22
IAHIR DID NOT expect her to wake him with her mouth on his prick that night again, and—indeed—she didn’t. He wasn’t disappointed, but he was even more uncertain of all of this.
It seemed to him that none of it made any sense at all.
She had no reason to want him. She didn’t seem to want him, in fact. She seemed to resent him. Perhaps she was attracted to him, but she seemed to resent that as well. She seemed to resent her very self in some way, to resent her femaleness.
The problem was that, were he in her position—were he a woman, that is—he thought he might resent it, too. And he felt for her in that way, he really did, but…
Well, everyone resented things about themselves they could not change, did they not?
He resented being born into the family he had been born into, all the wretched responsibility, no choice in anything, his whole future laid out in front of him, done, decided, before he had even been born.
What was the point in living a life when all the living had been taken out of it already?
He resented that, but he made the best of it. It was just the way of things. You had to take life on the terms it presented itself to you. It wasn’t as if things could change, after all.
He found his freedom in the places he could, he supposed, but he knew, when anyone looked at his little rebellions, they looked exactly like the tantrums of a child, one who was angry and resentful.
Was that what he was to her? A tantrum she was throwing? A rebellion of some sort?
If so, what was it she was getting out of it, because he seemed to do nothing but displease her. He didn’t understand why she’d gone to bed with him at all.
He should have said no.
Why did she want to come with him to Cirlahir? That made even less sense. She should not wish to be around him at all.
Certainly, she’d said that she had nowhere else to go, but she didn’t seem like the sort of person who needed anything at all. She was so strong and self-possessed, his warrioress was.
Ah, shouldn’t keep doing that, thinking of her as his.
She was never going to belong to anyone.
And he wasn’t worthy of her.
The second night, it rained, and they were miserable, unable to make a fire, and they got drenched, even though they tried to take shelter under some trees and used a blanket to make a little roof.
Neither of them slept well, and there was no attempt to do anything together. They didn’t even kiss much.
The rain continued through the next day, and they trudged through it.
Early the following afternoon, he suggested they find an inn for the night.
He had an idea of their location now, and he was fairly certain that if they cut across the road here, they could be back in the Vale in an hour, at one of the inns right on the border between the northern and southern parts of the country. He had stayed there before.
She agreed, but it didn’t take much convincing. Another night in the wet sounded horrific.
But, of course, when he arrived at the inn, the elf at the desk looked Gathren over with a sneer.
He said that there were servants’ quarters, but that an orc servant would have to sleep in the barn, and Iahir countered that she would be serving him intimately and that separate quarters wouldn’t be necessary.
The elf gave Iahir a look that was pure disgust. “Have you come from the north?” he said. “Do you not know what has been done in the capital city?”
Iahir swallowed. “No, I know.”
“You know that they have raped our women to death, burned down our chapels, stabbed infants in the street? You know that, and you bring that thing into your bed?”
Iahir glanced at her and she was staring at the floor.
“So, the… the armies of the Vale have not put down this invasion?” said Iahir.
“No,” snapped the elf. “You do as you will behind closed doors, but do not think to bring her into the taproom or the dining areas. You will cause a riot, and I won’t have that.”
Iahir understood. They would kill her. His heart was in his throat as he brought her through the hallways, and she kept her head down and stayed close to him.
In the room, there was an explosion of chatter between them, both going over topics they’d talked of before, both expressing guilt for what had occurred, both taking personal responsibility.
They both assured the other that they weren’t to blame, and it rang hollow to both of them, and then they were quiet.
They lit a fire in the fireplace, because even though it was mild weather, the rain had chilled them both to the bone.
He thought of the last time they’d been in an inn together, the way he had bantered and shamelessly tried to cajole her onto his cock, and now, just two nights ago, it had happened, and he’d been inside her, and it had been the most anti-climatic of experiences.
He fingered the stitches in his shoulder. She’d done such a good job stitching him up, he’d barely noticed the wound in some time. Maybe he’d simply become accustomed to the dull ache of it as it healed.
“Sorry about the inn,” he muttered.
“Better than the rain,” she said.
“As long as no one gets wind of your being here and comes after you, that is,” he said.
“I can take care of myself,” she said.
She could, of course.
“Our clothes are wet,” she said, looking into the fire.
“They are,” he agreed.
She took off her tunic. His mouth was dry as he gazed at the binding strip wrapping her breasts.
She began to unlace her breeches.
“Your, um, your…” He gestured to his own chest. “Is it not uncomfortable?”
She looked down at her chest. “Much more uncomfortable having them free and flopping around, I assure you. They get sweaty underneath, and the skin chafes, and then there are times during the month when they are sore whenever they’re jostled, and it’s much less trouble like this, all told.”
“I see.” He had an erection now. All that talk of flopping and jostling, really. He turned away and took off his own tunic.
She was draping her clothes over the arms of chairs in front of the fire. She was wearing only a pair of drawers and the binding cloth, and so much of her skin was on display. He admired the smooth gray-green curves, the hint of her muscles moving beneath the skin.
“It’d be easier not to have them, I suppose,” she said.
“What?” he said. “You don’t mean your breasts?”
“If they didn’t give me so much pleasure, they’d be utterly worthless,” she said with a chuckle.
He worked at his trousers.
She laughed knowingly. “Something seems to have awakened at the talk of my breasts.”
He felt himself flush. He could not look at her. “Ever so sorry about that, really.”
“No, no, it’s nice,” she said. “I do like affecting you that way.”
“I wish I affected you.”
“You do,” she said. “You quite do.”
He looked at her then. “You’re very contradictory, warrioress.”
“I don’t mean to be,” she said. “Come here, then. My binding strip is wet from the rain. Help me out of it?”
He actually groaned. He stepped out of his trousers and did not bother to hang them, simply left them as a sopping wet pile on the floor, and he went to her. He pulled her against him and kissed her mouth and she sighed into him, her eyes closed, her body warm and pliant and perfect.
He pulled her back so that he sat on the bed and she straddled him, and he began to unwind the strip that bound her breasts, and she gasped and he gasped, and she shifted herself, the way she’d done before, and began to rock herself against him.
He could feel the heat of her wet little cunt through her drawers, and it made him feel ready to burst. He freed her breasts and tossed the binding strip.
He took them both in his hands, gathering them up on her chest. “Hello again, look at you both. Aren’t you the prettiest bosoms in all of the land and all of the sea? ”
She laughed, but she was pleased. “Are you talking to my chest as if I’m not here?”
“Mmm, I think they like me more than you like me, warrioress.”
She ran her fingers through his hair. “Well, they are fond of you, it’s true, but mostly because you are so very attentive to them.”
He licked one of her nipples, licked a circle around her dark green aureole and traced the tightening of her nipple with his tongue while she made little noises in the back of her throat. “How could one not be attentive to them? They’re sheer perfection.” He licked the other one.
She sighed.
He thumbed both of her now-hard nipples and buried his face between them, and she laughed at him and he didn’t care. “So,” he said, into her flesh, his voice muffled, “when we are in Cirlahir, and you are my kept woman—”
“Are you going to call me that, your kept woman, because I thought you were going to be my whore?”
“Right, well, this will be what you’d command from a whore, clearly,” he said. “You’d demand that I spend all my time with one of your nipples in my mouth.” He captured one and suckled it.
She let out another moan. “I suppose that would be acceptable.”
“It would mean, of course, that you would need to constantly have your bosom bare, though.”
“Would it? Or would you have to spend all your time with your head inside my clothes?”
He suckled the other one, chuckling in his throat. He let off, mouth still against her skin. “At the very least, you’d have to be unbound and floppy, I think.”
“Oh, you like the floppy aspect, I see?”
“Can you doubt that?” He tweaked one of her very hard nipples.
She gasped.
“You like that, warrioress?”
“You know I like that.” Her voice was a rasp.
He did it again.
She groaned, rocking against his leg.
He kissed her chin. “This is it, I think.”
“What is?” She was out of breath.
“What you do with me,” he said. “You said you could not figure out how to use me for your pleasure, but this seems to be the way.”
She captured his lips with her own, her kiss fierce, and he groaned against her. She rocked against him, and he could feel that she was wet, that her wetness was coming right through her drawers. He wanted to touch her cunt, but he didn’t dare change a thing about this. He tweaked her other nipple.
She cried out.
“Use me, warrioress,” he panted, latching onto the nipple he’d just tweaked. He sucked one nipple and thumbed the other.
She rode his thigh, and threw her head back and made noises, such noises, and he teased her tight little nipples until he found them tightening even more intensely inside his mouth, and he felt her rippling against his thigh, and she mewled out her climax.
“Come for me, warrioress,” he groaned into her breast, flicking her nipple with his tongue.
She cried out like a wild thing.
And then he pressed her back on the bed and stripped off her drawers and put his cock in her, without a sheath, and he fucked her, and she looked up at him and he kissed her and she felt like sheer fucking bliss—had he ever fucked a cunt this wet before?
But he was wound very tightly, because he’d been getting more and more aroused when she’d been rubbing her wet little quim into his leg, and now he was barely going to last. He tried to say that, but then it was now.
Warning lights were bursting in his brain and his climax was a cannon explosion, and he pulled free just in time and spattered the underside of her perfect fucking teats with his release and he threw himself down on the bed next to her and panted at the ceiling.