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"Paris," Oinone hums in his ear, soft hand spreading out over his chest to cover as much as she can.
"Yes?"
Blinking his eyes open, he smiles at her, playfully squeezing the small breast he's been petting for the past little while. In response she chuckles, the arm around his waist tightening. It presses them closer together, though there'd been little enough distance between them already, their legs tangled together and her arm around him. This close to Oinone his skin tingles, from his scalp down to his toes. It's like a tiny, tiny buzz; Paris imagines it feels like how the vibrating beat of a bee' wings would feel if you could touch that without stopping the bee's flight. It makes her feel heavier than she physically is, just like her gaze feels - is - heavier than any mortal's he's met is.
All the nymphs feel like that, if they're close enough, and their gazes can be felt from a greater distance, or when he can't see them at all. It's thrilling. Always have been, since the moment he first picked up on it when he began to entertain both himself and his cows with singing, and later with the lute his father got him.
"I'm going to make you very happy," Oinone says, pressing a darting little kiss to his mouth.
"You already do!" Paris replies, laughing, but when he leans in to return the kiss, to make it into something that'll turn the first round of sex into a second, he's stopped by Oinone pressing her hand against his chest.
She pushes until she hasn't just urged him back so she can continue speaking, but has rolled them over from where they'd been lying on their sides, until he's on his back and Oinone is on top of him. Paris smiles, batting his lashes as he relaxes into the bed and her weight on top of him. Again, she doesn't take the offer, even if she caresses upwards to cup his cheek.
"Oinone..?"
"I'll make you the happiest man on Mount Ida - no, in the whole of Taruwisa, bestowing on you honour such as few mortals could ever dream of, even though they'd be princes, never mind a slave."
A blush steals over Paris' cheeks, though in that moment he can't tell whether it's for what she says, for the heady weight of Oinone's attention on him, a breathless brush with divinity that always makes him feel both too light and as if he's being crushed, just a little, even when she isn't literally lying on top of him, or if it's for the way she says slave. That she says it at all. He can't help the frown that follows, though Oinone only laughs at his pout. It's a sweet laugh, and the poke to his bottom lip is sweeter still. But - but like the mention of slave, her laughter sits uncomfortable on his heart.
Because he wishes she wouldn't mention what he is - can she not just say neatherd? It might amount to the same thing, but not all herders are slaves, so it doesn't feel as limiting. Doesn't feel as binding. Mount Ida is an escape from that reality, even if he's performing his job while here, which he's doing because he is a slave. Still, Mount Ida is yet an escape and, even more so is whenever the nymphs come to spend time with him, and especially Oinone.
"You already do," Paris repeats his earlier assurance, shaking his head.
"Of course I do," she agrees, but there's a light in her luminous eyes. She's looked at him in many ways, and for the first time Paris shivers. "But I'll do it even more so."
She pulls off her necklace, the only one she wears. It's warm gold, with a couple tiny, water-polished river stones from her father's river half-cradling a glowing piece of amber. She lays it on his chest, right below the hollow of his throat, and smiles again.
"You might be a slave, Paris, but even that wretched status can't sully your beauty in the least. It shines through just like the sun does to this amber when held up to the sun, making it glow. And like the amber in my necklace, your beauty should be raised up and given its proper due. That beauty, too, as if it might've come from the gods themselves though you be so base-born, makes it worthy of me. We'll marry in midsummer; you'll be called my husband among all the daughters of the rivers, and the river gods, too, will acknowledge you as such."
For a moment, Paris can do no more than blink up at Oinone, his head filled with a rushing roar as of wind, like when an autumn storm comes tearing down Mount Ida's slopes and bellows its fury, tearing at the trees and shaking them to their roots.
He should... feel happy, shouldn't he? He likes Oinone, and he likes spending time with her, in and out of bed. She's funny and sharp and decisive. And she's certainly right. What she's offering is a gift that barely even princes and kings, unless they be born of gods and sometimes not even then, can lay claim to. That a nymph, born of the immortals and ever youthful, the same as the gods, would deign to so much as share love's embrace with a slave, and even more so marry him, is near unthinkable.
But Oinone is willing, and has given him the gift to prove it. Should he work for years he wouldn't be able to provide kusata to match it. And he doesn't care - it'd only be fitting that he join her home, rather than she, his! But she's heavy on him, so very heavy, right then, and she keeps saying slave, and there's this weighted little curl in the corner of her mouth, pleased, and yet...
"Paris?"
Oinone's lying right on top of him, close as can be, but it feels like she's standing up, far up and away from and above him. And not in the fun, pleasant way when she makes him kneel while they're playing around.
"Of course," Paris agrees faintly, because what else can he say when a nymph, one who has been born to the immortal river god Kebren, has told him he'll marry her? "I'd be happy to."
He smiles, and that (condescending) curl in the corner of her mouth bleeds away into sweet delight. She comes down to kiss him, and Paris melts into it, even if he feels pinned by her weight in ways he never has before. It's not as if he can refuse. And it's not as if it isn't an honour.