The Inn Ch. 11

Another shrug moved her leather-clad shoulders. "Day, day and a half, since it's just me on the horse."

"Good," I said, trying to think how long it might take Yilma to make the return trip. As with a lot of my minor characters, her powers had been left deliberately vague. She might have a sorcerous means of speeding up the journey, like Cang did. Or she might take a week.Nothing I can do about that either way, though.

By the time I finished giving Valdazirit a description of the greenwarden, Leyna came around the corner of the Nestled Goose leading the woman's horse.

* * *

I spent most of the afternoon and early evening hanging out on the bench in front of the inn. The chill, humid air didn't exactly make me comfortable in my thin dress shirt and slacks, but Leyna brought me a blanket shortly before dinnertime, along with the only other possessions I had to my name – my writing supplies. But there weren't any more letters to write, so the stuff just sat on the bench beside me, picked up only when Galufrand came out to chat with me at one point. I didn't mind having the company, though my brain kept fading away from the old scholar's discursions – to wander through imaginings of the Mistress of the Bog, Yilma the Greenwarden, and of course, Leyna.

"I've convinced Burgham he'd be killing you to leave you outside overnight in the cold," she told me when she brought out a tray of bread and chicken scraps for my dinner. "He's allowed me to put you up in the hayloft over the stables – I'll fetch down some more blankets and a lamp once dinner has puttered itself out."

She hadn't time to sit and chat, but she kissed me before going back in to wait tables.

So I sat and thought a few hours. It passed the time even though it came to nothing: I'd sent my letters, and their effects would play out over the coming weeks, but none of them in the next few days. And I decided I ought to thank my lucky stars for that, since the two letters thathadbrought early results both did so in the form of near disaster. On the other hand, Cang now rode for Tambervale Wood, to arrive sometime tomorrow or the next day and set in motion what I hoped would be our end game against Necromanata. I had no way to hurry her along, nor any sure estimate of how long Yilma would take to respond. Everything lay out of my hands.

To be honest, I'm not sure I could have been more relieved.

I might be stuck in the horse stables while I waited, with no fire, no furniture, living off scraps and unable to so much as bathe. But I could expect to see Leyna several times a day, and I decided that would be enough.

She came out sometime well after dark, when I'd watched the flow of patrons go from a trickle entering to a trickle exiting and then no movement at all while the common room got cleaned up. Nightfall had kicked the temperature down, leaving me huddled miserably under my blanket.

"Here we are then!" she said cheerily, a lamp flickering in one hand and a bundle of bed linens beneath the other arm. Then her voice went sympathetic as she saw me stand up shivering, even though I couldn't help smiling at her. "Oh, poor Simon! It's chill as the northlands out here, and you without a coat. Come on, let's hurry you to the stables and the hayloft."

"Sure," I said. "Can I get any of that for you?"

"Just the door, once we're there."

We walked around the building in the quiet and the dark, our fronts washed with the golden glow of the lamp, our shadows jumping and wavering behind us. She glanced at me a couple of times, smiling each one, with her face half shaded but her blue eyes bright in the lamplight. Then we arrived at the stables and I rolled the door far enough aside for us to enter.

"It's that ladder there," she said, gesturing with the lamp. "If you climb first, I'll pass these things up to you before I come up myself."

"I'm a lot taller," I pointed out. "It might be easier for you to go first and me to lift the stuff up to you."

"And let you peek up my skirts while I'm on the rungs? Simon, for shame!" Her eyes sparkled, and her teeth showed in a grin. But despite clearly meaning it as a joke, she kept hold of her things and waited for me to mount the ladder first.

At the top, I found the hayloft cramped and low-ceilinged. Bales of hay reached floor to roof on the far end of the loft, and half that high most of the rest. Only here on the ladder end was there room to walk, and that had to be done hunched over. I took the blanket from where I'd hung it across my shoulders, set it down, then turned and lay flat to reach through the narrow space between the ladder and the railing. Leyna set the lamp atop a barrel and handed the other blankets up to me one at a time – five in all, counting mine. When I had them stacked atop the bales, she retrieved the light, climbed one-handed up the first few rungs, and then handed that off to me as well.

Scooting back to give her room, I found a crate in one corner and put the lamp down atop it. The placement was completely innocent on my part, but as Leyna came up over the head of the ladder, the light fell perfectly on her as if meant to put a glow in her bobbed golden hair – and deepen the shadowy valley of her cleavage within the low-necked bodice of her dress.

"Right cozy up here," she said as she maneuvered away from the ladder, skirts hitched to avoid treading on them while hunkered over. She got past me to the first tier of bales, her perfume belatedly hitting my nose amidst the masking smells of hay and animals. Looking around, she said simply, "Hmm."

I'd knelt beside the crate to let her by, and now found myself behind her, the round curve of her bottom less than arm's reach away, filling out the green skirt in a way that left my throat dry.

"Here," she said, turning and pointing, "hand me the first of those blankets and I'll get this stack turned into a tidy neat bed quick as you please."

I did as she asked, then watched her unfold the blanket with brisk precision in the tight space she had available.

"You really don't have to do that," I said, my brain slow in catching up to the situation. "I mean, I know you'll do a much better job, but I can manage it myself. We can just sit and talk until you have to go back inside."

She looked up from the blanket.

"I didn't intend on going back inside."

"Oh," I said, blinking. "Oh. Well, you can at least let me help, then."

Her laugh filled the little space and washed out into the rest of the stables as well. "No room, silly. And anyway, I'll have this done myself faster than I can tell you what to help with."

And she did. As I watched, she spread the first blanket across a bed-sized stretch of hay bales, tucked it down and around them one side after the other, and then unfolded and cast each of the rest of the blankets in place almost like a matador twirling his cape to distract a bull.

"You're really good at that," I said.

She laughed and said, "Practice a trade a few years and you can't help but pick up one or two –" One eyebrow made a keen arch. "– helpful knacks."

I swallowed, seeing in her eyes that she'd switched from talking about one of her trades to the other.

"Now," she said, more quietly, "there's a knack to unlacing a girl's bodice and helping her out from her dress too. I'm hoping you've either got it already or wouldn't mind a little lesson, before we turn in."

Easing over to where she sat, legs together, at the edge of the fresh-made bed of hay, I said, "A lesson would be okay. I haven't untied that many bodices. But I'm not sure I'll have the patience to practice many times tonight."

She leaned out, under the warm, low light of the brass lamp, and brushed her lips to mine without closing her eyes. "Don't worry. I'm a very good teacher."

Teasing my mouth again with hers, she took my hands and pulled them forward, then straightened her back in a way that drew our faces apart but lifted her breasts toward me until they strained against the cloth of her dress. Clean and grass-green, the fabric set off her pale, wonderfully curved flesh to perfection. If it weren't for her eyes holding my attention, I'm not sure I could have avoided reaching out to cup and caress that ripe, mounded bosom. But her sparkling gaze and a tutoring upward flick of her eyebrows kept me on task, my fingers tugged along by hers to the dangling ends of the bow-knot centered right beneath her decolletage.

I pinched the thin leather cords and pulled. Centimeter-by-centimeter, the ends extended, shrinking the loops of the bow. Leyna kept her eyes on mine and breathed – not quickly, but purposefully, each inhalation and exhalation controlled, intentional. The knot shrank to a tight fist of cording, determined and resistant until the moment it failed and snapped out of existence.

With the knot surrendered, the pressure of Leyna's bust shifted down just slightly, easing the first lacings on the bodice fractionally apart. I worked a finger up under the leather cords there. Taut laces, the stiff fabric of the bodice, and the softer cloth of the dress clung to my fingertip on all sides as I brought the first cord out of its eyelet. When I took hold of the tie on the other side, my three unoccupied fingers alit for a moment on the bare skin above her neckline, incredibly smooth and soft. She bit her lip as the hand came away, loosening the cord with it.

"I'm not hearing much instruction so far," I said dipping my index finger in again through the next lacings.

"You've a born talent," she replied, breathily. "I'll tell you as soon as you go astray."

"Hmm." Eyelet by eyelet and criss by cross, I tugged the laces free. A third of the way down. Halfway. As the vee of the bodice widened, her breasts settled gently lower within the looser fabric of the dress. Eventually, I couldn't hold back any longer, and I leaned in and kissed her, undoing the rest of the fastenings by touch while the soft, wet pleasure of her lips made everything else recede. Then the outer garment parted entirely, so I drew it from around her and dropped it to a nearby hay bale.

Smiling, she leaned back and eased the straps of her dress over one shoulder first, then the other. I let my hands rest on her knees as she shrugged loose from the upper part of the dress, which fell about her waist in a soft nest of fabric.

Her breasts amazed me.

Large without being heavy, they rose and fell with her breathing, snowy, round, and smooth. The nipples stood out in the chill air of the stables, taut pink points centered in rosy areolas. I lifted a hand to brush one with a fingertip, then pulled it back at a shiver and squeak from her in response.

"Fridigaa's nethers, your hands are cold!"

"Sorry," I said, feeling chastised as gooseflesh across the curves of her tits caught my attention. "You must be freezing – we should hurry and get under the blankets."

Leyna smiled. "I won't argue against it, now those icicle fingers have touched my nips."

When she stood, the bunched cloth of her dress tumbled down from waist and hips until it hung up across the backs of my hands, forgotten at the ends of my wrists because a gold-tufted mound of treasure had just revealed itself. An instant passed with my nose inches from her wedge of fine blonde hair and the peeking pink lips of her cunt. I caught only a hint of a whiff before she stepped out of her dress and slid backward, one dainty foot finding and gliding under the folded-back upper blankets, which quickly swallowed each sleek ivory leg she eased into that cozy, readied space.

With uncooperative fingers, I fumbled open the front of my shirt, then my belt buckle, pants button, and fly. If not for the shaky hands, I'm sure I'd've broken a dozen speed records for shucking out of a set of clothes. As it was, I still think I made decent time. Once I had them off, I wiggled my way under the blankets with her and pulled her naked body tight to mine.

Soft and cold and giggling and glorious, this wonder of womanhood cooed as she took me to her – and then our lips came together and turned the bed of hay steam-hot before I knew it.

"Mmm, Simon," she breathed. "I've been sohungryfor you. Have me – have me and let me please you."

My cock leapt and throbbed, straining to obey her. But the eager tangle of our limbs and the distracting, candy-sweet wetness of our kiss prevented any deliberate or planned positioning. We thrilled and twined about one another, my hands caressing her flanks, her breasts, her back, threading through her hair as hers explored the curves of my biceps and pectorals, toyed with my pubic curls, clutched at my ass. Two or three times, I recognized that happenstance had brushed my hard-on against the damp slash of her cunt, but each time, before I could think and reach to angle it inward, passion rolled us into a new configuration and made me forget what I was doing.

And then, suddenly, she sat atop me, enfolding me, with a look of wonder and joy on her face and my cock as far up in her as it would go.

"Oh my god," I said sliding my hands up her thighs to her waist. "How did you do that?"

She laughed, hips motionless as I floated in her hot and wet interior. "I don't half know! Sometimes things just fall into place, don't they?"

I reached higher, ran my hands along her spine and shoulder blades, and pulled her down close until her breasts hung feather-light and gracious against my chest and her face hovered angelically and near enough to kiss.

"Yes. Sometimes they really do."

Still, she gave no shift or movement with her crotch. The mouth of her pussy rested in a perfect seal around the base of my erection, all the furor of the moment before turned to serene purity.

"Simon?" Her blue eyes contained my soul with the same heat her cunt wrapped around my cock.

"Yes?"

She bit her lip. "Would it be terribly foolish and put you off me if I said I love you?"

For the first time since I'd arrived in Phaeland, a completely easy answer jumped into my head:

"Only if you didn't mean it."

Laughing, she dipped her head and kissed me, then put her nose to mine, light from the flickering lamp making her blue eyes sparkle. "Mmm, I do. I love you, Simon."

The words felt better than any of the mind-blowing sex I'd have over the last three weeks. They felt better than finding the magical world of my imagination to be real. If they'd been separable from the sweet heat of her vagina holding me, they might have felt better than that, too.

And they felt better, I realized, than anything that had happened to me before that rainstorm drenched me into this place.

"I love you too, Leyna," I said quietly. Knowing that it was true, and knowing that it had been true for quite some time without the words surfacing inside my head, left me awestruck. She smiled and quivered and let her body lie entirely flush with mine, her forehead lowered to the blanket and her cheek to my ear, so that the low hum of bliss she let out vibrated directly into my brain.

Then her head turned and lifted her lips where they could brush the whorls of my ear.

And she whispered, "Are you ready?"

I twisted my neck to look her in the eyes, bringing a hand up to ease a few golden locks clear of her face.

"I don't know," I told her. "I don't know if I'll ever be ready for how beautiful you are and how lucky I am that I met you."

She smiled and kissed me, then gave me a look of fire and boldness.

"Well ...I'mready."

A moment passed, and then another, in which I could feel her heartbeat through the contact of our chests and bellies. Then she tipped her pelvis just a fraction of an inch to one side, glossing pleasure all along my shaft with the subtlest of movements.

"Oh god," I said.

"Which one?" she asked, grinning provocatively and bumping noses with me as she delivered another tiny hip-tilt stroke in the opposite direction.

My hands caressed their way down from her back across the low curve of her waist and up onto the plushly domed flesh of her ass.

"I mis-spoke," I said, clutching that perfect, heart-shaped bottom and pushing up against her so that her mouth fell open and released a breath of ecstasy. "I didn't mean 'Oh, god.' I meant, 'Oh, goddess.' You. Nataleynata, the deity of embodied joy."

"Ohhh, that's blasphemy ..." Her hips rolled as she said it, grinding and swirling the hungry mouth and luscious throat of her cunt against and around my flesh. "But it feels so good ... I hope Glor and Ofara don't strike me dead for –ooh!– for letting this heresy ... invade me ..."

I lifted my head to nuzzle along one side of her throat. "It's not blasphemy if it's true. Mmnnn ... and it is – you're divine.Fuck,Leyna, you're so perfect."

She rode me with a vengeance now, the touch of her breasts and tummy pastry-cream light atop me as her lower half put its every muscle into the act of fucking.

"Nnnn," she moaned. "Simon,thrustyour sacrilege into me. Dear gods of pleasure, forgive me – ah,ah!Forgive my poor cunt for letting ... ooooooo ... this blasphemer make a false temple of it ..."

"Oh, Jesus," I said, lost in the glorious slick shelter of her inner delicacy. "There's nothing false inside you, Leyna."

"Yes!Yes, oh yes, there ... uhh is ... your tool is inside me, and it's, oh, toogoodto be true. Good past all belief!"

I gave up on saying anything. The way she sat heaven onto me left me speechless.

"Uh, uh,uh–" Her eyes squeezed shut and her brows furrowed. "Ahh ... nn –oooh, passion's pantheon ... I'm undone ... what else could I pray for or to or worship ... except ... this ...cock!"

And with that, she stiffened and keened above me, spasms of ecstasy rolling through her from sacrum to skull, pulsating in time with the throbbing grip of her wondrous hole around me.

"Simon ... you ...exaltme!"

The look of absolute release on her face, the quivering of her breasts above me, and those words – it all plunged through my body and blasted me into stratospheric orgasm. I cried her name and unleashed a dam-burst of cum into her pussy. She climaxed endlessly, moaning, gasping, trembling. Out and out and out surged my white, silken flood as if pulled skyward by gods in the clouds, shocked up from my balls by the sensual thunderbolts of Leyna's strobing cuntflesh.

When she finally collapsed down onto me, slick sweat had coated us both, and the warm, exhausted ache of satiation melted us together like butter.

"Simon ..." she whispered, over and over. "Simon ... Simon ..."

"Mmm," I replied, just as quietly. "I love you so much, Leyna."

She shook an instant, then went limp again and just lay breathing and content, stretched out atop me entirely at rest.

We stayed that way a long time.