Ingenious #1

Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

S tefan was well into his flask of brandy before he stopped sobbing. He lay on the sofa with a wet cloth over his swollen eyes, giving Quiggs the how could you silent treatment. His red hair tumbled from his turban, and his tunic was inside out. After knocking back the rest of his silver flask, he held it out to Quiggs for another refill.

“Come on, Stefan, yell at me before you explode. You’re holding in enough steam to lift my flying balloon.”

Stefan’s voice came soft and faded. “Almost murdered… under my watch.” He lifted the cloth and glared at Quiggs hovering over him. His faded voice rose with righteous anger. “If you were that hungry, you should have just said so!”

“Whenever I did, you fed me more greens.”

Stefan tossed the wet cloth at him. “Max stormed into Cutty’s bedroom, furious I’d let you escape. He caught us in the middle of our… reunion.”

Quiggs twirled the cloth. “Wedded all these years and still getting it up for each other.”

“Had it not been for Cutty, Max would have added my skull to his kills. He trusted me to watch you. Oh, Quiggs, you climbed over the balconies, you cavorted with soldiers, you were thrown off the rampart!”

“Look at it this way. Someone wants me dead. The element of surprise is gone thanks to you.”

Stefan sniffled. “True. I was thinking of refunding my fee. Now I won’t.”

“I am alive and on my guard. I owe you.”

“True. I should add it to my fee.” Stefan checked his puffy-eyed reflection on the flask Quiggs handed him. “Hideous.”

“You’re always gorgeous. I hope I look like you when I’m sixty.”

The pillow smacked Quiggs’s laughing face.

Quiggs settled back in the tub with a mineral mask on his face and his unbraided hair spread over the edge of the tub. Waterproofed white plasters protected his shoulder and the punctures and scratches on his lower legs and ankles. The heat soaked into his muscles, and the bath salts—a small handful—lulled him into a fantasy of Miles lying on his back with his thighs pulled up, watching Quiggs prep him.

Stefan knelt behind him combing a sudsy cleanser—another of his special formulas—through Quiggs’s hair. It dried in minutes, then was brushed out, leaving a silken sheen without enduring hours of air drying. “Hmmm. That smile. Admit you’re crushing on the sergeant.”

“He’s the one I want as my first.”

“Is he attracted to you?”

“I’m an itch to scratch. He thinks the commander will bear a grudge if he scratches.”

“Not if you show Max how grateful you’d be.”

Stefan washed off the mask and unplugged the tub. “Stand and dry off, but remain in the tub. You won’t like this… but Max ordered an extra bit of prep for tonight.”

Quiggs remembered Miles’s warning. Wary of something inserted, Quiggs stood in the tub with his hands covering his ass as Stefan pulled on a pair of thin gloves before twisting off the lid of a jar holding green paste.

“Why the gloves?” Quiggs asked.

“The paste dissolves body hair. Also, any skin it touches if on longer than ten minutes. So don’t touch.” Stefan scooped up a handful and slapped the green stuff over Quiggs’s exposed testicles.

Quiggs yelped and broke out in goosebumps as Stefan massaged the cold goo into the hairy areas. “What’s in it?”

“The digestive sap harvested from the older vines.”

“Get it away from my cock!”

“Keep still! I’ve handled hundreds of cocks without a mishap.”

Quiggs’s cock remained flaccid while the paste dried.

Stefan timed the application, then rinsed off the paste with the handheld shower spray. The dark wiry pubes, now bleached white, swirled down the drain. He inspected the smooth genitals for stray hairs. “Makes your cock look larger, doesn’t it? The paste leaves you silkier than shaving. Lasts longer too.”

After he stepped out of the tub, Quiggs admired his smooth genitals in front of the vanity mirror. Cadets who’d declared service as future concubines routinely shaved their genitals at the sinks. He turned left and right, enjoying the sight of himself. His balls were certainly tighter after his encounter with Miles.

Stefan bragged in his breathless voice, “Silky balls get more blow jobs.”

“Why bother? You told me the commander never offers blow jobs.”

Stefan winked. “Perhaps competition from the luscious sergeant will goad Max into offering his concubine extra attentions.”

Stefan tied Quiggs’s hair in a simple braid hanging below his knees with the end tied off in a small red bow. He refrained from applying cosmetics, grumbling at the waste of his skills as he followed Max’s updated instructions .

Quiggs balked at wearing the humiliating red corset, pleading exemption because of injuries.

“The shoulder wound isn’t in the way, so quit fussing and take a deep breath.”

When finished, Stefan circled around Quiggs, hunting for any wrinkle in the buttoned down simple white shirt with fitted sleeves. The top buttons opened to reveal the edge of the red corset threaded with black ribbon. The shirt was paired with slim cropped black trousers and red platform sandals with straps crisscrossed above the ankles. The plasters cushioned the friction from the straps.

“You’re neither pretty or muscular,” Stefan mused, staring at him. “But when you smile, especially when you’re scheming, you become something special. You haven’t come into your mature bone structure yet.”

“How’s this?” Quiggs managed a strained smile.

“You look like you’ve smelled the governor’s fart and pretended she did not.”

The corset bit off Quiggs’s burst of laughter.

“Shallow breaths,” Stefan reminded him. “Slow graceful motions. No exertion.”

Max covered his hair with a towel and held the ends tightly when Cutty came at him with a pair of scissors. “I don’t need a haircut.” If the tawny hairs with sensory receptors were accidentally snipped, haircuts hurt. It felt like stings traveling up his skull and hitting a wall behind his eyeballs.

Cutty pointed at the stool in front of the vanity table. “Face the mirror and keep the fuck still.” He yanked away the towel, settled it around Max’s hunched shoulders like a cape after he sat, and met Max’s anxious gray eyes in the mirror. “Fucking Defender of the Territory afraid of a haircut. ”

A yowl slipped from Max as the tip of a tawny hair over his ear was deliberately snipped. “You’re still angry I burst in on you.”

Cutty sniffed. “We hadn’t finished.”

“Stefan shouldn’t have left my concubine alone!”

“Quiggs pretended to be asleep. He disobeyed your order to stay locked inside the penthouse.”

“He could have fallen to his death off the balcony.”

“Be grateful he escaped and you know someone wants to him dead.”

Watching from the door where he waited for further missives, Sergeant Miller bottled his laughter, maintaining attention until Max ordered him at ease.

Max gripped the arms of the chair, his tawny hairs flattening out of the way as Cutty snipped the sides short.

Cutty lifted a lock off the forehead and snipped, catching the tip of another tawny hair. “Pussy,” Cutty muttered at the curses hurled at him. “Don’t you want to outshine Sergeant Miles when you claim your concubine tonight? People noticed Quiggs ogling his fine ass today.”

A loud skkkrrriitttch followed as Max sank claws in the padded arms of the chair.

Miller choked.

“Spit it out, Miller,” Max growled.

At ease, Miller dared to say, “Sir, your men are talking about the amount of time Miles spent alone with your concubine. Knowing the sergeant’s reputation, they don’t believe it was entirely innocent.”

“A bunch of gossiping old heralds,” Max said. “Inform my men that any soldier overheard speculating on what happened between Miles and my concubine will accompany the sergeant on border patrol tomorrow. You got that, Miller?”

Miller thumped his chest, bowed, pivoted, and left. Max heard open laughter before the front door shut.

Cutty finished snipping and worked a light wax through Max’s hair to soothe the angry bristling of the sensory hairs along his hairline. After removing the cape, he eased Max into his long blue jacket with tails and epaulets. He pinned a tricolor sash on Max’s left shoulder and draped it to the right hip. On the turned-back cuffs, he had embroidered more fanged skulls in shimmery red.

Max intended to add a few fangless skulls before this business with Quiggs was resolved.

Cutty fluffed the lace spilling from the cuffs. The lace minimized Max’s powerful hands. He checked for smudges on the glossy black boots. Satisfied, he completed the attire with a black three-cornered hat, rarely worn because Max detested the curling plume.

Max frowned at his reflection. “Why’d you cut my hair if you meant to cover it with a hat?”

“Because you aren’t wearing a hat to bed. Quit frowning. You’re courting a concubine tonight, not hunting ferals.”

Max inspected his appearance. His gray eyes glimmered for a fight. He breathed deeply to relax the flexor tendons in his fingers. In public, he was careful to keep his hands palms down to hide his distorted digits. At rest, his claws sheathed within protective folds of his thickened fingertips. They displayed when he sensed danger, when he hunted, when his possessions were challenged.

Due to the governor’s meddling, he had planned a quick but satisfying claiming with a minimum of fuss and bother tonight instead of patiently waiting. A rational arrangement to appeal to Quiggs’s rational mind… and to ease Beau’s distress. That all shot to fuck this morning. His concubine lusted after the man who’d rescued him, and the assassin would strike again.

Max’s claws tingled at both threats to his ownership.