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Rapiers with rapier wits verseXbathymcbath

“Who would believe that ridiculous --”

The momentum of her ire carried Zora through half a thoughtless sentence before the implications did finally shock her into stillness. Everyone. That’s who would believe it, not that it mattered. One opinion mattered and he was laughably easy to convince of traitors. The barons were moving against her father. They were setting it up to look like the Viscount was behind some kind of plot to capture or kill the king. They’d be executed for it if the story gained credibility.

Zora’s only hope would be to expose the barons before they sprung their trap. After the other night, though ... Realization dawned and all the blood drained out of Zora’s face. The carnage of bodies Sharlan had left behind guaranteed the conspirators would know they’d been there and whatever they had planned was likely already in motion now. She’d wasted any possible advantage wallowing in self-pity all day.

“You know it’s a lie. My father has no ambition for the crown, nor do I.” Did, her subconscious supplied hurtfully. Whatever personal ambition she’d possessed had been written out of the plan. Irrelevant. She could still try to save her family, though. The Viscount could have another child if he set his mind to it. She just needed to keep his head connected to his shoulders.

“Come with me to King Bellaforte and vouch for us,” she said, not quite asking. It also didn’t have the ring of command. Zora didn’t believe there was any point in clever word play with Sharlan. She didn’t think she could trick him into doing the honorable thing. Her only hope was to align their interests in some meaningful way.

“My father has no heir. If you do this for us and save our house, he would name you. Just ask him. You would make out better than you could hope to under the Sea Barons.”
 
Serious, but not grave, only almost painfully focused on her when she built the pieces he laid out for her, to make her world tumble. Zora was learning how much despair her heart was capable of, and Sharlan got to see the tides of it as it beset her aristocratic beauty, over and over. Hadn't she been formidable a moment ago, ready to serve him up poisons with this meal?

A demeaning tilt of his head as he listened to her defend her father. He wondered where this would go, where this upheaval would finds its port out of the little woman with her bird bones and swan skin. And she didn't disappoint. Zora imploded beautifully, like a flower sucked in on itself, wrung for its nectar, and bleeding that sweetness in her worst hour. Couldn't she see that he was only hurting her because she was so lovely when she broke? But she only ever did it, still afflicted with hope.

She understood the crushing power of gossip, of rumors. They were her sabers and hatchets. She knew them better than him. Even her father of high standing wasn't immune to it. Even her gilded life. He took the fork and knife and cut the bread so he could chew on something, now that his cigarette laid on the lip of his cup. She was paying with all she had. She wasn't being coy. All her riches right up front. Mr. Crowley was a good man not to be hated. His fortune was good too. Sharlan ate the mouthful and tapped his knife to her plate to remind her to have some, even in her whipped-up state. Caviar toast. The lemon juice was brilliant against the salt. Garcon would earn his tip.

"Crowley house was a quiet patron of Berrenger services, back when my father and my brothers were alive." he said. "But grew quieter still when Heath, George and Mason went." Named in descending age. Heath had been a far cry from Easley, but maybe that's why their political vines had bloomed in this generation, under Heath's leadership, before it all rotted. It was when Sharlan had returned from his travels in the orient, fed on the legend of their name, only to see it turn to dust when myriad challenges ate away at the males of his bloodline. Dead from unworthy blades. "Why should want him to name me? I know my name. And the bodies on the docks know it too. They rhyme it to the ferryman on their way over the river Styx."

But there was too much confectionary in this offering to decline. He licked his lips of crumbs and froth. "But tell your father I'll speak on your behalf. I'll take it, and sing like a bird, if I can get it in writing, which means you have to daughter his head in circles. You already tried to kill me before paying me last time." he said it with the fork pointed at her, smug.
 
Zora was not remotely comforted by Sharlan’s easy agreement to help her. In fact, his levity gave her a powerful chill. He’d agreed to help her once before and while the letter of their agreement had been honored, the spirit of the thing had been left in tatters. She had no doubt he would do it again if she left him room to maneuver, but Sharlan himself had requested an agreement in writing. This was a good sign that he meant to negotiate in good faith, she thought wishfully.

As for Sharlan’s joking and bantering, Zora did not engage him. Not to look at him flatly and point out that he was destitute and her father rich. Not to remind him that honor demanded his death for how he’d treated her and that when she’d sought to stop his heart Zora was merely dancing the steps Sharlan had choreographed for her from the start. And not to tell him to shove his caviar toast someplace rude. She thought he might want her to say these things to him, to spit and hiss and show him how miserable she’d become, and that was precisely why she did not.

She did hear him, however. When he spoke of his fallen kin, framed within the context of how and when his house had enjoyed support from hers, Zora thought she might have glimpsed the heart of Sharlan’s hatred. It was grief. He was mad with it.

“No, you need to talk to him,” she argued. “I’m only a feckless woman and this is a serious matter for serious men.” She spoke these words flatly. They were obviously not hers, but her enthusiasm for arguing against such rhetoric had taken a steep decline recently. These were her father’s words. He would not tolerate Zora as a messenger between himself and the man who threatened their existence. He would find it ludicrous. He might even accuse her of making it all up.

“You must negotiate on your own behalf,” she finished softly, but resolutely.
 
He tended to the toast, mostly when she tried to make her case. It had a good point, and as old and current as the sea he tasted on the little fish kernels. All he had to go on when it came to children and their parents were the talks with his own father, and the dread on the faces of the fathers who's sons he put in the ground, or who's daughters he laid in other ways. It was not far to think that Zora did not command her father to give up their family coffers, or their name itself. Though she didn't seem as far from it as other women in other families. Suppose even headstrong girls are just girls to the men who raised them.

He clicked his tongue as though disappointed and reached for the napkin to touch his lips. "You're rather demanding for someone who's begging, Zora." he pointed out and nodded to her plate again. "And not as polite as beggars should be." He inhaled through his nose and leaned back, mostly on the upper edge of the chair. He must have been famished because his meal was gone when he put the cloth over the plate. He did not regret his first purchase being food.

Viscount Berrenger did have a ring to it.

Whether she humored him about the bread or not, he'd stand up and offer his arm to her. They were still playing a part at a social place, after all. And the chances of her finding a knife inside her dress and transferring it to his side while close was minimal, given what she needed him for. He left a coin in their wake. It felt good to tip again. If she had a carriage, he'd take it, and if not, he could afford to rent one all the way to the Crowley house. His prospects were looking up. On his way out, he'd nod at a confounded, opulently dressed man in one of the finer booths, Vinnie Fleur, often seen by King Bellaforte's side. "Look. The crown watches us. Smile." Sharlan said with some derision. "Now, I am dying to see the Crowley abode again." He'd been a boy, last time.
 
Zora wished in that moment that she cared about anything enough to be done with this game. If she enjoyed painting or singing more she might slip away to Paris in the night and live the life of a belle insouciante. If she enjoyed dueling more she’d go find a house who would accept her as a nameless scullery. If she hated her father just a little bit more, she might let him die without a fight and escape to any or none of these futures. But she was a Crowley and she’d been raised to think that meant something dignified and eternal and worth fighting for.

So she let Sharlan call her a beggar and bully her into standing and accepting his arm. She knew they would be seen together when she had chosen the location for their meeting, although she hadn’t expected such lofty eyes as Fleur’s to find her that day. Simply because Sharlan told her to, Zora did not smile once while the doorman fetched her accessories. She was grim faced and leisurely about pulling on her gloves and tying the ribbons of her bonnet under her chin. She didn’t look at Sharlan while he waited, but took his arm again when she'd finished. Her parasol hung casually from her free hand as she floated out of the restaurant on Sharlan's arm as if she had no idea how far the man fell beneath her own station.

Outside the Regency, Zora dropped Sharlan’s arm. There were still society people around, so she was careful not to be nasty or rude about it. She put both her hands on the handle of her parasol and held it in front of her while Sharlan set to ordering a carriage.

Zora took a step back from the side of the street, from Sharlan and the concierge who listened to his request and then began signaling for a coach to go to Crowley House. She did not welcome the idea of sharing a carriage with Sharlan, and she wasn’t ready to see the Viscount. Zora felt she wore her ruination like a brand and he would see it immediately. She shuddered to think of his reaction to all she’d squandered and lost.

“You should send a note first,” she said plaintively as the carriage pulled up to the boardwalk. She took another backwards step. “You don’t just drop in on a Viscount.”
 
She had nuances to her anger towards him. Practiced like any doll on a track, he'd seen famous gear makers and clock people construct similar mechanical wonders, she used her training to follow him. Though, he supposed, she was creative about it in her own way, when she offered her unforgiving sour instead of any tenderness of a person on your arm. Here in Berna, Zora was in good company, being a woman who'd rather not hold on to the arm of the man she was with. If anyone looked for long, and some had more than their allotted glance, they might think Sharlan Berrenger must have something other than the dwindled fame of a house of swords, if he could make the Crowley daughter keep his company when she was obviously not charmed.

He relied on his black lacquered cane when she took to her parasol instead. He missed her a bit; that light weight on him as he strode. She may regret not having been prettier for Vinnie Fleur. Charlan was joyful, though, fed and humored, when he waved for their transportation. He even made a lighthearted joke about masters of horses and the horses mastering them, when the carriage came. The driver laughed politely. Of course The Regency Room would have such good carts at the ready. Expertly, dipping into the pocket where he kept her money now, he flicked a smaller valued coin to the helpers.

But his good mood switched a lot like the favor of the sea that her father made their family fortune off, when she mentioned the note. He slid close to her without giving her either of his eyes, and rested the cane tip on cobblestone near her. With a unseen flick of it, her skirts moved as though invaded by a soft gust, nothing unseemly, but in reality it had been a lighting touch from the cane to her ankle. Not much damage to the bone, but it'd sting horribly. A test to her composure.

"I will give you my time because you'll pay for it with all you have. But either you write the note and send it ahead, or I come to the Crowley estate and challenge your father instead. No more conditions." And then he did look at her, smiling politely and holding out a hand that had been inside her, to help her up into their carriage.
 
The cane did not catch Zora by surprise. That didn’t mean she’d been expecting the strike exactly, but in her current state, twitching with paranoia over every small gesture that her companion made, she’d already steeled herself unwillingly against unknown dangers. She kicked, of course. The shock of it had to go somewhere, and it vibrated up through her leg. She jerked it away from Sharlan before she got control of it again and gingerly set her foot back down. With her skirts obscuring her feet, a casual observer might think she’d tripped and recovered, but this close Sharlan would see the press of her mouth and the wide flare of her eyelids and know he’d hit his mark. Her eyes glistened with the sting of it, but her cheeks were dry.

She chewed on her cheek and openly considered declining the offered hand. Her fear was fighting her reason for control of her. She hadn’t realized it until now, but there was something placating about Sharlan’s easy, charming manner. It was disturbing, too. Also insane. But it was less terrible than his naked displeasure, which he liked to repay with a double feint of pain and spite. He’d hurt her again if she provoked him, but she thought it just as likely that he’d hurt her if she didn’t. In the span of a few racing heartbeats she’d gone from asking Sharlan for his help to assisting him under threat of challenge to her father.

How had that happened?

The evidence strongly suggested that Zora would at least be alive when they reached Crowley House -- depressing that she set her ambitions so low and they still seemed fairly impossible -- so she took Sharlan’s hand and stepped up into the carriage. She wouldn’t be writing a note. Zora had never cared one iota about a note, she’d been looking for an exit. She arranged her skirts and sat, setting her parasol across her lap. She turned her face out the other side of the carriage and rode in tense silence.
 
It was a good pleasure, hurting fine things. This was where she'd been headed, all this time, anyway. Ever since the opera played in the background, and her better shoes stepped into his lesser booth. A vine grown from the upper echelon, thinking there'd be something down here with him, because he'd once been one of them. He'd taken her. He would climb. She took it better than some porcelain-build toys that these rich men raised. But it still hurt her. Even well-made dolls can't stand for real-world violence. His brow told of his amusement, but the irritation lingered for a small moment longer as her skirts settled from his cane.

Maybe she knew, because she took his hand after filling the air with suggestion that she wouldn't. His thumb pressed her knuckles down into his palm, and kept her secure. His fingertips rode her digits when she let go. He closed the door to the outside world, and let it pass at the rhythm of hired hooves. She was the prettiest carriage mate he'd had in a while. It was a rather roomy place. Sometimes they came and got him with haste, when they needed a champion, and on occasion the service was on par with this. Suddenly his cane was on her knee. She was aware of him, but so were a lot of dead men. It hadn't helped them because they hadn't seen his weapon coming even when they looked directly at it. If she moved, the cane that had already bitten her would follow. The handle was silver-braided, but the rest was black. It slid from the upper to the inside of her knee.

"Have you thought about me since last time we were with each other?" he asked, conversational tone. As though he wasn't referring to an intimate calamity. The cane intruded further. And when she'd try to close her other knee to it, an apt rap would strongly suggest she parted them. Having her here, it was all he could see; the nude Loyal, who'd served herself up and lost everything to him, in that filthy bed. She'd been keen for much of it. He could smell them, in here, how they'd been. He was smug, but not a manic about it, this monster in good shape across from her. "How many times have we been, in your head?" He was bunching her dress up against her cunt now.
 
Zora’s head turned immediately to the end of the cane when it landed upon her knee, and then her alert eyes snapped up to Sharlan’s. She didn’t wear any surprise on her face, but her shoulders and her spine went rigid with fear and caution. Sharlan's cane traversed the curve of her knee and settled just inside of it. Zora’s heart stuttered and accelerated.

Had she thought about Sharlan? Had she thought of anything else? She couldn’t. He lived behind her eyelids now. His voice lurked in every silence. He consumed her. When she wasn’t thinking of what he’d taken from her she was thinking of how easy she’d made it for him. When she wasn’t thinking of that, she tried to think of the corpses he’d made, allegedly for her but more probably for his own pleasure. She imagined killing him with alarming frequency. Once, briefly, she thought about how he’d called her a whore with one hand around her throat and two fingers inside her. She’d been careful since then not to think of that.

Until now, with his cane between her legs. She understood his vulgar poetry now and tried to close her knees. He struck her opposite knee and it jerked open again with a gasp and a start from Zora. The fear opened up her pupils and darkened her eyes. She sat in perfect stillness for a moment, not even daring to blink. She watched the man across from her, trying in vain to understand him. The cane drove forward, dragging Zora's skirts along with it, until there was pressure between her legs and her ankles were exposed. Zora felt rage and terror and shameful heat that rushed to meet the pressure of Sharlan’s cane.

“I don’t owe you anything now,” she reminded him in a whisper that was scarcely loud enough to overtake the sounds of the street outside their carriage. She thought of grabbing the cane and shoving it away, but the unbidden thought of a fractured hand kept her still. She gripped her parasol tight; if not for the gloves Sharlan would have been able to see her knuckles turn white. “Please remove your cane.”
 
She had prepared herself to meet him at The Regency. She had probably allowed herself some resources to deal with him beyond that, or any extended interaction. But her plan had been clear with her dainty but decisive pivot at the table once she'd paid him. She would have cut this as short as she could. Though she had asked for more after his initial information, she'd not been woman enough to withstand it then. She said as much when her head whipped to look at his cane, when it courted her knee. The lacings of her patience were untied slowly, but not as slow as she'd like. What had she thought, going into a confined space with him again? He had a nightmare archetype to uphold.

He corrected her knee with a whack and she corrected her pose thereafter. She was a collection of bowstrings, and he liked pulling them back. She had to sit for when his cane touched her intimately, and he gave her more pressure as a reward for her stillness. He loved her a bit for it. Her defiance in words were offerings to him, again. "You want things from me, don't you?" talking of debts. "I like when you say please." he complimented as though there was not a stick between them, finding her pussy through her pretty fabric.

"Zora." he said it softly, but every letter got attention, which meant it was rather severe. He made circles with the handle on his end, which meant the tip of it dug the skirts tighter against her womanhood. "I don't mind that you play at being your own creature. Maybe in some ways you still are." The cane chose one thigh and traveled back along its inside. Whatever relief she may have from that would be crushed when the stick came under her hems and lifted, and returned, to traverse skin, obviously looking to return to her now much less guarded place. "But when we're alone you're going to be the good girl you're so afraid of. Is that understood?" If she was unwise, the cane would not reach its destination, and he had to punish her naked leg with another cutting lash. If she was wise, the tip would nuzzle her undergarments next, over where his cock had been. Having the Crowley daughter spreading her legs for him here did make him hard. Maybe his coat would conceal it.

"Please remove yourself from your seat, and kneel in front of me." There was some time to pass before her home. He might as well use it to educate her on their new relationship. If she complied his cane would retreat as she advanced, and if she didn't it would stay.
 
A flush crept from Zora’s neckline to the curve of the bonnet over her brow. It spread shockingly fast, quickened by a blood boiling blend of righteous fury and shameful lust. There was fear, too, but it was a constant presence that didn’t clamor up and down for her attention. It was the fury holding the reins just then, but the reality of Sharlan Berrenger holding a weapon against her cunt was persuasive.

The cane twisted, gathering her skirts into a swirl and it was outrageously good. The fabric of her skirts dulled the edges of Sharlan’s cane, so the pressure was pleasantly dull. Zora throbbed with interest and hated him for it. She hated him more when he implied that she’d somehow transferred ownership from the Viscount to Sharlan because he had despoiled her.

“No,” she said plainly as the cane began its return trip up her bare leg. Zora smoothly flipped her own parasol from her lap and planted it between her legs, tip down, into her skirts and the seat beneath them, blocking Sharlan’s reconnection with her. She clasped her hands over the curving handle, level with her chin. All the fine muscles of her face quivered with rage.

“I’m not your creature and I won’t be your creature. You haven’t elevated yourself from ruin by being an irredeemable beast. If that’s what you think, I’ll just knock and let myself out here, shall I?” She made a fist and held it aloft as if to knock it against the carriage wall to signal the driver she’d like out. She stared into Sharlan’s face, mouth curling into a contemptuous sneer.
 
He thought it was his wave that washed over her in red, barely underneath her complexion. Maybe all her blushes would have his name, from now on. She was ruined by what he'd done to her, her tastes eschewed by the calamity he'd taken her body through in the Red Letter. He thought there was pleasure in her expelling of air, so he breathed with her when they came. She certainly had all his attention now.

But she responded aptly with her own walking accessory. She looked haughty, with her legs spread and her skirts pushed down between them by her parasol. This was a kind of fencing he wasn't a champion at, though, he'd argue he was still world class. She'd be her own heroine, she waxed on about it rather firmly, and her chirping like that from her new position of strength made for good on-road entertainment. She believed it. Bravo.

"Oh, please." he said with a lilting cadence. His palms raised to show submission, and with the cane resting on the floor instead of against her, it could still rely on his hands even though the fingers weren't locked around the handle. "I'm sorry. I've gone too far, Ms. Crowley." However aptly acted, it was of course another ruse. He flipped the cane in a new hold and tapped the frame of the window himself. The driver did halt their car for that. He better have. It was on Sharlan's coin.

"Sir?" asked the man, who had silver in his beard but looked healthy and strong last time Sharlan saw him. The dastardly Berrenger son looked at Zora and then through the window at the road where the houses started to become a bit more sparse than inner city Berna, and then back at her.

"It's Ms. Crowley. She's managed to make other arrangements to fix the issue at her house." dark eyes didn't leave hers. Somehow he judge her, as though she was the worst daughter, or at least that's what his heavy brow said. "So will you be getting off here?" he asked and relied on his cane the way she did her parasol. His next words came quieter, to keep them from the driver. "I'll find my way to strike glints out of the fire that burns down your house, whether you invite me in or not. I think watching your family burn will make us kindred. Maybe then you'll know me, and how serious I am." he nodded for the door dismissively. "I'll see you at your hearing or your father's execution."
 
Zora fought to study the opportunity in front of her while the adrenaline burning through her legs was telling her to stand and flee. She could escape momentary indignity, but potentially at a cost. Then again, she’d now come to Sharlan three times and he’d never once sought her out. There was a strong chance that he only played with her because she was stupid enough to invite it. Nothing he told her was verified, even if he made too much sense to inspire any optimism that he lied. To date she’d only witnessed him amble alongside her and capitalize on opportunities to terrorize her, seemingly with demonic relish. Perhaps if she got out of the carriage it would all go away and she wouldn’t have to think on it any further. She could find a country lord without much money to take her despite her shortcomings. This would be a story she took to her grave many years from now.

Or she could be antagonizing a monster who need not be her enemy. Who would her father field against Sharlan’s challenge if his threat was true? She didn’t think they had anyone who could withstand him. Would he do it, just because Zora had dared defy him? Did he feel so entitled to her?

She could convince herself to stay just as well as she could convince herself to go. She thought perhaps there were equal parts of her pushing for both outcomes. She hated not understanding the rules of engagement, or if there were any rules at all.

Zora studied Sharlan’s thunderous face. It changed so quickly she could hardly keep up. She thought if she apologized and did as he asked he might become charming again, but she was afraid to know what came next. She was only sure it would be humiliating and most likely hurt, and that whatever she thought she was agreeing to she would forfeit twice as much at least.

Her face crumpled into despair. She drew her bonnet off her head in an angry swipe. “Sharlan,” she began, voice strained with exhaustion and desperation. She rubbed briefly at her aching brow before dropping her hand to her parasol again. She felt absolutely ridiculous sitting there with it lodged between her thighs, but she thought moving it would be a signal of surrender. “Will you please tell me what you’re offering and what you’re asking? Plainly and ... comprehensively? Is there some incentive to cooperate with you that I should be aware of?”
 
Another helping of her thoughts through her pretty features. Usually, there was an air of knowing in these societal maidens, but something wholly unprepared in the otherwise planned out Crowley beauty registered as fresh in the seasoned tastes of her fellow traveler and monster. He thought it was an art beside his specialty of wielding swords in all their iterations, to remake her senses like this, usually on the tail-end of some kind of push from her. Another count of vibrations in her, and then she disassembled in front of him. Sooner or later, Zora yielded. He didn't know why he liked it more in her than most others. Maybe because she was better poised and more adamant on not being what he made her into. Sharlan was excited to see her bonnet off. He hung the cane behind his neck, and then hooked his wrist on either end, waiting for what she'd give him next. This promised to be great. The carriage, still, also held its breath for what she'd do.

Her request was not out of order. It was that time in their game, then. In order, he looked at her peeking shoe tips, the skirts, her parasol, her face. "You high born women put forward the edges of the hands you're dealt, consisting of mostly air and pretty tricks, almost exclusively deriving power from not being plain, and now I have to speak clearly?" but he was not so harsh in his tone. "It is a good thing you're irresistible to me, Zora." He was not so earnest in his tone, either.

"I am offering to tell the truth to the crown, as you ask. I will take your fortune as payment. I will also take you, piece by piece. If I do not get these things, I will make sure you will not get what you want either." He shrugged and that lifted the cane across the back of his shoulders and his hands, hung over it. "Incentive would be to avoid my vengeance, I suppose. And I do not deal with underhanded economic or social responses. You have seen how I deal with people." She had seen them dead by hatchet and rapier.

"Now." he laid one leg over the other. "You will have the impulse to retaliate in your small ways, and rebel. I will forgive a measure of it, because I know you feel you have to, but I'll chide you if you're doing too much." His legs uncrossed now, slightly parted. She could see it as an invitation. "I think our relationship would be best demonstrated to you if you did as I said, and got on your knees in front of me, in this carriage." Another nod to the door. It was almost encouraging. "Or you can continue this misunderstanding that you have any choice in the matter, and walk out, so I can collect you in connection to the fall of your house." His new incline back suggested he was waiting for her answer.
 
He spread himself out like an offering, Zora noted. Sharlan opened his knees invitingly and the position of his wrists on his cane pulled his shoulders open and back. All his vitals were laid out for her and she inspected each. Her assessment drifted from his throat to his chest, down his abdomen. The juncture of his spread thighs, the outline of his arousal straining the cut of his trousers. He looked like he hadn’t a care in the world, almost the noble fellow he should have been, if not for the lewdness.

She wondered what it really meant to be taken piece by piece. This implied she had something left to give him. Something best surrendered from the floor, on her knees. She fought against the instinct to nervously wet her lips. The picture was more or less clear to her, although the mechanics of it tied her imagination in terrified knots.

The words tactical repositioning rose briefly to the forefront of her mind. She could still kill him after he told the truth to the Crown, couldn’t she? If she had to pretend at being Sharlan’s whore just until she could make safer arrangements, and the alternative was death and more ruination than she already had, then it was sensible to obey him. She slowly laid her parasol down on the seat beside her and inched forward to the edge of her seat until all she needed to do was tip forward a bit to ease herself down to the floor in front of him.

“What happens after you’ve helped yourself to the last piece?” She used the distraction of her own question to make that final push to the floor. For her house, she thought with hollow amusement. A sacrifice they would never appreciate. Committed now, she didn’t bother with avoiding him. She balanced herself on Sharlan’s own knee and used her other hand to tug her skirts out from under her knees until she could sit back on her heels without ripping her frock.
 
Maybe he would have wrung the crane with his hands, if they'd been in position around the wood and silver. But she got to have her look of him. She looked at him with another hunger. There were great cats in the black Asian jungles where he traveled to be better than the blades that cut the British nights. Sometimes the gems of their eyes made lanterns for his earth, leaf and insect bed. They had the same kind of proposition as Zora's eyes now. He wondered if he'd enjoyed it more if she tested her claws. But he knew she wouldn't. Only housecats came out of rich houses.

A barely quiet intake almost caught on its way when she moved. He'd earned this level of pet, hadn't he? There was suffering in her too - she was confused and curious. She was addled by it, the mysteries he presented to her; about the world, but also about herself - her inner self. The parasol went, a lady's weapon of choice, and then all her body came for him, step by step. She made herself look almost dutiful below him, skirts out and hand on him. He put the cane away, a slow slide to one side. The carriage started again. She moved a bit with it, from where he could see.

Her lovely poetry in form and in speech was fitting; a sister of the cloth there, about to pray. He wrapped a hand around her chin, only it couldn't just be the tip, because his hands were killing size. The low of her face was eaten by the firm but not breaking clasp. "Then I'll start on your ghost." he said and his thumb stroked her cheekbone, where her tears had been when she climaxed on him. He let her go and it wasn't dismissive. "But you'll be surprised how much to a person there is." In some fights, he had to spend himself to the very last layer. Dead many times.

"Now, as we have put you in the right position." he was sure she sat by her bed the same way, every night, if she pretended to be pious. "You'll worship." A gentleman always, and unbound by the amounts of shame she had weighing her down, he undid his trousers and put himself further on display. That ugly, hard thing, bowing now because it loved her, but needed some of her attention to stand fully. Its heavy, rounded, bagged appendages were out under it too. Already a threat, in its sluggish state, it relished in the air of the carriage a bit. "With your mouth, tongue and hands. I think you'll have the talent for this, if you abandon yourself to it, Zora." And the meter was kind, but the way he looked at her and the hollow in his voice was a new kind of sacrilege, and with a belief in only the man.

He remembered when she'd given herself to it, in the bed they'd made theirs. She could, if she found the right way to channel her hatred, and passions.
 
Start on her ghost? Zora’s face jerked up to Sharlan’s. He intended to keep her and use her until he killed her? That wasn’t how Zora thought these things worked. She understood men tired of women and quickly discarded them when there was no public obligation to do otherwise. Then again, was Sharlan really a man? And did it really matter how long he intended to keep her when she planned to make sure at least one of them was dead once her house was out of peril? Their arrangement wasn’t long for this world in any case. She only had so much energy for worry and panic and dread and this, for now at least, did not make the cut. She released this newest spike of disquiet into the torrent of it that flowed through and past her and returned her attention to the task at hand.

Sharlan took himself out of his trousers and Zora stared at his cock with blank eyes. Abandon yourself, he said. A couple of days ago she might not have understood his meaning, but she was different now. She had abandoned herself once already and survived it. In fact, afterward she’d bathed and put on a pretty frock and walked right into the Regency Room and they’d let her. Not a single person there seemed to notice her disgrace. They had no idea. They couldn’t tell.

Mouth. Tongue. Hands.

Zora pressed her lips together like she’d just applied rouge. This close to his groin, she could feel his heat and detect the scent of his sweat and skin. She hesitated again and again, realizing through her distant and angry shock that it was easier to be ravaged than it was to do the ravaging. She briefly considered asking if they could do that again instead. She despised not knowing what to do, not knowing how to project competence and poise in this alien situation, and knowing that there was no victory to be teased out of this encounter.

She reached for him with one hand, lips twisting into a little grimace, and touched him with her bare fingertips. Her fingers grazed him lightly, picking up the texture of the thin skin, the stark warmth, petting it like the snout of a friendly horse, with no curve or flex in her palm. She knew this was not what he wanted; this was for her, like dipping her toe into a cold bathing pool to ascertain whether she truly possessed the fortitude to plunge. She weighed the price of displeasing him against how badly asking him would sting her pride and remembered quite abruptly that she didn’t have any left.

“Could you just tell me how?” she asked, words edged with irritation. She silently cursed Sharlan and his poetic mouth. She’d found it charming when she thought there wasn’t anything behind it and that there was no threat in his pretty, mysterious words. He’d seemed romantic. Now the things he left unsaid hung heavy in the air and suffocated her.
 
While there was indignation and worry in her when he presented her newest task, it wasn't the kinds that should be flourishing about a maiden's recently bonnet-held head when ordered to do this deed. As always, he was flattered by her reaction to his cock,. She didn't flee. She stayed to be further confounded by what he asked of her. What quiet conversation happened between the very living menace of his manhood and her thoughts, then? He liked that there was any connection at all, between the daughter of Crowley and his own ugliest weapon. He liked the picture spread out in his lap, the staring contest between the woman and the cock. Her novice despite knowing it intimately was endearing. It overrode her anger many times over. How many times would this limb best her?

He held his breath when she touched it. It was an exploring contact. He liked the contrast in size between her digits and his length. An almost painful amount of consideration went through her, as though it transferred with the heat of his shaft. He shifted a bit as she got as acquainted as she could with her current method. It did swell a bit from her petting. She looked wholly foreign to this.

A significant rush of blood to it when she posed her question. How earnest. Zora couldn't lie to him to save her life. Once more his student in these elicit matters. Maybe he'd enjoy staying at the Crowley manor immensely. "Take a hold of it, then." he offered, sternly, like the irritation in her voice challenged him. When she did, it would fill further. It was at full length. "Up and down with your small hands." He was about to order her around in how to suck him off. That was good road entertainment. "Put your lips on the string that goes from the top of the shaft to the head." Just the feel of them would be triumphant, and that also of course put her nose just above the most scented part of his cock. "Tongue out, lather the edges of the head and then take it in your mouth. Firm suction, but don't try to pull it off. Get it as wet as you can. Worship it with your face."

No finery or trickery, other than what had preceded this. Just the instructions. Just the momentary full subjugation of the Loyal, to the carnal whims inside him. He had found her beautiful the moment she came to him for help, it seemed like some strange dream that her lovely features should be used for their friction to sate his cock.
 
Zora’s dark eyebrows shot up and she looked again at Sharlan’s face. Twice, he’d told her to worship, and she guessed by how unsettling she found the godly imagery that his entire aim had been to unsettle her. She did not want to think of her eternal soul or the chances that she might find forgiveness after all of this. She did not want to think of God at all, which was just as well, because she didn’t think He was giving her much consideration lately, either.

She was grateful for the clear instruction, anyway. She obeyed as closely as she could, although there were false starts aplenty. She reached for him with one hand and found there was more give than she expected. She took him into two hands stacked one on top of the other, her fingers not quite fully encircling him and Sharlan flexed, and suddenly there wasn’t any give in it at all. Zora regarded the flesh in her hands like an exotic beast, curious and reluctantly impressed. She moved her hands gently up and down. She thought it went without saying that if she injured Sharlan there would be swift and severe consequences. She hardly gripped him at all.

She wasn’t quite so brave with her mouth as she was with her hands. She drew her full bottom lip between her teeth and continued taking his measure with her eyes and her hands. The words found their definitions as he spoke them and Zora’s eyes landed where he meant them to. String, she realized, and reflexively she drew the pad of her thumb over it lightly to learn its shape and texture. Zora gathered her courage to her with a deep intake of breath, screwed her eyes shut, and leaned forward to replace her thumb with her lips. She pressed them, utterly slack, against the underside of Sharlan’s cock. Needless to say, Zora’s first kiss did not live up to her girlhood expectations.

She drew back and opened her eyes to inspect whether her ministrations had had any effect. She didn’t know what that effect might be, but she thought she should check before moving on to the next instructions, which were to lick and suck him firmly and get him wet. It was disgusting, but Zora knew women did this. She let that knowledge soothe her unease. Women made whole professions out of performing this very act. It was meaningless, just like everything else.

She leaned forward, eyes shut again, and this time she put out her tongue as she was told and licked the head of Sharlan’s penis. She knew her mouth was wettest in the back so naturally she used the flat of her tongue to swirl around its ridges. She was surprised how little taste there was to his skin, considering the musk. He was warm and dry until she got to him and left him glistening. She had to crane her head left and then right to lick him all the way around, lifting up from where she sat on her heels to reach. From that position it was simple to take it into her mouth. A moment later her cheeks hollowed ever so slightly from her suckling.

That was it. The end of the instructions. Zora had flowed through them like a training sequence, executing the commands in the order they were issued and with as much precision as she could muster on her first run through the moves. Hands, tongue, suck, worship. Feint, disengage, lunge, riposte. And just like they might in the training ring, Zora’s eyes shot to her trainer to read the quality of her performance in his face.
 
Not a first time deflowerer, but hardly the first customer they called to break in a new girl, Sharlan could appreciate the weight of this gift he'd given himself. Her hand first, when it explored him like he was not another person, but another animal. It of course fed his ego when her finger were insufficient. Deadly with daggers but lacking in love. Even the second hand made him feel like a giant that she had to work on. Lately, there'd only been rum-filtered dalliances, and while he knew they sated him in the moment of inebriation, as did the violences he gorged himself on, merely a feeling of rotten decadence was left, whenever he woke up. Memories that weren't really his, other than the surface-level senses that had recorded them. But this was other. He hadn't had much to drink or smoke, his eyes were clear to drink Zora in, and to memorize her hold. And then her pumping. How out of place for her to be fully clad and wear that concentration on her brow while submitting to his cock. It was quaint, and the view was fine, but the lack of pressure was testing him.

The cock waited for her mouth, and stood, full and stretched, when she waited to take in its form. An obstacle, not an object of affection. But her fascination and spirit of hard work was new in this kind of act. Industrious woman on her knees. He swallowed when she thumbed it, that delicate string, and then he held his breath when she provided hers between the petals she liked to talk clever with. He smiled with that ugly satisfaction, like he'd won something, but it was softened slightly with the pleasure that all men can feel. He did breathe out a little when she puckered and placed the peck. His own lips stayed apart, barely, and his breaths were automatic and slow, but perhaps not entirely within his control, when she looked at him. His chin cut up and down once to encourage her. There was some greed in his measured eyes now. It was partially bait, because he knew what rewards women seek in mens faces, but also earnest.

And then the well-considered Zora Crowley of the viscount's house took his cock in her mouth. In the beginning it was only that, if that's how he could describe it, with her mouth so hot and slick, when he had thought this might end in some unsatisfying way. He swallowed and let her explore it with the inside of her mouth. It was good but it was also frustrating not to have more. There was a pearl of precum for her suckling. His throat clucked and he sighed with both engagement and a bit of irritation when he relaxed after her mouth left him. He did pick up on her style of following instructions. He'd have to play to her strengths.

"Firmer hands." he said and reached for her. His palm laid over her scalp and he gave her skull a squeeze to show that she needn't be so delicate. "Rub the moisture out and keep lathering it. It feels good but it's not enough. Try to give friction to all of it at once, going back to the places you miss when you've attended to others." To speak to her ambition. She did well with missions. And it would seem she was distracted enough by this new ordeal that she didn't protest anymore. "When you suck it, jerk its base, too. You need to get a bit more busy." But he wasn't using his monster voice, indeed a bit more like a stern teacher. His eyes were only on her, the girl who was learning on her knees, sitting on the floor in front of him.
 
Sharlan’s hungry expression helped Zora in exactly the way he had intended. She saw her own success there and drew a strange sort of peace from it. If anything could help her now, it would be his satisfaction. She began to think she could adjust to this arrangement and make something useful. She began to think that it would be all right to just not think for a little while.

She flinched under Sharlan’s hand, a fleeting reaction that she schooled almost the instant it manifested. The only hands she’d ever had in her hair had belonged to her nannies and maids and the simple sensation swung in a dizzying rush from terrifying to electrifying. The feeling traveled and spread as it shivered through her.

Lord, she thought those were the most words he’d ever said to her, all of them filthy. Disgusting, obviously, except perhaps the bit about it feeling good. But really, who didn’t enjoy being successful on the first try at something new and difficult? Zora wasn’t exceptional in that; that was normal. Pedestrian, even. She clenched her thighs and leaned in to spin his requests into reality.

She distilled his instructions down to their main thematic elements: more pressure, more moisture, more enthusiasm. She gripped his cock as firmly as he gripped her head, not entirely trusting it wouldn’t hurt him but fully trusting disobedience would hurt her. She closed her mouth around the head again and meditated on the meaning of the word lather while she moved her mouth on him. She closed her eyes and saw with her lips and tongue and hands, getting him wetter by sucking until her instincts bid her to swallow and instead drawing back to gather that moisture with her moving hands, noting how easily they would slide for a moment after that before the skin became tacky again. She quickly came to understand Sharlan’s particular emphasis on moisture and enthusiasm. She took more of him into her mouth, spreading her spit with her tongue.
 
More pliable now, not just to his orders, but perhaps to the moment, Zora went about doing his bidding on his cock. He had another predatory impulse when she tensed underneath the grip on her skull. Ah, that's right. The roots of her hair and her scalp were sensitive the way everyone's were. How formidable she looked as she took his cock on for a second round, when she'd perhaps managed a draw in the first.

A little cough in his throat at the increased power in her fingers. The small things had more will like that. It was still unreal to see the lady eat his cock, and without hesitation this time. She had been tamed for this activity rather quickly. He wanted to mock her for it, for his own satisfaction and her blush, but he didn't think she'd be in the right mindset to understand the scathing heat of teasing yet, not when she was figuring the act itself out, still. A grunt when she managed to find some smooth collaboration between her hold and her lips, and they all started rhythmically sliding, up and down. She wasn't bad, or maybe it was her pedigree that made it good. As a visual, it must be rather stellar among the ones he'd had.

But she was learning, and the more she did, the more of her other, unseemly self was peeled off, and the rawer woman underneath showed. He would stoke this fire. His hand came out to rake fingers over her head. If she looked at him about it, she'd see no agreement to her stopping. And he continued to scratch her head like that, to usher in the image of a pet, and to keep those signals through her cranium.

"Ngh. You're doing well, Zora." he breathed. Perhaps he was expression too much pleasure, but he wanted her to think that indeed she was doing the right thing, so that she could either relax about it, or do more. Because it was such a surprise that the viscount daughter was at all on her knees for his satisfaction, he'd not readied himself, and therefor hadn't reeled in the ultimate outcome of this kind of favor. A few deeper diggings of his fingertips into her head steadied the swell in the shaft, and some shifting from his hips brought the pleasure back to where he needed it, to last.
 
Zora knew something was wrong with her now. Perhaps not uncommon, considering all she’d discovered over the last few days, but certainly wrong. She didn’t want Sharlan’s cock in her mouth or in her hands. She wanted to be out from under his thumb, preferably via his death, and she wanted to look him in his face while he bled out.

At the same time, when Sharlan made a strange sound in the back of his throat and ran his fingers over her skull, Zora felt pleasure engulf her body in a rush of scorching heat. She nearly moaned when he praised her out loud; her hands and mouth went perfectly still for an instant and Zora’s eyes snapped open only to slowly flutter shut again. She resumed her sucking and stroking. There was a rhythm waking in her blood again, like there had been the first time. Her breathing and her heartbeat and her cunt all strained to synchronize with what she was doing to Sharlan. Her mouth grew wetter along with her undergarments.

Abandon yourself to it, he’d suggested. It wasn’t even a command, really. More like a bit of friendly advice between miserable creatures. Zora took the advice and let her mind go quiet. She made herself busy. Her ears strained for his reactions to her touch and she read their signs as best she could through the dizzying rush of it. His voice made her shake when he deigned to use it nicely, or when it got trapped in his throat because of something Zora had done. She thought he liked it when she moved her mouth more and sucked a little less, holding her lips instinctively taut to protect the sensitive flesh from the scrape of her teeth, her tongue sliding hotly against the underside of his cock with each up and down motion. It was easier that way to find coordination with her hands, too. Easier to lather. Easier to worship.
 
Ever wakeful, even when she put it to the test, Sharlan considered the woman he'd bent and sat down in front of him. Though there was privacy here, she was on a road, traveling with him in the open, and yet still so indecent, submitting her mouth and hands and saliva to make pleasure for him, on his orders. Beautiful, as some kind of tribute to him. He was always looking for ways to solve her, to make her as he wanted her. It would seem unfair that he'd get further on that simply by having her doing something he wanted, but there it was. He'd met enough broken girls who were lonely in their servitude, to know the surprise in her eyes when they opened, and the truth of her hunger and thirst for approval poured out with her spit onto his cock. Another one of her secrets spilled for him in her lowest acts.

His petting became more reassuring when she was more dedicated to his cock. That's what he wanted from her. Some kind of ambition to make it feel good for him, but also confession of her own rapture, that may be mixed up in it. How good for his ego, to see the lady be so inclined toward his cock. She kept it up so well when there was a stake in it for her. Her mouth was more careful and yet more eager. "Mnh, Zora. Damn it." he whispered as though he couldn't hold it back. His lungs weren't kept in tight place by the muscles of his ribs, he let his breath drag ragged over waiting details in his throat, a kind of sound signal to increase her enthusiasm, so he could see what she'd do next for it.

He stroked her hair back with his palm, from having upset it with his combing fingers. "C'est une fille bien, non?" he said in his lowest French cadence. Good girl. That's not just what he wanted her to be, but something he wanted her to want to be. Tragic little daughter of a powerful name, still a servant in her blood. "The balls too. And nuzzle the shaft with your face. Look at it, Zora." he encouraged, to give her more tools to express herself. If she had too many directions, she'd have to pick the ones she connected to. Sharlan wanted to know what kind of cocksucker Zora Crowley was. He'd gargle some exhales and intake shrilly to exaggerate her successes, to give her the praise she wanted, and to stoke her bravery. Like an animal revving, he leaned back and rubbed his heels against the floor around her.
 
It hadn’t yet occurred to Zora that there were lies here, too. She didn’t question what she heard. She had no desire to question. When Sharlan sweetly cursed her name she throbbed in answer. It was confusing and embarrassing. She’d still kill him when she had her chance, but he also made her feel things she didn’t know she could feel. She thought of his cane pressed against her. His fingers inside her before he’d fucked her. She wished she could touch herself. She worked him faster and was rewarded when he pet her and called her a good girl in French. It sounded sweeter in that language than it had when he was threatening her in English. Affectionate. Zora clenched her thighs again against the wild and restless feeling that made her want to squirm. She only just managed not to press her skull into his hand like a greedy cat and mewl.

He murmured new instructions to her and she lifted her head to look at him, glistening mouth subtly swollen and hanging slightly agape. Her eyes were dark and softly dazed and landed first on Sharlan’s face, seeking some indication of his attitude. Then down at his balls, which he’d hardly said anything about. She let one small hand slide down and away from his shaft to tentatively stroke his balls with just her fingertips, simultaneously rocking forward to put her face against his shaft. Her fingers slowly closed into a light grip on his sac and she tugged gently. He was so much softer here that he reignited her fear of injuring him. If he wanted more pressure he’d have to stroke her head and show her again; once the thought occurred to her she held him with an even lighter touch.

“Could we hurry this along?” Zora asked with her empty mouth. Her breathlessness was sincere and made her self-conscious and then angry that she was self-conscious. “It’s not a very long way."
 
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