4
IAHIR WAS SURPRISED at her skill with a sword, though perhaps he shouldn’t have been. He realized now that there was a fierceness in her, a fierceness that seemed to have been forged in some kind of awful pain.
He knew about that, about how pain changed a person, how it made a person both strong and weak at the same time.
Strong because one built a fortress around oneself, one that no one ever penetrated, one that was never lowered.
There was no trusting anyone at all, of course, not after that kind of pain, after the kind of pain that taught one that the world was unpredictable, frightening, and uncaring. There was only the fortress.
But weak, too.
Because it made a person isolated, and strength came from cooperation with others.
Neither of them seemed to be very good at that part. They both seemed out for themselves.
Hadn’t Gathren betrayed that orc she’d brought to Marthlis, after all, sending him entirely out of the scheme? Hadn’t she come to the enemy all on her own, a lone orc amongst elves, to pull off this assassination?
If a person wanted something done, the best way to assure it was done was to do it personally, he supposed.
But what do I want done? he asked himself.
He knew he was working to kill the High King, to set the country of Lothnehil on a path of destruction and change, to remake everything. He knew that was what he was doing, but it really wasn’t what he wanted.
What do I want?
Perhaps simply to bed the warrioress?
It was as worthy a goal as anything. She was so intriguingly prickly, after all, and he liked the look of her.
He liked her precisely because she didn’t look like an elf.
But also, he liked her for the same reason that other elves liked orc women, and that was because of her hips and arse and breasts.
Orc women tended towards being broader and curvier than elf women, who were often willowy and graceful and small.
There was something about the round curve of an orc woman’s body, it tended to make a man’s cock stir.
However, perhaps he was currently thinking that because she had him up against the wall of the sparring field, and his blade was crossed with her blade, holding her back, and she was gritting her teeth at him, so close, just inches between their bodies, and he could see the place where her breasts cleaved, because her shirt was tugged down and the binding she used to wind them against her was visible.
Yes, he might be distracted.
Even so, it was a worthy goal, he thought.
I will destroy my country if I can fuck that woman, he thought. Anything at all in exchange for knowing the wet grip of her cunt.
He smirked.
She pressed her blade against his. “What’s so funny, my lord?”
“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head, still smirking.
“You’re terrible with a sword,” she said to him. “Really terrible. And I could beat you with one arm tied behind my back. Is that what’s funny?”
“I am not terrible,” he said. “I have been going easy on you, of course, on account of how I don’t wish to hurt you.”
She moved away, removing her sword from his. “You are only saying that because I have so clearly bested you.”
He straightened up, letting his sword fall so that the blade touched the dirt floor of the sparring field. It was a circular enclosure, surrounded by a tall wooden fence on all sides. The guards trained there, though he had to admit that missing training was rarely punishable.
In truth, the kingsguard was a ceremonial position, given to high-ranking elf lords in the country, and it rarely required any actual fighting or danger. Still, enough of the other guards did train, as much of boredom as anything else, he supposed.
Across the enclosure, he could see two of the other guards crossing swords with each other. They would likely tease him later for how badly he’d performed against the orc warrioress. He had underestimated her.
“Again?” he said, lifting his sword.
She raised her chin and tutted at him. “This time, you’re not going to go easy on me, I suppose?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, warrioress,” he said, beckoning with his free hand. “Have at me, then?”
She raised her sword, but she did not attack.
They began to circle each other, and she was wary. He feinted a few times, but she didn’t take the bait, only moving to protect herself, not to attack the places he would have left open if he had actually struck. So, the circling went on a while.
He kept thinking she would get bored and try something, but she never did, and it was him who became bored and thrust his sword at her.
She blocked him easily, pushing his sword down with her own, and then she seized his wrist, holding his sword hand down as she put the tip of her blade under his chin. “Terrible,” she said again, letting go of him in disgust.
He laughed.
She shook her head, backing away. “Have you ever been in an actual fight, my lord?”
“Tons of them.”
“Where someone was intent on killing you, I mean?” she said.
“Well, hurting me for certain,” he said. “I’ve never fought in a war or something, if that’s what you’re on about. You can’t have had many battles yourself. I understand the orc strategy is just to take keeps that have little to no defense. It’s all the element of surprise.”
“I think if you want to get more volume you could really speak from the pit of your stomach,” she said, glaring at him. “What are you thinking, talking about the orc army advancing so loudly? It’s not exactly common knowledge.”
“There are rumors,” he said. “No one’s worried, of course.” He lowered his voice. “How often have you been fighting for your life, warrioress?”
She inclined her head. “You’re right, it’s not often for me either. But you fight like it is a game, my lord, and orcs never fight that way.”
He felt a bit grim, feeling as if there might be a dark truth in what she said, one that he did not entirely want to acknowledge.
“Ho there!” called a voice.
He rounded to see that another guard, a man named Kinsahad, was approaching.
He and Kinsahad were friendly enough, even if Iahir didn’t exactly have real friends, what with being a fortress who never let people in and all of that.
He didn’t trust anyone, especially not people who seemed trustworthy.
That sort of betrayal really was the most devastating, he found.
He was on guard against that type of person more intensely than with anyone else.
“Iahir, is it part of your foreplay to let her beat you?” called Kinsahad as he approached. “First, she trounces you in the sparring ring, then she straddles you in the bedchamber?”
Iahir turned to Kinsahad, smiling. “I don’t know what you’re speaking of. The warrioress is only my sparring partner. She’s certainly not my partner in any other respect.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Kinsahad, laughing. He raised his eyebrows. “Well, perhaps you’d lend her out then?”
Gathren made a noise in the back of her throat.
“For sparring,” said Kinsahad, turning to her. “I’d like a go, unless you haven’t tired yet of making Iahir look like an idiot.”
“Oh, I need no assistance there,” Iahir returned easily.
“But she is not for lending, one way or the other.” He glanced sidelong at her, feeling a sudden acute knowledge that he was the only thing protecting her in this place, and that she was quite on her own, that she was the only one of her kind here. It must be incredibly lonely.
“I think I can handle another elf lord,” spoke up Gathren.
He gave her a nod. “If you are sure.”
“Oh, indeed,” she said, giving him a smile he might term mischievous. “And anyway, it is not quite that way,” she said to Kinsahad. “First I trounce him in the sparring ring, and then he uses his tongue on me until I tell him to stop.”
Kinsahad brayed out a laugh.
And Iahir, for no reason he could discern, could feel his face heating up. Was he blushing?
“This is the woman who breaks you of that?” said Kinsahad, leaning in to smile at him. “I seem to recall someone sitting at the breakfast table and going on about how it was that he never put his mouth to women there.”
“Yes, I heard that and I was quite appalled,” said Gathren. “He has much to learn.”
“I suppose I do,” he managed. She had done that on purpose, had she not? Well, two could play at this game. He advanced on her and reached up to slide his hand over her cheek.
She allowed it, and she even turned to look at him, though her gaze was steely.
“Do go easy on him,” he said in a low and lilting voice and he leaned his face in, raising his eyebrows, making clear what he was about to do.
She looked startled, but she did not duck away. She closed her eyes, instead, waiting.
And then he kissed her.
Just a press of his lips on hers. No open mouths or tongue or anything like that. Her mouth was warm. Giving. Dare he say, sensuous?
Anyway, he liked kissing her.
And she immediately threw herself into fighting Kinsahad, and she disarmed him, had him on the ground, and her sword to his throat in moments.
Later, when they were behind closed doors, he expected her to say something about how he’d forced that kiss on her, but she said nothing at all.
HE HAD KISSED her.
And she had liked it.
Shamefully, something about the feel of him, his hand cupping her cheek, his mouth against hers, and then—when he pulled away—the dazzling nature of his golden elvish features, it had been very nice.
Now, she was lying awake in the very large bed in this room, and she was thinking about the kiss, thinking about it over and over again, and she was beginning to wonder if it would hurt anything to go to bed with him, after all.
She did not have any expectations that it would be satisfying, being bedded by that man. That is, not physically satisfying, not pleasurable, not something that would give her one of her peaks of pleasure, which was she was not going to reach right now at this moment, thinking about it.
No.
Do not touch yourself and think about that awful elf lord, Gathren, she urged herself.
It was strange to her that she liked to fantasize about the act so much, but that the act itself was so very disappointing. It was nothing like her fantasies, really.
However, there were aspects about doing that she very much appreciated, she had to admit. She did like being an object of desire, and when a man wanted her in that way, it was quite gratifying, so she would submit herself to it more often than not out of desire for that kind of satisfaction.
He did, at least, seem to want her.
And yes, the wanting of her, it was always because she was sort of exotic and different—some sort of woman-man, she supposed, for the orcs. But for Iahir, it would be even different, because she was an orc and he was an elf.
If it came to that, perhaps she was curious about it, too. Would he be pale all over? Would his chest be as sinuous as his forearms, which she had seen bared today, in the sparring ring, when he had rolled up his shirtsleeves? And what about that?
His cock?
Did elves have long, pale, thin cocks? Would it be so thin that it sort of got lost in her and she would only feel the tip of it, pounding up against her there in a way that, well, it was pleasurable, really, just not as pleasurable as putting her fingers between her own thighs and rubbing circles into her clitoris.
Which…
Haem take her, she was doing it now.
She let out a shaky breath as she slipped her fingers there, finding her body already wet and ready, likely from all those thoughts about his body and his cock and everything else.
She imagined that he sat on the bed here in this room, totally dressed, and surveyed her with that little smirk of a smile on his face.
Take everything off for me warrioress, he would say.
And, I have been waiting to see your bosom since the moment I clapped eyes on you.
And, Aren’t you just the most luscious thing I’ve ever seen?
What had he said to her, something about sucking him?
She’d heard of such things. She had spent her time in orc war camps, after all. She knew what men spoke of. But she was under the impression that it was quite a feat to convince a woman—any woman, even a whore—to do such a thing.
Maybe elves were different. Maybe elf cocks were so fine and alabaster and beautiful that no one minded taking them into their mouths.
Something surged in her at the thought, something that echoed as her fingers moved on her most sensitive of places, and she wondered what such a thing might feel like in her mouth, because the skin on a cock was silken, and she imagined dragging that against her tongue.
She shuddered, involuntary, and a tremor went through her pelvis.
Kneel down, warrioress, he would say. Do you know how to work my trousers?
Her finger squirmed against herself.
That’s right, just take me out. See what you do to me, then? See how much I like the look of you? I’m quite, quite stiff for you warrioress, stiff and ready for your mouth, for you to suck all of me right down, just like that.
When she saw him the next morning, she could not look him in the eye because she felt so very, very embarrassed. She knew from past experience that taking sexual liberties with a real man in her fantasies was a recipe for only bad things, and now she must pay the consequences.
It hardly helped that she’d had such an explosive release, pretending to suck his cock, which was the worst, most degrading, most disgusting, most horrid thing in all of the upperworld and in Nilhaem, the underworld, as well.
It had crested like a flock of white-winged birds taking flight over a gleaming lake reflecting the moonlight. It had beaten its way against her thighs, against her pelvis, against her inner walls, making her clench and spasm again and again, and it had been pure bliss.
Fuck Iahir nae Cirlahir.
That was all.