Chapter 14 - Shadow Dancing

The dungeon air smelled of incense and herbs, same as always. Today, the day after my night with Rosalind, there was a new addition: frustration. My frustration, and probably Ashara’s amusement. We were in one of the larger basement chambers, a space usually reserved for combat training, now lit by a few braziers set around the walls, and the shadows jumped and wobbled on the stone every time the fire moved.

Ashara stood before me, arms crossed, her face telling me exactly nothing, as usual. She was wearing her standard training attire, which is to say, not much. If that was meant to distract me, gods, it was working. My gaze kept flicking to her, to the firelight glinting off her black fur, to her dark, furry ears twitching with every subtle shift in her weight, to the thin leather straps straining across her breasts, her nipples poking hard against the leather, right there, practically in my face. Focus, Sam. Focus on anything else.

“Shadow Dancing, Samuel,” she said, in that low purr she used when she knew I was staring. “It is not magic. It is skill. It is control. You learn where the dark is deepest and how to stand in it without a sound, so a man can look straight at you and see only a wall.”

She made it sound easy. For her, it probably was.

“It is a fundamental ability for any rogue,” she went on, staring me down with those golden eyes. “A beginner’s technique, really. Something you should have mastered weeks ago.”

Her ears and the little tilt of her head said ‘you incompetent fool’ loud enough for both of us.

“Show me,” she commanded.

I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head, trying to banish the images of Rosalind’s wild abandon, of Victor’s possessive touch, of Lily’s teasing smile, of Maple’s everything, of Ashara’s, well, you get the idea. I focused on the nearest shadow, a pool of darkness cast by one of the braziers. I moved towards it, copying how Ashara moved, all smooth hips and no sound, and tried to stand in the dark and keep quiet, like she’d said.

It didn’t work. Not even close.

My foot caught a loose stone and I stumbled, and the scrape bounced all over the chamber. I kept my eyes on the floor, but I’d have bet my last copper Ashara was enjoying every second of it.

“Again,” she said.

I tried again and again, and I sucked at it every single time. I could see the shadows right there, but I couldn’t get inside them.

Crack!

The riding crop landed across my back, right through my shirt, and stung like hell.

“Hesitation is weakness, Samuel,” Ashara said, still calm. “A rogue unseen is a rogue untouchable. You are… very touchable right now.”

The crop hurt. Being laughed at by her hurt worse. I gritted my teeth and tried to put all that pissed-off embarrassment into my feet instead.

We kept at it for what felt like half a day. Ashara demonstrated, silent, her hips and tail sliding into the shadows with each step, and I spent more time watching her ass than her feet, which might be why I failed repeatedly and spectacularly.

The crop landed on every misstep and every flicker of distraction. And, gods, there were many distractions. My mind kept wandering, jumping between the women (and men) I’d been with lately. And, of course, there was Ashara herself, never more than a few steps away in her few strips of leather, doing the exact thing I kept screwing up, perfectly, every time.

Finally, when the light through the little barred windows up by the ceiling went gray with dusk, Ashara stopped and stood before me. Was that disappointment on her face, or frustration?

“Enough.” Her voice was curt. “You are… not receptive. Your mind is… elsewhere.”

She was right, of course. I was a distracted, exhausted, horny mess.

She looked me over, her tail swishing, and gave me a look that scared the piss out of me and, gods help me, got my cock stirring.

“If your mind will not listen,” she said, her voice low, “we will teach your body.”

She flicked a finger at my clothes. “Remove them.”

My jaw dropped. “What?”

“You heard me, Samuel,” she snapped. “Strip. Now.”

Was this another test, or some kind of bizarre punishment? I had no clue, but I did know that arguing with Ashara, especially when she had that look in her eyes, was a very, very bad idea.

I took my sweet time undressing, because I’m a coward, and dropped my clothes in a pile on the stone floor. The braziers were still going, and I was freezing anyway. I stood there with my hands over my cock and my face on fire.

Ashara watched me, her gaze going everywhere. She made a show of it, too, so I’d know exactly who was in charge.

She pointed at the door. “Outside, Samuel. Now.”

Naked, outside, in Ashbourne? Was she insane? So, with a sigh and a shiver that was mostly nerves, I did as I was told.

We stepped out into the narrow alleyway behind the compound. It was full dark by then, with a few stars out. It was cold, though thankfully not as bad as it had been earlier in the winter, and I had gooseflesh in places I didn’t know could get it.

“The shadows, Samuel,” Ashara said, low and sharp. “Use them. Become them. Move. Silently. Unseen.”

In a blink she was gone, and I was left standing alone in an alley with my ass out and no idea what to do.

I took a deep breath, trying to get my heart to slow down, and trying not to look down at what the cold had done to my cock. I focused on the shadows, the dark patches along the walls and the narrow gaps between houses.

My first few attempts were pathetic. I stumbled and bumped into things. I was about as stealthy as a drunken ox. Passersby, thankfully few at this hour, gave me startled looks, some hurrying past, others stopping to gawk. My face went red hot, and everything else on me shrank even further.

“Move!” Ashara’s voice, disembodied and sharp, echoed from somewhere in the darkness. “Silence! Flow! Become the shadows!”

She still had that crop somewhere out there, so I kept going. I tried again. And again. And again. Each time, I focused on something different: how I placed my feet, how I spread my weight, how I breathed, and, with no clothes on, keeping my bits from flapping in the breeze.

Bit by bit, I started to get it. I learned which patches of dark were deep enough to hide me and which ones were too thin. My steps got lighter, and my bare feet stopped slapping on the cobbles.

I was moving along a narrow alleyway, deep in the dark along one wall, when a couple came out of a doorway, laughing and talking, without a clue I was there. I froze, sure they’d see me and start screaming about the naked man in the alley.

But they didn’t see me.

They walked right past, still laughing, and neither of them so much as glanced my way.

I stood there with my mouth hanging open, and then I couldn’t stop grinning. I’d done it. I’d actually disappeared.

I moved again, to see how far I could push it. I slipped from shadow to shadow, without a sound, and I hardly had to think about it. The cold still stung, but I didn’t care.

Gods, it felt good, almost as good as sex. I could have walked right past a guard with my bare ass out and he’d never have known. Any house in Ashbourne was mine to get into and out of with whatever I wanted, and that scared me a little, mostly because of how much I liked the idea.

I took off through the streets of Ashbourne, and I wasn’t embarrassed anymore. I was cocky as hell. For once in my life I felt like a real rogue, and I wasn’t even wearing pants.

“Took you long enough,” a voice drawled behind me, smooth and mocking.

I froze, swore, and spun around, grabbing for a weapon I didn’t have. Naked. Right. Forgot about that.

Felix.

He was standing there, leaning against a wall in the dark, with only his face showing. He was smirking, of course, that infuriatingly superior look that always made me want to punch him, or kiss him, and I never knew which.

“Felix,” I said, and my voice cracked on it. “What… what are you doing here?”

He pushed himself off the wall, with no hurry at all, and stepped closer, his violet eyes catching what little light there was. He was too close. Close enough that I could smell him, cedar and steel like always, close enough that I could feel how warm he was against my cold skin.

“Just… admiring your technique, Samuel,” he said, his voice low and teasing. “Or lack thereof, until recently. Very… revealing.”

My face burned. I was naked, and Felix, of all people, had found me like this. Gods, this was humiliating. “Don’t you dare tell anyone,” I hissed.

He laughed, low, and it went straight down my spine to my balls. The way he was looking me over, slow and interested, didn’t help either.

“Whom would I tell, Samuel?” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Your secret is safe with me. Though I must say… I am impressed. You have finally learned something useful.”

He looked at my face, then right down at my cock, and he took his time there.

“Now,” he said, “perhaps you can show me what else you’ve learned.”

I braced for another taunt, or a proposition, and I honestly couldn’t have told you which one I was hoping for.

He started to undress.

He was quick about it, folding his clothes into a neat pile in a dark doorway. In moments, he was standing before me, as naked as I was, his body lean and muscled, the little light there was catching on his collarbones, the dip of his stomach and the line of hair running down to his cock.

“What are you doing?” I said, and it came out shaky, partly from confusion and partly because my cock was paying a lot more attention than I wanted it to.

Felix just smiled, a genuine smile this time, without the usual mocking edge. “You have found it, Samuel,” he said. “You have not mastered it. Allow me to show you. It is best taught by touch.”

Before I could respond, he reached out and took my hand. His grip was firm and warm, and weirdly reassuring.

“Come along,” he said, grinning. “Shall we have some fun?”

He slid into the dark along the wall, so smooth I could barely see him, and since he had my hand, he pulled me right in after him.

It was terrifying and fucking amazing.

We slipped through the streets together, two naked idiots nobody could see. I was having too much fun to feel the cold, and Felix’s hand in mine didn’t hurt either.

He took me through alley after alley, showing me the little tricks of the Shadow Dance, mostly by putting his hands on me: a palm on my hip to shift my weight, a squeeze of my fingers when it was time to stop and stay in the dark. His palm stayed on my hip a lot longer than my weight needed, and I let it.

“Do you see, Samuel?” he whispered, his lips almost brushing my ear. “One does not hide in the shadows. One becomes them.”

And with him dragging me along, I really got it. My feet found the dark spots without me thinking about them, and I stopped flinching every time we passed a window.

I lost track of how long we went on like that. Felix went up a wall and onto a low roof at the back of a building I knew, the Crooked Nail. I scrambled up after him, scraping my bare knees, and he pulled me down into a crouch right next to him.

He pointed at the window right in front of us, where the second floor rose above that roof. I knew that window. It was Maple’s.

“Show time,” he said, and the bastard was grinning.

I looked through the window, my heart pounding and, well, let’s be honest, my cock hard before I’d even seen anything. And there they were. Maple, her caramel fur wet with sweat, and the tiger-man. He was impressive, thick muscle bunching under orange fur striped in black and a low growl rumbling in his chest as he fucked Maple, slow and thorough, and I got even harder watching it, and I couldn’t decide if I was jealous of him or of her.

We watched for a few moments without a word, Felix’s breath warm on my shoulder.

I hadn’t gotten anywhere near my fill when somebody spoke right behind us.

“What, pray tell, are you two doing?”

Ashara.

She was standing on the roof behind us, her arms crossed, her expression amused and annoyed at once. She was, of course, dressed, if you could call that leather dressed, and it caught the light from Maple’s window. And she was holding her riding crop.

Felix and I froze. The shadows still covered most of us, but we were crouched hip to hip with our faces at Maple’s window, so it was pretty damn obvious what we’d been up to.

Ashara raised an eyebrow and looked us over, every naked inch of both of us, taking her time about it.

“Well?” she said, way too calm. “Care to explain?”

Before either of us could stammer out a response, she tucked the crop under her arm, reached out, grabbed each of us by an ear, and pinched hard.

“I believe,” she said, “it is time for you two to cool off. And perhaps… reflect on the importance of discretion.”

And with that, she started to pull, dragging us off the roof by our ears, two naked idiots with our cocks out in the cold, and I knew we were both in deep shit.