by J. S. Volpe
* * *
“Hurry up,” Gaspard said as Merizen stuffed another blouse into her pack. They were in their room at Cimex Lectularius’s Cozy Rest Inn. “If we don’t get moving, someone else will get the gold.”
She shot him a frosty glance. “I am not going all the way to Ghost Gulch without a change of clothes. Ghost Gulch is half a day’s ride away—and that’s on horseback. On foot, it could take close to two days.”
“We can try to get a horse. We—”
“At the moment we don’t have enough money for more than a single horse. And I refuse to ride two to a horse. Not after last time.” Her eyes narrowed and her upper lip curled back in a sneer. “That hairy, sweaty pig of a man. How dare he cut our horses’ throats?”
“It’s done. We mustn’t waste time on it right now. Speed is of the essence if we are to become filthy rich.”
She paused in her packing, a boot clutched in her right hand.
“Filthy rich,” she muttered. Her eyes lost focus, and her icy expression started to thaw. “A hunk of gold as big as a troll’s head. That was what that man in the bar said, wasn’t it?” Her voice was soft and thick, like that of someone speaking in a trance.
“Um, yes. That was what he said.” He didn’t like that dreamy, heavy-lidded look in her eyes. It was usually the prelude to some wild, nasty sex, and usually he was more than ready for that. But now simply wasn’t the time. If they didn’t get moving, they wouldn’t get the gold. And if they didn’t get the gold, then Gaspard would miss out on all the mind-blowing sex that would follow. Which wasn’t to say the sex wasn’t good when there weren’t large sums of money involved. But when riches entered the equation, then by Vävel, she became a whirlwind of lust, a wildcat willing to do practically anything between the sheets, or on top of the sheets, or next to the sheets, or, well, pretty much anywhere. And the more money, the better and wilder and more frequent the sex. His mind still reeled and his cock still swelled when he recalled those wild nights after they conned Lady Francis out of the Viridian Diamond: They fucked so many times in their little room at the inn that they broke the bed, and his penis was raw and sore for over a week.
Yet none of their past hauls had come anywhere close in value to a troll-head-sized piece of gold. He couldn’t even imagine what the sex would be like if they got their hands on that.
The only way he’d find out was if they got their butts out of the inn and on the road as quickly as possible.
“Darling—” he began.
“So much gold,” Merizen muttered.
“Yes, but we should really—”
She whirled, grabbed his shirt and pulled him against her. Her eyes were wide and feral, her nostrils flaring, her lips drawn back from gritted teeth.
“Let’s do it,” she hissed. “Just a quickie. Right now. One for the road.”
Gaspard’s mouth opened but no words came out. They should go, they should get on the road, they should have been on the road twenty minutes ago.
And yet her breasts were squashed against his chest, and her pelvis was grinding slowly and rhythmically against his, and her face was so close to his that he could feel her warm breath washing across his lips, and when he inhaled he could smell the thick musky scent of her juices (and, my, but they must be flowing pretty heavily for him to be able to smell them like this). And as if all that wasn’t enough to knock down whatever shoddy defenses he could hastily erect against the lure of sex, she reached down, cupped the newly developed bulge in his pants, and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“Ah,” he said as if she had just explained something.
With a devilish smile, she took his hand and drew it under her skirt and pulled it up and up to a place where raw animal warmth pulsed like a small sun and coarse hair tickled his fingers.
A smile flitted on his lips as his fingers flitted on hers.
Yep, wet enough to drown a fish.
Ah, fuck it, he thought as he flung her onto the bed. Just a quickie.
