Chapter 05 - Basic Combat Drills

The next morning I stood in the training chamber in that joke of a tunic and those too-small shorts again, my whole body stiff and aching. Each bruise from Mistress Ashara’s drills still throbbed. The place stank of sweat and leather.

Ashara came in wearing even less than yesterday.

Her straps were thinner today, and the dim light caught the curve of her breast where the leather barely covered the black fur. The leather creaked as she shifted, and my eyes went straight to where it barely contained her. I could smell her now, a musky smell that made me want to bury my face in her neck. The sight of her nipples, hard points pressing against the straps, had me half hard before I’d even said good morning.

I swallowed hard, my throat dry. She was upping the ante, and I stared like an idiot.

But before I could think any harder about her nipples, I heard footsteps behind me.

I turned around. A guy walked into the room, light on his feet, crossed straight onto the training floor and stopped beside me. He had shoulder-length blonde hair and violet eyes, and he looked way too sure of himself.

I squinted at him. The guy who’d answered the compound door with his ass hanging out the day I first showed up, the one I’d taken for a servant? He was one of Ashara’s students?

His shirt was tight enough to show off every muscle in his chest and arms, and his pants hugged his thighs close enough that I could watch them flex when he walked. I sucked in a breath.

Finding out he was a student threw me, and his body made my dick stir in those too-small shorts.

My eyes kept sliding back to his body, mostly to his ass in those pants, and I’d have eaten my own boots before I said so out loud.

Ashara cut my staring short. “Today, we spar. Samuel, Felix. You will fight. And you will disarm each other.”

My stomach dropped when she held out two daggers, one in each hand. She looked hungry for it, and her crop kept tapping against her furred thigh.

I took one, the metal cold in my hand. Felix took the other, his movements smooth and easy. I glanced at him. He twirled that dagger through his fingers without looking at it, and his eyes stayed on my throat.

Our blades met right away with a ringing clang that echoed through the chamber. I lunged, eager and clumsy, and swung hard enough to throw myself off balance. Felix slipped around every swing, and his parries were tiny flicks of the wrist that made my brute force look stupid. His face stayed calm the whole time, and that pissed me off more than the parries.

A parry sent me stumbling back, panting. Damn him. He was a rogue like me, only he was a hell of a lot better at it.

I gritted my teeth. I wanted to steal every move he had and then use them to knock him on his ass.

“Come, Samuel,” Ashara snapped. “Do not hold back. Attack!”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I lunged at Felix, dagger first. But he was ready for me. He parried my strike and came back at me so fast I only saw his blade at the last second.

I barely blocked it, and the force sent a shock up my arm.

But I wouldn’t give up, not with both of them watching.

I attacked again, and again after that, until my arm burned.

Felix slid out of the way every time, and I kept stabbing empty air. The corner of the bastard’s mouth twitched up whenever I stumbled. My skin prickled, and down below, heat throbbed, because he was toying with me and I couldn’t do a thing about it. Did I want to wipe that look off his face, or feel it on mine? I honestly couldn’t tell. My dick got harder every time I missed.

Ashara watched every miss. “Hesitation is a rogue’s greatest enemy, Samuel!” Her crop came down on my thigh before she finished the word. It stung sharp, and the heat spread after it. Blood rushed to my dick, and I was ashamed of how fast it got there. It was humiliating, and gods, I wanted her to do it again.

But I wasn’t thinking about Ashara right now. I was thinking about Felix, and how much I wanted to punch that smirk off his face, or maybe kiss it off. I wasn’t sure which.

Felix found every hole in my guard, and I had a lot of them. A flick of his wrist sent my dagger clattering across the stone floor, and I was empty-handed. I staggered back while he flipped his own blade, showing off, and sent it sailing at me. It ripped straight through my tunic without touching me, which I only believed after I checked for blood, and the stupid bedsheet fell apart.

“Nice and slow, Samuel,” Felix said, low and amused, and he winked. “You are making this far too easy.”

I growled and lunged to grab him, but he slipped past me and scooped my dagger up off the floor where it had landed. He ran his tongue along the flat of the blade, staring right at me while he did it. I shivered, a jolt that went straight from my eyes to my groin, and I hated that my dick gave a traitorous twitch. He flipped the dagger in his hand, caught it, and threw it.

My hand shot out to knock the blade aside, but I was too slow. The blade sliced through my waistband, and my shorts crumpled to the floor.

The cold air hit my bare skin, and my hard cock was sticking straight out for both of them to see. I wanted to cover myself, but I refused to give him the satisfaction. Instead, I met his gaze, my jaw clenched, trying not to look as horny as I was. I’d been trying to ignore the throb in my dick with every near miss, every time he slid past close enough to touch me, and every taunt. Now there was no pretending.

“A lovely view,” he said, his mouth curling wider as he turned and walked away, whistling like he hadn’t just stripped me bare in front of Ashara.

Ashara’s eyes flicked over me, one quick up-and-down that made my skin burn even hotter, and went right back to Felix.

I stood there red-faced. Ashara’s eyes were all over Felix as he walked, his ass, his chest, his back. Did she like him more? The thought hurt, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t care. I told myself I didn’t care. Watching her stare at him made me feel small and stupid.

He disappeared through the doorway without looking back, and I was left with nothing but my pride to cover me.

“Get dressed, Samuel,” Ashara said. “We are not done yet.”

I couldn’t move. I was panting, angry, frustrated, still hard, and too rattled to look closely at why.

I was done letting Felix get the better of me, and I was done watching Ashara eye his ass while I stood there naked.

I grabbed my own clothes off the bench by the door and yanked them on. By the time I had my boots laced, she was standing at a workbench with lockpicks and tension wrenches laid out on it. “Lockpicking, Samuel,” she said, her voice dropping so low I felt it in my balls, “is an art of patience. It requires finesse, control, sensitivity.” She tapped one finger on the wood. “Much like seduction.”

“Do you teach that too, Mistress?” I asked.

Ashara smiled, and I could tell she knew exactly where my head had gone. “Indeed. Both require you to understand your subject.” She picked up a lockpick so thin I figured I’d snap it inside a day, turning it in her fingers. “You must feel for their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities. Exploit them, yes, but with care.” She selected a tension wrench. “Too much force, and you will break them. Too little, and you will get nowhere.”

She gestured for me to approach the workbench. A practice lock, brassy and so worn I wondered how many students had fumbled it before me, was clamped in a vise. “This lock,” Ashara said, almost whispering now, “is like a guarded heart. It has secrets. It wants to be opened, but it will not yield to brute force.”

She took my hand, guiding my fingers to hold the tension wrench. Her fingers were warm on mine, and the metal was cold. “Apply slight pressure,” she instructed, her body pressing lightly against my back, her fur brushing my arm. I could smell her musk again, leather and something sweet, and my dick started paying more attention to her than to the lock. “Just enough to feel the resistance.”

I turned the wrench a hair and felt the lock push back, barely, which I’d never have noticed if she hadn’t told me to feel for it.

She purred, her breath warm on my neck. “Good. Now, the pick.” She guided my other hand, positioning the pick at the mouth of the lock. “Slip it in… gently. Do not force it. Feel your way.”

I slid the pick into the keyhole, the metal scraping against the pins, and my hand was shaking a little, which I blamed on the spar.

“Each pin,” Ashara continued, “is like a barrier. A defense. You must find the right one, the one that’s ready to yield. The one that wants to be lifted.” Her fingers brushed mine, and I’d have bet money she meant it. “Listen to the lock, Samuel. It will tell you.”

Her chest was pressed to my back and her hips kept swaying against my ass, and I was supposed to be thinking about pins. I tried to listen for the tiny clicks and scrapes inside the lock, and mostly I heard my own heartbeat.

“There,” Ashara whispered. “Feel that? That slight give? That’s your first pin. Lift it. Just enough to persuade it.”

I nudged the pick up, barely at all, and felt the pin click into place. I wanted to whoop, partly because the pin moved and mostly because she was still pressed against my back.

“Excellent,” she said, low against my ear. “Now, the next one. They are not all the same, you see. Each one requires a different touch. Some need a firm hand, others a delicate caress.” Her fingers tightened on mine. “Just like people, Samuel. Some respond to dominance, others to subtlety.”

I lifted the rest of the pins one at a time, Ashara guiding me, and every instruction she gave sounded half about locks and half about fucking.

“Patience, Samuel,” she murmured, her breath hot on my ear. “A lock, like a person, will only yield when coaxed properly. Rushed actions lead to broken tools and broken hearts.” Every word went straight to my cock, and her scent mixed with the metal smell of the tools. Her mouth was right at my ear, and I couldn’t tell if I was scared of her or about to come in my pants.

Finally the lock clicked and sprang open. I pulled the pick out, grinning so hard my face hurt.

She stepped back, and her golden eyes looked pleased and a little hungry. “You are learning. You have a natural talent, Samuel. For more than just lockpicking, I suspect.” She kept looking at my face long enough to make me squirm. “But remember, the true art lies in knowing when to walk away and leave them wanting more.”

“Now it is time for your next lesson,” Ashara said. “The market. A girl named Lily Winterbrook sells flowers there. Find her. Learn what she loves, what she fears, and what she needs. Persuade her first, and then seduce her.”

My stomach twisted. She’d made the whole job sound easy: stroll into the market and have a stranger seduced by lunch. I pictured Ashara doing it herself, all effortless confidence. I, on the other hand, felt like a plucked chicken about to be thrown into a wolf den. I grabbed my heavy cloak and swung it around my shoulders. “Right,” I muttered. “Seduction. Persuasion. Got it.” I tried to sound confident, but my voice cracked halfway through.

I pulled my gloves on, climbed the stairs out of the chamber, and walked out through the door in the compound wall. The wind hit me as soon as I stepped outside, and I kept my head down the whole way into town, trying out opening lines in my head, each one dumber than the last.

The market was a godsdamned roar. The noise hit me first, a jumble of vendors shouting their prices over braying animals and people yakking, and the smells hit right behind it: fresh-baked bread, something vaguely rotting, horse manure, and a hundred other smells I didn’t want to know about. And the cold was brutal. My breath puffed out in white clouds, and my fingers, even inside my gloves, were already starting to numb. I shoved my hands deeper into my cloak pockets. Why were there so many people out in this weather? “Okay, Sam,” I hissed into the wind. “Find Lily. Don’t freeze to death.” I adjusted the collar of my cloak, pulling it up higher to shield my neck. “Be cool. Like Felix.” The thought of Felix’s smug face actually helped. I’d be damned before I let that bastard beat me at this too.

I plunged into a shoving crowd of wool coats and red noses. I tried to remember Ashara’s lessons. She’d said something about reading people and finding their secrets, and something about pressure, though never brute force, and slipping something in gently. Damn it, that was the lockpicking lesson. How the hell was that supposed to help me with people?

My boots slid on the packed, icy dirt and scattered straw that covered the market square. I dodged a cart piled high with firewood that came rattling through the crowd, nearly tripping over a basket of squawking chickens. This was worse than Ashara’s obstacle course.

I passed a fabric stall where the merchant was yelling at everybody who walked by. I gave him a quick, awkward smile and probably looked like I was about to be sick.

The crowd kept bumping and jostling me. I scanned faces for her, except I didn’t even know what Lily looked like. Great planning, Sam.

Somebody was roasting chestnuts, and for a second the sweet smell beat out the horse manure. My stomach growled. I almost bought a bag just to have something hot to hold, but I shook my head and told myself to keep my mind off food.

I pushed on through the cold and the chaos. Felix would probably have walked through this crowd charming everyone he met.

Halfway through the crowd, I saw her.

Across the way, near a stall heaped with winter flowers, a girl was arranging a bouquet. Her hair was light blonde, almost white, falling in waves down her back, and even from this distance, I could see she was smiling at the flowers, and it looked real. She was pretty, really pretty, and watching her hands fuss over the stems made my dick perk up even through the cold. She had to be the one Ashara meant. “Lily,” I breathed.

My nerves were still there, but now my heart was pounding too. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and edged closer through the crowd, my boots crunching on the frozen ground. I was Samuel Thornwood, rogue-in-training, and I was about to try.