Chapter 9 - Playing the Fool

My lungs burned, the stone walls bleeding moisture like the whole place was weeping, and the scent of incense mixed with the sting of blood, evil cultist edition. I held on to Mistress Ashara's brooch, for it was the only sane thing I had left. My ears were alert for the inevitable pissed-off warlock. Instead, I ran headlong into a big-eyed, red-cheeked servant girl who made a very nice sound as I flattened her against the wall.

"Gods!" She looked more surprised than I'd ever been in my life, eyes wide, wine soaking through a thin shift as she grabbed for her tray. "You scared me!"

"Did I?" I was still grinning like a madman. I probably looked like one, bare everything glistening like I'd just crawled out of the moat and smelled like it, too. Her stare went somewhere it clearly hadn't expected to go, then jumped back to my face.

There was a moment of beautiful confusion. The spiced wine was the best thing I'd smelled in days, which tells you something about the rest of my evening. I smelled like the pit: saltwater, something organic I preferred not to name, and the singular bouquet of a man who had recently been in genuine trouble. She still hadn't screamed. I chose to read that as an invitation.

I was breathing hard from more than the run. I took a step toward her, looked around to see if we had an audience. Only shadows, deep and dark, and getting less terrifying by the second. Her hair was dark, catching a flicker of torchlight that kept winking on and off. Her eyes flashed with something I hoped was interest and not a medical condition.

I also noticed the collar at her throat. The wrist braces. The ankle cuffs below the hem of that little linen thing she was wearing, fitted and matching and clearly not decorative in any way I was choosing to think about right now. The linen was thin enough to be basically decorative as well, especially with the wine soaked through it, which I also noticed. Apparently this was how Malkor dressed his slave girls: collar, cuffs, and a scrap of fabric that was doing its absolute best under difficult circumstances. I had opinions about that. Several of them were warm. I was in an evil warlock's fortress. This was not the strangest thing I'd seen in the last hour.

Her gaze snagged on my face like she'd been waiting for it, then traveled down to linger on my shoulder where the scar made its diagonal trek toward areas south. She wet her lips. Damn, this girl was doing all sorts of things to me, most of them pretty promising. Maybe my luck wasn't so shitty after all.

"Thought I was done for," I said, sounding more pleased about it than I should. "They're not easy to shake."

"Who?" Her voice was breathy, bouncing off the dripping walls in all its girlish glory.

"All of them." I meant it, from the tentacles to the soldiers to my previous arrangements with Maya and the harpy and that exceptionally keen shop girl. My face was close to hers. She didn't back away. I put my hand on the wall, next to her head.

"What are you..." she started to ask, but the end of it didn't sound too committed. She hadn't picked up her tray.

"You don't need all those cups, do you?" I said.

I held her eyes until she looked down, blushing, pretty much answering my question. She glanced around, nervous and tempting and maybe as reckless as I was. It made me want her like hell, right there on the wine-soaked floor.

She pressed against me and hissed, "This way!" grabbing my hand and dragging me toward a curtained doorway and through a dark hall. I barely had time to close my fist around my precious brooch before she shoved open a hidden door and pulled me through.

The room was small. A storeroom, probably, judging by the shelves along one wall, though someone had put a cot and a candle in it, which elevated the whole situation to "private." Hot, still air hit my bare chest. The candle threw yellow light on naked stone and threw it on her, too. I set the brooch on the nearest shelf, carefully, and tried to look like I arrived in the dungeon naked on purpose.

She turned to face me and the candlelight caught the collar properly.

I looked at it this time. Really looked. Metal. Fitted tightly around her neck. Not an accent piece, not anything she'd chosen at a market stall. The wrist braces were the same work, same maker, worn smooth at the edges. The ankle cuffs on her bare legs matched them exactly. Malkor's work, I was guessing, though I'd have guessed that even without the murder pit context. The girl who'd been rushing wine through these corridors was not the staff. The girl watching me with those dark, perfectly steady eyes had not picked any of this hardware herself.

I have a thing with locks. See one, want to open it. Occupational hazard. The wrist braces, up close, were solid old work. I had my picks in my boot and a decent moral argument and I reached for the clasp.

She grabbed my wrist.

Her eyes went wide. Not frightened exactly. More like I'd reached for something of hers without asking. Her grip didn't shake.

"I can pick these," I said.

"Don't." She didn't let go. "They're... mine." Low, like a fact she'd already decided. I had a thought about that. Then she was still right there against me, barely dressed, and I lost the thread of the thought entirely.

The musk in my blood had been running my executive function since I'd falling into the pit and it was not signing off on this detour. I put the thought away. Filed it. I have a long list.

She reached for the cord at her waist.

That little linen thing dropped. Cinched at the waist with a cord, thin as promises, doing its best. Its best was not much, and I mean that as a compliment to everything underneath.

I want to say I handled what came next with grace and composure. I did not. The candlelight hit her all at once and she was dark-skinned and warm and everything the shift had been hiding had absolutely no right to look like that. Her breasts were perfect. I know that's not a technical description but I'm telling you, objectively, as a man who has seen breasts, these were the standard by which all future breasts would be measured. The collar sat at her throat and the wrist braces circled her wrists and against her bare skin the metal looked different, like something that had been put on something it had no business touching.

Her waist curved down to hips that matched the rest of the equation exactly. The whole picture was unfair. I was nineteen years old. I had recently survived a great deal. I stood there like an idiot.

She let me.

Look. I want to be very clear that I gave the situation the serious consideration it deserved. I considered it for approximately one full second, which is longer than it sounds when you're post-tentacle and still carrying someone else's musk dripping out your ass. Then she smiled, slow and deliberate, the smile of someone who knows exactly what they've done, and the consideration ended. I'm only human. Barely, at this point, but it still counts.

I'm a man who loves being alive, and being alive had recently gotten extremely complicated, and right here and right now there was a beautiful girl smiling at me in a small warm room and the universe was not entirely awful. She had hardware on her wrists and throat and ankles that she hadn't chosen, yet, she'd also chosen to pull me through that door herself and drop that little linen thing herself. I told myself that distinction mattered. I was fairly sure I was right. Fairly.

She crossed to me and the ankle cuffs made a small sound with each step, metal on stone, almost musical. I noticed it the way you notice a door creaking once someone's pointed it out. She put her hands on my chest, wrist braces cool against my skin, and looked up at me with those dark eyes that were not nervous. Not even a little.

"You shouldn't be here," she said. Then, quieter, eyes dark and completely certain about something: "I've been watching you. Since the outer hall." She had no reason to be watching me. I was not going to say that. "You're different."

I had no complaints about being watched. I have no complaints about a lot of things when the person watching looks like that.

"You dragged me here," I pointed out.

"Yes," she said. Just that. And kissed me.

She tasted like cherry wine. She kissed like she'd been thinking about it since the corridor, urgent and a little desperate, hands at the back of my neck before I'd had time to participate, fingers tracing my ribs like she already knew where they went. I pulled her in by the back of her neck and my fingers grazed the collar's lower edge, cool metal under my hand while she was warm everywhere else. She made a sound against my mouth that rewrote my priorities for the evening.

The cot found the backs of my knees. I sat, she came with me, and we sorted out the logistics from there.

She looked down at me with those dark steady eyes, and then wrapped her hand around my cock, and I forgot whatever I'd been planning to say.

"Oh," she said, quiet, grip tightening. "You're already..."

"Yeah." I was. Ripple's musk had been keeping me half-hard since the pit, and her hand finishing the job was not helping my composure. "Long story."

She didn't ask for it. I'd spent so long in that tentacle pit being comprehensively dismantled by an ancient creature with no concept of diminishing returns. By any reasonable measure, I should have been done for the week. But Ripple's musk was still threading through my blood like the world's most committed houseguest, and apparently it had filed the paperwork to keep things operational before checking out. I owed it an apology and probably a fruit basket.

Her knees went either side of my hips. She rocked forward in a slow, deliberate grind, and I found out she was already wet before I had to ask. [Slick heat] against me, her hips working in small [measured rolls] that made it clear she'd been ready since the corridor. Possibly earlier. Possibly the moment I'd upended spiced wine down her amazing breasts and she'd looked at me [like that was interesting rather than catastrophic]. Some sensible corner of my brain pointed out that beautiful slave girls do not typically drag strangers off to evil warlocks' dungeons unless something is very much going on. The rest of my brain noted that something was clearly going on and it was, so far, excellent. She worked herself down onto my cock and the argument ended.

[So earlier he'd stated she had the most amazing tits/breasts he had ever seen in his life, and that's probably a true statement - what about her clit? How does she feel? Tighter than Lily, slicker than Ripple, firm yet taught, more alive down there, as though it was grabbing him and pulling him in. Samuel is very much an in-the-moment exaggerator. Everything is the best he's ever had, and her pussy, well, there's nothing like it, and he would certainly know. Even better than that harpy girl and that was saying a lot.]

"Gods," I said.

She didn't answer. She braced her palms on my chest, wrist braces cool and smooth against my skin, and started to move. The collar caught the candlelight above me each time she arched back. I watched it when I wasn't watching her face, and her face was something worth watching: cheeks burning, eyes half-closed, lips parted. She was not keeping quiet.

She was tight and hot and completely intent, and then she put her mouth near my ear and said "please" like she'd been saving it up. Low. Breathless. Like a question with an obvious answer.

I had a thought about that. It didn't finish.

I pulled her down harder. She made a sound that was going to get us both buried in the courtyard and grabbed the back of my neck and said it again.

Look. I was nineteen years old, post-tentacle pit, running on whatever ancient biological nonsense Ripple had left in my blood, and there was a beautiful naked girl on top of me with her hands in my hair asking for more. The part of me that asks intelligent questions had filed for the night. The rest of me had exactly one opinion.

She leaned back, hands braced on my thighs, wrist braces warm now. Her dark hair swung forward. Her cheeks were burning. She was loud in the way of someone who had spent a long time being told not to be, and the ankle cuffs caught the cot frame with every motion, and she didn't stop or adjust. I didn't want her to.

[Should her cuffs jingle? Do we need to give them a single chain link of metal to give that distinct tingle as she moves?]

I flipped her onto her back and she made that surprised sound, the one I was already a dedicated fan of. I grabbed her wrists on instinct and pinned them over her head.

She went liquid the second my hands closed on the braces. Made a sound I felt in my chest. Not scared. The opposite: the kind of sound that means you've been waiting for something and it finally showed up. I didn't know what to do with that.

She laughed.

A real laugh, bright and startled. Her eyes were wide and lit up, shining with something fiercer than lust, something closer to relief. She was grinning at me with her wrists pinned and the braces cold under my palms.

"Yes," she said. "Like that." Then she added all breathless, begging: "Tighter. Hold them tighter."

I had no idea what was going on.

I pushed into her and she arched up to meet me and dragged her nails down my back and the cot complained loudly and I did not slow down. She was a lot, this girl. More than she'd let on in the corridor. More than I'd expected. She wrapped her legs around me, ankle cuffs biting into the backs of my thighs, and said yes again, and it was rather painful.

We found a pace that made thinking impossible, which was exactly where I wanted to be. She was fierce under me, hips rising to match every thrust, sharp breathless sounds she was only half-suppressing. I was running on instinct and adrenaline and the dregs of something ancient and organic that had been making excellent decisions on my behalf all evening. She came hard, arching up off the cot, fingers digging into my arms, a sound in her throat that was going to get us found and I did not slow down. I followed her over about three seconds later with all the grace and dignity of a man falling off a roof.

"Goddamn," I said. Into her neck. Once I had the lung capacity.

She said nothing. Her chest rose and fell against mine. Outside the room, up in the keep, the stones kept up their low, unhappy hum.

I lifted my head and looked at her. Still flushed, hair everywhere, eyes half-closed and gleaming. She looked like someone who had gotten exactly what they came for.

I thought that was about me.

"Cocky bastard," she said.

I wasn't sure if it was my persistence or my performance that she meant.

"You know it."

"Dangerous game."

"Always."

She stretched, sly smile and bare skin, daring me to keep at it or give it up. "Better get out while you can."

I probably should have. I'd arrived here wet, stinking, and barely coherent, and she'd been enthusiastic to the point of implausibility. Mistress Ashara had a word for situations that seemed too good to be true. I'd always assumed it didn't apply to me.

But I didn't leave. Not yet.

I grabbed the wine tray she'd set at the edge of the cot and tipped a goblet to my lips. She'd had me half-crazed with need and the pure thrill of not getting caught. I wanted to say something clever. I wanted to say a lot of things. But I drank instead, warm spiced honey dripping down my chin. Her eyes stayed on me, more amused than cautious. Her eyes drifted to the shelf where I'd set the brooch. She caught herself and smiled, not bothering to pretend she hadn't. I thought: she really likes me.

I took a second swallow and looked down at her. She was sprawled beneath me, still flushed, hair a disaster, chest rising and falling hard. Those breasts were even better from this angle, which I hadn't thought possible. The collar sat at her throat, the wrist braces caught the candlelight, and the whole picture was exactly as unfair as it had been when her skimpy outfit dropped, except now I'd had her and she'd had me and we were still connected in a way that made drinking wine seem like the most reasonable thing in the world. I was deeply, genuinely grateful to be alive.

The candle shadows had gotten interesting. Probably the wine.

Or probably me.

The third swallow was the one. The room went sideways. I hadn't earned that. My hand set the goblet down carefully on absolutely nothing, and I heard it hit the floor from a long way off.

"Hey." My tongue was half-asleep. "What's..."

She was beside me. I hadn't heard her move. Her face was close, dark eyes steady.

"Shh," she said.

I had a clever thing to say. It didn't come. My back found the cot without me deciding to lie down. The ceiling was moving. Then I wasn't sure which one of us was moving. The candlelight was doing something strange.

Her face was the last thing I had clearly. She put her hand on my cheek. Gentle. Those eyes were doing that certain thing again, the one I didn't have the blood pressure left to figure out. I tried to ask. My mouth had already called it a night. Then she smiled and she had dimples. I noticed that. I thought it was a strange thing to notice.

Then the candlelight went out.