The Inn Ch. 12

[The story so far: Simon Kettridge is a fantasy writer transported to the world of his novels. Necromanata is an evil necromancer threatening the realm with destruction. Leyna is the serving maid and resident courtesan at the inn where Simon finds himself staying – the Nestled Goose. She also happens to be Necromanata's daughter. While trying to write a series of letters to people who might stop Necromanata's plot, Simon falls in love with Leyna, but gets himself kicked out of the Nestled Goose because his letters bring a couple of dangerous individuals and consequent strife to the inn. He also learns who she is, and that her mother may have been buried with a magical object that could destroy the arch-mage. To find the mother's final resting place, they need the help of a nature wizard, Yilma Greenwarden. Once Yilma has been sent for, Leyna sets Simon up in the hayloft of the stables, where the two of them finally consummate their relationship.]

"I half didn't think this was ever going to happen," Leyna said quietly, toying with the hair on my chest as we lay beneath rough woolen blankets and let the sweat from our recent sex dry.

"Really?" I asked. "I've been dying to get you in bed since maybe the second or third time I talked to you."

She laughed, her blue eyes sparkling in the lamplight. "No, sillybear. I've intended on fucking you even longer than that. I was talking about ... this."

Her hand took mine and lifted it, turned it, pressed it to her sternum between her breasts. I felt her breathing more than her heartbeat, but the intended message pulsed through me loud and clear.

"I've had a toss or two or twenty for fun and for lust," she went on, "and I've sixpenced out my cunt more times than I'd care to tally up. But I haven't been made love to till just now. Not right and proper – not so that phrase is really true."

A quiver snuck through me, made my arms around her draw tighter and my cock inside her rouse a fraction from its soft, spent state. Leyna felt it, I'm sure, and it broadened and sweetened her smile. But she said nothing. Somewhere in the stalls below, a horse or mule shifted and scuffed a hoof. Crickets chirred outside, so that the night felt alive and large and yet also quiescent – as though suspended just for us, in reverence.

And where a month ago I would have said I'd made love to plenty of women, now I found myself less sure that any of the others qualified.

"Are you surprised?" she asked.

"A little," I said, bringing a hand up to her shoulder to caress it. "You're so beautiful and lively and clever and talented –"

"And well-bosomed!"

"– and well-bosomed ..." I cleared my throat. "You must have had men falling all over themselves in love with you for years."

She shrugged. "I suppose. But Burgham scares off the locals, and it's a right rare one passing through that I don't make pay. A fellow or two has caught my eye now and again. Only the more genteel ones hesitate to woo a slattern, and the less genteel ones ... well, what would I want with them, except their coins or a prong-brought dose of Ofara's loin-quake?"

"I take it I'm on the more genteel end of things?"

"You're in the middle," she said vivaciously. "Kind and well-mannered but not afraid of where your manhood might take you when it's got its –" Her hips gave a glorious wiggle. "– blood up."

"Don't distract me," I scowled. "I'm not done telling you how amazing you are yet."

Leaning down, she kissed me. Then, leaning farther, she nibbled at an earlobe and whispered, "Why don't you tell me from on top of me?"

"Um ..."

"Roll me over and make love to me again, Simon. Now I've had it done to me once, I find I have an appetite for it."

How was I to resist that? And even if I wanted to, once she began the motion, I had to rotate with her or the space would open between us and I'd slip out and we would be apart.Can't have that, can we?

So with a graceful turn and shift that took both of us movingjustright, I wound up atop her, with her arms and legs wrapped around me, breasts to my chest, lips seeking mine and melding to them adoringly. The crickets and the horse huffs and the stable smells and hay-scent of our bed should have made a coarse atmosphere for such a tender moment. But instead, they set off the elegant fullness of my lover's figure, the perfect gold of her hair, the absolute devotion with which she moved in time with me, responsive and warm and, in that moment, everything I could want.

"Ahhh," she sighed, breaking our kiss while her fingers threaded their way through my hair and her eyes drank in each corner and curve of my face. Lower, she rocked her hips needfully, pulling me deeper with the hook of her heels, plying wet bliss all along the hard, buried beam of my cock. "You're a thing of joy, do you know?"

"I'm ... starting to," I panted. Each thrust plunged my cock into a new depth of ecstasy and brought a quick breath from her, or a twitch of her chin, or a faint, involuntary tremor in her lower lip. "I don't know how you do it ... but you make me feel ..."

"Oh!" Her back arched and her shoulders trembled. "Oh, Simon, what? What do I make you feel?"

Intoxicated.

Orgasmic.

Giddy.

Blessed. Beloved. Worthy.

I gazed at her, my mouth open, struck mute by the roiling sexual delight of her cunt. The word was there, ready to come out, but too odd and startling for my head to get control of the apparatus of speech.

She clutched me tight, her whole body moving in waves to milk my shaft to the utter pinnacle of swollen rigidity.

"Uhh ..." she gasped. "Uh, what? Hmnnhh – nng – what, Simon – what ... oooh ... do you ... hn- hn- h-ahhh ... feeeel ...?"

Watching the spasms take hold and shake her, I felt truth surging up out of my throat and my balls at the same instant. Helplessly, I dropped my mouth to her ear and plunged my cock as deep in as it would go and let loose and groaned it:

"Mated."

"Oh, sweet Saint Eldivara!!!"

If the whole town didn't hear her cry out in heedless ecstasy, then at the very least everyone inside the Nestled Goose must have. Her voice exploded passion as my dick flung blissful gouts of divinity up into her, surges and flows of lava-hot seed that sought her core as if to interweave us beyond the possibility of detachment. When the pleasure dimmed from blinding to merely euphoric, I heard enough shiftings and stirrings below our hayloft to think we'd woken every creature in the stables.

Leyna gave a few more trembles and squeaks before settling into limp contentment with a sigh. We breathed together for a bit, exhaling in turns so that her belly drifted lower as my chest expanded, then swelled as the air left my lungs. Her eyes came open a few minutes into it, exploring my face, speaking in visual regard.

I kissed her.

"Mmm, Simon," she said with another long breath. "I could see and feel that you meant it, when you said it. Do you still? Or was it sex, galing you out of this world into that one where everything feels like love?"

Smoothing her hair with the backs of my fingers, I contemplated it.Mated.

"It's all right if you said it reckless and out of your head." She smiled a smile unshackled by any doubt. "You meant it in the moment, and I think I can make you mean it again."

"I shouldn't," I said, teasing her blonde locks back out of place from where I'd tidied them, and then returning them to neatness with a fingertip. "I've only known you a few weeks. We're from ...verydifferent places. I barely have a sense of what's real and what's not anymore. Saying something like that, in the middle of sex – it ought to be an embarrassment. Me being a fool and thinking with my dick."

She laughed. "What a way you have of reassuring a girl!"

"I'm getting around to a point." I did my best to give her a scowl. But my best scowl at that moment only widened her smile and made those blue eyes flash.

"And taking your time at it!"

I shut my mouth and waited.

"Oh, all right," she said, scrubbing a soft palm against my shoulder blade. "Go ahead, then."

"Thank you. Now, what I was saying was, Ioughtto be back-pedaling as fast as I can. Even if I thought that was really me, speaking my heart, I ought to be terrified that you don't feel the same way, that I'll scare you off by sounding like a crazy person."

"This speech is full of a lot of 'shoulds' and 'oughts' ..."

"I'm trying to establish that I'm sensible enough to know what's right," I said. "Because what I said was right. And I want you to believe it and believe that I believe it."

She blinked rapidly a few times, still smiling. I could see the emotion tightening the corners of her mouth and of her eyes.

"Do you believe me?"

A nod, quick and certain. "I do ... and you know I do, so I don't half get why you're asking."

"Because hearing it is every bit as good as feeling you around me and beneath me."

"Everybit?" she wiggled her hips, mischievously.

I kissed her. "Every bit, and better."

"Mated." The smile softened into wonder. Her eyes absorbed all they could of my gaze. "There's some might call that presumption. The usual thing is, a girl has to agree to such a state."

I shook my head. "Married, yes. Committed, yes. Promised, yes. But mated isn't an arrangement. It's a condition. It just ... is. Even if one half denies or refutes it. And anyway, you asked me how I felt, not what I expected of you or what I thought I deserved."

"Hmm," she said. "I notice you still haven't yet askedme, though. How I feel. Whether it's the same from my end."

"Because I know you're a bold enough woman to tell me once you're ready, and in the meantime, I love watching you be shy about it. You do shy very well."

"Thank you! That's very sweet of you to say." Her face rose to mine and brought our lips together in a long, slow, splendid kiss. "And now I'm ready."

I waited. And when she said nothing, my eyebrows lifted themselves in a question.

At that, Leyna's grin went wicked. "Not ready to tell you – ready for you to fuck me again. And I can feel the beam up in my belly that says you're ready too."

And I was.

* * *

The next morning, I woke to the sound of my name as Leyna whispered it in my ear. Full consciousness took its time settling in, but at last I turned my head and blinked at her beautiful face, inches from my own and softly shadowed because the lamp rested somewhere behind her.

"Morning," I said, smiling at the sight of her.

"Good morning," she replied, kissing me and then straightening to reveal that she'd already dressed herself – though not yet put on her corset. "Not as good as if I could stay here in the hay and play, but still. How are you this morning?"

"Good," I said. "Wonderful, actually. It's cold and I need to pee, but I'm terrific. How are you?"

She put a finger to her lips and gave a conspiratorial look in each direction before leaning close to whisper again. Then those pink, soft lips brushed my ear, saying:

"Mated."

She kissed me again before I could get over the rush of emotion, and her back turned briefly to me as she moved to the ladder, and she mounted it, got down to where just her head and shoulders showed, and said, "I'll be back by first light with a nip of breakfast for you and a piss pot, or you can go in the pasture if you really can't wait."

Then she blew me another kiss and disappeared, and I sank down under the blankets and listened to her cross the stable floor, roll the door aside, step out, and close it again.

* * *

So, have you ever been in one of those situations where you're trying to save the world, and you're madly in love with the one woman who can help you do it, and by all appearances she's just as crazy about you – but instead of saving the world or spending time with her, you're stuck sitting on a bench for three days and sleeping in a barn? Except that for most of the second day, it's raining and you can't even sit on the bench, but just have to huddle under some blankets on scratchy hay bales with the smell of horses all up your nose?

Well, that's how the next three days went for me.

Burgham kept Leyna even busier than normal with chores – or maybe it wasn't Burgham but the fact that another caravan came through. Whichever, I barely saw her by day, and two of the three nights she was bought and paid for and couldn't come out to the hayloft to sleep. The third, she woke me by creeping under the blankets at what must have been near midnight, smelling of sex and sweat and too tired to stay awake through more than a kiss and cuddle.

"... umsorry, Simon. H've 'ad hell's own flogging of my cunt by two different blokes'n' I just ... had to come out and be with you and ... now'm too tired to move."

"It's all right," I told her, holding her tight.

"Fyou can get my skirt up ... you can do whatever you want. Only I don't know as I'll keep from nodding off."

"I just want to hold you and feel you next to me," I said. And as rock-hard as my dick was, it was true.

"Hmmm," she murmurred, eyes closed and a smile on her face. Then she started to snore.

And the thing was, after three days of never talking to her for more than a few minutes at a time, never getting more than a quick smooch and a laugh and an apology for not having more time to spare me – after three days of getting instant and maddeningly persistent erections every time the thought of her crossed my mind – just the smell and feel of her there under the blankets had me in heaven for a good hour or more before I finally returned to sleep.

Then she woke me with her mouth around my cock just after dawn and rode me to a quick and wonderful mutual orgasm before hurrying in for another day of work.

Midmorning, she woke me again, surprising me that I'd gone back to sleep.

"Simon!" her voice rang up from the stable floor. "Simon, your friend the greenwarden is here!"

I jumped out of bed and threw on my pants to hurry down the ladder. Valdazirit Cang had made it to Tambervale Wood with speed, then. And even better, the woman I'd sent her after had made the return trip just as quickly. Framed in the open stable doorway, I found Leyna and Yilma Greenwarden.

"He's not usually this unpresentable," Lena told her, coming over to smooth and straighten my hair as the sight of the greenwarden stymied my search for appropriate words.

That'sdefinitelynot how I described her.

The first thing I noticed was her rack. No, not that one – I mean the pair of double-tined antlers that sprouted from her temples. Thanks to the dim light in the stables, I couldn't immediately tell if they were real or some kind of headdress. The wash of sunlight from behind her and Leyna threw them both into silhouette when I reached the bottom of the ladder and looked their way. Then, as I got closer and the change of angle removed a couple of barrels from my line of sight, the bottom half of her removed any doubt: from the waist down, Yilma had the body of a gracile young doe. Four legs, hooves, teardrop tail and everything.

"I'm usually more presentable as well," she said, with a glance back at her ungulate haunches. "A hindaur isn't the most beastly form I can take, but I wasn't surprised for the innkeeper to hurry me out of his foyer when he saw me."

Her human torso had the slender proportions I expected, and her strawberry blonde hair and green eyes met with the descriptions from the books as well. She wore a simple white top of woven spider-silk, just a band that covered her modest breasts and a couple of straps, really. A light satchel made of hide hung at her side, and beyond that she had nothing on her.

I stepped forward to meet her as her deer hooves clacked on the stable floor. She held a hand out, and I took it and gave it a brief shake.

"Simon Kettridge," I said, trying to keep eye contact. My eyes fought me on that score, wanting to drift up to her antlers or down to her faunlike bottom half – curiously, though, not to her smooth, bare, sun-browned shoulders or the dainty swells of her breasts within that silken band. I couldn't help noticing the supple fineness of her build, but Leyna stood beside me, and my brain did something at the recognition of female beauty, flared and heated in a way that made me imminently aware of my lover's presence at my side, like an aura of attraction that drew power from any comparison to another woman's shape. I swallowed and tried to gather my thoughts. "Thank you very much for coming."

Yilma laughed. "A man tempts me with the Staff of Verdance and then thanks me for rushing to him full of slavering avarice. Well, I appreciate the politeness, at least. Do you really know where it is?"

"Yes," I said. "And I can give you pretty good advice on what it will take to acquire it when you get there."

"Is it close?" Her green eyes flashed. "Will I need allies and force of arms?"

I raised both hands. "Yes, yes, and no – but look, can we discuss the details over some breakfast? I'm afraid I've just gotten up, and I'm famished."

"Oh!" Leyna said, putting fingertips to her mouth. "Bless me for a wool-brain, but I didn't think to bring something out. I'll hurry back and get you something."

"I wasn't complaining or trying to run you off," I said. "And you don't have to rush. I'll wait for it on the front bench so you don't have to come all the way back here."

"Pish and tosh," she replied. "Custom's light in the common room, so Burgham can spare me, and I've neglected you something awful the last few days. I'll be back quicker than chicken-squirt."

I glanced around the stables, which didn't feature any chickens, but had more than a fair share of livestock. "Well, I'd still rather head up to the front, I think. No offense to the horses, but it's not exactly appetizing in here."

With a wink and a glimpse of tongue touching her upper lip, she said, "Really? It didn't hurt my appetite any this morning ..."

I opened my mouth, but couldn't find anything to say. Leyna solved the problem by going up on her toes to kiss me before giving a wiggle-fingered wave and vanishing out the stable door. I watched her go until the angle cut off sight of her. When my gaze turned back to Yilma Greenwarden, I found her wearing an appreciative smile.

"I thought I heard something in her voice when she offered to lead me out here and introduce us," the hindaur said. "Is it Glor and Ofara, or Saint Eldivara between the two of you?"

"A bit of both," I said, feeling an odd, excited heat at the prospect of telling someone what was going on with me and Leyna. And I knew Yilma had a soft spot for tales of love and romance. But ... "Well, it's more than a bit. I'm not sure Leyna would want me going into it with someone she doesn't know."

The antlered head tilted, and her eyes narrowed as her smile shifted to curious. "But if it was just up to you, youdogo into these kinds of things with people you don't know?"

"Well I do –"Oh, Jesus, Simon, come on. How are you going to finish that sentence? 'I do know you, because I'm the one who made you up?'"– that is, I do sometimes if I'm too hungry to think straight. Can we head up front to the bench?"

"Certainly." She turned in a lithe circle on her four hooved feet and trotted effortlessly out of the building. I hurried to catch up, suddenly having more than an inkling of why she'd chosen that form to change into – clearly, it couldmove. As I fell into stride beside her, she said, "Apologies if I put my nose in where it shouldn't be, just then. But I'm attuned to the ways of life and generation, and there's such an appealing energy between the two of you."

Despite the sun being well up, the morning remained chill, and I buttoned up the last couple of buttons on my shirt. Even with the cold, though, her words tickled me. "Thanks for saying so. It's really just – well things have blossomed, the last few days."