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“Here,”
Cara looked from the small, gooey blob to Kahlan’s face and back again, her eyes narrowed. “What is it?” she asked, her voice bordering on suspicious.
“I told you already; they’re called marshmallows,” she said, barely resisting the urge to smile at the blonde’s uncharacteristic hesitance, “They’re really good,”
Taking the thing between her thumb and index finger, she removed it from Kahlan’s palm only to examine it at eyelevel. “I’ve never seen such a thing before,” she said, frowning at the strange consistency.
“The recipe’s native to the Midlands,” the Confessor began idly, spearing another of the marshmallows on the point of a stick, “But they’re really only ever eaten around the Winter Solstice. You would’ve been at the People’s Palace then, right?”
Though she was, technically, a native of the Midlands herself, Kahlan knew better than to mention the scant years she’d lived here before ‘joining’ the Mord’Sith; Cara had little patience for such inquiries and she was loath to dredge up memories she knew must hurt, even if the blonde would never acknowledge the pain.
Cara shrugged, “I left D’Hara only a handful of times,” she said, “And never for the purpose of holiday-themed indulgences,” Her cavalier tone faltered slightly, near the end, and she scowled at the dirt until the moment of weakness passed.
They both knew what those excursions had wrought and it was not merriment. Well, not the kind one spoke of in polite company, at least.
Kahlan could feel the mood change, see the way the blonde’s fingers curled and the sudden tightness of her frame, and she refused to let it taint the happiness of the moment. Ghosting the fingers of her free hand along Cara’s leather-clad thigh in silent sympathy (and forgiveness), she slid the marshmallow laden end of her stick into the fire and waited for her companion to rejoin her.
Grateful for the distraction from her rapidly darkening thoughts, Cara cleared her throat. “What are you doing with it now?” she asked.
“Roasting it, of course,” she said with a smile, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “Would you like me to do yours as well? I know what an awful cook you are,”
Cara’s eyes narrowed to slits but amusement tugged at the corner of her mouth, “As I recall,” she began, “You rarely fare better,”
“Oh?” she smirked slightly, raising a questioning brow, “A challenge, then? The first one to roast the perfect marshmallow wins?”
The Mord’Sith licked her lips sinfully slow and Kahlan’s eyes tracked the movement without her consent, “Wins what, Confessor?” she husked and the brunette didn’t bother to suppress the shiver her words – and their unspoken intentions – caused.
Smirk hitching at the sudden darkness of Cara’s gaze, she swallowed hard and offered a breathy, “I’m sure we can think of something,”
Tapping her chin thoughtfully, as if considering her terms, she nodded and pointedly reached past Kahlan, pushing full breasts against her arm, for a stick of her own.
“Kahlan?” she drawled a few minutes later.
“Hmm?” she hummed, words suddenly impossible to navigate with the thought of the blonde’s body almost painfully fresh in her mind.
Cara smirked, green eyes dancing in the firelight. “Your marshmallows on fire,”
Her eyes jumped from her favorite spot on the blonde’s collarbone to the fire where, as Cara had so cheerily pointed out, her fluffy sweet was, in fact, burning, “Spirits!” she exclaimed, yanking the stick away from the flames and staring, somewhat despondently, at the now-blackened treat.
“So,” Cara began after a moment, pulling her perfectly toasted marshmallow back from the reach of the fire and offering it to the Confessor with an openly lascivious smirk. “Does this mean I win?”
With blue eyes trained on green, she eased the sweet from its perch and sank her teeth into it, uttering a decadent moan that almost turned Cara’s eyes black. “I think it means,” she began, digging her fingers into hardy leather, “We both do,”