Sunspire Mountains he threw me on the needle bed, across my dress he laid

Riley digested Orlaith's suggestion with a heavy expression. Things were not so easy as just do -- however, he had yet to return to Redsands, so there was that. He wondered if any of the Saints had even cared -- or if he was just another cog in an endless wheel, crushed underfoot by those stronger, smarter, and better than him.

He didn't know how to take Orlaith's second piece of information; Riley genuinely knew very little when it came to mature subjects. He knew what his body told him to do, and he knew too that Esme sparked in him a very real kind of interest that set his heart up and his stomach down with fluttering, but he didn't know anything about whether it was good or bad he felt that way. And he certainly didn't understand why it would be bad, if anyone chased those feelings. Slut was not necessarily something he knew -- not yet, anyway.

It had just seemed the natural order of things, so Riley assumed it was normal elsewhere too. He left no comment about 'his group', because he still steadfastly held onto the idea he was not defined by his company. Being called an asshole, however, had Riley's uneven gaze lift.

He looked at Orlaith for a long time. He was thinking, and while he did so his gaze traveled the hardness of her features; the way fire seemed to creep from the bridge of her strong muzzle to her ears; how white so cleanly spread along her cheeks and throat. How her shoulders were doused in a smoky darkness, extinuguishing the flames that licked along her backside.

At last he spoke, his response moreso a direct observation than an accusal. "Well, so are you." Was being an asshole a bad thing? So far, Riley had only met assholes in his life. There were barbaric assholes (Donovan) and there were bitter assholes (Indra). There were delusional assholes (all of the Faeries, especially their queen), there were cruel assholes (Laurel), and there were indifferent, selfish assholes (like Easthollow) who had let him and his ilk suffer. The world was full of assholes - why was Orlaith any different?