The Inn Ch. 01

When the bra came off, it unleashed two absolutely perfect, smooth, dark breasts - not huge, but ample enough and shaped like God had commissioned his favorite sculptor to design them.

Or I guess Kethera, goddess of beauty, in this world, right?

"Hellpits and demons, my tits are glad to be out of that," she said, looking down and massaging them two-handed.

"Yeah, I'm glad they're out of that too," I said honestly.

She grinned at me and gave her thimble-sized nipples a tweak, then undid her belts and leaned to toss the sheathed swords across the desk. Her eyes fell below my waist as she undid a set of brass buttons down the front of her pants. "Fancy bloomers you've got there! Who's your tailor?"

"Uh, fellow named Hanes," I said, getting my socks off as she continued to eye my boxer briefs. "Surprisingly cheap, but he's a long way off."

"Well, shuck them and toss them over so I can spread everything out by the fire and we can get to it."

With that, she stripped away her pants and underwear at the same time, then turned and bent to lay them out in front of the fireplace.

I did not immediately do what she'd told me to.

Fucking hell, I thought instead, my eyes probably the size of half-dollars. She had the long, sleek, toned legs of an athlete, of course - absolutely drool-worthy despite a couple of long scars here and there. But what froze me in place was her ass and the peek of her cunt lips between her legs as she bent over facing away from me. My cock turned into one of those indestructible comic-book alloys the superheroes make their armor out of - hyperdickanium or something.

As she rose back up, I shook myself from paralysis and yanked down my underwear before she turned around and saw me staring. Or maybe not quite before, because she grinned that grin at me again and said, "Looks like my assets were putting Master Hanes's seamwork to the test, eh?"

I swallowed and handed her the briefs, trying to move nonchalantly - not easy when you're waving a hyperdickanium erection around in front of you. She tossed them to a bare spot on the floor and straightened them out with a toe. The muscles of her inner thigh tautened and shifted with each graceful motion of her foot, further engorging my prong, now freely leaking precum.

"Am I doing all the work here?" she asked, putting hands to hips and raising an eyebrow. "You could at least throw back the bedcovers, couldn't you?"

"Sorry," I said, blushing and turning to the bed. But she only laughed.

"Teasing," Juliette said as I drew back the blankets and sheets. "I'm as fond of getting stared at by a helplessly aroused man as any woman is."

Then, before I could turn back again, she came in behind me, reached around to grab my cock and my chest, one hand each, and pulled me flat against her. The incredible strength of her muscles gob-smacked me. If I'd been trying to resist, I would have failed utterly.

But, no way would I ever have tried to resist this.

Her lips and then tongue ran up my throat to my right earlobe. I could feel the hard beads of her nipples just under my shoulder blades. Her left hand squeezed at my right pectoral. Her right hand pumped my cock once, then twice.

"Now, Simon," she breathed roughly into my ear, "how do they like to get things started in this far-away place you're from?"

I moaned a little and shivered as she trapped my earlobe between her teeth. "They, uh, don't complain if things get started about like this."

"Hmm." She traced the circumference of my nipple with one finger as she slid her grip forward and then back along my shaft, slicking it with streaks of thick, glossy fluid from the tip.

"Oh god, that's good," I said. Her mouth explored my trapezius and she scraped her incisors there. "Uhhhh ... yeah, that's ... that's definitely a way to get things started."

The hand on my rod worked me more firmly now. Fuck, she's going to make me come like a virgin teenager if this keeps up.

"Look," I said, "I could put my tongue to work down between your legs if you want - we get things going that way too, where I'm from."

"Hah!" She spun me around, her eyes and teeth flashing, then pushed me over onto the bed like I was a life-size carnival plush doll. "You're made of tougher stuff than I am, if you could go down on the two days of saddle sweat since my last bath!"

"Oh. Well -" Before I could get anything more out, or do more than straighten my legs a bit on the mattress, she prowled over me like a panther, her black hair loose and still damp, her body fiercely female and intimately intimidating.

"Listen, Simon from very-far-away," she said, staring down into my eyes. "I'm a quick fire to light and I'll burn as long as you can keep my coals fed. Are you ready to fuck?"

I nodded. She grinned.

"Good."

And with that, she dropped her hips and engulfed me - didn't even have to guide me in with a hand.

"Oh, Jesus!" I gasped. The slide of her around me, wet and delicious with a ferociously muscular grip, just about popped my eyes out. "Holy fuck, Juliette!"

She brought her lips down to mine and ground herself all the way to my root, clit pressing hard to my pubic arch, hips rolling, those magnificent breasts swaying just above my chest to graze me with their soft curves and engorged nipples. My hands made their way unthinkingly along her thighs and up and around to the powerful hills of her ass, feeling their relentless muscular rhythm as I thrust up in time to her motions.

"Yessss," she whispered, the sinuous, titan-strong curve of her spine pressing her belly down against mine. Crushed beneath her, I could feel her abs working, tighter and firmer than my own. "Yes, keep going ..."

Holy shit. Julia Ravendark is fucking me - and loving it.

I watched the clench of her brow as her breath quickened through her nose, then switched roughly to her mouth to break our kisses with ragged gasps each time she rocked herself forward and back atop me. Her tongue lunged past my lips, clashed against mine, retreated to let her breathe, then returned. Groaning into her mouth, I wrapped my arms around her back and felt the gliding steely planes of muscle there as I jammed my hips up to match the roll of our groins together.

A sense of heroic prowess burned through me - an awareness of her magnificence and an amazement that I could keep up with her, please her, make her growl with raw sexual appreciation. My cock had the strength of a dragon's tail, burying itself in the golden trove of her cunt, reveling in the smooth, flowing treasure hoarded there. Again and again, I plunged into the riches of her mound, where she heaped ecstasy upon me in a slide and glide of diamond-brilliant sex.

"Close ..." she gasped atop me. The fluid heat of her snatch stroked my cock lightning-fast. Her teeth clenched and a couple of powerful grunts escaped her. "Close ... keep at it, Simon ... there ... that ..."

We'd started off clammy and damp from the rain - and now the sweat drenched us even wetter than the storm had. The slick, sweet gloss of her dark skin floated along mine as she rode me, clutching tight. I kissed salty beads from her throat, her collarbone. She lifted up and thrust a breast at my mouth so I could latch onto its firm brown nub and broad areola, suckling, tasting her passion in the perspiration that coated it.

"Yes, Simon - YES!" A roar of animal release burst from her throat. She stiffened and spasmed, her nails digging into my deltoids as she came. Her cunt tightened around me with the throbbing tides of her orgasm. "AH! Ahhhh - NGHH!"

I'd never felt a woman come so hard. It was like being fucked by a blood-pressure cuff.

And it didn't stop. The incredible, pulsating, drenching pleasure should have made me spew within seconds, but I was so awestruck by the bestial delight on her face that I kept dazedly thrusting and thrusting up as she bucked atop me and swore with climax.

"Glor's mighty cudgel, yes, fuck me!"

Somehow, I did. My dick had never had anything like this. Heat and cunt juice poured along my length. Smooth, fearsomely strong flesh oscillated in and out around me. Back and forth and back and forth she rode, dark skin gleaming with exertion, gorgeous face taut and tremorous with orgasm, voice an unending hail to the gods of sexual release. The purity and perfection of her moment held me like an insect caught in a flow of sensual amber. I was fossilized by her reveling bliss.

And then I came unstuck.

"Oh my god, Juliette!"

My balls let loose like the clouds had done earlier. Jets of carnal satisfaction erupted from me up into her still-hungry, still-grinding snatch.

"Uh!" Juliette's eyes and smile flashed as her movements slowed. "Ah! Yes ... there we go."

I just held on for dear life, still fountaining up inside her, panting and gasping as the white joy gushed. She rolled her hips languidly to coax a few more dwindling expulsions from me.

"Hmmmm," she purred when my erection finally surrendered and fell still. She rubbed my shoulders and nibbled at my chin. "Good man."

"Thank you," I said weakly. "You're ... really something, yourself ..."

"So I've been told." A finger toyed with the hair over my ear. "Know what else I've been told?"

I shook my head. Her most wicked grin returned.

"That I'm even better on the second go."

"Oh good lord."

Juliette Ravendark laughed, then fell to kissing me again.

* * *

I woke to morning sunlight through a window, accompanied by the sounds of birds. For half a second, I thought I'd come out of the dream and now lay in one of Lord Weltfordshire's many guest bedrooms. But the lumpiness of the mattress and close, crude-grained wooden walls dispelled that idea before it could even fully form.

Where's Juliette?

Throwing back the covers, I swiveled to sit at the edge of the bed, clearly alone in the tiny room. The ache in my groin brought back flashes of the previous afternoon and evening, when we'd gone at it two more times with such robust, athletic fucking that I'd fallen asleep from exhaustion after my last orgasm.

My clothes still lay spread on the floor. Juliette's did not.

I got up and dressed hurriedly - both because the room had gone cold once the fire died, and because my heroine's disappearance half-panicked me.

Downstairs, the serving girl - Leyna? Lenya? - stood shifting plates of eggs and sausage from a tray on her shoulder to a table between two ample-waisted male travelers. A burly fellow polished the bar from its far side. Otherwise, the room lay empty.

My nerves made me want to hurry over and ask the bartender where Juliette might be. But the man had a dour look and did his polishing with disagreeable intensity.

I waited for the girl to finish serving her table.

"Oh, good morning, sir!" she said when she turned around. Her smile had that deep and genuine quality that would have put me right at ease if the one person I knew in this hallucinatory world hadn't vanished on me. "Can I get you some breakfast?"

"Have you seen Juliette? The woman I came in with yesterday?"

"Well, piss my britches," she said, smacking her free palm to her forehead beneath her fine golden bangs. "I'm sorry, I should have remembered and given this to you right off."

The hand went to her bosom, where I now saw that a folded piece of paper had been tucked through the low neckline over one full, pale breast. She plucked it out and held it toward me with a smile of contrition.

"Off before dawn, that one! But she wrote this for you and paid your room and board for a week."

A week?

I opened the paper up with an unsteady hand.

"Do you have your letters, then?" Leyna or Lenya asked with a bright-eyed smile.

"What?" Even as the word came out of my mouth, I realized she was asking whether I could read. "Yes, of course."

But when I looked down at the page, it wasn't even in English. My mouth must have hung open slightly, because she said, nicely, "You sure, then?"

I felt my face burning. Fortunately, something occurred to me and I looked again. Sure enough, the alphabet wasn't alien or foreign - it was a runic cipher I'd made up back in high school for my Dungeons and Dragons group. But I hadn't used it in years, not since writing an inscription to go over an ancient tomb in the second Juliette Ravendark book.

Clearing my throat, I said, "Yes, I can manage."

"Have a seat for some breakfast while you read it?"

"Um, sure."

I found a table by one of the front windows and pulled the fountain pen from my shirt pocket where I'd tucked it the day before. The bold black characters on the page - in a strong but flowing hand - looked entirely familiar, but didn't even begin to translate themselves as I stared. Still ... I could see a signature at the bottom, and a greeting at the top. The letters in those got me started, because the five-letter one had to be mine and the eight-letter one at the end, hers.

_oo_ mo_nin_, Simon,

[Short paragraph of gobbledegook]

Loo_in_ _o_ _ _ _ _ to _not_e_ tum_le _it_ _ou _oon,

Juliette

That let me figure out the first and last lines:

Good morning, Simon,

[Starting-to-look-less-gobbledegooky paragraph]

Looking forward to another tumble with you soon,

Juliette

By that point, I had seventeen letters to work with. The rest fell into place without too much trouble.

Good morning, Simon,

If they're all like you in your far-away land, I'll need directions for a visit sometime! Meantime, I've put my last shilling down to keep you fed and indoors a few days. If I've misjudged the state of your coin purse, sorry, and I'll get the money back from Leyna when I ride back through. My business in Vandestre shouldn't take more than a week, assuming my friend Ymbrod meets me there on time. Be nice if you're still around for me to plumb a few of your mysteries when I return!

Looking forward to another tumble with you soon,

Juliette

Leyna had put a plate of eggs and sausage on the table while I worked, but I suddenly had no appetite at all. Instead, I looked around the room at the two other diners, the gruff-looking bartender, and winsome young Leyna, who'd taken up her broom again to keep the area spick and span.

I've killed them all.

This was the start of The Doom of Necromanata. The fourth book in Juliette's series. The opening scene has Juliette show up at a tavern in Vandestre to meet a friend. Her first line is, "Ymbrod! On schedule for once! And thank Ofara, you've already bought the drinks? Brilliant! I spent my last shilling on the ferry across the Elderflow - was betting I'd have to wait on you here with a throat as dry as a Proodlin nun's vagina."

If Juliette spent her last shilling on my room instead of the ferry, she'd have to take the Cooperdam bridge to cross the Elderflow. If she rode to Cooperdam, that's three hours north and three hours back, and instead of arriving just shy of lunch, she'll get there near nightfall. If she shows up at nightfall, she and Ymbrod will stay over in Vandestre instead of getting in an afternoon's travel today. If they stay over they won't reach Sanderton in the nick of time to save Pelfreyda Lightfingers from being hung on just slightly trumped up charges of larceny.

If Pelfreyda Lightfingers swings from the gallows, then instead of narrowly escaping the Maze of Dissolving Eyes thanks to her lockpicking skills, the whole group will die a horrible death.

Dear god ... Juliette, Ymbrod, Pelfreyda, Halvard the Twisted, Mikila Magestone ... all turned to ocular goo by the Maze. Well, not Pelfreyda, she'll be dead from hanging.

If they die, no one will put together the clues they're supposed to find in the next few days.

If no one puts together the clues and confronts Necromanata, he'll summon his undead army and finalize his pact with the orcs of Sutherdun.

If that happens the two armies will sweep across the empire destroying everything in a frenzy of rape and unholy devouring.

Thanks to me stumbling across Juliette Ravendark in the rain, every decent person in a thousand miles would be enslaved, or dead, or enslaved and then dead, or enslaved and then dead and then undead, within about six months.

I had no clue how to do anything about it, especially considering my assets consisted of the clothes on my back, a week's room and board ...

And a pen.