Violet Moons, an excerpt

Violet Moons excerpt:

Beneath the cloudless azure sky they broke camp quickly. A beautiful day was a good day for traveling and they both knew it.
“So, you still have not told me where you are going.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well?” asked Priam. She had been an enthusiastic lover and they had pleasured each other so often throughout the long night that he felt as if he knew her body intimately, but her hidden personality very little.
His longing to know her mind more fully was as obvious as his desire for her body.
“Well what? I have not told you, no. And I am not certain that I will be telling you, either,” she teased. She rolled her sleeping mat into a tiny ball and stuffed it into her traveling pouch. “And what of it, Priam? You have not told me where you are headed.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well?”
He ran a hand down his newly bound side tails. They framed his face handsomely, he knew. He did not indulge in vanity but facts were facts and his long thick hair was the envy of many women in his kingdom.
Right now he would have gladly traded it for the chance to read Wathalia’s thoughts.
There were tales, ancient tales, that told of those who could read thoughts. He had always wished that the trait of thought-reading could still be cultivated among the people, but try as he might he could not figure out how to do it.
It would have been a talent that would serve him well at this moment in time.
Something else, he thought. Ask her something else.
“Where are you from, sweet Wathalia? Where did your journey begin?”
She hesitated, but only for an instant, before she answered his question. There could be no harm in his knowing where she had come from. After all, everyone came from somewhere, did they not?
“Vestia. I come from Vestia,” she said. “It is a kingdom about two days’ walk in…” she searched the sky to get her bearings, “in that direction,” she finished, pointing at a distant point somewhere behind them.
“Ah yes, I have heard of Vestia.”
“You have?”
“Of course. It is a place that is known for peaceful living, fertile lands and beautiful women. I have never seen it with my own eyes but I know now that the part about beautiful women has not been exaggerated. If anything, it is an understatement.”
“Ah, you know how to say the right things to make a woman swoon, do you not?”
“Are you swooning?”
She laughed, the easy heart-lifting laughter that seemed to come quickly and often between them. He joined in her laughter as he rose from where he was packing his travel pouch. Reaching for her, he pulled her body against his.
“I wish we had time to linger,” Priam said. He bent his head and touched her lips with his own. “I would like nothing more than to hold you close, feel you shiver and shake against me once more. Last night was a time of wonder and joy for me, Wathalia. You taught me much.”