As for his genius business plan to capture tribal women?
"Tomorrow," he decided. "The business empire starts tomorrow."
Now, a cynic might say he was postponing his genius business plan just because he couldn’t wait to get into Evara’s furs. They might say he was thinking with his lower brain, abandoning his grand ambitions for a taste of the widow next door.
"Don’t slander me," Sol muttered to the invisible audience in his head, adjusting his tunic self-righteously. "Do I look like that kind of person? A man ruled by his lust?"
He paused.
"I do? Well... then you are absolutely right."
Ahem.
"Enough joking," he corrected himself, shaking his head. While the Evara factor was indeed... significant (massive, really), there were practical reasons for the delay.
The soup plan required raw materials. He needed bones, innards, meat, various wild vegetables etc. But he didn’t have any of that yet. He needed to wait for Lyra and the girls to return from foraging to see what they had scrounged up, and more importantly, he needed to pitch the idea to his aunt.
Lyra was protective. If he just started setting up a stall in the middle of the square without telling her, she’d probably have a heart attack thinking he had gone insane or something. He needed to get her on board, maybe even recruit the girls as his sous-chefs.
"Logistics first," He nodded sagely. "Then empire."
But right now? Right now, the logistics pointed in one direction: adjacent.
He turned toward the slightly larger, better-maintained hut next door.
Evara’s hut.
It stood a little apart from the others, much like its owner. The thatch was thicker, the wood sturdier... likely remnants of the work her late husband had put in before his death. It had an air of comfortable solitude about it.
He stopped a few paces from the door, smoothing his hands over his hips.
He didn’t know if she was home or not, but accessing the memories of the previous Sol gave him a pretty good clue. Evara was known in the tribe for being... efficient. Or, if you asked the envious wives, "plain lazy."
She was the type to fish for one day and then hang her net to dry for three. She lived by the philosophy of minimum effort for maximum comfort. Since she was all alone, she didn’t have hungry mouths feeding off her labor. She gathered enough to fill her own belly and then spent the rest of her time lounging, weaving, or simply enjoying the sun.
"Carefree," Sol corrected the mental description. "She’s not lazy; she’s just carefree soul."
If she wasn’t at the river gossiping, she was definitely inside, likely napping or waiting for the sun to go down.
His throat went dry. He remembered the way she had looked at him the previous night... the hunger in her eyes, the way she had practically purred when she tasted the food. He couldn’t wait to hear that moan, when he pinned her down.
He took a deep breath, steeling his nerves. He walked up to the wooden door, raised his hand, and knocked.
Tap. Tap.
The sound echoed in the quiet noon. He waited nervously, his heart doing a traitorous double-beat against his ribs.
"Come in," a sultry voice called out instantly, as if she had been waiting right by the door, counting the seconds.
Sol took a breath to steady his nerves, pushed the wooden door open, and stepped in.
The transition from the blinding midday sun to the dim interior took a moment for his eyes to adjust. The hut was warm, heated by a central firepit that cast a soft, flickering glow against the walls. But as his vision cleared, the first thing that struck him wasn’t the warmth...it was the absolute chaos.
"Chaotic" was putting it mildly. Unlike his Aunt Lyra’s home, where every tool had a place and every fur was folded with military precision, Evara’s hut looked like a storm had recently passed through it... and decided to stay.
Furs were scattered in heaps rather than piles. Half-finished woven baskets sat abandoned in corners, spilling their reeds onto the dirt floor. Clay pots were stacked precariously, and dried herbs hung from the ceiling in tangled, haphazard bunches. It was a nest of disorder, a physical manifestation of her carefree, "I’ll get to it later" philosophy.
And there, in the center of her comfortable mess, sat Evara.
She had clearly just freshened up. Her chestnut hair was damp and combed, flowing over her shoulders in loose, heavy waves that framed her face. She wasn’t wearing the rough furs of the outdoors. Instead, she wore a simple wrap made of soft, beaten tree fiber... a fabric so light and thin it left nothing to the imagination.
It was tied loosely at her waist, a single tug away from unraveling completely. The material clung to her ample curves like a second skin, leaving her smooth shoulders and arms completely bare. The neckline dipped dangerously low in the front, struggling to contain the heavy swell of her breasts and offering him a deep, unobstructed view of her cleavage.
She looked up from where she was reclining on a pile of skins, her posture languid and open, like a cat stretching in a sunbeam. Her caramel eyes crinkled at the corners, scanning him from head to toe with a look that felt like a physical caress.
"You came," she smiled, a slow, languid expression that made the air in the room feel heavier. She patted the fur beside her. "I was worried you might have forgotten a lonely widow."
"I never break a promise," Sol said, his voice sounding rougher than he intended. He navigated the clutter on the floor to sit down beside her, the space suddenly feeling very small.
He was instantly hyper-aware of her scent. In the open air, it was pleasant; in the enclosed space of the hut, that floral musk was overwhelming. It wrapped around him, intoxicating and thick, filling his lungs with every breath. It smelled of crushed petals, warm skin, and a deep, womanly musk that tempted him to do something forbidden.
As he settled in, his thigh brushed against her.
And It definitely wasn’t an accident.
The contact sent a jolt of electricity straight to his groin, searing through the fabric of his loincloth. Through the thin fiber of her wrap, he could feel the scorching heat of her skin. The texture was incredibly soft, yielding under the pressure of his leg. The realization hit him hard that under that flimsy piece of cloth, she was warm, soft, and completely naked. He couldn’t help but gulp.
Evara didn’t care about such contact and leaned in, invading his personal space. Her caramel brown eyes scanned his face, lingering on his lips, before dropping to his hands.
"So," she purred, her voice dropping to a husky whisper that seemed to curl around the firelight. "Are you really going to cook for me? Or did you come here for something... else?" Her eyes glinted with mischief, daring him to answer. For a heartbeat the air hung heavy, the crackle of the flames the only sound between them.