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Rapiers with rapier wits verseXbathymcbath

He thought she did it better than a loyal should. She wore this defeat with such perfection he wondered again if there was slave blood in her. Maybe the women of her bloodline were so thoroughly broken, and chosen for it, that's simple how they were. How else could she explain her stillness, and how flawlessly she stood for him now. And how she answered him with modesty, when conversation was hardly the point here. He'd had whores who couldn't be this genuine in their degradation.

She looked as though the blade had found her flesh. Ah, how tempting. Maybe if she overstepped too far, one day. She stood there, tense, before the swell of motion in her body came with the rain of buttons. He only pulled back a bit to see her fully when she scowled at him. Such true anger, too. Which made her inaction even more of a gift to him. He was happy to receive more, when her shoulders circled like music box gears. He looked intently, but not so much that he lost himself to the image of Zora, that he would be distracted from the tragedy of her. He saw her fully - the implications and the blatant sensationalism.

He came closer again, and looked from her face, that had the most delicious displacement and struggle on it, to her breasts. He'd never in a life see this, if circumstances had been just slightly different. They were beautiful. Painfully youthful. How dare she be modest in build, as well. Hah. A blue blood through and through, then. Unmistakable hips, though. He touched her stomach, and the coverage of his palm already told either of them her tits wouldn't be enough to sate it. Still it rose, three finger lifting the underside of one already standing breast, thumb inspecting the bud.

"How pitiful." he breathed and slid the touch over to the other, fingertips rapping her sternum on the way, to do the same but rougher to the other breast, more dismissive, as though he hoped to find something in the meager meat. In reality he was delighted, of course, but it was the decadence of finding a Loyal insufficient that made this all the better. He then used the same hand to wrap over her mouth, two fingers going inside to find moisture. He'd be quick between her teeth and swipe her tongue before he slathered that moisture over of her nipple harshly. Playing with her. He laughed a little and stepped back away from her again, as that offending hand undid the first button of his trousers.

"Now the pants and the boots, Ms. Crowley, and sing or hum something French while you do it." he ordered and undid his own pants more. "Something defeatist should be fitting, but if you have a personal favorite, I'd rather that." Already the outlines of an organ was there. She may not have the knowledge to compare, but by the looks of it, it seemed to occupy the better length down his thigh, even somewhat dormant. There was an unbearable smirk on him. Pride and lust are sibling sins.
 
There were levels to Zora’s panic and fear. It seemed to her that as soon as she figured she’d descended to the worst of it and that her only remaining task was simply to endure, Sharlan found a way to escalate. He’d been doing it since she met him and she couldn’t shake the delusion that he’d soon run up to the limit of what he could inflict and be forced to content himself with some unsurpassable peak of torment. She was always wrong.

She was ready when he touched her. If she understood nothing else about this exchange, she at least thought she knew he would bed her. So of course he’d put his hands on her bare skin. The reality of it was less of a shock than she braced herself for. It was just his hand against her abdomen, warm and large, and temporarily gentle. Then his touch slid over her. He tested her breast in his hand and drew his thumb over her nipple and she reacted with a surprised little shudder. Something terrifying shot through her.

He insulted her and used her shock to slide fingers into her mouth. Zora jerked her head back on pure reflex, and cried out when that same hand smeared her with her own spit. It turned the air cold. Both little pink nubs tightened into pebbles. She wanted to step back but there was no space for it. Slow, hot tears began to escape the corners of her eyes. She watched his hands busy themselves with his own trousers and she was a long time in looking away. She could see the evidence of his maleness and wondered briefly if she was mistaken about the logistics of the act. Her alarm climbed again. She breathed through it, refusing to sob.

He commanded her to perform a song for him while she undressed. She wasn’t ready for that. She was trying to send her mind away. He kept reeling her back. She knew French songs. She knew dozens, as would any lady with her background. But her thoughts were made of dull ringing and silent mantras and nothing would come to her.

“I can’t,” she said softly so her voice didn’t break. Her hands shook with a violence. “I can’t remember.”

She lowered herself down to the bed in silence if he would let her and reached for her boot laces. Her larger stilleto was in her boot and she thought again about killing him. There was a spring loaded blade in the toe, too. She could hurt him at least. But she just loosened her laces and peeled them away, allowing each to drop with a thud.
 
She let herself be inspected, and was both indignant and adorable in her predicament. Such a high lady for such a low situation. He was flattered when he presented a low grade, and she cared so intently. Her bodily upset was perfect, when he accosted, and the shrinking and growing nipples made him warm, down in his cock. Pants and knives or not, she was still a picture of femininity. The clear pearls at her eyelashes caught the fire around them. She was laid bare, more than in flesh. So much tension and defeat in one woman. She carried her entire dignity, but barely. It made her tremble.

He angled himself so she had a good vantage for his cock. He winked at her with some pride about it, as his pants dropped further and his briefs showed. His lips popped with real disappointment at her refusal to sing. It was a true confession, telling of the crushing of her spirit that he was pulling her through. Suppose it was his own fault, for getting to enjoy all the others.

He looked as she lost her boots, and thought it was a beautiful submission, once again. He could make her do anything now. With only huffs to express the labor, he was efficient about the last of his own disrobing. Without shame, in fact, with some kind of squaring of his frame, he stood nude by her. Scars, because he was a prominent duelist, and the muscle underneath. Those tokens of power that held together his torso and tied it to its limbs were impressive, but their closeness to his skin almost made them look a bit starved. Not some vain composition of pumped flesh, but rather, an apex creature, who'd rend its way to the top. And such positions are costly, even for animals that are made for them. he was not enjoying his hayday.

And then that thing. The object that was also a monster. Though half filled, it had already engaged its veins. It culminated to a bowing head, that was a darker color than the rest. A tuft of hair the same shade as that which he had tied back from his face. atop the base. With her sitting as he came to her, his towering would be impossible in nature. Of course, that'd put his cock at height with her eyes.

And then reached down, bowed down. Hand on her pants and eyes at her eyes. "Lie back." he said, and when she did, because that's what Zora Crowley did now, he would get her pants off his damned self. Eventually he'd throw them, and reach all around her to rid the bed of her clothes and knives, so it'd only be the Loyal woman under him, naked and-- his. And as he did "You know Nicole DuBois Breasts, Bush Scene in Interview With The Vampire ?"
 
When he told her to lie back, she had a little trouble lifting her eyes up from his nakedness, and once she finally did they betrayed her concern. She was about to be naked, too. His eyes bore right into hers when she looked up at him. Her breath quickened as she hinged backwards at the hips. She laid back slowly, as if she might buy herself some time before she was fully exposed, but Sharlan wasn’t having it. He dragged her trousers down and her knickers with them, revealing pale, lightly muscled legs that met in an apex shadowed with hair a shade darker than that upon her head. She instinctively put her knees together and to the side the moment that she could. She struggled with the instinct to do more than that, to kick him away.

Her pants went sailing across the room, and then Sharlan cleared the bed of everything but her. He requested a song. Again. She fought to get clear headed enough to think about his question. She knew that song, she thought. At least most of the words. He’d said she could hum, too. She gave a watery eyed nod and began. Her voice broke on the first word, but she recovered, and then she began to sing in earnest. Her voice was soft and raspy from holding in sobs, but she was trained for after dinner parlor songs so she was still melodic despite her struggle. It was a slow, meandering song that might have been comforting to Zora under any other circumstances.

She heard all her knives connect with the floor, wishing she trusted her hands enough to snag one of them before they were out of reach. She smoothed her palms over the bed next to her just to be sure, but the bed was truly empty aside from her. Her little hands balled in the sheets. Her song faltered a little, but she picked it up again. Her tears had all changed directions when she sat back, running from the outside corners of her eyes to collect in the fine hairs at her temples. She shook now when she inhaled, too, and with the effort it required to keep enough air in her lungs to make music with them.
 
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Her bravery was whittled down. She spent it on inaction to slow her fall, that still amounted to obedience. He saw it in her, that lovely ghost on her expression; her worry and her little dreads. He was dismantling her, piece by piece. How delicious she was being. Fighters aren't always hunters, but he enjoyed this. He breathed with a lung-warm compliment when he got to take her pants and underwear off in one motion. So that was her color of hair, in secret. He knew something about her that no one else might. A pretty pose for him too, with her remains of modesty. It didn't matter, but that's why he liked seeing it. She was such a practical body, pretty when it needed to be, and useful.

It touched him more when she gave him her voice. He was mesmerized over her, when he laid her down, and remained sitting himself, on the bed. The fault in the flow of it was just rawer. She looked like she was swimming under him when she searched the cheap sheets with her hands, and with her singing, she had to be a mermaid in a thread-bare sea. His admiration didn't buy her anything. He was transfixed as beasts can be transfixed, hollow-eyed and hungry. He parted her legs as though it was a favor, and laid them on either side of his when he moved closer. He laid his heavy length over her, so his sack pressed against that apex. It was a bit alarming how far his cock reached up her stomach. A violent promise.

His hand stroked her vibrating throat and he drank her tears with his own eyes, peering down at the trove of treasure he'd uncovered from her, squeezed from her. She was paying for their deaths with one of her own, wasn't she? He stroked a breast on his hand's way down. How small her waist was when he held it, as though to steady her for him. The belly of his cock felt good against her little hairs. When he toppled forward and caught himself with hands on either side of her shoulders, his own hair came a little loose from the hairtie. Her singing was the most expensive thing he'd had in a while. How fine. How exclusive. He couldn't help but relying on one arm so the hand of the other could touch her cheek, and his thumb could trace her lower lip even as it birthed the song. Her pronunciation was particularly embodied. This was much deeper felt than Antoine and her mix-language fate.

He didn't tell her to stop. He wanted to slaughter the song, too. So he started pushing against her, rubbing himself up against her sex while his cock stroked her stomach and pelvic hill, his sack pushing against her womanhood. She had proven herself keen when they slid down the rope together. How long would she try to lull him with the lyrics?

He eventually lifted his hips back, had to do it far, to finally align the fat head against her folds, having that bulb press against her cunt. An unbidden kiss that became tighter as he applied just a little of his weight.
 
He looked at her almost tenderly and touched her almost gently. Of course, it didn’t last. He stroked her breast again, and she began to wonder if he liked them after all. The sweep of his fingertips down her body left a trail of fiery awareness. HIs hands slid over her hips, and that was fine, too. His hands were warm when they weren’t coated with her spit, and textured with callouses, and her untouched skin felt every snag of their slide.

He put his sex against her. The size wasn’t right, she thought with fear. She’d been taught what to expect on her wedding night. It had been a long time ago because she was expected to match quickly rather than spend four years on the marriage market, but she remembered well enough. It was a difficult thing to forget. She thought he would hurt her with it. She thought he was enjoying tormenting her and would probably enjoy physically hurting her just as well. She wished she would have thought about that before now. He fell forward onto her and she braced herself. The song faltered and resumed.

But again, Sharlan surprised Zora by rolling his body against hers, and that wasn’t bad, either. It felt a little like when she had her legs around him, when he pinned her to the wall with his hips, when she was still in denial about how monstrous he could be. It was like that, but more vulgar. Zora grew warm. What she was beginning to identify as arousal loomed, gathering tension behind her ribs and creeping toward the sudden southerly rush. The weight of him thinned her voice further, until she was more or less whimpering the melody of his song. She could adjust to this, she thought. It was adjacent to tolerable.

All her resolve, every remnant drop of denial, flew out of her when Sharlan aligned his cock to her and began to press. Seconds began racing by faster than they were supposed to. Panic gripped Zora and refused this time to negotiate with her higher reasoning. Her terrified limbs became mutinous and Zora bucked away from Sharlan. Her voice broke on a shocked wail and she scrambled up the bed and away.

“Wait, wait, no, please, let’s talk about this,” she babbled. She couldn’t stop it. Her limbs were on fire with the need to run and flail; her mouth wasn’t hers anymore. “Listen, we could ... I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
 
He conjured something in her. There was a part of Zora Crowley that had always spoken to him. It betrayed her with little breaths and clear-as-day blushes in the Libera, and showed itself in her fascinated, appalled eyes when he cut the life out of men. It tried to commune with him now, come up through her skin like eager spring through winter ground. He played with it. If his blood hadn't been thwarted by the world, if George and Mason had still been alive, if he'd been allowed to remain the unfettered middle son of a house of loyals, maybe the gentle in his touch wouldn't have been insincere. But Zora was too much of what he'd lost, and her being here, with him, was too much of a joke on them both to be forgiven. He'd not live in a dream where they'd courted.

He was only the beastly things her baser self responded to. So he liked when she melted a bit for him, when he pushed against her, the act of skinship without its seal. Oh, she looked ready for it then. But when he readied himself to take her, to see if the spell would hold, she turned back to her primmer self. There were teeth in his smile, and bit of frustration that showed as black in his brown eyes, when she fled like a little thing and curled up even smaller against the worn bedboard. As always, she was beautiful in her deafeat.

He was quiet as she vomited her words on the sheets that were still warm from her. How does a wolverine smile when a lamb makes its petitioning noises? With his hands on the bed, around the indent where she'd laid, and his arms taut with sinew and strength, he looked like he was ready to leap and rend her. "You tried that, Ms. Crowley." he said like a bark to decapitate her sentence. He thrust his head forward but it stopped before it could crush her cheek. He rubbed his nose against her. Full of fear, Zora smelled so good. He had his knees in when his hand locked around her throat and held her head against the wall in the corner. His other hand wasted no time to burry between her legs, petting her mat of hair first, and then mashing his palm against it as his fingers reached further, to rub against where his cock had kissed her.

"You already tried that, Zora. You didn't bring anything but this." he said and ventured the tip of a finger inside her. The rest of it followed soon. Callouses inside her. Moving rhythmically to learn her. His hand on her throat collared her tighter, and kept her harder against the wall. His cock pressed against her thigh. Maybe this was all to squeeze more whimpering out of her, because he loved it. "You're going to be a woman by my flesh." he promised into her ear.
 
When Sharlan surged forward Zora shrank back, finding herself pressed into the corner against which the bed was wedged. She thought he’d hit her or drag her back to him, but instead he nuzzled her cheek like she’d done something that pleased him. She began to understand a little more what he wanted from her. Not just obedience, but suffering. She was wracked with a silent sob. The flutter in her chest and shoulders stilled instantly when he put his hand around her throat and pressed her back. The pressure against her windpipe returned the distracting edge of looming mortality and got her fear under control. It grounded her to the moment, and the heaving of her little breasts gentled.

His hand against her was rude. The pressure of his palm was frightening, his bare fingers against her bare cunt left her feeling more exposed than when it was his manhood. Fingers seemed more personal somehow, and her whole face heated. She was subtly wet, less subtly when he parted her with his finger and tested her with its tip. She took a shocked breath when he shoved the whole digit into her and her hips twisted at the sharp sensation of it and she clenched around him. When the finger of one hand began to move inside her and the others flexed around her throat, Zora shook. She felt a fresh, hot flush of arousal rush between her legs. She wanted to moan and sob, but all that escaped was a high pitched whine that broke into airless clicks. Zora closed her eyes against the blinding mortification. She didn't think it was natural to respond this way to his hands on her, not an ounce of warmth to be found in him, but it was tempting to latch onto any sensation that wasn't fright or pain.

His whisper in her ear whipped her embarrassment higher. The breath tickled the shell of her ear and down her neck. Zora felt it echo in her cunt. Her throat worked on another sob that didn’t quite push past Sharlan’s fingers.
 
She was caught, and she looked gorgeous in her peril. Beautiful parcel of a girl, shrunken in on herself when he choked her in place. She didn't use her hands, however useless that would be, and he saw the resignation of her calming motions. A good girl, still. It was intimate, of course, the claiming of her windpipe. She understood. Women get so docile when you hold their necks. "That's right. Just so." he cooed when her body stopped its frantic, and settling into a slower kind of misery. He swallowed back on lust that billowed in his mouth when she breathed and sounded like that. But he gasped when he felt the acceptance and welcome of her pussy, sucking his finger in and hugging him warmly. The slickness told him something about her; that she was not above the perversions of being captured. None of her well-brought-up schooling could have prepared her for the paradox of the female heart and body. He knew it well, because just like bloodshed, he had taken his time to practice.

A second finger inside her then. He curled them while listening to the hitches in her lungs and the high of her whimpers. He was choking her warningly, sometimes. Not just in control of her body, but her breath, too. "You're a little whore, after all, aren't you?" he asked and slid fingers out of her, and held them up while he tested the strands of sap between them for her to see. "I thought better of you than this." he muttered, dismissively. In reality, he was elated his noble catch had such tendencies.

And then he turned and pulled her along with the grip he had. Now the back of her head landed on the opposite side of the bed. Only reason a woman has her head there is when she's put in such a position to be fucked. It was easy to make sure her legs were on either side of him again, and he could keep the back of her head buried in the matress with his grip as he readied himself once more. Again the hot, round head pushed at her folds. He had been worried he'd have to deal with a dry cunt catching on his cock, but poor little Zora was already lathered for him.

He made sure her neck was craned in a way that she could see their junction perfectly, exactly how his cock was nuzzling between her labia. But she could also chose to look elsewhere, which was up at him. Either way he'd be staring at her as he perfectly violated her. His cock was unstoppable. It was a matter of threading her new place over his cruel creature. And he wouldn't stop until he'd introduce at least a quarter of himself into her. So this was how a woman of society felt around him.
 
With his hand around her throat, Sharlan was all Zora could see. When he squeezed, her heart beat faster and ate up her oxygen, so her vision dimmed quickly and for an instant she would see nothing at all and feel only his finger, and then fingers, sliding and stretching. She’d start to properly surrender to the blackness, hoping she might pass out, hoping he wouldn’t kill her in his carelessness, and then he’d let the air in again and she’d drag for it with desperate lungs and the world would come back with razor sharp brightness. He’d still be there when she came back, fucking her with his fingers. It was what she came back to each time until she reached for it and her hips grew heavy with it. She wanted to widen her stance, to move with him.

When he called her a whore, her mind was too far away to supply an argument. Maybe she was, she thought. Nothing else made sense. She watched his fingers and burned. She wanted him to put them in her again, to shut the rest of the world off. If he was going to ruin her, she wanted her mind ruined too. It was better that way. She could step outside of it for a while and just writhe on his fingers if he'd just put them back. She realized her eyes were dry just in time to start up again, just in time to be dragged by her neck to the opposite end of the bed. Forced down for the second time. The instinct to close her knees returned, but the instinct not to was stronger. She lay frozen but opened for him when he pressed.

She tested her neck against his grip and found she couldn’t turn it. He gripped her brutally so, again, there was only Sharlan everywhere she looked. His dark, hungry face loomed above her. Lower, he parted her. The alarm returned as he began to sink into her and her feet slid uselessly against the mattress. She was tense. It hurt. She put her hands on his forearm, the one that choked her. She squeezed him and tried to breathe through it as he pierced her. It wasn’t like his fingers at all, and she might have shouted under any other circumstances, but now she just whimpered and clutched him while tears leaked from her and she adjusted to the painful feeling of being stretched when her muscles fought against it.
 
If it wasn't death, it was an overwhelming of her. Her dignity and poise swept away, and now she was just a naked thing, with breasts cutting up and down at whatever pace he allowed. He liked it most when the pump of her lungs were futile, against a throat that would give them nothing, because his hand was set a certain way. He could have killed a thousand men for any slightly justified reason, and, as he knew, her reason was more just than most. So this play at needing trust was just a farce - if he couldn't trust someone who was too naive to run from paying, then who? So she was losing her breath and a lot more for his game, not her debt. It made her all the more beautiful underneath him, extinguished and reignited with the pulsing of his grip, her small tits rising and plummeting on her little bird torso.

How would Zora feel if she knew he was playing with the idea of making her a martyr for his perverse whims?

But something else in him won over the mischievous bloodthirst. Something as steadfast to him as his skills. Something she wanted too, by what he could read between the daze in her eyes, and their reflection of his wet fingers. Tossed her down and watched her stay like that. When he lanced her he wondered if he'd bottom out. She came alive again, and he kept her barely so, with his grip. Her hands were too late on him. And she cried for him. Maybe for herself.

"Relax into it." he said, finally, when he'd either inserted himself fully or encountered the limits of her depths, either way he'd be pulling back, half his intrusion, and then plummeting in again. She was tight and firm around him, in that infernal hug. How delicious, daughter of House Crowley. He tried her a few reaching times, stretched her, full or as far as he could go, securing her throat while filling her up with cock when she couldn't breath to expel the fullness. And then he started loosening the grip, holding on only to keep her in place. His thumb massaged the side of her neck, where a killing blood vessel was. But he didn't squeeze as he found his rhythm inside her slick place, intrusive, overbearing, and insistent. "You can adjust your hips to what you like." he offered with the same dark voice that told her orders.

For all that he'd sneered at her good breeding, her prim, new pussy did feel delectable, holding on to his cock as he moved in her.
 
Zora’s face tightened into a pained grimace when Sharlan surged forward and seated all of him inside of her. It hurt enough she thought she might be injured beyond simple discomfort. He filled her until she felt him run up against a different kind of resistance, provoking a different quality of pain that made her hips buck and her spine tighten reflexively. She squeezed his arm to release the pain. The edges of her fingernails bit into his flesh and left little curving indentions. She saw black. Sharlan told her to relax while he violated her, and in spite of herself she tried, but every time she anticipated his motion he would change it, thrust deeper until her mouth shot open to scream and no sound escaped. Zora broke into a sweat.

Each time his fingers slackened on her throat she would inhale noisily. She whimpered between breaths because she didn’t have the strength or the concentration to try not to. It was no different this last time when he let her have a little bit of air. She choked on it while he told her to move how she liked. She had insufficient fire in her for outrage. She obeyed him instantly, gratefully. She tilted her hips up and arched her spine like she knew what she was doing; it was an instinctive pose she struck, meant to elongate so when he buried himself deep she could spare herself the worst of the pain. She planted her feet flat on the mattress for purchase and shifted little by little while he thrust into her.

She found a rhythm. Or rather, she found his rhythm. She found she could tip her hips just so as he thrust into her, and relax as he withdrew, and it wouldn’t hurt as much, or sometimes at all. He kept giving her oxygen long enough for her lungs to stop their spasming. The nature of her grip on his arm shifted, too, until she clung to him for purchase, for more precision and less strain in the roll of her hips. Her blood ignited into liquid fire.

By now she was so accustomed to the futility of her noisemaking that she made no attempt to restrain the broken sob of pleasure that wracked her. The clenching of her cunt inverted, trying to keep him. She didn’t know if she was sobbing or moaning. “I hate you,” she cried, unaware of how she writhed under him, or how the heat that rushed between her legs was the reason the slide of his cock became less violent. She adjusted to the fullness, to feeling each thrust up in her throat, even after he gave her air back. She looked down, watching how he split her open, mesmerized by the rhythmic synchronization. It felt like something she knew already and just needed to be reminded. It was exquisite. Her feet crept wider on the mattress and she reminded herself that she would kill him when this was over.
 
He adored hurting her. And that's all she could have first. Her head kept in place, her throat laced with large fingers. Her little body under his, enough to be crushed. He could sense that she was enduring it like anyone might torture. He relished in that, let her take the test of his cock and know its effects on her. She didn't bite back cleverly when he told her to relax. He could see it in her shifting; she was desperate for any reprieve under him. She was still running from his lusts but she was being choked where she was. He might have loved her then, the little wilting saint that she was, gored on his cock.

But the breaths that he let her have sounded different when she took his advise. He knew that stretch, long ways. A compliment but also a promise to try and adjust. She didn't mean to, he was sure, but she was participating in this inevitability of her rapture. He was luring her into it. It didn't belong to him, only her body did even by his unfair deal, but now he was going to steal her own pleasure from her too. She hung on to him a bit like when they were coming down that rope. Like he'd save her life even as he was killing her. A soft murmur in his chest when he heard her, and felt the welcoming squeeze of her cunt instead. As with weapons, she was outmatched and under-trained when it came to fucking. The small, amused revving sounded ursine in the chest over hers. A dastardly, heavy monster, claiming her.

He only nodded at her spoken hatred, and lifted himself a bit off her so she could see where her body betrayed her. Their hips didn't part though. To show off, he even pulled back further, bulging her lower lips with his all but dislodged cockhead before plunging in again. His shaft was glistening from her. He was mostly just looking at her as she was staring at it. She had all her breaths back when his hands planted in the sheets around her instead. He wanted to hear her confessional symphony.

With his usual hubris when it came to bodily conquests, usually bloody but always of the flesh, he slid his hands under her, between the back of her ribs and the bed, and lifted her with him as he leaned back. With them so entangled, they'd stay attached as he sat back in the bed, her in his lap and her legs still around him. With his shoulderblades resting on the wall, he could dig his feet in to the bed and push up when he started bouncing her. With his length inside her, during the insertions, at the critical point her own weight would crush her last barrier onto his cockhead. It was a lovely punishment, and his cock could take it. But his hands steering her waist would only make the rhythm that had her moaning for so long, until try gradually stopped, to see if her could trick her into moving herself.
 
Zora jerked beneath Sharlan when his arms slid beneath her, caging her further. She looked up at him, startled and instinctively shrinking into herself as she levered up and over with the tilt of his body, until her weight landed on top of him, centered about his cock. Brightness exploded in Zora’s vision and she wailed. She scrambled to get her knees under her, to find some control over the brutal plummet that Sharlan left her to when he would bounce her up and let her fall again.

She knew what she was looking for this time and she found it faster. She didn’t wait for his invitation. She laid her hands over Sharlan’s shoulders and pressed with her strength to exert some control over the downstroke of her cunt. Her thighs flexed in time with her fingers. Her eyes drifted shut and a frown of concentration creased her glistening brow while she taught herself to ride him. Gradually it became easier. Sharlan’s hands didn’t push her so insistently. She thought his pace shifted to accommodate her struggle to match him, not understanding that he was handing her over to her own volition.

She wanted to move with him, at least as long as she wasn’t thinking about it. Heat pounded between her legs. Energy swelled in her limbs, giving her strength to move when he moved, to put his cock where it felt best, sunk nearly all the way into her with her hips rolling into the angle that stroked her best, grinding with surprising enthusiasm for her own pleasure. Her toes curled and her fingernails bit into his shoulders at first, but she found it was even better leverage if she pressed her palms flat against his chest. She thought she could have gone on chasing that elusive coiling feeling all night, heedless of the hateful face that loomed just behind her closed lids, but Zora became so intensely feverish so quickly that she startled herself from her stupor and went rigid. She lost her rhythm and some measure of her oblivion, eyes blinking open owlishly to fix on Sharlan and glare at him.
 
As he introduced the new position to her, she sparkled with panic, and the sound she gave him he'd save forever. She came with him willingly, and was fast to steer. How cute, when she gathered her focus, even with closed eyes, to make his member go as she wanted. It wasn't to mitigate pain, it was to seek pleasure. She showed him all the ways into her, while he helped her, and then Zora was helping herself. That's what he wanted. The image of the lady becoming this lost creature. For a moment of hugging and riding his cock, she was wild, but not feral. It was honesty as bare as she was. The light on her body, striking longer rays against the perspiration. Labor finally, Ms. Crowley.

She switched back, but even when she took her clarity, propped up on his cock, she was tarnished; maybe forever. There'd always be a part of him, a part of this moment, in her; mixing up with the proper things she'd learned, and staining the cleaner pleasures she knew. That's why it meant the world to men to be the first to women. He relied more on the wall because her hands were still on his chest. I got you; just a short blare of his eyelids said it, but she'd know. His hands on her waist, and then his hips rolled to follow the path in her that she'd moved him in. But deeper. He'd fuck that expression out of her again; he'd let it degenerate back to that unwitting libertine partaking in her own corruption. A puppet on his cock.

He held her there so he could push up into her. It was his rhythm now. Her discovery of his trickery wouldn't win her any autonomy here. He thrust as though there was no fatigue in him. He'd shown his physicality before. He'd be rough enough to make even her petite breasts sway as he knocked on the womanhood inside her womanhood. A beast completely there for her, against her will, but willing. His muscles came alive under his skin, both keeping her where she was, and pumping himself into her, finding a pace he liked through ways that she'd shown him. Always more violent. He held this velocity for a while, flawlessly, to lean more about her, and to enjoy the friction of her slick. And then he'd lift her off, and all but toss her to the other end of the bed in such a way that she'd be facing away from him, on her stomach. She'd get no time to gather herself.

She'd know he was moving behind her, but she wouldn't get away. From here he'd be able to see her pussy as he propped her up another time, her knees in the bed but her face still down. Ass up. He impaled her again, and they made a shape like animals do when they mate. If she had the strength she could get up on her hands, but he'd be no less beastly for it. He'd just grab her hair, then. And if she didn't, he would still thrust into her, leaned over her, with his palm holding her head down, mashing her cheek against the mattress. The other hand on her hip, as though to keep her from splitting rather than any real support. At the beginning of this he hadn't thought he'd get to fuck Zora Crowley like cattle. Or that her body would take to it so well.
 
Zora wanted to cry again, but her eyes were dry. Sharlan took over when she faltered, but with a ferocity. Zora saw stars, arching her back, and with every upward thrust of Sharlan’s sharp hips he forced a broken little moan out of her. He lit her up from the inside. She forgot she had arms and legs. She was just her dry mouth struggling for air and her wet cunt shifting and clenching for his cock. He was too rough, but the pain was becoming familiar and welcome as long as it kept building the distracting fever in her blood. She was falling in love with hating him. Her pleasure was agonizing. She thought she might die soon, but then he moved her again and she wailed and didn’t know why.

She landed in yet another new position, prone this time. She pushed to her hands without pausing to consider whether her landing was intentional. Was he done? It was a natural byproduct of her confusion to push up to her knees, but Sharlon moved so fast. He was inside her again before she even understood they could do it this way, with Zora facing away. Was he larger still? He shoved himself home and she cried out in surprised shock and dropped to the mattress again. His hand landed on her head and mindlessly she laid hers on top of it and held it there, aware on a purely physical level that she didn’t have to struggle if she simply couldn’t. She cooperated without hesitation now, digging her weight into her chest and the the one arm crooked over her head and gripping the bedding. She pressed her ass to the ceiling and muffled her tearless sobs into the mattress.

It was much better this way, she quickly realized. Zora didn’t have to look at anything or anyone. WIth her face hidden and her voice muffled, she didn’t have to do much of anything other than remain still for Sharlan and take his cock. The singular focus on his pounding was suffocating and terrible and Zora thought she’d kill him if he stopped, too. She’d kill him no matter what. She’d kill him while he fucked her if she could.

That thought dragged Zora abruptly over that edge she’d been chasing for what now felt like an entire eternity. She imagined she had her itty bitty knife after all, and she had it snug against his pulse point while he fucked her and she stared into his beautiful, tamed face and spat. It took her completely by surprise when her cunt turned to liquid and contractions rolled through it, stealing Zora’s breath, pushing it out of her in a rapturous scream that she sacrificed directly into the mattress while she shook and jerked artlessly beneath him. Her soul was burning, she thought. That had to be the feeling of damnation, a teasing little taste of hellfire boiling her blood.
 
She was just a pouring of broken sounds, so natural, and so mixed up with the shrill that came with the inadequacies of her voice to say the noises the meant. At every turn she reassured him he hurt her, but there were other things with her too. He had designed this entwinement this way. He was an often patron here, and even a more faithful guest in this moment, that he'd abducted her to. She didn't know that her body conversed with him, was trying to convince him to stay with her sweet, primal smells and her tell-tale expressions. But he responded with just the kind of warfare she was made for, simply by being a woman.

She served herself up in the small time he let her be, thrown and landed. How perfect their reconnection, all the way down to the bottom of her stomach. She wanted it then, more than she could cuss away. He liked controlling Zora Crawley and looking down at her, where he kept her in place. It was perfect for thrusting. And she was so matured in her skin and the things he'd nurtured on her inside now. He fucked her wildly, making froth at her slick folds, petals bent sideways, each of them, for his ugly trunk. Looking down at the event itself, where he was slathered in her at every retreat, he felt like the worst kind of hero, but still victorious, and proud, even more so.

He could feel the shifts in her, and when they became shorter apart, he chased that. He didn't relent his stabbing even when she gave and quaked the few feathers in the bed with her muted voice. He let out a small chuckle, dark and clucking, when she lost to him, and was as beautiful as anyone could be in her spasms. Her pretty, small ass waved at him at the far end of her shaking, and he gave it a rewarding smack with the hand he lifted from her head. He pushed her hip to let her topple, and had his cock sway free with a coat of her love. Sharlan produced himself at the side of the bed, looking down at his exhausted, newest darling.

The hard cock had every glistening clue to her approval, as he jerked the base. Once more one of his hands was in her hair. The slit at the tip of his cock must look cavernous to her, as close as he held it until he whipped her with the thick threads. She'd earned it, those paths crisscross her noble face. He groaned and stared at her as he did, enduring the accompanying bursts through him. Dark eyes still, and with sweat on his brow. A last impact of the dark cockhead onto her cheek, like a pat for her good effort, before he backed off to look at the panting victim he'd made of her, though there was enough vengeance in the aftermath-eyes to fuel more, if he wanted, he'd bet. Better she was too ravaged to get to her knives.

He stood in his scars and his trained skin, looking at her, cock bowing now. When he had his eyeful of her, and his belly full of gloating, he started picking up his own clothes. "In the opposite side of this corridor there's stairs that'll take you to alleys that'll spit you out by the Scara." he said, and would be mostly dressed by then. "Now you only owe me a bella, minus five." out of the hundred that a bella made. It was a small price for her body, and that's what he meant for her to understand. Better he had taken this taking for reassurance of payment instead of adding the suggestion she was like one of the corseted girls downstairs. It was too delicious to resist. He even produced the five on the floor, and they spun and clanked until they settled.

"I trust you won't make the mistake of being late with payment again, Ms. Crowley?"
 
Sharlan’s hand made a sharp noise on Zora’s ass and then he let her go. In his physical absence she felt the air cooling her skin, the flush of her arousal dissipating quickly. She panted, heart cautiously hopeful that the torment was over. She looked up when he moved into her periphery and flinched minutely as the first warm rope of Sharlan’s seed impacted her face, then harder when she understood. His hand held her in place while he finished on her, so it was a useless jerk of her head that went nowhere and accomplished nothing. He put it on her face after, but Zora’s outrage was gentling and her fury turned cold like the rest of her.

She turned her face into the mattress with her eyes and mouth screwed shut, rubbing the wetness away. When she’s finished she looked up at him, the coins he flung at her in payment still jangling into their resting places on the wooden floor. Zora pushed up to sitting, fresh humiliation cresting within her. With virtually no effort on his part, Sharlan had fooled her and fucked her and now he insulted and dismissed her like common rabble. She was drunk on hatred.

Zora threw her legs over the side of the bed, reaching for her shirt first as it provided the most modesty in a single garment. It lay pooled with her vest and jacket, where Sharlan had swept them off the bed. She considered her vest. Her hesitation was purely internal. Externally it would appear as if she never had any intent other than to reach smoothly for a knife. She did not think about the potential consequence of her death. All the important things that made survival worth considering had now been taken from her.

She cocked her hand across her body for a reverse grip throw. The little knife fit almost entirely in her hand, her thumb tucked against the flat of the blade, leather-clad tang oriented with her wrist. She snapped her arm and released, aiming for his face. He’d asked her if she was good and she’d demurred, but her aim was true and he’d have to be fast indeed not to let the flying blade make a home inside his eye socket. She snatched up the vest, already fishing for the remaining three blades inside, pushing silently to her feet and ignoring the strange sensation of moving around with her freshly used cunt still slick and smarting. She pinched the next little blade in preparation for an overhand throw.
 
She was still affected by being fucked for the first time in her life when he got her head by her hair. He watched that change as he marked her with his fertile signature and insult. By the last lines of his essence, as the pleasure was careening through his twitching cock and the low of his guts, Zora was trying to get out, but too dumbfounded or perhaps brimming with too much anger to do anything useful in the moment. On this changing surface he got to paint his cum. It was a lot of her dignity abused. She could only address it when he let her go. She'd hear a bit of an amused hiss when she wiped her cheeks on the cheap bedding. That kind of insult could break a woman, or it could make her stupid. He learned what kind of woman Zora was.

Her breasts jiggled in their closeness to her chest when she sat. He saw every movement. She didn't understand his standing there as anything other than her right to satisfaction. The duty of a Duelist is to relieve the opponent of that right. Turned completely toward her, he was just a target. Her form was good. She became a formidable spectacle, primal in her nudity and efficient from her mire. He even lowered his upper lip at her pinching of the dagger. Calculating its speed was hard from the front, but her arm gave away where she aimed, if her eyes didn't. He gave her a courtesy she'd never know, when he waited to move until the weapon had left her grip.

He dove toward it it, after that, posture undone, but trajectory barely compromising at all for her projectile. If she wasn't quick, it may even look like she hit what she was aiming for. But then how was he still moving? He would have liked to do something as picturesque and warranted as rapping across her face, but perhaps he was fond of her choice of keeping their secret, and black eyes or facial welts tell tales. Instead his long arm reached so he could palm her hand, the one she held her newest dagger in, and shoved that hand into her own diaphragm, to steal her air and footing, sending her back on the bed while he kept the vest and blade.

The money had done it. It had been the straw that broke her camel's back. Good to know. While she surely would cough, or recover in whatever way she felt she needed to from the punch of her own hand to a very sensitive line on her torso, he came to her, and turned her, ass up again. By the way his hair billowed, she could learn her dagger had cut its tie in flight. He crossed her wrists behind her back and slapped one ass cheek three times, each impact more thundering than the previous, and with the last one hard enough to knock a grown man off his feet. Even though a woman's behind is sturdier, the pain might be debilitating.

"I'll only take payment face to face." he said, lightly, as he backed off, and felt confident enough to leave her there, while he turned his back to her. And, if she was done with her useless fit, he'd close the door, leaving her with many of his scents, a good deal of memories, and five coins.
 
Zora collapsed gasping and sputtering onto the bed, struggling to get her lungs sorted and working again. Her eyes watered -- partially from the blow, partially because she’d reclaimed enough of her thoughts that she now remembered how very much she had to cry about. She put up a perfunctory struggle when he took her wrists, but she bucked in earnest when he paddled her like a child. She didn’t have enough oxygen to curse him.

She’d missed. She shouldn’t have, not in such close quarters, and yet she knew that she would miss when she’d struck out. Did she want to die, then, she wondered? She supposed she did a little, yes. It would be easier than cleaning herself up, finding her way home, and foiling an evidently seditious plot being carried out right under her father’s nose. Yes, dying sounded a lot nicer than all of that. Alas, Sharlan had left her alive and Zora wasn’t the wallowing kind, so she used the sheet to rub any remaining fluids from her sore and tired body and then she dressed. It was a difficult task on account of the violent tremor in her hands.

It wasn’t enough to simply dress, of course. She had to look *unharmed*, so she spent some time straightening her hair and smoothing down her jacket and cloak. When she finished she thought she still looked haunted and hollow, but she was satisfied that someone would have to peel back her cloak and jacket to find the signs of her assault. She took a moment for herself then, to lean against the door before she passed through it, forehead pressed into the wood. She spent the time convincing herself that there was any point at all in going home and eventually she triumphed, finally slipping out of the room.

The five coins remained on the floor. The only reason she would want them would be to make Sharlan eat them, a goal she knew was far beyond her skill. She followed the path he’d described to her, down the back stairs and into the alleyway. She didn’t care enough to be disgusted by the alley filth. She went mechanically to the Scara, then turned and followed the path she knew back to the dressmaker, where she rapped hard on the back door until it opened and she disappeared inside.

Penelope drew her own bath in the middle of the night and soaked and cried and drank in the dressmaker’s modest upstairs apartment. She was alone, having compensated the shop owner earlier in the day to leave this place vacant for her. She spent the small hours of the morning getting fantastically drunk.

She didn’t know what it meant to be late again with payment. She hadn’t thought herself late to begin with. She’d said there might be more work, depending on what they found and Sharlan had agreed. She wasn’t late, the job was incomplete. Furthermore, he’d never said how much time she’d bought with her virtue, so how could she possibly know at what point she would be late? These concerns were overshadowed by his final stipulation, against which she’d been too stunned to argue -- I'll only take payment face to face. He expected to see her again.

Zora was already convinced that he’d set her up to disappoint him again, no matter when or how she paid Sharlan. He would push her as far as she allowed herself to be pushed. She vastly preferred to stand firm, but there was the small issue of having no idea how to. She’d hired the best because that was the Crowley way, but now she needed protection from the best and she owed nearly every glint she had to Sharlan now.

Nine people. He’d killed nine people and had an appetite for that after. He was more monster than man. She had to pay him and get away from him as quickly as possible. Someplace public like the Libera.

The bath went cold before Zora climbed out and fumbled drunkenly into bed. Gray light was already pouring through the seam in the curtains when she fell asleep. She remained that way until the evening, only waking occasionally to panic and sniffle and dig herself deeper beneath the pillows and blankets. The shopkeeper eventually shook her awake purely out of concern for her health and after making herself decent Zora exchanged her final bank note for a bella of hard currency. This time the coins were collected into a purse. The King’s Beauty coin had been a one-time novelty.

She penned a note to Sharlan then. She’d thought of it off and on all day, when she rose unwillingly to consciousness. There was no way around simply asking what he wanted from her. She burned with rage over every stroke of the quill and it was evident in her sharp, angled script.

Mr. Berrenger,

I trust this letter finds you well. I have in my possession the payment you seek. Might I request the pleasure of your company for afternoon tea tomorrow at The Regency Room, where we may conclude our business?

Z.C.
 
There was melancholy always, in the Berrenger city house. It was sturdy and carried the best details of its building time, but the garden outside was simple, though lovingly kept, there was not much there other than the bare minimum of some grass, and spoiled statues, as far as polishing with a rag went. Because it was a Duelist home, the lack of flowers and lanterns and any new luxuries since its make, could be blamed on a no-nonsense, results only attitude. But the raised beds by the wall told a story of former glory, now only populated with wildflowers, however neatly contained. Water for the sparse plants were free, after all.

Exactly three members worked in the household, trying not to rub away at golden details on ancient china, or further wear threadbare uniforms. But they flitted around with more concern than that dutiful dignity that other house staff wore like their everyday masks. The Berrenger crew were engaged and involved in their tasks.

The son himself, sat on his bed, still with Zora's scent about him. He'd already pleasured himself about her twice - his own fault for not taking libations after he'd had her, and continued the party in her honor - but was now in that descending dread of the low after the high. Trousers only, with a silver tray on the bed with him, with crumbs of black bread and the shell of an egg mixed up. He was hunched over, rolling the bella coin between his fingers and listening to the whistle of her dagger gliding closely over his left ear on its way to his hairtie. He let sun hit the round treasure, and then put that stark ray in his left eye. A river of tears celebrated the abuse. His ancestor, Easley Berringer, had been there to usher in the age of this coin.

Emma Foxville knocked on his door and entered. No one was there to see the familiarity between servant and master. When he looked up, half his vision was on fire from the light he'd been pouring into his eye, and she looked like her colors were erupting when she stopped in her confident stride. It was the tears. She'd seen him in many ways, but this crying was new. Maybe she understood by the bella he was holding, or maybe she forgave him on the spot for this strangeness when she saw he wasn't actually downtrodden.

"The Wilkin boy." she said and raised thick, brunette eyebrows. He flipped the coin flawlessly at his nightstand where it landed dully on a thrice folded handkerchief. Emma was not so easily swayed by his sleights of hand as the tavern belles, but took his incline to fully enjoy the bed as a Yes. The errand boy was allowed in, and a letter that was folded to also be its own envelope exchanged ownership. The boy got the smallest of currencies for his troubles, but ran away exhilarated as always, to have glimpsed Sharlan Berrenger's life. In children's gossip, Sharlan was still valued by his victories and not his losses.

-

The Regency Room hadn't really been welcoming. As much as he sparred in his profession, and as much as he'd lost in societal prowess, he could still pick up on the unwelcome the helpers exuded by the door. Most working class were still fooled by his family's old glory, but some knew him by his nighttime activities. Suppose the gentlemen in an inferior suit but newer cut had seen him face deep in a cleavage one too many times.

Sharlan wore blue. With a maroon shirt and a black cravat. Silver pins and a polished weapon belt. Today he'd taken a saber and a black cane. Since he was no richer now than when he'd met her at the Libera, he was having coffee, black. Tellingly, one of the sugar cubes on the tray was gnawed in half. He had been looking forward to seeing her. To seeing how she carried his deeds on her when she'd had the time to clean them off. But also because she was one of the few fine things he'd gotten to touch with other things than his blades, lately.

"Zora." he gave when they met. Eventually they'd both be seated. "Please, you needn't be so speedy with repaying me. What are friends for?" he joked, but was famished for the pouch with the music in it. And, once he had the money in his naked hand "After all, I haven't told you about the rumors I've heard concerning the ship and its... plot." When she brought it up last time, he'd derailed the conversation.
 
Zora dressed that morning in the same yellow frock she’d worn to the dressmaker’s when she first embarked upon her foolishness two days prior. She split her hair into two plaits and pinned them in a knot at the base of her skull. She’d been dreadfully sick from overindulgence on the prior evening and well into the morning, but now Zora had recovered enough to have a brandy before she left to meet Sharlan. It was for her nerves.

There was a hint of sleeplessness beneath her eyes when Zora entered the Regency Room, but she’d otherwise pulled herself together for this meeting. She’d chosen the time and location for her safety, but this also meant that Zora would be among peers and must commit to the appearance of business as usual. She was mildly horrified to find that it was easy once she had actually arrived in the restaurant. It was like any other unexpressed outrage that she hid beneath her manners and poise. It cut her more deeply and she’d never felt as powerless as she now did, but these little tragedies were irrelevant to the general technique of freezing one’s face into angelic neutrality and pitching one’s voice to dulcet vacancy and getting the bloody hell on with it.

She drifted into the Regency like any other afternoon, handed off her coordinating gloves and bonnet and parasol, and allowed herself to be led to Sharlan.

“Mr. Berrenger,” she greeted him calmly back, handing his purse over immediately. She shifted her weight on her feet, ready to walk away only because sprinting would cause a scene, when he caught her with his words. She froze mid-pivot and let her heels reconnect slowly with the floor while she let her mind gallop ahead.

Did it really matter what he had to say? She thought on that. He wasn’t trustworthy. He wasn’t exactly a liar, but he wasn’t truthful, either. He had gone out of his way to hurt her and humiliate her and now smiled at her like it’d been lovely. He was criminally insane. And yet, for all she had sacrificed, Zora had gained precious little information and she already suspected that Sharlan knew more. She slowly swiveled back to Sharlan.

She imagined throwing his coffee in his face. She imagined he’d scream if it was fresh enough. And then he’d be ugly.

“Go on, then,” she said. “Tell me.”
 
He thought she was beautiful when she came in. He'd not expected a sobbing, hysterical woman, but she presented well, considering. He was attached to the shadows under her eyes, though. Those were his. What a painting she made when she dropped his wealth for him to catch, while turning at the same time. He was weighing the pouch - without her crest, he'd noticed - when her dress was still flying subtly at her panning the other way.

So they were dancing?

She'd said his name so well. It was her part of it; to be lovely, and to draw the eye. Now he must lead. He must apply the power of their union, to direct hers. She thought this was done, but she was mistaken, as always. When he said his own words her new restraints were set, like a hand around her waist. Zora stopped and her skirts continued for a bit, imbuet with her actual wishes rather than her sense, but eventually they had to settle too. She gave him back her face, her eyes, and all her attention. He set the bag down by his coffee and ignore her while he waved down the passing waiter.

"Something for the both of us. It must include bread." As poetic as the bella coin had been, so would breaking bread with the man who'd sacked you be. The waiter bowed and scurried off. Oh, Zora had such well-fed hatred for him in her eyes. He remembered them from when she'd sent her knife off.

He stood up. It was quiet and of very little consequence to his chair. Another bolstering of his own height, as though he'd strike her right here in the open. But instead he let the startle do what it may to her, only to then pull out a chair for her with a practiced nod. He'd sit her down if she'd let him. He also dealt in decorum, when they let him.

"If you sit down less people will hear. It'll be easier to gossip between friends." he offered. And if she did, he'd sit down too, scoot his chair closer to her than the table for two was designed for. Sharlan Berringer was playful, today. It was nothing unusual for women of Zora's standing to deal with Duelists. Sometimes they wanted champions for entertainment at their parties. He'd not done such lighthearted work in a while. People didn't trust him to hold back, anymore. It was insulting.

He touched the rim of his coffee and threw her grave eyes with an empty smile for those that might be looking at them. "Coup." he said. It could have been Cup, as in a Cup of coffee, but it hadn't been. A small, french-touched word that was similar to, but also worlds apart from something as innocent as a hot beverage in porcelain. A swear word in King Lester De Bellaforte's England. He leaned closer. This time he did whisper. "Treason." With what they'd found so far, and all the connections she may be making off it, it should be staggering for her poor little sensibilities.
 
Zora did, in fact, shrink back subtly from Sharlan when he stood. Her chest tightened reflexively against the expected blow. He’d hit her twice high in the abdomen and both times he’d left her painfully winded and useless. She clasped her hands just under her breasts like she might have a chance at shielding herself from attack, but she moved without noticing. She had no such illusions about her self defense anymore.

He pulled out a chair for her and Zora looked all round, weighing the ramifications of refusing to sit. He couldn’t force her with all these people around, but then he couldn’t tell her anything if she was storming out of the restaurant, so she sat stiffly. She leaned away when he scooted closer, dropping her eyes to the table, careful not to be touched. Her memory taunted her every time she looked at him. She was miserable with wrath and shame.

She didn’t bother telling the waiter that she wouldn’t be staying long or that she didn’t care for food. It was Sharlan’s money now. He could waste it as he pleased.

Treason, he said. Despite herself, she did look up then, face darkening with irritation. Her hands balled into fists in her lap. She’d sat down with him and it wasn’t a small compromise for Zora. Her heart pounded and she felt like she had two nights ago while she crept through the cargo hold in the dark with Sharlan at her back, sick with paranoia. She wanted more than vague, contextless words from him for her sacrifice.

“Obviously, trahison,” she hissed back at him. “We didn’t find a hold full of ladies’ parasols, did we? I want to know who and why.”
 
His nostrils flared with fed addiction when she cowered a bit at his standing. Oh, she'd learned something valuable after all. The first chapter of her taming. His cock moved just a little bit inside the fine trousers, when her hands protected under her breasts. It'd look like modesty to any onlookers. He was as satisfied as any large animal with meat in front of it. He reminisced on the determined lady in the Libera. What as contrast. But he controlled himself and his gloating expression. He waited for her to sit, another defeat, and pushed the chair in with her on it as though she weigh little more than the pillow she sat on.

He savored some more of her bustling demure while they sat together. He wondered if she'd scream if he reached for her now. She wasn't getting it. She heard the word but she couldn't see the meaning, of course. And she laid it up so nicely for him with her continued prodding. Who? "Your father." he said and moved his cup to the side so his elbows could fit between them on the table. "The King's Sorrow only in name, right? It was a Crowley vessel when it docked with weapons." He smiled as though she was daft and leaned back a bit. Out his his chest pocket, a cigarette came and he held it perfectly between two fingers. "The implications are clear. But what's worse is the rumors. Your father is well liked. He's fair enough. People don't mind him as a leader." he put one end of the roll to his lower lip, smug. "What's to say they wouldn't mind him as a king?"

He interrupted his plans to further hollow his lungs, and touched the cigarette hand to his chest, where he still kept the bella coin. "And we who belong to the King Lester De Bellaforte may be moved to stand against such a... plan." His eyes were locked into hers when the garcon came with their dishes and light drink. "I for one think the barons," of the sea, her father's sea. "may find themselves with more than they started, if the Loyals and their Duelists knock on your father's door."
 
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