The Inn Ch. 02

Story Info
A job. A plan. Leyna's not-so-secret secret.
6.8k words
4.72
21.2k
17

Part 2 of the 15 part series

Updated 06/07/2023
Created 01/06/2016
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The story so far: While a guest at an English nobleman's manor, author Simon Kettridge finds himself transported to the magical realm of Phaeland, where his heroine Juliette Ravendark nearly tramples him under the hooves of her horse. After a quick ride through pouring rain, they reach a nearby village, get a room, and have crazed sex like nothing in Simon's real world. In the morning, though, Juliette has gone, leaving a written message that makes him realize he's bumbled across he path at just the wrong time, and thrown the entire plot of the novel into ruins.

* * *

I read the note from Juliette again. I remembered her laughing and looming above me, dark skin bright with sweat, body a temple to glorious passion. I looked around the common room. My mind painted it over with fire and ash and blood, demons pulling the head off the big, grim-faced bartender, a gang of orcs holding sweet blonde Leyna down and –

Fuck! There has to be something I can do. I invented this whole fucking world. It's exactly like I imagined and wrote it. I –

Looking at the sleek, cobalt-and-gold pen in my hand, I stopped myself.

That's right ... I wrote it.

With a pounding heart and unsteady fingers, I leaned back over the page before me and scrawled, "As fate would have it, under the mattress of the bed Simon had so recently left, there rested a magical ring of teleportation, hidden there by none other than Krezikren the Mileblinker." Then I capped the pen, pocketed it, and jumped up to climb the stairs, note fluttering in my hand.

At the third room on the left, I threw open the door. There stood the still-rumpled bed on which Juliette and I had screwed and screwed and come and laughed the night before. With a tight chest, I yanked up the mattress – a heavy, floppy thing that didn't want to cooperate with my search. Heaving at it, moving a bit, heaving some more, leaning in, peering, squinting because the light wasn't the greatest, and gritting my teeth harder and harder, I went over every inch of the frame and the slats and the sheets that someone – Leyna the serving girl, I presumed – had carefully tucked under the lumpy, thick bedding.

Zilch. Absolutely nothing. Certainly no magical ring that would let me teleport ahead of Juliette and tell her that she had to get to Vandestre by lunchtime, or the legions of Necromanata would devour the empire and all the Western Reaches in two or three seasons' time.

"Fuck."

I sat heavily to the floorboards and stared at the bed with its sweat-and-sex stains from the marathon of heavenly fucking I'd had with Juliette Ravendark the night before.

Juliette Ravendark, skin like rich loam with lighter tracings of scars along her limbs powerful and commanding atop me, kissing, coaxing, rousing me from my first orgasm to the sound of light rain on the rooftop and the crackling of the fire.

Juliette Ravendark, feeling me stiffen and swell again inside her, pulling up from our kiss to show gleeful, pure white teeth and then flick her tongue against them.

"Is that a request for seconds I feel?" she'd asked, wiggling her hips to tease a moan from me.

"Uh-huh," was the best I could manage.

"Good. Let's roll over and let me see how you run things from the top side of the saddle."

Without waiting for an answer, she hooked an arm around beneath my back and an ankle in under my left thigh, then raised and flipped us both so I was on top.

Holy shit, this woman's strong, I thought. Working up my courage, I tried to pull back for my first stroke as the one in control, only to find that her other leg had encircled me too, and her arm hadn't loosened by a millimeter, and I had all the freedom of a mouse in the coils of a python.

Juliette grinned up at me, lifting my stomach with her abs as she breathed, crushing the full swells of her breasts against my pectorals.

"Do you want the reins, Simon?" she asked mischievously. "Will you ply this filly's rump with your whip, bring her to a gallop until she's spent? Or would you rather let her take you where she likes and just enjoy the ride?"

If the squeeze of her vagina hadn't been just as tight as that of her legs and arm, my ego might have spent a few moments struggling with that challenge – take her dare and be the one in control trying to please her? Or surrender to her will and leave her in charge even though I was on top? But the power of those cunt muscles and the laughter in her eyes told me she had me where she wanted me no matter how I answered the question. So I answered it the only way that would truly pick up her dropped gauntlet.

"Let's not play games, Juliette," I said. "We both know it's up to you. Do you want me to be your partner in this, or your plaything? I'll enjoy it either way, so take your pick and let's get going."

Her grin went to an easier smile, and her eyes roamed my face a moment as though seeing something to respect there.

"Let's do play games, Simon," she replied quietly, her muscles melting from vice-tight to gossamer all around me. "Let's."

"Hmn," I said, not yet moving. The feel of Juliette Ravendark, gentle and waiting beneath me, made me burn with power like I'd never known before.

Leaning in, I brushed my lips to hers, felt her breath, watched her eyes close with sublime anticipation. When the kiss began, it was my mouth touching and inviting, hers responding and welcoming. I dipped my tongue beyond her lips, tipped my pelvis just enough to shift glossily within her, and got a subtle, throaty hum as my reward. The tip of her tongue danced with mine, beckoning it deeper. One foot tilted to run its arch and toes along the back of my thigh.

Paradise.

I rolled my lower spine. She made a sound halfway between a gasp and a sigh. A wave of pressure swept through the vaginal flesh around my shaft.

"Yes," she whispered. "More."

Kissing her harder, I worked my hips to pull back for a long, slow stroke, push in for a firm, circling grind. Her mound pressed hungrily against me in reply, the mouth of her cunt suckling wetly at my root.

"Ahh, Juli," I breathed, moving my lips to the corner of her jaw where the hot pulse of life beat quick and passionate beneath the skin. Her hand went up to the nape of my neck, forearm deliciously gracing my spine between the shoulder blades. Her other hand appeared at my waist, slipped around to the small of my back, drove lower and tighter to glide the middle finger down the valley between my buttocks, then grabbed and squeezed my ass-cheek in wide-spread, powerful fingers. With urging heels and that clutching grasp, she asked me to fuck her for real, and I answered with a lunging thrust that made her coo.

I'd made this woman perfect – perfect at everything – and now that I probed fully into her depths, she was teaching me what perfection meant.

"Faster, Simon," she murmured, her hips speaking need with their rhythmic, questing twists. "Aim higher and loose your bolt inside me."

"Uhhhh," I groaned, lost in wet pleasure, sharpening my pace, feeling her accelerate with me. "Juliette ..."

The slick, splendid tides of our lovemaking rose higher. We moved in waves, in resonant, fluid compressions and expanses. A hot wind drove us toward a distant, golden shore where we would inevitably crest and then crash into foam, but for now we rode a whole ocean of sex together.

"Nnggghhh ... Simonnn ..."

"Uh! God, Jul –"

Her physical might took hold of us both, urgent instinct telling her muscles what to do, where to grasp, how to squeeze, when to flex, where to extend. I focused on riding the loop of her cycling, arching passion – pushing in when I could, holding tight where I had to, keeping my mouth on hers whenever the rush of our breaths would allow it. The intensity with which her snatch milked my cock electrified my viscera from belly to brain.

A beast stirred within my groin – a creature of fire and relentless inertia. It woke itself in heat and ecstasy as I heard the catch and conflagration in Juliette's panting breath.

"Uh! UH! AH!" she cried in a voice that lured the beast ever up from its sleep. Her body threw itself off the mattress against me, dark arms and legs a cage to shape me to the bow of her form. Stuck as high within her coruscating, orgasmic cunt as it would go, my dick beheld the brim of heaven as the beast in its foundations roared to life.

"FUCK!"

An infernal blaze of pleasure burst from my nuts and coursed out like wildfire through my shaft. The sculpted, titanic curve of Juliette's body shook beneath me with her furious rapture, receiving insatiably every gush of cum I expelled as climax spiraled up and through and out of me. I spouted and spurted and blurted myself down to a trickle, and she finally collapsed and dropped us both back to the sheets.

"You all right? Need me to change the linens?"

The unexpected voice lurched me back to reality (reality?), my ass on the floor, the empty bed in front of me.

In the open doorway stood Leyna, her clean, fresh expression shaped into a look of concern.

"You didn't touch your breakfast. Did something put you off it?"

I looked up at her a moment – the bobbed blonde hair, the innocent empathy in her blue-eyed gaze, the youthful luxury of her figure, the simple, plain blue of her dress.

This can't happen, I thought. Juliette can't die. This girl can't be ripped to bloody fragments by Necromanata's hordes.

But what could I do about it?

My stomach grumbled.

Eat breakfast, for starters, I thought. Getting my feet under me, I stood up and brushed my hands on my pants.

"Sorry," I told the pretty young woman at the door. "I had an idea and came up here to think it through."

"On the floor, staring at the bed?" Her eyebrows went up, but the smile on her full, pink lips stayed cheery. "You're a bit of a strange one, aren't you?"

"I suppose I am. Is my plate still on the table downstairs?"

"Unless Burgham's cleared it away. And he's not much on clearing tables, Burgham."

"All right. I'll go and get to it, then."

"And the linens?"

None of this could really be happening. Except that it was happening. And at the moment, I couldn't stand the thought of returning to this room and finding everything in order, the bed neatly made and fresh, all evidence of Juliette and our hours of passion erased.

So ... what? Are you going to come back here later today or crawl into bed tonight and curl up with the stale smell of sex and sweat as company? I tried to work up enough shame to make a bold answer to that. But what I thought instead was, Yeah. Maybe.

I sighed and told Leyna, "Just leave them for now."

Then I went downstairs to eat.

* * *

My plate had gone cold on the table where I'd been sitting before. Slumping into the chair in front of it, I forced myself to take the fork up and shovel a few mouthfuls of clammy scrambled eggs down my throat.

These were probably pretty good ten or fifteen minutes ago, I thought. Instead of taking another bite, though, I just stirred the remnants around on the plate. Right, like Juliette was really good eight or ten hours ago. And thanks to me, not long from now she'll be cold goo too.

If my trick with the pen had worked, this would be the best day of my life. I could take the enchanted ring I'd written into existence, teleport ahead of Juliette on the road, and magically whisk her to Vandestre in plenty of time for her rendezvous with Ymbrod. Hell, I knew the whole rest of the novel's plot – I could use my new-made wizard's ring to throw in with my characters and shave days or weeks off their hard-fought battles and near-fatal perils. We could skip the Maze of Dissolving Eyes entirely, bounce ahead to Arvenon's Pavilion, avoid the landslide in the mountain pass between Skarpendus and the Hadaccerin Wastes ...

But it didn't work, Simon. I sighed and had another robotic swallow of eggs. And there's no horse in town fast enough to catch me up with Juliette before she heads north to Cooperdam, so Pelfreyda will hang and everyone else in the group will be stuck in the Maze to get liquefied.

There literally was nothing I could do. I knew exactly how the characters could survive the dangers ahead of them, but I had no way to communicate any of it. The amazing hero who last night had become a real and amazing woman to me was headed for unavoidable death.

If I could get myself to wake up, it'd be a snap to fix. Just write a sequel where some clever new hero learns the Maze of Dissolving Eyes doesn't kill you when it turns you to ocular sludge. It ... what does it do instead? Maybe it just spreads your matter out into a viscous matrix of suspended animation. Then the right magic could pull you back out later.

Out of old habit, I uncapped my pen, flattened Juliette's letter on the tabletop, and dispiritedly scratched out some notes about the idea. Why? I thought after a sentence or two. It's not like I'm going to have this paper when I wake up. And if I wake up, then it was just a dream, right?

I put the pen back down and took hold of my fork again – then realized that someone had come up to the table while I made my notes.

The grey-bearded fellow in robes from the day before. The one who'd been reading by that magical light.

"You wouldn't happen to be a scribe, would you, lad?" he asked. When I glanced up at him, he didn't look like much of a wizard – rheumy old eyes of dull brown, a bit of his breakfast still in his moustache.

But maybe he is. Maybe he could ... I realized he'd just asked me a question.

"Um – a scribe?" I certainly didn't want to say no and have him turn and walk off. "I guess you might say that." Not really a lie; I earn my living by writing.

He raised an aged, knob-knuckled hand and worked the fingers creakily. "What do you charge a page? I've got a twenty-page disquisition I need five copies of before the imperial post comes through tomorrow, and the cold's got in the bones of my hand too bad for me to write them out myself."

"If there's any way you could get me to the Elderflow ferry in the next hour or two," I said, feeling my chest tighten with nervous hope, "I'd be glad to write them out for free."

He had that magic light. He's got to be some kind of magician. Come on, please ...

But the furzy grey eyebrows just dropped in a scowl and his throat cleared with a rattle of phlegm. "If I could manage a trick like that, I wouldn't need the post to carry my missives, would I?"

Hope cooled like the gelid heap of eggs on my plate.

"Sorry," I said. "I saw you with some kind of magical light yesterday, and –"

"Phffgh. Knowing a couple of minor hexes doesn't make me an arch-mage, son."

"Yes, but I really need to –"

"Look," he growled, "do you want to earn a few coins scribing for me or not? I don't have time to stand around all day educating you on the subject of wizardry, which you obviously know even less about than I do."

I shut my mouth. Clearly, this guy wasn't getting me to Vandestre. Why couldn't I have written The Doom of Necromanata with a prologue of Juliette encountering a kindly magician in Piperville on her way to meet Ymbrod?

"Wel-lll?" He drew it out into several impatient syllables.

My brain turned over a couple of polite ways to decline before realizing I had nothing better to do and shouldn't really be turning down employment, given my penniless state and the fact that Juliette's charitable shilling would run out in a week and leave me on the street.

Although it might be better to starve in the gutter now than hang around until Necromanata's horde's arrive.

"Sure," I said, after contemplating how much I hated it when my stomach got hungry enough to growl. "Of course."

When this earned me an exasperated glower, I realized I still hadn't answered the critical question of how much I would charge a page. How much would a scribe earn here? I'd always been a bit vague on pricing things in the books because Juliette and her larger-than-life associates had more money than any common person would know what to do with. (Hence her willingness to hand the ferryman a whole shilling and not ask for change, even though a shilling clearly represented a whole week's food and lodging.) Twenty pages ... that's an hour or two. Times five copies means probably eight or ten hours of writing before the mail carrier comes tomorrow. Could I ask a week's living expenses for a day's work? It is skilled labor ...

"What say a penny for two pages?" I asked, hoping I wasn't lowballing myself or asking the outrageous. "So, a shilling-and-a-quarter for the whole job?"

The man mulled for a moment, but only a moment, which told me I'd probably gauged about right.

"Done," he said, holding out a hand. "Galufrand of Gattington ... though lately I'm more inclined to say Galufrand the Gouty."

"Oh ... well ... sorry to hear that. I'm Simon. Simon Kettridge."

"Don't be too sorry. I travel by foot –" he lifted one leg cumbersomely "– and if my gout weren't acting up, I'd have left town last week and you wouldn't be earning your tidy sum. I'll bring the disquisition down from my room in a trice. You have your own paper?"

I shook my head, remembering the journal I'd lost track of tripping into the mud. "I lost my supply in the storm yesterday."

"Well, I'm already well stocked, so I don't suppose I'll dock you for using mine. But assuming you do a good job and you're interested in scribing next week's copies, I'll expect you to provide your own materials if I'm paying a hafpenny a page."

"Of course," I said, blinking.

"Right, then. Back in a hare's hop."

Galufrand turned and moved off with more of a slow limp than any kind of hop. I watched him get halfway to the stairs before I went back to my eggs.

The room had taken a strange lurch somewhere in that conversation – I couldn't quite put my finger on what the change was. But some of the grimness had faded. From the sun getting higher? Had some clouds cleared away outside?

No, you're just not going to be out in the street come next week.

I scraped up the last of my eggs, not sure why I felt any better. I was set for two weeks now. And if Galufrand liked my work, it sounded as if I might have a steady job – at least until his gout calmed down and he left town. But ... Necromanata. This was all just prolonging the agony, wasn't it?

And then it hit me. I'm feeling better because I'm actually in the fucking Phaeland Empire. Whatever the hell this is, it's not a dream, and I'm apparently not expecting to wake up. I'm living in the Phaeland Empire, and I have a skill I can earn a living with, and ...

The imperial post was coming through town tomorrow.

I didn't have a ring of teleportation. I didn't have a band of epic adventurers to help me take down Necromanata. But I had something no one else in Phaeland could even imagine.

I knew exactly how The Doom of Necromanata would play out. I'd outlined and drafted and revised and re-revised it. I knew the Mortuary Mage's plan, and his timetable. I knew where to find all the pieces needed to stop him. I knew the future. And not just one novel's worth – I'd written five whole books after this one. I'd filled dozens of notebooks with a comprehensive understanding of the politics and history of this land, and published about a million words' worth of plot twists, hidden treasures, Phaeland social structures, and skeletons in the closets of aristocrats and wizards alike.

12