Scars and Swindlers

by Val Saintcrowe

  She arched her back to allow him more access.

  “Lovely to touch as well,” he said. “And to taste.”

  She sighed, holding his head down against her sensitive skin. Everything he was doing felt so good, and her whole body seemed to feel heavy and loose, like she was a flower that was opening up to him, one petal at a time.

  He seized handfuls of her shift and tugged that up, over her head, baring all of her to him.

  She was still wearing stockings, but all of her most secret places were uncovered, and she always thought she’d be shy about having anyone gaze upon her the way he was looking at her, but she wasn’t.

  Maybe it was because he’d seen it all already, or maybe it was because it was him—it was Haid—and she didn’t know when this tendril of a connection with him had been made, but it had, and she felt safe with him. She liked pleasing him, and he was pleased by her, and she liked that very, very much.

  He kept his eyes on her greedily, divesting himself of his jacket, undoing buttons at the top of his shirt.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Was he going to take off his shirt at long last?

  But no, he stopped after untucking it and left it in place. Instead, he began to unlace his trousers.

  She went to sit on her bed, kicking off the slippers she was wearing. She lifted her leg to peel off one of her stockings, and Haid sucked in a noisy breath.

  She looked up at him, and then she realized that she’d exposed herself between her legs in this position. Embarrassed, she started to lower her leg.

  “Don’t,” he breathed.

  She swallowed. Slowly, she lifted her leg back up, but she didn’t go for her stocking. She simply sat there, on display for him.

  His lips parted and he drank her in.

  Bolstered by his reaction, she leaned back, bracing herself on her hands, arching her back, showing him everything.

  He pushed his trousers down, and she caught one glimpse of him—hard and proud and at attention—before his shirt fell over his member, and he was stepping out of his trousers and coming for her.

  He went down on the floor, settling between her legs. He kissed her inner thigh.

  She let out a strangled gasp. “What are you doing?”

  “Shh,” he whispered, and she felt his breath on her most sensitive of places.

  “But, Haid, you can’t put your mouth—”

  He did. His tongue, in fact, licked a long line up the center of her, parting her folds and settling on the center of her pleasure.

  She cried out.

  He chuckled against her sex.

  “But…” She tried to protest again, but he did something so clever with his lips and tongue that she couldn’t think, let alone form words with her mouth.

  Everything fell away, shredding like torn pieces of cloth that were fluttering away on the breeze, and she was left in warm dark pleasure, nothing existing but her quim and his mouth, and it was bliss.

  She couldn’t have said how long he continued. In some ways, it seemed to stretch on for centuries, a long journey from one plane of goodness to the next higher plane, each one taking decades until bursting to the next. In other ways, it seemed almost too quick, because her climax seemed to come upon her unawares, sneaking up onto her, a gathering of all the shredded pieces of fabric, all of them being sucked back by a strong wind, forced together, packed tightly, tightly together until—

  An explosion, ribbons of goodness flinging out everywhere, her body undulating and spasming, sounds ripped from her lips that were too loud, too uncontrolled.

  And then she was pulling him up to kiss him again, to clutch him against her.

  They fell back on her bed, and she wrapped her legs around him and kissed him and kissed him while his hips moved against her, and she felt the press of his hardness against her belly, felt him dragging himself against her soft skin there.

  Then he stopped, and he went still, still except for the twitching between his legs, the gush of warmth and wetness.

  She gasped again.

  “Apologies, love,” he murmured into her bare shoulder.

  What was he apologizing for?

  He pushed himself up on his hands to look down at her. “You make incredibly sexy noises, do you know that?”

  She just gazed up at him, not entirely sure what had just happened.

  “You are lovely to taste.” He gave her a wicked grin and then he vaulted out of the bed and came back a moment later with one of the towels that hung in the corner where her baths were drawn. He sat down next to her and began wiping the wetness from her skin. “I suppose it’s better this way. Let’s even say I planned it this way, to spend out of your womb? Because you say you aren’t sure yet about whether you’re with child or not. This is far more responsible. We probably should keep my cock out of you if we can, hmm?”

  She peered at his cock. It was soft now, lying against his upper thigh, where the hairs on his body grew fainter and thinner, and she realized she found every aspect of his body endlessly fascinating. She reached out to touch him, fingers gliding over his thigh and then to run the pad of her finger over his cock.

  He let out a little noise of surprise, almost a laugh.

  “I didn’t get a chance to touch you,” she said. “It was all so… quick.”

  “Mmm.” He bent down to kiss her. “Well, I missed you. But I am sorry. I want to please you, love.”

  She gave him a small smile. “You do. You very much do.” She was still touching him, and she found him intriguing soft like this. She wrapped her hand around him, and he felt so different this way than he did when he was erect. She let out a delighted laugh.

  He kissed her again. “If you’re going to want that to be up and moving any time soon, you’ll be disappointed, I’m afraid.”

  “No,” she said. “I just… like it. I’ve never touched one before yours, you know, and I’m just exploring, I guess.”

  He let out a low groan. “Explore away, then.” He tossed aside the towel and lay down next to her, stretching out on his back beside her. He yawned.

  She sat up to move the loose skin on him up and down, hiding him away and then revealing him. “This doesn’t hurt you, does it?”

  “No,” he whispered. His eyes were half-lidded, and he was smiling. “Definitely not. I’m very tired, of course, but…” He yawned again. “Blazes knows what’ll happen if you keep at that.”

  “It doesn’t bother you.”

  “Nothing you do bothers me.”

  She snorted. “I’m sure that isn’t true.”

  His eyes were closed. “I think it is.”

  She bent him in half, expecting some sort of reaction from him, but there was none. “Is that… commonly done?”

  “Is what commonly done?”

  “What you did to me with your mouth,” she said. “I didn’t know about it. I read some things in books, but they never mentioned it.”

  “It will be commonly done between you and me,” he said.

  She chewed on her lip. “You’ve done it before, I suppose.” Her hand went still on his cock.

  He opened his eyes in slits. “Oh, love, I think I’m too exhausted for that conversation. Could I simply say that I’ve never felt like that when I was doing it, that it’s never been quite so arousing to me? How long did I last after you were done? Two seconds? You are magnificent, you know.”

  She surveyed him.

  “Lie down with me,” he murmured. “I want you in my arms.”

  She hesitated. Then she did, and he wrapped his arms around her, and she shut her eyes as she pillowed her head on his shoulder.

  He was asleep in minutes, but she was not even vaguely sleepy.

  She extricated herself from his arms and looked at him lying there, looked at his sleeping face and his bare legs.

  Carefully, slowly, she picked up the hem of his shirt.

  His breath was slow and even.

  She pulled his shirt up an inch, revealing the lower part of his s
tomach. He was muscled, almost sculpted, his stomach flat, decorated with black curls which were thicker as they joined with the hair around his cock.

  She lifted his shirt higher to reveal his belly button.

  And he stirred in his sleep, uttering a cry of distress, his hands going to his midsection as if to protect himself.

  Startled, she let go of his shirt.

  He rolled over, away from her, onto his stomach.

  She stared at him for a bit, then—sighing—she gave up and got out of bed. She dressed herself and covered Haid up, then pulled a set of curtains closed to separate her bed from the rest of the chamber and called for servants to bring water for a bath.

  Soaking in the water, she contemplated everything.

  He was hers, wasn’t he?

  He acted as though he was, and he seemed eager to be with her. He seemed to be quite satisfied with her and he had given her intense pleasure. He had put his mouth on her body in a place that she didn’t think anyone would want to put one’s mouth, and he’d claimed that it had aroused him.

  And besides, she couldn’t help but approve of it all, perhaps because of the sheer lewdness of it—somehow because it was such a low sort of thing, to use his mouth on that part of her body, it made it all the more thrilling.

  She mused.

  Could she put her mouth on him?

  A slow smile spread over her face at the thought of it, and something leaped inside her abdomen. She wanted to.

  But she wasn’t sure of him, she supposed. Maybe she couldn’t be, and maybe it was because he wanted to use her for the job, or maybe it was her own fault for tricking him and not revealing that she wasn’t carrying his child. Eventually, he’d find out, though, and likely he’d be angry with her.

  She grimaced at the thought of that.

  Well, she didn’t want to tell him yet. She didn’t want his anger yet.

  But even these issues aside, things were never going to be quite equal between them, and this bothered her. She was so inexperienced compared to him. He was the only man who’d she’d ever been intimate with, and so he had no competition for her affection, but she… she had his past, all of those women, and even if he said that he was out of his mind of iubilia when he did it, that he was behaving self-destructively because of the shock and grief of losing his entire family at the hand of his own father…

  Well, it didn’t wipe all of those experiences out, no matter why he’d done it.

  She didn’t see how she was supposed to not be bothered by it, even though she knew there was no way to remedy it. His past could not be taken back. He had done what he’d done. And she had no desire to go and gain experience with other men to even the score. She only wanted Haid.

  She sighed heavily and then sank down in the water in the bath, letting it close over her head. Submerged in the warmth, she felt cocooned away from all of it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HAID AWOKE ALONE in Sefoni’s bedchamber. It was just growing dark outside, and he could see that through the windows. He rose and tugged on his clothes.

  He could have sought out his wife, but he had things to accomplish that evening, and so he simply climbed the stairs to his own bedchamber. He would have liked a bath, but he thought he must put that off and instead rang for his valet to bring up a basin of water so that he could wash himself, which he did alone, on account of his wanting to wash his chest and under his arms and not allowing anyone to see that part of his body. He dunked his head in the water, scrubbed at the beginnings of a beard on his chin.

  Should he have a shave first, or would the lack of grooming work in his favor?

  He decided not to shave.

  Once his valet had dressed him, he took a bag of gold and descended the servants’ staircase to the back entrance. He slipped out without saying goodbye to Sefoni or telling her that he was leaving.

  As he moved through the streets of the city, he winced at the aches and pains in his body from sleeping in strange beds and his long journey to and from the northern part of the country. After speaking with the witch who’d wanted the blood offering, they’d found a few other witches or wise women on their journey back, and none of them had any idea how to reverse the curse on their own. At least two others had confirmed the idea that the witch who cast the spell must reverse it.

  They still had four months until the job, and so if the Cowntess couldn’t help, perhaps they’d have some time to try something else. If not, maybe they could work at releasing Cadon in his bestial form, now that they knew how to transport him. Pairce wouldn’t like it, of course, but he could convince Pairce if he really put his mind to it.

  And then his thoughts strayed to Sefoni.

  She didn’t look pregnant, but then he supposed that women didn’t when they weren’t very far along. And yet, when he’d seen her sitting at that shanj board, he’d felt such a surge of possession towards her. His wife, he’d thought.

  She should hate him, by all rights, but she didn’t. She’d sat up next to him and toyed with his flaccid cock and said she wanted to explore him, and he was charmed by her innocence and wildly attracted to her curvy, soft body, and infatuated with her—with every aspect of her.

  Flames take him, but he wanted her to be his wife, really his wife, and even if she wasn’t pregnant, if she was willing, he…

  I want to keep her.

  But was it right to keep her? Did she really want him? Was she world wise enough to even know what she wanted? The way the women in the aristocracy were coddled and hidden away, she knew nothing of the world. He was only five years older than she was, but in some ways, he felt far older than her.

  Haid knew that it was easy to become confused about things when sex came into the picture. Sefoni had never experienced anything except in his arms, and she probably thought she was in love with him, but maybe it was just curiosity and lust, and maybe… maybe when some time had passed, she’d realize that she didn’t belong in Haid’s world, and…

  If he truly cared about her well-being, he’d dose her with that tea without her knowledge, have her miscarry his child, and annul the marriage now.

  Of course, that would mean not having her for the Rzymn job, and he… well…

  He wasn’t going to do what was best for her.

  Blazes, he’d nearly had her again. He’d gone into her bedchamber and removed her clothes, all with the thought of burying himself inside her body, and if he hadn’t been so distracted by her pink, glistening—

  Blaze everything, why was she so pretty all over?

  And then the way she’d been so astonished at what he was doing to her, utterly unaware such a thing was possible, the way she’d moaned and cried out, and been his—entirely his—when he’d given her pleasure…

  He’d been destroyed by that.

  So, she’d only been saved from his cock in her quim by the fact that everything she did was too erotic for Haid to handle.

  I won’t be able to keep control with her forever.

  Blazes, he couldn’t keep control with her now.

  Control.

  He was going to need all of it to execute this plan he’d formed. He hadn’t even shared it with Tristanne on the road as he was thinking it through. This was partly because he didn’t like sharing plans until they were finished.

  In the early stages of planning something, he didn’t have all of the parts worked out, and if he shared a plan then, others typically poked holes in it. Theoretically, this should help him shore up the plan’s weaknesses, but it tended to have the effect of deflating him. He’d chuck the plan entirely and start from scratch.

  You’re vain, Haid. You want to dazzle everyone.

  Well, be that as it may, he rarely asked for input. And last time, when it came to the Cowntess, he’d caved and listened to Pairce’s idea, and this had meant that they’d been set upon by armed musqueteers and that Sefoni’d had to kill a man to protect him, and he’d promised her that she’d never have to do that for him, and he hated himself for put
ting her in that position.

  Anyway, he was keeping it to himself.

  And Tristanne herself would hate the plan, so there was no point in telling her.

  Thinking these thoughts, he left the well-tended streets of the good parts of Laironn for the narrower, dirtier streets of the city.

  He was recognized here, the Lord of the Dead, one of their own, so he was safe enough from the pickpockets and other swindlers who hustled out their meager existence on the corners.

  However, he hadn’t been back to this particular place in a very, very long time.

  Eventually, he stopped at the door of a house and knocked on the door. He waited, and a doorman answered.

  Yes, of course Nicx had a doorman, since he was playing at being an aristocrat. However, his house was in disrepair, and his carpets were stained, and Haid could see this through the doorway.

  The doorman registered a bit of surprise at seeing Haid, but the servant was good enough at his job not to let it show again and simply escorted him through the hallways to Nicx’s sitting room, blandly introducing him at the entryway. “The Duex of Darain.”

  Nicx was lying on a couch—also stained—his head in the lap of a woman named Keirla. Haid knew her. Had rutted with her. Once at the same time as Nicx, in fact, although it had all been in the midst of a iubilia haze.

  Keirla was Nicx’s, he supposed, but he was second in her affections. Her true love was iubilia, something Nicx exploited. He always had a number of girls about for his use who he’d gotten hooked on the stuff. Keirla had been around a long time, though, and she didn’t leave him.

  When Nicx heard Haid’s name, he sat up straight on his couch. He was wearing the remnants of a suit—no neckbow or waistcoat and his shirt was unbuttoned over his sallow, pale chest, but he was wearing a jacket over it all—and he smoothed out the lapel as he stood up to greet Haid.

  “Well, well, well,” said Nicx. “It’s been a long time.”

  Haid smiled. “It has.” He crossed the room, offering the other man his hand.

  Nicx grasped it and shook, grinning at him. “What brings you back to the dark corners of the city, Your Grace?”