With a laughing glance in his direction, she took off and raced away.
'Hey!' he shouted. 'Lily, you come back here!'
Instead of running after her, though, he hesitated. Lily was the daughter of a local farmer. She and Vyrl had been friends practically since they had been born, but lately he had avoided her, unable to do more than stutter banalities in her presence. Lily didn't look like Lily anymore. She had changed, become all curves and mystery.
She ran through the grasses, sending sprays of bubbles into the air. Her blue skirt swirled around her legs and parted the high grass, showing glimpses of her thighs, then hiding them again. The top of her dress fit snug around her torso, adorned by a maze of confusing laces. Vyrl had never figured out why girls needed so many ties on their clothes. She made a beautiful sight, though, her waist-length curls flying in the wind, streaming around her, shiny and red-bronze, touched with gold sun-streaks.
Hah! He wouldn't let her get away with spying on him. He took off in a sprint. In the village, he would have held back, not wanting people to see them playing like children, but out here he felt less constrained. Chasing Lily, making her shriek and laugh, had always entertained him. Now the thought of catching her made his pulse quicken in a way that had never happened when they were younger.
Lily glanced over her shoulder, her gaze flashing with mischief, her large eyes taunting him with an audacious gleam. Her teasing laugh sparkled across the plains. That laugh had been the bane of his existence for as long as he could remember.
With his long legs, Vyrl easily gained on her. Coming alongside her, he grabbed her around the waist with a gleeful shout. They went into a spin, their momentum whirling them around. He almost regained his balance by swinging her in a dance step he didn't usually let anyone know he had learned, given that men weren't supposed to dance. Then they toppled into the grasses in a tangle of limbs and clothes.
'Got you!' Vyrl flipped her onto her back. Still panting from his run, he pinned her upper arms to the ground. 'Say 'Give,' ' he demanded. 'Come on, Lily! I win.'
In years past, she would have yanked up a clod of tube-reeds and thrown it at him, then escaped while he yelled and wiped his eyes clear of the sparkling dirt that clung to bulbs on the grass.
Today, though, she wasn't laughing. She stared up at him, breathing hard, her chest rising and falling, her violet eyes huge. Most everyone in the Dalvador province had violet eyes, including Vyrl himself, but until this moment he had never realized the beauty of the color. Her lashes glimmered gold, a thick fringe against her milky skin. The rosy blush of her cheeks made his pulse race. He felt hot, then nervous, lying here, half on top of her, gazing at her face, which was so familiar and so new at the same time.
Her emotions washed over his empath's mind: confusion, surprise, and an uncertain anticipation, sweet and intense. It all mixed with another emotion harder to define, a warmth that spread through her and made him even more aware of her curves. Vyrl flushed, unsettled by his heightened awareness of her. Usually he shared emotions only with members of his family, who were the only empaths in Dalvador. Even then, they had to be near one another to pick up moods, and they had learned to guard their minds, to give one another privacy. Yet with Lily, his mental defenses were drifting away as if they were no more than ephemeral bubbles that floated on the wind.
They lay staring at each other, Vyrl with no idea what to say. Lily's mouth parted slightly, her lips full and soft. So soft. Plump. How would they feel if he touched them?
Then she dimpled like an imp and grabbed a handful of reeds. 'You must let me up, O clumsy sir, or I will be forced to shower your head with sod.' Although she spoke as always, full of play, she sounded different today — breathless, a little scared.
In the past, Vyrl would have wrestled her for the grass. Today he murmured, 'You must first pay a fine for spying on me.'
She gave a mock gasp of dismay, her heart-shaped face as expressive as ever. 'And what terrible fine would you wrest, you heartless beast, from a poor girl such as myself?'
'Not so terrible,' he said softly. Then he bent his head and kissed her.
As often as Vyrl had imagined this moment, his daydreams were nothing compared to the real thing. A jolt went through him as their lips touched. She tasted so sweet and felt so soft, her breasts against his chest, her body round beneath his. His heart thudded hard, as if he were still running.
Lifting his head, he whispered, 'Lily.' Then he kissed her again, moving his hands up her sides, caressing, feeling where her hips curved in to her waist.
Her emotions had become a confusing tumult. Ah, no, she wasn't responding. Mortification swept over him. Had he made a fool of himself? If she pushed him away or laughed at him, he was going to die, utterly die.
Instead she slid her arms around his waist, her embrace tentative, as if she wasn't sure where to put her hands. Her mouth parted under his and she nibbled shyly at his lower lip.
Vyrl sighed, almost giddy with relief. He wanted to untie her laces and pull up her skirts, touch her everywhere, but he held back, afraid he would scare her.
Her emotions flooded past the natural barriers in her mind, the protections all people raised without realizing it. Then he knew; this was her first kiss, as it was his. Despite his good intentions, his hands roamed. Still kissing her, he stroked her sides, down and up, his touch urgent. He folded his palms around her breasts, filling his grip with them — if only this cloth would disappear! He fumbled with the laces on her bodice, baffled by their complexity. Frustrated, he pulled harder, straining to undo them. Pushing up her skirt with his other hand, he reached for her thigh—
'Vyrl, no. Slow down.' Lily pushed his hand away from her leg. She was breathing hard now, but she had tensed, no longer pliant under him.
He groaned softly, one hand on her breast, the other intertwined with hers at his side. With her mental barriers fading, he could feel her shy desire, but also her fear.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'You're just so soft and pretty.' He brushed his lips across her nose. 'I could kiss you all day.'
Her blush deepened, as pink as a sunrise. He had always thought Lily was lovely, even in their early childhood when cruder children had called her a 'fat little sprout.' Now the plump little girl had vanished, replaced by this curvaceous beauty. Warmth washed out from her mind and he closed his eyes, letting it flow over him. She felt so very, very right, as if he had always known he would someday hold her like this.
'You've been working on your father's farm a lot,' she said. 'I've seen you doing your chores.'
Vyrl opened his eyes. 'They don't seem like chores.' He longed to kiss her more, but he held back, not wanting to ruin this moment by pushing too hard. He shifted onto his side next to her, their bodies fitting together like pieces of a puzzle. The grass waved above and bubbles shimmered in the air. One popped, scattering glitter over them. Vyrl laughed, then flicked the powder off Lily's nose.
'I like to work in the fields,' he said. He would far rather plow a field than study the physics his tutors persisted in trying to teach him.
Her mouth curved upward, half shy, half teasing. 'You look very fine out in those fields with your shirt off.'
He flushed. 'You watched me like
'You know, Vyrl, you used to be skinny, like a stalk of too-tall-weed.'
Hai! He never had liked it when people called him that, even if it had been true these past years, when he shot up like the too-tall-weeds that grew over houses, seeking light from the suns.
'So what weed do I look like now?' He tried to make light of it, though he would really rather not be called a plant.
Her face gentled. 'You don't.' Touching his cheek, she spoke in her lilting voice. 'You look like a man now, so strong and tall.'
An emotion swelled in him, one he wasn't sure how to define. He knew only that he was where he belonged. With a tenderness he hadn't known he possessed, he brushed back a curl that had blown in her face. Then he kissed her again, barely able to believe he had her in his arms. He wanted to feel her skin against his, to make love to her out here under the golden suns, just as he had so often loved her in his dreams. But he held back and did no more than kiss her, taking it as slowly as she needed.
When the larger sun touched the horizon and shadows stretched across the plains, Vyrl and Lily headed back to the village of Dalvador, walking hand in hand, smiling and shy with each other. Vyrl was in no hurry. Now that he and Lily had made clear what had always been unspoken between them, they had plenty of time — their entire lives
