(no subject)
Lemon-Lime Sorbet #2. Public Place and Soft Serve 13/50 : Rocky Road #10. Bar
with Hot Fudge and Chopped Nuts
Story : knights & necromancers
Rating : R (semi-explicit sexytimes)
Timeframe : 1270's
Word Count : 3886
claiming amnesty for Falootin's XXX Afternoon Delight
I started this last November for my first origfic_bingo card, the prompt being "drunken declarations of love". Kairn, Reida, a lot of booze, a little sex...and mostly just Kairn sticking his foot his mouth over and over. ONE MORE LL TO GO!
Kairn shuffled into the inn’s common room, which was poorly lit and sparsely occupied at this hour. A quick sweep of the bar and tables found no sign of Lyssa, much to his relief. He picked his way past empty tables and drunken patrons to the bar and hauled himself up onto a stool. Propping his elbows on the bar, he lowered his head into his hands.
“What can I getcha?” the bartender called.
About to answer with his usual request for water, Kairn paused. He rubbed his head for a moment before he said, “Something hard. Cheap. I don’t care what.”
“Here, your girlfriend likes this.” A glass of something clear slid along the counter.
Kairn shifted his head to one hand and reached out the other to catch it. “My girlfriend,” he muttered, scowling down at the drink, a lump rising in his throat. He swallowed. No sense in bothering to argue.
He gave the glass a sniff. It reeked like some medical astringent and made his eyes water. He could feel the bartender’s eyes on him, so he lifted it to his mouth and took a gulp. The liquor burned his throat and left him choking and gasping. He slammed the glass back down on the bar.
The bartender was shaking his head. Coughing, Kairn thumped a fist against his chest and swallowed hard. “Leave the bottle,” he said.
That got him a laugh, but the bottle stayed as the bartender headed off to another customer. Kairn faced the glass with a sigh. He pinched his nose, tipped his head, and poured as much as he could down his throat before he started choking again.
A hand curled over his shoulder, and still gagging on the liquor, he jumped. There was Reida behind him, all curled lips and pearly teeth. For a moment, Kairn would have liked to think she was a product of the alcohol, but he wasn’t about to start attributing visions to a few gulps, so he conceded that she must be real.
“What do you want?” he said, wearily, turning back to the bar and his drink before she could answer. It just figured she’d show up now.
“So,” said Reida, hoisting herself on one knee on the stool beside him. The bartender shot her a look as she leaned over the counter to feel about the shelves on the back of the bar, but she ignored him. Kairn took another gulp from his glass and did his best to pretend neither was there. After a moment, she bobbed back up, glass in hand. “Mercenary bitch left you?”
Kairn eyed the glass poised over the bar, waiting for him to fill it, and shoved the bottle away. “No,” he said, firmly, before downing the rest of his drink. Somehow the bitterness was quickly diminishing. “I left her.”
Reida laughed, and Kairn’s hand tightened around his glass as he brought it back to the counter. “Right.”
“I got tired of coming second.”
Snickering, she lunged in front of him for the bottle.
“What?”
“You know,” she said, pouring herself a drink and him another, “I’ve got a few forms that’ll let you go as many times as you like.”
Under the alcohol’s influence, the blush that seeped across his cheeks felt like flame. Kairn shook his head. It didn’t lessen the warmth any, just made the room spin, and he found himself grinning at the sudden thought of Reida frantically scrawling lines on some poor man‘s flesh. “You would, wouldn’t you.”
She leaned in, her grin spreading even wider. “I could show you.”
Then it was clearly his body he was envisioning her drawing on, and there was nothing to do for it but take another drink.
Reida settled back in her seat with a sigh. “So,” she said, “you showed the slut the door. And now you’re here wallowing in… whatever this is you’re wallowing in.” She lifted her glass to squint and frown at the contents.
“I think it’s gin.” He turned the bottle, and Reida wrinkled her nose at the label but took a cautious sip from her glass.
“Classy.”
Kairn shrugged and emptied his glass. It didn’t taste like much of anything anymore. Slumped against the counter, he gave the empty glass a slow turn and it seemed the room turned with it. “You know… I could’ve kept her, if we’d have both just kept our mouths shut. But she had to…” Somehow it was too much to put words to, so he just twirled his glass some more. “And then I went got a backbone for once and…” He sighed, letting the glass wobble to a halt. “A-and now I’ve got nothing.”
“That made so much sense.”
Kairn turned to scowl at her and the motion set off a buzzing in his head. “Right. ‘cause I owe you an explanation, don’t I?”
“You’re right. Enough with the talk. There are better ways to get your mind off your whore of a girlfriend.”
She’d put her drink aside and her hand was now working its way up his arm, and for a moment all he could think was that it felt unbelievably good to have her touching him. Something in him managed to hold onto the fact that this was Reida he was dealing with and instead of leaning into it, he gave the hand a disdainful stare. “Like what?” he said. “Being with an actual whore?”
Reida snatched her hand back as if he’d struck it, but her grin quickly slid back into place. “At least I had the sense to ask for payment. The way your woman gives it out…”
There was a long pause Kairn wasn’t entirely sure was real, in which her eyes slid slowly up and down his body and he struggled with the sense that he might at any moment topple from his stool. Then her hand was on him again, stroking its way up his arm, and he gave up and leaned into it as it kneaded a path across his chest.
“What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on you, though.” Braced against the bar, teetering on the edge of her seat, she was practically in his lap now. “Poor, pathetic, lonely little girl.” Too occupied with the fingers that were now curling around the back of his neck, he didn’t rise to the insult. “I could make you feel so much better.” He was leaning in too to meet her, reveling in her touch, drowning in the thought that she wanted him so badly.
For the second time that night there was a sudden, painful understanding that hit him like a rock in the stomach, and as he had with Lyssa before, he pushed Reida away. “You’re as bad as Lyssa,” he said, his throat suddenly tight and dry. He threw a hand out to catch the edge of the bar as he swayed on his stool. “You always wanted Sethan, but you’d settle for me if I’d have let you.” She was staring at him in open-mouthed shock, and he tumbled on, volume and pitch rising with his anger. “You all think I’m so pathetic I’ll just take whatever attention I can get and be happy for it. I’m not some consolation prize!”
He wasn’t sure what he expected; an apology, an insistence that he was wrong, a drunken, boneless flop off his stool and a nap on the floor. What he got was a face full of gin.
“You stupid, stupid, blind, self-centered, little bitch!” she snapped, the hand clutching her empty glass shaking.
Kairn blinked at her through the rivulets of gin coursing off his hair. “I’m self-centered?”
Reida slammed her glass down on the bar and hopped off her stool. “Do you think I’m even your second choice? Do I even make the list?”
“Like you care?” She was turning away from him and buttoning up her cloak, and he was wishing he had a bit less liquor in him so the whole thing might make a bit more sense. “Like you’ve ever wanted anything but to paw me.”
“You’d enjoy it, too. If I was still offering.”
“I still don’t get what I did.” He made to scratch his head but quickly retracted his hand.
“You really are stupid, aren’t you?” she said, as he searched his pants for a spot dry enough to wipe his hand on. After a few swipes it was still sticky and he gave up. Reida was staring at him, brows knit, lips thrust out in a stiff pout. “You know, you’re so drunk right now you won’t even remember if I- forget it.” Her voice was as shaky as her hands. She spun away and he made a clumsy grab for her arm.
“Hold on.” He caught her sleeve with the second swipe and then grabbed the bar again as he nearly fell. “You…you have feelings for me, don’t you?”
She turned back to him, with that usual cold, slick grin of hers, and her eyes fell to his lap. “You bet I do.”
“Other than the ones between your legs,” he said, his fingers clenching against her arm. Somehow, he couldn’t help but giggle at even the thought of it, but he still managed to get the words out. “You’re in love with me.”
“And you’re so drunk off your ass you’re delusional.”
He yanked her to him, threw his arm around her back, and kissed her full on the lips. There was a long moment in which her lips worked forcefully against his own and he could feel the pounding of her heart where she pressed against him, that was so exhilarating and yet so ridiculous he wanted both to laugh at it and to never let it end.
She pulled away with a sharp stare and a swift, perfunctory lick of her lips, even as her chest heaved and her breath came in ragged gasps. “You taste like gin.”
“And whose fault is that?” said Kairn, still not letting her go.
Reida scowled down at the damp patch on the front of her cloak. “That’d be yours, princess.”
“Princess, am I now?” he said, grinning in spite of himself. “S’pose that’s better than bitch.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She gave her lips another lick. “Self-centered little drunken princess who thinks the whole world’s in love with her.”
“Not the world, just you.” It took him a couple of tries to get his hand around his drink and he brought it shakily to his lips.
“I think I liked you better when you were a bitch.” She started to run a finger down the center of his chest, frowning as it slid into a patch of gin, and Kairn took a deep gulp. “You need to learn your place.”
Kairn choked on a laugh. Gin tickled the back of his nose, and he plunked the glass back down on the counter hard. “I don’t think I need to ask where that is.”
Reida leaned back to fix him with a grin, her thick, red lips peeled back to reveal her perfect, pearly teeth, her finger still planted on his chest, and Kairn swallowed hard again.
“Do I get to show you anyway?”
His eyes traced the surface of her lips and he thought about tasting them again, about feeling her against him, beneath him, about the warmth of her flesh and the curves of her body. He bit his lip and shifted in his seat. Was it just the gin or had he never really looked at her before?
“Well?” said Reida, and her hand dipped lower, lingering just above his navel.
He cupped a hand around her cheek and gently tipped her chin up. “Tell me the truth first,” he said. “I want to hear you say you’re in love with me.”
She glared at him. “Will saying it get me laid?”
Kairn slid his hand down off her cheek. She stiffened and gasped as it skimmed over her breast and along her ribs. “If I’ve still got the coordination for such a thing,” he said.
Reida eyed the hand as it made a clumsy attempt to retrace its path back up her front. “Fine,” she said, stiffly. “I am completely, madly, head over heels in love with your pathetic, girly ass.”
Teetering on his stool, Kairn giggled. “Told you.”
Reida fisted her hand in his shirt. Kairn tumbled from his seat into a shaky but upright landing between Reida and the bar. She pulled him in until she could press her nose to his and stare him straight in the eye. “I said it, and now you’re going to take me upstairs and thank me properly for it. You hear me?”
The only response Kairn could come up with was a laugh. Reida let go of him with an aggravated sigh and he staggered back into his stool. “There’s just a little problem,” he said, clutching at the bar for support.
“Oh?” Reida planted her hands on her hips.
“I don’t know if I can make it back to the room.”
Reida leaned back against the bar, stretched her arms wide and draped them along the counter’s edge, and arched her back and thrust her chest out and upward. “Well, then,” she said. “We’ll just have to do it here.”
Kairn grabbed the bar and the rim of his stool as he stumbled. “H-h-here?” He gulped and glanced around the room. There was only one table still occupied, two of its guests still seated, a third slumped on the floor and snoring loudly. The bartender was wiping down the far end of the counter. Kairn turned back to Reida to find her unbuttoning her cloak. “Th-there are p-people here.”
The cloak fell open and she moved right along to the laces of her dress, and Kairn just stared as the tops of her breasts came into view. Reida gave the remaining patrons a look and wrinkled her nose. “If you want to call them that.”
“Regardless. I’m not giving them a peep show.”
“Oops!” said Reida, hopping up onto the bar with a grin. “Too late!” She gave the laces a sharp tug and the front of her dress fell open.
“Hey!” called the bartender. “What do you think you’re doing? Get off my bar! And put some clothes back on! This is an inn, not a whorehouse.”
Reida pulled a sigil-lined cloth from her pocket with a flourish and brandished it at the bartender with an ominous “Make me.”
“Reida!” Kairn yelped, and he made an awkward lunge towards the bar and swung a shaking hand and missed the cloth by a mile.
The bartender was charging towards Reida now, and Kairn didn’t see himself being much use in stopping her, clinging to the bar to keep himself upright as he was. With a laugh, she simply swatted him with the cloth as he drew near, and the man vanished completely on contact.
There was a loud rumbling and scraping as the remaining patrons leapt to their feet.
“What did you do to him?” said Kairn.
Reida was carefully folding the cloth, preparing to return it to her pocket. “Earth spell,” she said. “I teleported him. Oh, don’t look at me like that, he’s in one piece. Wherever he is.” She peered over his head at the pair of men closing in on them as she stuffed the cloth back into her cloak and grinned. “You fellows want to join him?”
The two stopped short halfway to the bar. “W-we were just leaving!” said one, gaping at the half-naked woman on the bar. He elbowed his companion sharply in the ribs. “Right?”
“Right,” said the other, and without another word, they both bolted for the door.
“Hey,” called Kairn. “You forgot-” The door slammed shut behind them and he turned back to Reida. “They forgot their friend.”
Reida eyed the body still curled up under the table and wrinkled her nose. “He’s not going to bother us.”
“R-right. So…”
“So,” said Reida, spreading her arms to lean back on the bar. “We have the bar to ourselves, and I have you to myself.” She hooked a leg around his back and pulled him in.
Kairn laughed nervously as he staggered towards her. “You know, it’s funny, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours ago that I was upstairs with Lyssa and now-”
Her eyes hardened, her lip curled, and the grip her leg had on him tightened. “Mention her again and I’ll have to hurt you,” she snarled.
“So’s that mean you want me to mention her again or that you don’t?”
“Very funny,” said Reida, but she seemed to relax a bit. “If I wanted to hurt you do you think I’d wait for an excuse?”
“I don’t even know what to say anymore.” And really, with his nose inches from Reida’s very nearly bare breasts it was hard to remember words at all. “I mean, you really-”
“Oh, get over yourself, will you?”
“You know,” he said, and she all but purred as he slid a hand up the inside of her thigh, just under the hem of her skirt. “There are better ways of showing it than pincers and rats, and traps and death threats.”
Reida curled a hand around the back of his head and bent until her eyes were level with his. “Like this?” She kissed him forcefully, hungrily, until he was clutching at her and aching for breath.
She released him, and if not for the boot still lodged against his back, he might have simply tumbled to the floor. “Th-that’s, uh, that’s a start, yeah.”
“Now,” she said, hiking up her skirt, “you were headed somewhere here?”
“I was.” He stopped, hand out, to stare in shock. As the fabric rose, it revealed beneath it an ugly webbing of scar tissue. He laid his hand gingerly at the edge of the discoloration and dragged a finger slowly, gently up one of the vicious strokes that laced her flesh. “What happened to your-” He stopped again. “Ephram,” he said, sourly.
“Oh, don’t be such a bleeding heart.” Reida slapped a hand over his, pressing it flat and dragging it higher. “I’m fine.”
“I should have done something.”
“What? Like lop his head off sooner?”
“No! Well, maybe. I-I should have been there for you somehow.”
“Well, we’re both here now. You know, I stuck around so you’d fuck me, not ‘cause I wanted to reminisce.”
“R-right,” said Kairn. “Right.” He leaned back in to kiss her again, his hand sliding further up her thigh, slipping underneath her skirt.
He stopped just short of the edge of her panties. “So, why me?”
“Huh?”
“What do you even see in me? I’m not powerful, not good looking. I haven’t done anything special to win you over; I just barely see you as a human being.” He swayed a bit on his feet and hung on to her leg to steady himself. “That’s it, isn’t it? I’m the only one that ever treated you like a person, and-”
“Gods! Are we really going to keep revisiting this all night?”
“I-I just-”
“You talk enough when you’re sober. Liquor you up a bit and you don’t shut up for a minute.” She picked open the top button of his shirt, gave the slight bit of flesh exposed by this a smirk, and moved on to the next. “Look,” she said, reaching for the third, “what I see, right in front of me, this instant, is a good little bitch who’s going to quit her yapping and do what I say if she knows what’s good for her.”
She was leaning so far forward now to pull the last few buttons from their holes that Kairn found his nose buried in her hair. Funny, if anyone had ever pressed him to guess what the woman smelled like, he’d have named blood before perfume. Nuzzling closer, breathing her in, he slid his hand back up her thigh. “You can dance around it all you like, but there’s no taking it back.”
Reida moaned her approval when he curled his hand beneath her and slowly stroked her.
He felt the button of his pants pop, just as he laid a kiss beneath her ear. “And you can keep stalling,” said Reida, “but you’ve got no room for denial either.”
“I, uh, I-” His pants slid down off his hips, and the groan that escaped him as he felt her fist close around him was quickly lost against her lips.
“Mmm,” said Reida, stroking him roughly. He hooked a finger into her panties and slid it across her flesh and she moaned again.
He couldn’t believe he was doing this, kissing Reida, touching Reida… still conscious and standing on his own feet after gods only knew how much gin. She kissed him harder and harder still, her tongue sliding between his teeth. He gripped the counter for support and slid a finger inside her and another.
She let loose of his lips to throw back her head with a groan, and he found himself staring at the stark white of her throat against the ruddy cloud of her hair, clutching the bar and focused on matching the rhythm of her hand with his own.
And then he stopped. “Reida…”
Her head snapped back straight and her eyes narrowed. “What now?”
“I-it’s n-not…” he stammered, looking down at the hand thrust up her skirt. A slow flex of the fingers buried inside her sent a shudder through her. He found himself about to do it again and stilled himself. “I-it’s not mutual… I mean, I’m not in love-”
Reida fisted a hand in his hair and jerked his head up to meet her glare. “Just shut up and fuck me, bitch.”
Giggling at that, though somewhere deep inside he knew it should be frightening, he pulled his hand from her and curled it around the bar with the other. He braced his feet against the rail and stretched up to meet her.
He thrust into her and she pulled him in, her boot in his back again. Her lips were on his, her tongue exploring his mouth, and he clung to the counter as if it were a cliff from which he might fall.
It didn’t last long, and Kairn highly doubted he would have gotten particularly good marks on his performance if he dared to ask her, but what did she expect, seducing a man full of gin on top of a bar? Then again, if she was faking it, she was putting a great deal of effort into it, kissing and clawing at him and moaning as they rocked against the bar.
When he staggered down off the step and collapsed against the stool a few minutes later, light headed and shaking, he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all. Reida was still perched on the bar, slithering the rest of the way out of her gin-spattered dress and grinning at him like a fool.
“You’re a mess,” she said.
Kairn brought a shaking hand to his sticky hair and eyed the wet and rumpled clothes that hung off of him and laughed. “And you love me anyway,” he said.
with Hot Fudge and Chopped Nuts
Story : knights & necromancers
Rating : R (semi-explicit sexytimes)
Timeframe : 1270's
Word Count : 3886
claiming amnesty for Falootin's XXX Afternoon Delight
I started this last November for my first origfic_bingo card, the prompt being "drunken declarations of love". Kairn, Reida, a lot of booze, a little sex...and mostly just Kairn sticking his foot his mouth over and over. ONE MORE LL TO GO!
Kairn shuffled into the inn’s common room, which was poorly lit and sparsely occupied at this hour. A quick sweep of the bar and tables found no sign of Lyssa, much to his relief. He picked his way past empty tables and drunken patrons to the bar and hauled himself up onto a stool. Propping his elbows on the bar, he lowered his head into his hands.
“What can I getcha?” the bartender called.
About to answer with his usual request for water, Kairn paused. He rubbed his head for a moment before he said, “Something hard. Cheap. I don’t care what.”
“Here, your girlfriend likes this.” A glass of something clear slid along the counter.
Kairn shifted his head to one hand and reached out the other to catch it. “My girlfriend,” he muttered, scowling down at the drink, a lump rising in his throat. He swallowed. No sense in bothering to argue.
He gave the glass a sniff. It reeked like some medical astringent and made his eyes water. He could feel the bartender’s eyes on him, so he lifted it to his mouth and took a gulp. The liquor burned his throat and left him choking and gasping. He slammed the glass back down on the bar.
The bartender was shaking his head. Coughing, Kairn thumped a fist against his chest and swallowed hard. “Leave the bottle,” he said.
That got him a laugh, but the bottle stayed as the bartender headed off to another customer. Kairn faced the glass with a sigh. He pinched his nose, tipped his head, and poured as much as he could down his throat before he started choking again.
A hand curled over his shoulder, and still gagging on the liquor, he jumped. There was Reida behind him, all curled lips and pearly teeth. For a moment, Kairn would have liked to think she was a product of the alcohol, but he wasn’t about to start attributing visions to a few gulps, so he conceded that she must be real.
“What do you want?” he said, wearily, turning back to the bar and his drink before she could answer. It just figured she’d show up now.
“So,” said Reida, hoisting herself on one knee on the stool beside him. The bartender shot her a look as she leaned over the counter to feel about the shelves on the back of the bar, but she ignored him. Kairn took another gulp from his glass and did his best to pretend neither was there. After a moment, she bobbed back up, glass in hand. “Mercenary bitch left you?”
Kairn eyed the glass poised over the bar, waiting for him to fill it, and shoved the bottle away. “No,” he said, firmly, before downing the rest of his drink. Somehow the bitterness was quickly diminishing. “I left her.”
Reida laughed, and Kairn’s hand tightened around his glass as he brought it back to the counter. “Right.”
“I got tired of coming second.”
Snickering, she lunged in front of him for the bottle.
“What?”
“You know,” she said, pouring herself a drink and him another, “I’ve got a few forms that’ll let you go as many times as you like.”
Under the alcohol’s influence, the blush that seeped across his cheeks felt like flame. Kairn shook his head. It didn’t lessen the warmth any, just made the room spin, and he found himself grinning at the sudden thought of Reida frantically scrawling lines on some poor man‘s flesh. “You would, wouldn’t you.”
She leaned in, her grin spreading even wider. “I could show you.”
Then it was clearly his body he was envisioning her drawing on, and there was nothing to do for it but take another drink.
Reida settled back in her seat with a sigh. “So,” she said, “you showed the slut the door. And now you’re here wallowing in… whatever this is you’re wallowing in.” She lifted her glass to squint and frown at the contents.
“I think it’s gin.” He turned the bottle, and Reida wrinkled her nose at the label but took a cautious sip from her glass.
“Classy.”
Kairn shrugged and emptied his glass. It didn’t taste like much of anything anymore. Slumped against the counter, he gave the empty glass a slow turn and it seemed the room turned with it. “You know… I could’ve kept her, if we’d have both just kept our mouths shut. But she had to…” Somehow it was too much to put words to, so he just twirled his glass some more. “And then I went got a backbone for once and…” He sighed, letting the glass wobble to a halt. “A-and now I’ve got nothing.”
“That made so much sense.”
Kairn turned to scowl at her and the motion set off a buzzing in his head. “Right. ‘cause I owe you an explanation, don’t I?”
“You’re right. Enough with the talk. There are better ways to get your mind off your whore of a girlfriend.”
She’d put her drink aside and her hand was now working its way up his arm, and for a moment all he could think was that it felt unbelievably good to have her touching him. Something in him managed to hold onto the fact that this was Reida he was dealing with and instead of leaning into it, he gave the hand a disdainful stare. “Like what?” he said. “Being with an actual whore?”
Reida snatched her hand back as if he’d struck it, but her grin quickly slid back into place. “At least I had the sense to ask for payment. The way your woman gives it out…”
There was a long pause Kairn wasn’t entirely sure was real, in which her eyes slid slowly up and down his body and he struggled with the sense that he might at any moment topple from his stool. Then her hand was on him again, stroking its way up his arm, and he gave up and leaned into it as it kneaded a path across his chest.
“What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on you, though.” Braced against the bar, teetering on the edge of her seat, she was practically in his lap now. “Poor, pathetic, lonely little girl.” Too occupied with the fingers that were now curling around the back of his neck, he didn’t rise to the insult. “I could make you feel so much better.” He was leaning in too to meet her, reveling in her touch, drowning in the thought that she wanted him so badly.
For the second time that night there was a sudden, painful understanding that hit him like a rock in the stomach, and as he had with Lyssa before, he pushed Reida away. “You’re as bad as Lyssa,” he said, his throat suddenly tight and dry. He threw a hand out to catch the edge of the bar as he swayed on his stool. “You always wanted Sethan, but you’d settle for me if I’d have let you.” She was staring at him in open-mouthed shock, and he tumbled on, volume and pitch rising with his anger. “You all think I’m so pathetic I’ll just take whatever attention I can get and be happy for it. I’m not some consolation prize!”
He wasn’t sure what he expected; an apology, an insistence that he was wrong, a drunken, boneless flop off his stool and a nap on the floor. What he got was a face full of gin.
“You stupid, stupid, blind, self-centered, little bitch!” she snapped, the hand clutching her empty glass shaking.
Kairn blinked at her through the rivulets of gin coursing off his hair. “I’m self-centered?”
Reida slammed her glass down on the bar and hopped off her stool. “Do you think I’m even your second choice? Do I even make the list?”
“Like you care?” She was turning away from him and buttoning up her cloak, and he was wishing he had a bit less liquor in him so the whole thing might make a bit more sense. “Like you’ve ever wanted anything but to paw me.”
“You’d enjoy it, too. If I was still offering.”
“I still don’t get what I did.” He made to scratch his head but quickly retracted his hand.
“You really are stupid, aren’t you?” she said, as he searched his pants for a spot dry enough to wipe his hand on. After a few swipes it was still sticky and he gave up. Reida was staring at him, brows knit, lips thrust out in a stiff pout. “You know, you’re so drunk right now you won’t even remember if I- forget it.” Her voice was as shaky as her hands. She spun away and he made a clumsy grab for her arm.
“Hold on.” He caught her sleeve with the second swipe and then grabbed the bar again as he nearly fell. “You…you have feelings for me, don’t you?”
She turned back to him, with that usual cold, slick grin of hers, and her eyes fell to his lap. “You bet I do.”
“Other than the ones between your legs,” he said, his fingers clenching against her arm. Somehow, he couldn’t help but giggle at even the thought of it, but he still managed to get the words out. “You’re in love with me.”
“And you’re so drunk off your ass you’re delusional.”
He yanked her to him, threw his arm around her back, and kissed her full on the lips. There was a long moment in which her lips worked forcefully against his own and he could feel the pounding of her heart where she pressed against him, that was so exhilarating and yet so ridiculous he wanted both to laugh at it and to never let it end.
She pulled away with a sharp stare and a swift, perfunctory lick of her lips, even as her chest heaved and her breath came in ragged gasps. “You taste like gin.”
“And whose fault is that?” said Kairn, still not letting her go.
Reida scowled down at the damp patch on the front of her cloak. “That’d be yours, princess.”
“Princess, am I now?” he said, grinning in spite of himself. “S’pose that’s better than bitch.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She gave her lips another lick. “Self-centered little drunken princess who thinks the whole world’s in love with her.”
“Not the world, just you.” It took him a couple of tries to get his hand around his drink and he brought it shakily to his lips.
“I think I liked you better when you were a bitch.” She started to run a finger down the center of his chest, frowning as it slid into a patch of gin, and Kairn took a deep gulp. “You need to learn your place.”
Kairn choked on a laugh. Gin tickled the back of his nose, and he plunked the glass back down on the counter hard. “I don’t think I need to ask where that is.”
Reida leaned back to fix him with a grin, her thick, red lips peeled back to reveal her perfect, pearly teeth, her finger still planted on his chest, and Kairn swallowed hard again.
“Do I get to show you anyway?”
His eyes traced the surface of her lips and he thought about tasting them again, about feeling her against him, beneath him, about the warmth of her flesh and the curves of her body. He bit his lip and shifted in his seat. Was it just the gin or had he never really looked at her before?
“Well?” said Reida, and her hand dipped lower, lingering just above his navel.
He cupped a hand around her cheek and gently tipped her chin up. “Tell me the truth first,” he said. “I want to hear you say you’re in love with me.”
She glared at him. “Will saying it get me laid?”
Kairn slid his hand down off her cheek. She stiffened and gasped as it skimmed over her breast and along her ribs. “If I’ve still got the coordination for such a thing,” he said.
Reida eyed the hand as it made a clumsy attempt to retrace its path back up her front. “Fine,” she said, stiffly. “I am completely, madly, head over heels in love with your pathetic, girly ass.”
Teetering on his stool, Kairn giggled. “Told you.”
Reida fisted her hand in his shirt. Kairn tumbled from his seat into a shaky but upright landing between Reida and the bar. She pulled him in until she could press her nose to his and stare him straight in the eye. “I said it, and now you’re going to take me upstairs and thank me properly for it. You hear me?”
The only response Kairn could come up with was a laugh. Reida let go of him with an aggravated sigh and he staggered back into his stool. “There’s just a little problem,” he said, clutching at the bar for support.
“Oh?” Reida planted her hands on her hips.
“I don’t know if I can make it back to the room.”
Reida leaned back against the bar, stretched her arms wide and draped them along the counter’s edge, and arched her back and thrust her chest out and upward. “Well, then,” she said. “We’ll just have to do it here.”
Kairn grabbed the bar and the rim of his stool as he stumbled. “H-h-here?” He gulped and glanced around the room. There was only one table still occupied, two of its guests still seated, a third slumped on the floor and snoring loudly. The bartender was wiping down the far end of the counter. Kairn turned back to Reida to find her unbuttoning her cloak. “Th-there are p-people here.”
The cloak fell open and she moved right along to the laces of her dress, and Kairn just stared as the tops of her breasts came into view. Reida gave the remaining patrons a look and wrinkled her nose. “If you want to call them that.”
“Regardless. I’m not giving them a peep show.”
“Oops!” said Reida, hopping up onto the bar with a grin. “Too late!” She gave the laces a sharp tug and the front of her dress fell open.
“Hey!” called the bartender. “What do you think you’re doing? Get off my bar! And put some clothes back on! This is an inn, not a whorehouse.”
Reida pulled a sigil-lined cloth from her pocket with a flourish and brandished it at the bartender with an ominous “Make me.”
“Reida!” Kairn yelped, and he made an awkward lunge towards the bar and swung a shaking hand and missed the cloth by a mile.
The bartender was charging towards Reida now, and Kairn didn’t see himself being much use in stopping her, clinging to the bar to keep himself upright as he was. With a laugh, she simply swatted him with the cloth as he drew near, and the man vanished completely on contact.
There was a loud rumbling and scraping as the remaining patrons leapt to their feet.
“What did you do to him?” said Kairn.
Reida was carefully folding the cloth, preparing to return it to her pocket. “Earth spell,” she said. “I teleported him. Oh, don’t look at me like that, he’s in one piece. Wherever he is.” She peered over his head at the pair of men closing in on them as she stuffed the cloth back into her cloak and grinned. “You fellows want to join him?”
The two stopped short halfway to the bar. “W-we were just leaving!” said one, gaping at the half-naked woman on the bar. He elbowed his companion sharply in the ribs. “Right?”
“Right,” said the other, and without another word, they both bolted for the door.
“Hey,” called Kairn. “You forgot-” The door slammed shut behind them and he turned back to Reida. “They forgot their friend.”
Reida eyed the body still curled up under the table and wrinkled her nose. “He’s not going to bother us.”
“R-right. So…”
“So,” said Reida, spreading her arms to lean back on the bar. “We have the bar to ourselves, and I have you to myself.” She hooked a leg around his back and pulled him in.
Kairn laughed nervously as he staggered towards her. “You know, it’s funny, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours ago that I was upstairs with Lyssa and now-”
Her eyes hardened, her lip curled, and the grip her leg had on him tightened. “Mention her again and I’ll have to hurt you,” she snarled.
“So’s that mean you want me to mention her again or that you don’t?”
“Very funny,” said Reida, but she seemed to relax a bit. “If I wanted to hurt you do you think I’d wait for an excuse?”
“I don’t even know what to say anymore.” And really, with his nose inches from Reida’s very nearly bare breasts it was hard to remember words at all. “I mean, you really-”
“Oh, get over yourself, will you?”
“You know,” he said, and she all but purred as he slid a hand up the inside of her thigh, just under the hem of her skirt. “There are better ways of showing it than pincers and rats, and traps and death threats.”
Reida curled a hand around the back of his head and bent until her eyes were level with his. “Like this?” She kissed him forcefully, hungrily, until he was clutching at her and aching for breath.
She released him, and if not for the boot still lodged against his back, he might have simply tumbled to the floor. “Th-that’s, uh, that’s a start, yeah.”
“Now,” she said, hiking up her skirt, “you were headed somewhere here?”
“I was.” He stopped, hand out, to stare in shock. As the fabric rose, it revealed beneath it an ugly webbing of scar tissue. He laid his hand gingerly at the edge of the discoloration and dragged a finger slowly, gently up one of the vicious strokes that laced her flesh. “What happened to your-” He stopped again. “Ephram,” he said, sourly.
“Oh, don’t be such a bleeding heart.” Reida slapped a hand over his, pressing it flat and dragging it higher. “I’m fine.”
“I should have done something.”
“What? Like lop his head off sooner?”
“No! Well, maybe. I-I should have been there for you somehow.”
“Well, we’re both here now. You know, I stuck around so you’d fuck me, not ‘cause I wanted to reminisce.”
“R-right,” said Kairn. “Right.” He leaned back in to kiss her again, his hand sliding further up her thigh, slipping underneath her skirt.
He stopped just short of the edge of her panties. “So, why me?”
“Huh?”
“What do you even see in me? I’m not powerful, not good looking. I haven’t done anything special to win you over; I just barely see you as a human being.” He swayed a bit on his feet and hung on to her leg to steady himself. “That’s it, isn’t it? I’m the only one that ever treated you like a person, and-”
“Gods! Are we really going to keep revisiting this all night?”
“I-I just-”
“You talk enough when you’re sober. Liquor you up a bit and you don’t shut up for a minute.” She picked open the top button of his shirt, gave the slight bit of flesh exposed by this a smirk, and moved on to the next. “Look,” she said, reaching for the third, “what I see, right in front of me, this instant, is a good little bitch who’s going to quit her yapping and do what I say if she knows what’s good for her.”
She was leaning so far forward now to pull the last few buttons from their holes that Kairn found his nose buried in her hair. Funny, if anyone had ever pressed him to guess what the woman smelled like, he’d have named blood before perfume. Nuzzling closer, breathing her in, he slid his hand back up her thigh. “You can dance around it all you like, but there’s no taking it back.”
Reida moaned her approval when he curled his hand beneath her and slowly stroked her.
He felt the button of his pants pop, just as he laid a kiss beneath her ear. “And you can keep stalling,” said Reida, “but you’ve got no room for denial either.”
“I, uh, I-” His pants slid down off his hips, and the groan that escaped him as he felt her fist close around him was quickly lost against her lips.
“Mmm,” said Reida, stroking him roughly. He hooked a finger into her panties and slid it across her flesh and she moaned again.
He couldn’t believe he was doing this, kissing Reida, touching Reida… still conscious and standing on his own feet after gods only knew how much gin. She kissed him harder and harder still, her tongue sliding between his teeth. He gripped the counter for support and slid a finger inside her and another.
She let loose of his lips to throw back her head with a groan, and he found himself staring at the stark white of her throat against the ruddy cloud of her hair, clutching the bar and focused on matching the rhythm of her hand with his own.
And then he stopped. “Reida…”
Her head snapped back straight and her eyes narrowed. “What now?”
“I-it’s n-not…” he stammered, looking down at the hand thrust up her skirt. A slow flex of the fingers buried inside her sent a shudder through her. He found himself about to do it again and stilled himself. “I-it’s not mutual… I mean, I’m not in love-”
Reida fisted a hand in his hair and jerked his head up to meet her glare. “Just shut up and fuck me, bitch.”
Giggling at that, though somewhere deep inside he knew it should be frightening, he pulled his hand from her and curled it around the bar with the other. He braced his feet against the rail and stretched up to meet her.
He thrust into her and she pulled him in, her boot in his back again. Her lips were on his, her tongue exploring his mouth, and he clung to the counter as if it were a cliff from which he might fall.
It didn’t last long, and Kairn highly doubted he would have gotten particularly good marks on his performance if he dared to ask her, but what did she expect, seducing a man full of gin on top of a bar? Then again, if she was faking it, she was putting a great deal of effort into it, kissing and clawing at him and moaning as they rocked against the bar.
When he staggered down off the step and collapsed against the stool a few minutes later, light headed and shaking, he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all. Reida was still perched on the bar, slithering the rest of the way out of her gin-spattered dress and grinning at him like a fool.
“You’re a mess,” she said.
Kairn brought a shaking hand to his sticky hair and eyed the wet and rumpled clothes that hung off of him and laughed. “And you love me anyway,” he said.