stilted by the shock of sensations. Heat darted from where he drew upon her, down to burn in her lower bell and fan the flames hotter between her legs. Sweat broke out on the small of her back and Persephone gasped at the heat of it.

It was only then that she noticed Iason pulling at his own covering, rocking in the cradle of her hips to remove the last barrier between them. Unable to see him, nor where they came together over Iason's attentions to her chest, Persephone was unprepared when she felt the man pressing up against her most private place. Her eyes shot wide, her senses seemed to all zero-in on either her breast or her female core as she felt something impossibly silken and yet firm and hard pressing against her pelvic floor. She wasn't entirely sure where he was aiming for down there but something told her he had only to move an inch and both of them would be virgin no more...

And Persephone found that she wanted it.

She wanted to give it away to this man. To be irreparably tied to him. To be bonded and connected with Iason in a way that nothing - not future plans of marriage, or a future separate with other partners... not the reality of her new status or the persistence of his duty - could remove or erase. Sleeping with him now, becoming one being with him now... it would give her something; a connection in this world that she had none of anymore. Not family, not house, not kingdom. But she could have this. She could have this man, and this connection, here.

Her body cooling at such thoughts but her resolve becoming stronger, Persephone closed her eyes to focus on the feel of Iason's lips as he nuzzled at her breasts, his hands strong and commanding. She felt him - his... his manhood, up against her and shifted her hips in a way that had its tip brush along the crevice of her pelvic floor - a sensation that had her gasping. Her hand tightened in his hair, her body rocked up to meet his.

Persephone felt herself writhe and push and show more eagerness and passion than she had yet to embrace. She found her lower body thrusting down upon Iason’s manhood, seeking whatever it was he needed to give in order to complete things between them. Had their angles been right, her movements would have had them joined already but she needed his help for the sharp movements to bring such a union into fruition. She lifted her back from the bed, raising her breasts to his mouth and hands, and opened her thighs further to secure her knees on either side of his hips. offering herself to this man in every way she could, desperate to share with him this moment and this connection. So, that she wouldn’t be alone anymore.

What she hadn't realised, in her shifting and mewing of need, was that she had started to cry...

When Iason said her name, she had been expecting it to be in a tone of desire... words laced with temptation and seduction. A husky timbre and a deep resonance of a man in the throes of passion. Instead, it drifted to her ears in a calming rhythm, with control and a sheerness... a stark openness that seemed to pop the intimate bubble of heat and arousal they had spun around themselves.

At the sudden change in tone, Persephone's eyes popped open and salty tears fell back form where they had been caught in her lashes, stinging her eyes as she looked up at the ceiling of the chamber. Her lashes were long, long enough to brush moisture to the hollows above her eyes, the spiky tips damp on her skin. It was only then that she realised what Iason had seen, what had caused his desire to melt away and bring a cooling breeze of realism to the room. A change she wanted desperately to revoke but had no control over stalling.

Within two heartbeats - his and hers - the room had stopped being one of private intimacy and simply become a bed chamber once more. Looking around, Persephone have expected condensation to be rolling down the wooden panelling in the walls they had been so heated only a moment ago, but the room was as it had always been, besides the fire now being a little lower in the grate. The flames would see them through the night but be burnt out by morning. A morning that couldn't be more than a few hours away now...

Realising that she had ruined it. That her tears - a stupid reaction she hadn't realised she had been making - had instantly quelled Iason's arousal for her, Persephone went still and limp with resignation, allowing him to roll from her body and draw her in close.

Without saying anything of clear understanding, Persephone cried in Iason's arms. It didn't matter that they were near enough naked - despite Iason's attempt to draw one of the cloths back over his hips, nor that they were still laying on top of the covers - at least initially. As Iason drew her in close and pressed his face to her neck, Persephone did the same naturally in return, her own features buried a little lower where she could place her brow against the hollow where thick neck plugged into broad shoulders. There she found her own private space, hidden in shadow, and she cried.

Unlike the desperate tears and panic that she had engaged in a few hours earlier, or the silent numbness of the forest before that, this time, Persephone cried healthily. They were her feelings of grief, of regret, of loneliness... They were for what she had lost and for who she had once been and could not be again.

Her arms folded up to her chest, her hands at her throat. Her body turned in on itself as is to protect her from the world. And Iason wrapped himself around that; an additional layer of protection, making a secluded space of comfort. Which only made her feel worse for having failed him in what they had both so clearly wanted. The words "I'm so sorry..." and "I wanted to, I did..." Kept puncturing her sobs here and there as she attempted to apologise for the lack of completion in their moments together.

At some point during her tears, Iason managed to negotiate the two of them under the covers of the bed. Both naked - where the towels now were, Persephone had no idea - but certainly not engaging in what either of them had expect to be a part of only moments before - Persephone felt the awkwardness try to settle but was chased away by the cosiness that Iason had created. Here she lay, in bed with him... He was going nowhere and they would simply lay here together this night. No pressure, no loss. Still laying in the same position, Persephone's tears slowly ran into hiccups which ran into sniffles and were finally spent into simply the heavy exhales of an emotionally spent girl.

Swallowing nervously and placing a hand to Iason's chest, Persephone felt his heart beneath her palm. It was no longer erratic and heavy as it had been when they were... engaged... but instead offered a strong and calm beat that was very reassuring to feel beneath his skin...

Glancing up but only able to see the underside of his jawline from her position, Persephone instead, spoke to one of the light whorls of hair peppered across his chest as she calmed her breathing and tried to steady her voice.

"Are you staying?" She asked... meaning the room, meaning that night. Beyond that she suspected neither of them had any idea of what to expect.

Iason's murmured offer of her permitting him to stay in the room only had Persephone reaching down to where his hand was rested at her waist, in order to interlock their fingers. Her features still leaning in close to his neck and collarbone, so as to avoid awkward eye contact, she joined their hands and shifted closer, indicating her answer to him physically. She wanted him to stay.

Noting the brush of his lips over her hair and closing her eyes to the sound of his breathing, Persephone sighed slow and long. On her next inhale she took in the scent of Iason, of the balmy summer air and rain, of the bath, of their sweat... of everything that had occurred between them in the last few hours. She felt the warmth of his touch, of his hold, of the fire heating the room... of the blankets around them creating a cocoon of safety and privacy... Persephone had no idea who fell asleep first because she couldn't recall when she herself slipped into unconsciousness. Either way, the pair of them were asleep quickly, the exhaustion of the day and the tensions of the last few weeks, seeping from their bones and sending them into slumber.

Persephone, for her part, slept hard. Unlike every other night since she had left Athenia, this time she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep without fit or starts. She was able to sleep soundly and thoroughly for several long hours before she naturally awoke, instead of being startled away by bad dreams or shallow dozes.

Initially, Persephone was entirely disorientated. A deep sleeper at the best of times and impossible to wake up until her standard and exact time every morning, this time, she was even more lost in the fog of recent sleep than normal. For a moment, she couldn't comprehend where she was, what she was doing, why she was without clothing or - most alarmingly of all - who the person was lying in bed with her. Luckily, having finally gotten some decent rest, her mind began to work only a moment after her eyes and she was quick to recognise the room and recall the events of the previous evening that had led her to slumbering in the nude.

As she surveyed the room, Persephone noticed everything slowly, her senses becoming more attuned the longer she was in the world of the conscious. Sunlight was creeping in through the edges of the wooden storm shutters pulled over the windows and the fire had gone out. The candles, however, still burned, down into their stumps and cast the room in a balmy, open light.

Sometime during the night - though she had no memory of it - Persephone had clearly turned in her sleep. No longer facing Iason, she felt his front snugly fitted up against her back, the two of them curled into one another. Iason's arm lay heavily over her waist, his fingers curled softly against where they fell on the bedding. Her feet were free from obstruction but she felt the bumps and edges of Iason's ankles and heels tangled with her own. And behind her she felt-

For a brief, heartbeat of a moment, Persephone's mind - still uncharacteristically slow from her finally sleeping deeply enough for the adjourn to be restful - panicked that Iason was attempting something far outside his character. Feeling the soft press of his primed flesh in the crease of her bottom, Persephone's protective instinct was quick to condemn the man for attempting something sexual while she had been asleep!

Luckily, her reaction to the affront had been to freeze solid, rather than to flail, because a moment later Persephone's ears picked up the gentle and rhythmic breathing of the man she lay with and she was reminded again of the heaviness of his arm, thrown across the dip of her waist. Iason was most certainly asleep, which meant the reaction she could feel against her backside was one that had occurred as he dozed. Something she did not know could happen. Her own ignorance to blame once again, no doubt.

For a moment, Persephone was tempted to be something she had never before thought herself to be as a characteristic – and that was mischievous. As a sense of devilish curiosity stole over her, Persephone recalled how she had yet to look upon Iason - or any man for that matter - entirely naked. Whilst she had opened tournaments and arranged games in the gladiator arcus, she had never been permitted to stay within the stadium for any event that required full nudity. Instead, she had been whisked back to the palace and there she had stayed in her ignorance. Last evening was the closest Persephone had ever come to seeing the male shape in its entirety and even then, she had been blocked from gazing upon it, either by cloth or by the way in which their bodies had come together.

Curiosity curled itself in her lower belly.
She wanted to see what it was she could feel pressed against her bottom.

Years of self-discipline, however, and the fear of waking Iason from his sleep with her twisting to see, had her remain where she was and, instead, settle down into the bedding once more and look out over the soft white pillow to the strip of light beneath the storm shutters. She lay there, in a moment of repose she had never been allowed before. Always, at the palace, it had been time for her to immediately rise and dress the second she awoke. There were always too many tasks to be completed and too few hours in the day to get them done. She had never permitted herself to lounge or luxuriate in the moment upon waking. Now... Now, she had nowhere to go and no activity to see to beyond anything her own body and mind dictated. A strange reality for one whose life had been so carefully planned ever since her mother's passing.

Laying there for some time, considering the options that now befell her life, Persephone felt herself becoming more in keeping with her own nature once more. The mad and chaotic woman of the day before seemed to have been permitted her moment to scream like a banshee and the princess trained young woman was coming back to the surface. Only this time, she had been moulded a little differently by life's experiences.

Neither aware nor deliberate in the action, Persephone shifted the tips of her fingers up and down the tan forearm that had been lounged over her, clearly holding her tight at one point in the night but had slackened against the mattress as its owner slept. The pads of her fingers moved with and then against the grain of the hair on his arm and moved in circles, as she thought. It was near an hour of her thinking before she noticed the first signs of Iason stirring to consciousness. She did nothing to feign sleep, as she continued her subconscious touches and the journeying of her thoughts...

Persephone felt Iason stir and smiled softly at his sweet ministrations. As he curled his arm around her, her trailing finger tips turned into a soft palm placed on his forearm. As he slipped his legs between hers, she felt herself gasp softly as the top of his thigh brush against sensitive flesh. The gasp became a soft mew as Iason offered affection to the curve of her ear, his breath playing of the skin behind the shell and heating her blood.

She felt it unlikely that she was looking her most luxurious, naked in bed with unbrushed hair that had last been tackled by thorn and bramble and washing without a comb. She hadn't treated her skin for over a week with the oils she used to be anointed with daily. And she still sported little speckled redness across her skin where the peasants dress she had worn the previous day had rubbed her soft skin rough. She almost laughed to herself to think that there was no need to hide her presence on the estate. No-one would suppose her to be the elegant Queen of Athenia, looking as she did now... And yet, Iason seemed not to care... That alone sent a shiver of sweetness down her spine.

When he murmured "good morning" to her, Persephone felt her cheeks flame at the intimacy of the comment, having never been greeted such by someone who had shared her bed the night before...

When he asked her if she was alright, she responded with more noise than words; a soft "Mmmm..." Leaving her lips with a tone affirmative enough to provide answer to his query.

"Just thinking..." She offered to him, resuming the stroke of her fingers, this time over his bicep as his arms held her closer, enjoyed the sensation of them laying together without rush or hurry to be anywhere else...

As Iason pulled away, a cool breeze fell in over the skin of her back, exposed now to the lowering temperature of the room. Persephone looked over her shoulder to watch him shift away only to realise she was likely to see that she which had yet to witness. Despite her earlier curiosity, a quickly muffled noise of startlement left her lips and she flicked her head back around so quickly she thought she might risk strain to her neck, her hands coming up to be placed on each of her flaming cheeks. The embarrassment - though intense initially from her personal upbringing - melted quickly in the light of their behaviour the previous evening.

It calmed still further when she started to toy with her hair, working through a few of the simple and softer knots at the ends of the tendrils. She smiled as she allowed him to draw her closer and, as his arm encouraged her to turn and find her place at his side, her cheek to his chest, Persephone was shame faced to notice the sheets being pulled up so high.

Reaching up to fiddle with the hem of the sheets, her long, slim fingers playing with the linen weave, she let her breath go in one long release, as he asked her if her thoughts were regarding him. Regarding their actions being something she might regret.

"No..." She spoke calmly into the sheet, turning her head so that he might reach her hair the nape of her neck with greater ease. The gesture was unconscious but all the more pleasing for its results as Iason followed her ignorant guidance. "Actually, I was considering the opposite..." She said, seeming to breathe into her words...

She stayed silent for longer than was probably fair on Iason's nerves but the pause was not for dramatic effect but for her to formulate her words carefully in her mind before allowing them to escape her mouth.

"When my mother died..." She stated in a calm and controlled tone that only others who had spoken of the loss of their nearest and dearest would recognise; the slightly flippant and casual air that was only used in order to keep the words from shaking... "I learn that grieving should be felt but not endured. That it should be a part of your life without it taking your life apart. That... well... in short, that life goes on." The last few words came out low and quiet as if she feared speaking such things aloud for fear that Iason would think her callous. "I found my purpose with my sister and my father... with my place in life... I guess I somehow forgot to look for a new one when I lost them too." Her voice crackled at the end of the last sentence but she cleared her throat and swallowed her, unwilling to allow herself to break down again.

She took a long and calming breath.

"I've been thinking about how I should live my life now... What I'm going to do with it." Her fingers tightened on the blanket. "Whether I should return to Athenia..."