Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It felt good to be beautiful again.
I always did my best to take care of my appearance. But after all those days of leather breeches and heavy boots and Zefiah strapped across my back, my body felt so light with this much exposed skin. And there was, indeed, lots of exposed skin.
I got a drink and noted with satisfaction how the barkeep’s eyes lingered on my neckline as I leaned over the bar. My hair, free in delightfully clean copper waves, was doing more to cover my breasts than my dress was, and he certainly noticed.
I thanked him, took a long drink, and reveled in the immediate pleasant haze. The drink was strong, and probably laced with more than alcohol. It made it all the easier to appreciate the eyes on me as I strode into the pleasure house.
I wore Septimus’s gift. But I did not wear it as an acolyte would.
The skirt was secured only at my waist, so each step revealed a long sliver of tan skin up my thigh.
I had tied the strips of fabric intended to be a sash around my rib cage and looped around the back of my neck, leaving my midriff and much of my breasts exposed.
Sheer, draped silk obscured the grisliest of my remaining wounds.
Several long, gaudy necklaces—impulse purchases at the market—dangled in my cleavage.
I fit right in among the lovely, writhing creatures in this room. No, better; I stood out.
The pleasure house had grown more crowded since we first arrived. The population had shifted, too—not only holding Kajmar’s devotees who likely remained here, in drug-hazy “service” to him, at all times, but a more luxurious clientele who looked to be visiting from nearby settlements.
My eyes skimmed right by them and landed in the far corner.
It almost shook me—how, in a room of beautiful people engaging in beautiful debauchery, still my eyes drifted right back to him.
Septimus lounged in a booth, limbs stretched out, an ember at the tip of his cigarillo burning in the shadows.
Of course, he’d managed to find the perfect spot to be at the center of everything and yet removed enough to watch unnoticed.
A trio of scantily clad women laughed over drinks and brightly colored powders to his left.
A couple slowly undressed each other to his right. He acknowledged none of them.
None of them but me.
Those eyes cut through the smoky dark like shards of broken glass, and they slid right over my bare skin.
His stance, just the right kind of careless, didn’t shift.
But gods, those eyes. They told me, even in the darkness, everything I needed to know.
That if I were ten steps closer, I would be able to see the flare of his nostrils, the flex of his throat.
I would be able to see the way his gaze dipped down my body when he thought I wasn’t looking.
Normally, I was a little ashamed by just how much my body appreciated when Septimus looked at me that way. Tonight, I relished it.
He lifted one lazy hand in greeting. I lowered my chin in a barely there nod.
And then, I walked right past him.
The man lounged directly across from Septimus’s seat.
He sat in a sheltered nook, a round table before him covered with little metal plates bearing piles of food—nuts, a few dried pieces of meat, and some lumps of boiled potato that, I knew, had been enchanted by Kajmar’s acolytes, likely at great cost, to appear to be any number of delicacies to the one who consumed it. A blond woman draped herself over him.
He was handsome, though not the most handsome here.
Charming, but not the most charismatic. He was, however, the most powerful person in this room.
One look at the women on his arm, the food, the clothing he wore, told me that.
The way he sat. This was a person accustomed to having offerings laid at his feet.
I felt his stare, too. Different than Septimus’s restrained, elegant curiosity. Harsher.
Good.
I pretended not to notice him for a while, just long enough for another man to linger a little too long—to call me over and pat the empty chair beside him. I let my admirer watch as I dismissed him like an inconsequential pest. And only then did I turn around and acknowledge him.
I felt Septimus’s eyes following every step as I crossed the room, sliding gracefully into a seat beside the man in a way that let the silky fabric of my skirt fall open over my thigh.
“You look like you have enough to share,” I said, nodding to the spread before him—not the food, but the collection of drugs.
My Bosquan was decent, though heavily accented.
I hadn’t had to use it in quite some time.
But men enjoyed an accent. I knew mine marked me as exotic, especially in combination with the gold sheen of my skin and the red tint of my hair; all things that set me apart from the fair-haired, fair-skinned northerners around us.
It made my boldness interesting instead of offensive.
A smile lifted the left side of the man’s mouth.
He was genuinely handsome. Maybe ten years ago, his beauty would’ve been cloying, like sugar candy—too indicative of a life of no hardship.
But now, even the rich fucks had suffered, and it gave just enough of an edge to his appearance to make him interesting looking again.
“Of course,” the man said. “I am always happy to share.” He dipped his fingertip into a fine, shimmery lavender powder and lifted it. “My name is Johnus. And yours?”
I leaned forward, strategically allowing a glimpse of my cleavage, and inhaled. The high came with the scent of sweat, the overwhelming taste of florals in the back of my throat, and a shock up my spine.
Venther. A drug commonly crafted by followers of Kajmar, meant to mask the ugliness of an ugly existence. I’d done it more times than I cared to admit. Still, I tempered my inhale. I wasn’t looking to escape right now. I needed to be right here.
It was good stuff. The world seemed a little brighter, as if every surface sparkled faintly.
When I looked at Johnus again, it occurred to me that his blue eyes were the exact same shade the sea used to be before the sun fell.
The sensation of silk fabric against my flesh now seemed like foreplay.
I resisted the sudden, desperate urge to glance to my left, to that little sheltered corner across the room where, I knew, someone was watching me very closely indeed. But I didn’t.
Instead, I let out a little moan and threw my head back. “Wonderful, Johnus,” I purred. “Thank you.”
I began to rise, but my companion caught my wrist. His touch was firm, and he swept his thumb along the thin skin on the inside of my wrist, like a beckoning hand.
“You didn’t even give me your name. You can’t just rob a man and go.”
I laughed. “Rob you? How dramatic.”
“What else should I call it, after you take from me and don’t even give me anything in return?”
He seemed a little less attractive now. But I merely let my lips curl into a little smirk.
“What would you like, then?”
“Your company.”
He still had not released my hand. I made a show of looking away, sighing. Like I knew I shouldn’t stay, but couldn’t resist.
Men loved that shit.
“Fine,” I said. I lowered myself back to the couch and unfurled, limbs stretching, my body rolling back against the pillows in a way that, I knew, offered a few more glimpses of my breasts. “But only if you make it worth my while.”
Johnus’s eyes lowered, lapping up the offerings of my flesh.
The woman on his other side already had her face buried against his neck, her body arched against him.
His cock strained against his trousers. These two had been ready to take each other here before I’d stepped in, and they wouldn’t have been the only ones.
Behind me, I could hear the serrated gasps of a couple intertwining themselves in each other.
The venther made every sensation shimmer. When the man leaned so close his lips brushed my ear, and murmured, “I will make it worth it,” my self-control wavered.
My eyes slipped, without my permission, across the room.
If this place, the drugs and sex and a handsome man’s pleasant touches, were the electric tension in the air before a storm, then Septimus’s stare was the lightning crack.
In a room filled with blurry, fake beauty, his eyes were steel intensity, cutting straight to skin.
He was still sprawled out casually, but I knew it was fake—knew it because I could feel every line of tension, all trained at me.
Goose bumps rose over every inch of my exposed flesh. The muscles of my inner thighs tightened, my breasts suddenly much more sensitive beneath the sweep of silk as I let out a breathy exhale.
“Is that a promise?” I asked.
I didn’t look away from Septimus as the man murmured, “We will have plenty of fun together,” and with each word, his lips closed around the tender skin of my earlobe. His hands trailed over my exposed thigh, running inward, parting silken fabric.
I held Septimus’s stare as I let him. As my thighs uncrossed, allowing Johnus’s hands to wander farther.
Septimus let out a long exhale, silvery smoke dancing over his form. But he didn’t blink. I’d never seen him so predatory, so vicious, even as he didn’t move at all.
When the man’s mouth moved lower, kissing the column of my throat, the shudder in my breath was not an act. When his teeth—too blunt—closed around my skin, I let out a wordless sound.
His fingertips trailed higher. I opened my thighs wider, knowing the view they’d be offering across the room. At the first touch of my core, pleasure shuddered more violently than I would have expected.
Septimus sat up, the movement pointed, as if involuntary.
This time, the sound of pleasure I made was not intentional at all. A smirk curled the corner of my mouth.
My eyes did not leave his.
Johnus chuckled against my skin, pleased with himself.
“Look at you,” he murmured. “So wet for me already.”
His fingertip pushed aside the thin fabric of my undergarments, and the friction of skin against skin had me letting out another shivering breath.
“For you,” I agreed, the lie sweet.
He was right. I was wet. My lower abdomen clenched, my inner thighs parted.
The couple behind us now openly fucked on the couch, their breathy whispers escalating to needy moans.
The woman on Johnus’s other side reached for me.
She was beautiful, too, in the way that he was—beautiful under the haze of the drugs and the biological impulses of pleasure.
The venther made every touch soft and sensual. Who cared how much of it was real?
I craved the physical release of sex. The way it could drown out everything else. I hadn’t had anyone since—
I pushed that thought away violently.
This man—this couple—would be good in bed. We would enjoy each other.
But when my hand fell over his body, ran down, closed around the hard, straining length beneath his trousers, I wasn’t thinking about him at all.
I was still staring at Septimus, who now leaned forward, arms resting casually on the table. Every muscle oriented toward me.
And I was thinking only of him when I pulled away from Johnus, and I made sure Septimus had the prime view as I draped myself over his body, tilting his head toward me.
“Would you like to fuck me?” I murmured against his mouth.
He let out a low laugh that said, You’re making me say it?
“For hours, beautiful,” he breathed.
As if for emphasis, his other hand slipped my strap from my shoulder, thumb circling my exposed hardened nipple. I let out a low moan—not merely at the sensation, but at the view I knew it presented to that little corner booth.
Septimus’s stare sent goose bumps over my skin, a surge of desire clenching the apex of my thighs. Unleashed by that single bump of venther, it was momentarily overwhelming.
I had a feeling that “hours” might be a bit of an exaggeration for this one. But for a time, yes, and it would be a good one.
“Good,” I murmured to Johnus, and then I kissed him.
His lips parted for me, tongue slipping into my mouth a little too aggressively.
He tasted like shitty wine and the cloying sugar of venther.
His hands slid over my body, working at my clothes, attempting to pull me fully on top of him.
The friction of fabric, the pressure of his thigh against my core, sent sparks of pleasure shooting up my spine, making me wanton and desperate.
I broke the kiss and, my self-control decimated, my eyes returned to that far corner—
To see it empty.
I stopped. Frowned.
The heat in my body, still burning, ebbed slightly.
Johnus’s companion leaned toward me. I kissed her once, then him, and sat up. “Think of me tonight,” I told them.
Johnus’s brow furrowed.
“Where are you—”
But before he could stop me, I was gone—following the scent of vanilla smoke.