"Mmmm?" She turns around so he can do this.

It's nice. Leareth still isn't completely relaxed, or in the moment, or - safe-feeling, maybe that's it, some part of him still feels like the situation might not be okay unless he's on top of keeping it that way. And, perhaps relatedly, he isn't finding himself pulled to do more than kiss.

But - it's still nice, and he's glad to have her there, and it's probably unreasonable to expect himself to have already built trust and intimacy with her as strong as what he has with Khemet, when it's been so little time and also Khemet literally brought him back from the dead. 

Carissa is happy enough. This seems like relationship progress, or something, and the bed's much comfier.

Being frustrated that he still feels confused and unsure about it won't help, so Leareth isn't. He kisses her and plays with her hair, and - :How do you like to be touched?: Unlike with the Mind Blank shield, he can still - with some effort - get Mindspeech to her even when she's hedging him out. 

- wait, are they or are they not -

- why is this so complicated -

She stops hedging him out and tries to project in his general direction that she is very unclear whether he is asking about foreplay or, uh, platonic fiancee cuddling.

Goddamnit why does he have to know the answer to all the questions like that before he can do anything right - a burst of frustration that he quickly dissolves away - it wasn't constantly awkward like this with Khemet but apparently he is completely unprepared to replicate that on his own, he's getting very tired of constantly feeling like he's not oriented to the situation and has no idea what his options are let alone what the best path to his goals is.

:I have no idea! I - like touching you, but - it is hard and confusing for me when you ask questions like that, I am sorry...: 

It's okay, I'm sorry - 

She doesn't go back to shielding; maybe if he keeps reading her mind then at least he'll notice when she's confused before she asks and upsets him? Pharaoh boyfriend presumably handles this with - uncanny at guessing what's up with people, right, and also more comfortable telling Leareth what to do -

- the problem right now is not even that she's reluctant to tell Leareth what to do it's that she doesn't want to tell him how to get her warmed up if he would actually rather they just snuggle and doesn't want to tell him that just holding still occasionally vaguely moving his hand across her back is great if he's in fact asking for sex advice -

She could take off the shift, which is the cheapest one she could find and an itchy texture that he has probably noticed. 

She could give him a massage, or vice versa. 

She could Alter Self into the pharaoh of Osirion and see if then he wants to - this is a stupid plan -

He could use his magic to pin her to the bed and tease her while he sat at his desk working on Gate terminus security and ignoring her entirely, some people are into that.

The last thing is honestly hilarious, and - he can imagine someday, on exactly the right occasion, being into that, but - not today.

Leareth isn't sure he's ever given someone a massage while inhabiting this body; he's been the recipient of a few massages, but only from Healers when he had gotten injured. He can probably figure it out though. Her shift is scratchy; he hopes that now that she has money she can buy nicer underclothes, maybe he should take her clothes shopping tomorrow as well as magic shopping... 

:I think I would like to give you a massage: he decides. :Without your shift on, since it is scratchy: 

Okay. She wiggles out of it. We are doing things that are typical escalation-towards-sex things though it is also traditional to maintain any plausible deniability about that; the thing you are doing where you don't know what you want can be mistaken for the 'maintaining any plausible deniability' thing but I don't think this is really a problem right now, since you have explained enough that I won't be confused whatever you end up wanting next. 

:...Noted. Thank you. I - would be somewhat surprised if I end up wanting to have sex tonight, but - I was not expecting I would want to kiss you this soon and then I did: 

He starts out massaging her roughly the way he remembers getting massaged, and pays attention to her thoughts in order to notice if he should be doing something different. 

She can make it pretty apparent in her thoughts what feels particularly nice, and also coo appreciatively to communicate the same thing. 

That's pleasing. Not necessarily in a sexual way, just nice. He has some appreciative thoughts about her body, and communicates them to her in Mindspeech because why not.

- And for some reason he starts imagining the scenario where they didn't catch her and instead of finding out Iomedae had sent her to marry him, she decided to seduce him to learn more - this is really not a very plausible scenario, he doubts he would have gone for it if not for a god literally manifesting in his conference room to give Her blessing to the whole thing, but - for some reason it's nonetheless appealing to imagine. Kind of hot. Minds are WEIRD about this apparently. 

...He tells her that's where his thoughts went, while still massaging her, because it seems good to communicate. 

"At the time you said you would have a hard time noticing and I thought that was pretty implausible but now I believe you that you would have had a hard time noticing! I could probably have kept repeatedly showing up naked to perfume the baths or something and you would have been like 'I wonder if that's traditional here'..."

"...That seems quite likely. I would probably have blamed it on Asmodeus having strange tastes or something." 

"Does your pharaoh not keep hundreds of nearly naked women around just to look at, that's totally one of the rumors you hear repeated about Osirion."

"Not that I have noticed, anyway! At least not nearly naked. The servants were are all attractive, at least according to my travel companions who pay more attention to that. Apparently it was implied that we could sleep with them if we wanted and this was - a present from the pharaoh," he squirms a bit, he's still bothered by that, "but whatever the route by which we were supposed to pick this up, it was not at all obvious to me, they were also chosen to be competent and that is the part I noticed." 

"Huh," she says, thoughtfully. "There were no similar traditions here though I am sure as a practical matter there has never been a society in which kings had a terribly hard time getting their servants into bed."

She sits up. "If I had met so little success in seducing you I would probably have decided that you were gay but I might've tried asserting that I wanted Gifted children, I heard some other people talking about that."

"...That makes sense, and - might have worked, actually, though less clear it would have caused me to let down my guard much or slip out any secrets around you. But it would have seemed like a sensible motive to me. - I might have tried to send you Vanyel's way instead, he has more Gifts, and he is not really interested in women but I think would have fulfilled such a request." 

"How complicated my life could've gotten! - the thing I think, when I think how I wish it would've gone, is that I had managed to figure out that you'd asked Iomedae for a wife, at which point I would've gone to Aroden and explained everything and asked him if it'd be very impressive if I went and poked you with a hatpin that would not be enchanted with anything but could have been."

"That would have been very impressive! ...And scared me so much, probably, I do not think I would have harmed you by accident but I might have." 

"I would imagine so!! Maybe Aroden would have told me not to, I'm not sure. But I was feeling very fearless at that point due to having been trying to inure myself to much worse."

"Fair enough. I like that fearlessness in you." He leans in and kisses the back of her neck, then keeps massaging her shoulders. 

"Would it have been any different - if you'd caught me rather than Aroden -"

"In terms of what would have happened? I mean, I do not have my own anti-magic demiplane - yet - so if Aroden had not been near at hand I would have needed to do something else - I would have preferred to just alert him since transporting you to his demiplane was the safest way of handling the whole situation." 

She nods and makes a happy noise about some massage.