Rapiers with rapier wits verseXbathymcbath

[Verse]

They were intimate, then. Not like the surface creatures wound around each other he liked to make them, but she gave him something she'd held back. He could conjure it in her with physical knowledge, but now he'd drawn it out in another way. He gave her some honesty in the way he breathed, it wasn't hard to let go when it suited him. She grew just a little every time her thighs mashed together, and he knew what that meant. A small gasp from her captor when she looked at him, and he tilted his head at her pretty, lewd changes. What would he have felt, further, if she told him her first kiss had been to the head of his cock? She tended to his sack and it was more base things spoiled by the elegance that also hung about Zora- that he loved to taint. He swallowed when her cheek pushed against the underside of his beastly flesh. Just seeing her like this might be worth the deaths he'd pay, eventually.

He'd noted her affinity to the french, but now she spoke in clear English, her own snotty accent, though muddled up with her tongue's current addlement. He hummed a short agreement, and locked the hold on her head more toward the back of it, to bring her tighter to his cock, that it'd eclipse one of her dark eyes. Ah, there was a perfectly unhinged reality, inside this carriage. Suppose she was begging now. And then he let her go. "Get up then." For such a stern meaning, his words were rushed but not hard. She wouldn't get enough from clenching her thighs alone. "Lift up your skirts and take off your underwear." She already had some experience with what would come next. The way he'd stoked her now, she may be wilder. And then he'd be that much closer to turning her into some burning golem for his wishes. She'd turned out to be more passionate on her knees than he'd expected.

"Sit on me, Zora." he said and fully expected her to comply. Then she could decide how fast they were done. On the height of her need, she may still protest or she may not, but her body would do the ordering for him, if she fought it. If she knew what was best for her sanity, he'd let her fuck him in her own pace, to see what kind of woman she was, and what she liked when she got to chose. He wouldn't forego at least a one hand squeeze of her throat when she complied, though, because that's something they'd both learned edged her on. And death was almost present between them.

 

[bathymcbath]

For an instant Zora thought she’d made Sharlan angry. It hadn’t been her intent, although she could also easily admit to herself that she hadn’t been trying very hard to avoid it, either. She knew how to speak to a volatile man and she knew that Sharlan was the most volatile man she’d met and still she huffed and groused at him and braced herself for whatever her provocation wrought. Why did she do that? His hand shifted and hardened on her head and her heart jumped when he pulled her more firmly against him, nuzzling her face harder into his cock. She gasped and instinctively put her hands on the edge of the bench on either side of Sharlan, preparing to wrench herself free from ... something. An attack?

She almost laughed because somehow Zora kept losing track of the fact that this was all an attack and she’d already surrendered. Her fingers relaxed on the bench as Sharlan’s fingers on her head did the same and she lifted her head.

She was on her feet too quickly, she thought, but her knees were aching and they were under a time constraint, after all. Why bother with artful hesitation when she was the one who asked him to hurry? It wasn't a relief. It certainly wasn’t eagerness that had her small hands bunching in her skirts and dragging them up her legs before he’d managed to issue his final command, Sit on me, Zora, making her falter. She’d been going to. He hadn’t even told her to and she’d been going to simply because it seemed like where things were headed. She’d think about that later.

Her legs were not bare under her skirts. She wore thin white stockings that reached just above her knee and were held up by satin garters of the same color that buttoned tightly around her mid-thigh. Her drawers, too, were white and edged with lace, and held up with a satin ribbon that cinched about her small waist. She only had to tug one end of the bow and they dropped and pooled around her yellow slippers. Zora lifted one foot free of the garment, then the other, and kicked them off to the side.

Whenever she’d imagined this before -- disrobing in front of a man -- she’d always been married and in love and in a bedroom. And she took off her underwear last. And he’d tell her she was beautiful and how happy she made him. It never felt like this when she imagined it. Her fantasies never included threats or terror or a moving vehicle, and they’d never made her quite so wet between the legs, either. It was sick. She had to kill him. She just had to after this.

She put a knee on the bench beside Sharlan, bracing with a fist on his shoulder. She still held the fabric of her skirts inside it. She settled her other knee beside him, too, and then she was straddling Sharlan and rising up to try to work him inside her. She was clumsy about it. The angles were confounding and the height differential was an additional challenge, but then she found it. She guided his head into her waiting cunt, legs held wide by their position, and let herself begin to sink.

“No,” she said softly, because the only other word that came to her was yes. She rose up a little and sank lower. He was enormous. She knew she could work past it, but it felt like he was splitting her open for the first time again. Only this time there was promise in that feeling, if she could only make it to the other side of it. She was about to say it again when Sharlan’s hand cut her off by closing around her throat and giving her a threatening squeeze. Her soft ‘no’ turned into a full throated groan that scraped past the pressure of his hand and shocked Zora with its volume. Her eyes closed her head tipped back; Zora gave a little more of her next drop to gravity, fucking herself harder and deeper.

 

[Verse]

He'd always counted the faces of his partners as some sexual organ beyond their mouths. How lovely, when his cock crushed against her cheekbone and brow, shadowing an eye. He sucked in a pleasant mouthful when she moved from him, and he got to see her taller, standing there. It excited him but he remained sitting, of course, when she complied. Blaming the haste of the situation, surely, but there was readable eager in her and her lifted skirts, even when she made him wear them, partially. He was glad for the light in here, some of it real sunbeams, cutting her legs and showing him just some glitter over her cunt when her underskirts waved just so. More light than the candles of their former room. He'd forced her to do this not long ago, and now she was hurrying to get herself on him, by herself. Whether she reflected on it, that kind of willingness would stick to her body and mature her corruption for him.

She didn't hesitate much anymore. One knee, and then the other, and Sharlan gave her one hand on the low of her back to help steady her. But it was Zora herself that guided him in, so he could watch her, up and down, the expressions she wore were lovely in their anticipation for relief, the kind of lust he'd grown in her. And her pussy was hot and slick as she made it swallow him up. He dug the back of his head into the wall behind him as she plunged, and took his cock into her belly. A small exhale of amusement at her one word refusal, this small creature making herself a big pleasure in his lap. The cock twitched, adoring her for her tongue and mouth and now her womanhood again. She made such a sound that he thought she might cuss him out for not fucking her harder. She didn't object to his chokehold with her own fingers, and only enjoyed it with her head back. But he wanted her to do this to herself, to them.

His other hand was free when it didn't need to contain her. It roamed down her front to feel her, possessive and curious, though with haste that her hips inspired as familiar angles into her started taking his cock up and down once more. This was her, then, when she lost herself to it, when there was too much of his ideas of what she could be put into her mind, and flooding her body. She was soaked in there, a different kind of slippery than her saliva. "Gnk." he gave and squeezed her neck so hard there was no air going through. The killing kind of grip. But it didn't last long, only long enough for him to see if it even mattered to the crazed Crowley woman now. They'd continue this with the rocking of the carriage to the imperfections of the road leading up to her home. Did she even know that? Did she have any though other than to satisfy the momentum of friction that was causing her pussy to melt?

She didn't have long, and he held out for her until she'd be ready for it, for that thing he'd given her in a poorly made bed. His hand constricting but no longer forbidding her breaths pulled her to him, whipping her head like a toy to hang closer to his as her diligence gave him the very thing all men wanted when they looked at her. His lips were close enough to her ear that she'd hear him growl. "You can go head and cum for me, fille." And he meant it. She'd been so obedient for a while now, he was sure those tamed impulses in her wild body would know to listen when he allowed it. Sometimes that's all that was missing - a thought of it, and the idea of it being her purpose in the moment.

He hissed like any monster and then inhaled with some pain when his orgasm exploded from the high of his thighs, through his cock and balls, and drew from the bottom of his stomach to fill her up, one excruciating shot after another. He couldn't help but brace himself by squeezing harder on her throat as it happened, but it was purely for him, and the rapture she'd teased at from the moment she'd gone down on her knees. After he'd filled her, he just kept her head to his for some kind of comfort, panting against her neck while leaning on her skull. "Now, that's not bad for a Loyal." he said with some amusement in his ragged.

A moment or two to lament, like this, and then a nod to the door and a reminder of the stopping of the carriage. He held her head with both hands to look at her in the frame of her messy hair. "We have a job to do, don't we, Zora?" He was ready to follow, but not ready to break this union by himself.

 

[bathymcbath]

Zora did notice when Sharlan’s hand cut off her breath entirely. She’d been wondering if he would, anticipating that he might, and then suddenly he did. Her lungs jumped and stopped, then her smaller hands went to his forearm just as they had done before, reflexively, drawing herself up for a futile struggle. He relented before she could properly protest. Oxygen rushed back to her, making Zora cough. Her whole body clenched with it and she savagely bit her lip against the sound she wanted to make. She lost no time returning to her important work of furiously bouncing on the lap of a killer.

She imagined that his forearm was his throat and she gripped it while she rode him, just like the last time, marginally more adept at finding her own pleasure and marginally less concerned with her own safety. She focused on Sharlan’s cock spearing her, his ragged breathing, the heavy and desperate feeling between her legs. Nothing else mattered.

The command he gave her was unfamiliar, but it didn’t matter. It was the cadence of his breath and his voice in her ears shooting straight to her cunt that made Zora shake and start to come, sighing with pained relief. He tightened his grip on her throat while she still shuddered and it began again, bigger and brighter. Pleasure rolled through Zora in unforgiving waves, inspiring her to grind mindlessly down onto Sharlan’s cock. It was enough to make her scream, but all that escaped past Sharlan’s hold was a soft, surprised cry while he loosed his orgasm inside her and she went boneless and greedy for it.

She was silently coming to terms with the notion that it could get better. Zora hadn’t considered before that what she’d done with Sharlan the first time likely wasn’t the peak of sexual ecstasy. In fact, based on all that had been explained (but mostly accidentally implied) to Zora, she probably wasn’t supposed to enjoy it at all. Sharlan had called her a whore when he found evidence that she had, which seemed meaningful. And now this, shaking and sweating and half-conscious from the force of her climax. She wanted to lie down and stretch her legs.

A tremor ran through Zora at the completely lukewarm not bad that Sharlan offered her, forcing her to acknowledge that there was something disturbing happening there. It wasn’t even a compliment. She shuddered to think what she might do for actual adoration. Perhaps something to explore once Sharlan was dead, she remembered with forced cheer, and used his chest roughly to push back from him as she pulled her legs free and set her slippered feet back on the floor. She noticed for the first time that they were stopped and hid her surprise, grimacing instead at the sensation of wetness spilling out of her when she bent to retrieve her underwear.

She shifted around to get her underwear back into place. Her fingers still trembled a little while she secured the waist and then fluffed the skirt out and around uselessly. She sat heavily on the bench and patted assessingly at her hair before shrugging and putting on her bonnet over it, fumbling ever so slightly with tying it under her chin. She smoothed her hands down the front of her dress just to replace the memory of his hand there, but she made a show of locating and removing creases.

“You have to make him understand how serious this is,” she said. “I don’t know if he suspects anything yet. I was going to ... bring him whatever you helped me find to help convince him of the danger.” Zora rolled her eyes at the version of herself who thought Sharlan was ever going to help her with anything. And those things -- the stack of correspondence and the little diary she’d so hastily shoved into her cloak the other night -- were back at the dress shop. She hadn’t meant to come home so early. Her uselessness was boundless and eternal.

 

[Verse]

Choking her was as effectual as it was pretty. The kind of thing that you'd think didn't have a home in these matters, and yet, Zora had learned it was an intricate part of her sexual maturation and adventures. Everything flesh-ward had to do with her losing her breath. She had a good relationship to it when she hung of his arm and clenched it much harder than she had his cock. Perhaps he should make the comparison to her next, when her education continued. Nonetheless she remained a faithful rider, because nomatter who she tried to fool, she was trying to satisfy herself on him, now. He was more than grateful for what little honesty her hips supplied over her words.

She was removed from herself as she chased it like a madwoman. What athleticism, finally. So her body rewarded her and it was delicate, but he wanted it ballistic so he helped it along with a tighter grip, because she did love choking so much. Her spasm's around him would have told her story even if her little cry and slutty hips didn't. That's all he wanted from her; for her to be undone when he asked her to. She was becoming more like that woman, the longer they stayed together. He lavished her stomach with his signature, and she wasn't afraid of it when she corrected herself to fit the seed better. It was almost darling, how she wanted it. Part of her, forever, whether it took or not.

When it was over, and he was a bit spent too, she gave him a little dessert in the way she quaked for his neigh-praise. Oh. this was enough secrets to her heart to undo her. He should test out this weapon further, soon. He inhaled when she left him, cock sluggish but not soft without her, swinging sleepy after its adventure inside the society lady. He tucked himself in expertly and watched as she tried to get herself proper. It was a small pleasure of his, to see women in the act of chasing their decency, once they'd been with him. It said a lot about them, he thought. He was rolling his palm on the pommel of the cane which dug against the floor, while he waited for her, since she had much more to do. She did a decent job, but also a lot going for her - beautiful woman, and all.

He nodded though, jaw set with gravity in the strings of sinew framing it, when she told him what to do. When coming to some stranger, and telling them he was there for their blood by someone else's account, it was important to cement the seriousness immediately. The good Viscount Crowley would get the point, if the point had to be stabbed into him. Sharlan crossed his hands over the pommel, and rested his chin on them when he looked her over. That bossy mouth had been around his cock, he thought, when he took her in. "I perform well when I need to, don't I?" recounting day old merits. "I'm not always this easy going chaperone who lets you do what you want." He teased and straightened in his seat to tap the door twice and have it opened.

He smelled the fresh air though her preferred the perfume of her wet cunt and her breaths. The driver, bowed by the door he'd opened, looked slightly flushed. Sharlan still tipped him, despite the entertainment they must have provided, and helped Zora down to her home yard. "I'll accompany you. And if you see opportunity, you should held me underline the gravity of all this." Their best hope was that her father had heard the murmurs, and that her word and his own surety would convince the viscount. This threat mustn't feel too much like begging, for Sharlan's own honor. If he wanted to be a robber, he'd be rich many times over.

They'd find themselves inside this house, that felt like a mockery to the Berrenger son, who lived in a sparse building with similar bones, while this place was comparatively brimming with opulence. She was protecting her family with this venture, but he thought she should think more about the treasures here. Maybe, arriving with Zora, this would look more like an asking of her hand. That'd be funny. He would hold on to her arm as long as she let him, for that effect, and rely on his cane with his other, to make sure he didn't put any emphasis on the saber in his belt. Despite what he'd said, he did not want to cross edges with Loyal Crowley. Good men died ugly.

 

[bathymcbath]

Zora’s mind was racing as she stepped down from the carriage. She glanced sidelong at the driver as she passed him, noting how close he was. She glanced over her shoulder at the door she’d just exited, noticing how flimsy its construction really was. It was designed for keeping out road dust and creating the illusion of privacy. Her eyes drew wide with the dawning realization that the driver must have heard everything and possibly seen a good deal, too.

It was nice to know, Zora supposed, that she still had enough shame to blush. The word didn’t do much justice, though, to the scarlet shade she turned as she stiffened and straightened and clutched Sharlan’s arm. It was one thing to be a harlot and quite another to be known as a harlot. The driver had brought them to her house. He knew her name!

Zora’s slippered feet dragged a bit as they approached the wide front door. The moment the carriage left their driveway, it would be out of her hands. In truth, nothing had ever been in her hands in the first place, so there was no use getting worked up over it. But she was. She craned her head while Sharlan led her blindly up the steps and she watched while the driver clamored back onto the box, took the reins and snapped them. The pair of horses lurched into motion. Zora watched the driver’s face until she couldn’t see it anymore. She’d remember him if she could.

When she looked where she was going once more, the door groaned open and a familiar footman stepped into view, frowning as though he was prepared to turn them away. She’d had her head turned, and men grander than Sharlan Berrenger would be turned away from the Viscount’s home if they turned up uninvited and unannounced. Then he saw Zora and he pulled the door wider, stepping smoothly into an attentive posture with his arm gesturing for her to proceed with her guest. That might have been relief on his face as he motioned them forward. Although the footman would not be abreast of all the news and happenings in the duelist economy, he was awake and not stupid and he could easily sense that he’d rather not upset the stranger if it could be avoided.

The house was fine, but not overdone. Isaac Crowley was a fastidious sort and he didn’t care for clutter or unnecessary embellishments. There was nothing surprising in their decor. The furniture was all exactly where it was expected to be. The paintings on the walls were all family portraits or serene landscapes. Even the sunlight that filtered through the windows seemed to lose some of its glaring heat when it poured through the Viscount’s luxurious and relentlessly ordinary home.

At the threshold, Zora paused to hand off her parasol and gloves. She kept her bonnet over the ruins of her hair, and noted that Sharlan kept his cane and his blade. She gave one slow, indulgent blink to the footman and he took her meaning easily. He made no move to divest Sharlan of any of his things.

The Viscount was at the far end of the house. His study overlooked the back garden, where the noise of the street could never disturb him. The tradeoff was that occasionally a flock of crows would move into the area and make an even greater racket than the carriages, so now the Viscount had a veritable army of cats hunting their garden and occasionally sneaking into the house and creating mayhem for the staff. A young scullery went stomping by them as Zora and Sharlan walked through, then stopped abruptly and curtsied. She was dressed well for a maid in a Crowley blue frock.

“Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, we thought you was gone the whole week. I’m just chasin’ a cat.”

Zora didn’t feel very much like smiling, but she would have under any other circumstances, so she tried her best now. It was weak. “Off you go,” Zora said. The maid ducked her head, performed one more curtsy, this time aimed at Zora’s companion, and turned to dash through the house on noticeably lighter feet. When she was gone and they were nearly to the study, Zora asked, “Would you mind waiting here while I talk to him? He doesn't like to be interrupted."

 

[Verse]

It was odd to see her so affected by the driver's presence. She put it together quickly, but not as quick as her sharp mind would have, if she'd been a bystander and not a leading role. How comical, her gathering of the event. But he understood her also. However well he fenced, he couldn't cross gossip or cut every wagging tongue on any old subject. Wasn't he here, wasn't he bittered exactly because he didn't have that power, even in his most exotic blades? She held him tighter as though to comfort herself from the real danger. A woman, perhaps, was more at risk for sensationalist whispers than men. She'd paid a great deal for Sharlan's secrecy alone. Indeed they were here to thwart rumors about her father, that may prove devastating or lethal.

"Five." he said. She may ask him what he meant but he wouldn't wait for her question. "To keep your secret." It'd surely cost the driver more than it would her, if he was a dishonorable service. He was sure the staff shared plenty with each other in the small hours, after work, or in their breaks in between. He might have meant five bella with how imprecise he was being, but somehow he was sure she'd take his meaning to be exactly the five glints he'd paid her for her innocence in the dirty bed they'd made their own. Maybe he was playing at being cold about another person's life again, or maybe he thought she shouldn't waste her distress on other men.

He knew the expression that came with the opening of the heavy door. How many times had he been turned away at similar barriers, lately? The places he went now took coin, not reputation from their patrons. His blood was boiling a bit by the time he was let in, by merit of Zora. Suppose this was her home and it was perfectly as it should be. He still clutched the silver pommel of his cane tighter. He gave her a nod for helping him keep it. He would not enjoy swatting a man who didn't look to know the good angles to grip and keep a saber.

"It's serene here." he said in an impressed breath that had some weight in it too; feigned or real jealousy. Dramatic nonetheless. "Untouched." that part sounded like a judgement and a threat. As though it would matter to the atmosphere of the Crowley house that he'd not come to visit it. Duelists sometimes talked about fighting friendly in the garden here. His father had mentioned it, too. But the spirit of this home had not drank blood in a long time. Like Zora, it pretended to be civil.

Laughable.

You couldn't have maritime riches without doing pirate deeds now and then. Of course Isaac may be keeping his daughter out of it.

Even Zora might notice a strange staleness in his posture at the woman. To him, it was strange that the two seemed so familiar with each other. He found it vexing enough that he had to look over his shoulder when the woman went on her way, with only a nod from him for interaction. "Cats are pests." he said, but it sounded like an afterthought. It certainly didn't have the derision she knew him for. Could be he wasn't genuine.

He grabbed her arm before she could escape into her father's study. "I can't be the gentleman you keep mistaking me for, Zora." he said in her ear. "I'll wait but when I meet with your father, I want to see you giving him a peck on his cheek." She may not know what it meant, that the scoundrel in Sharlan wanted her defiled mouth to be affectionate to her father in front of him, but she could know that he was being serious. Maybe she'd think the gesture would be a sign of some sort, rather. "And, if you have errand boys here, I'll have them fetch the sword we collected, and perhaps your papers, too." They had taken pains to posses them, after all. Physical things are better to convince old men.

But he did let her go if she wanted. Soon, as he waited outside the door and listened, he saw a shape move along the wall and floor. The maid was nowhere near, so he didn't hunt the cat. To him cats were pests. He'd seen them staring from privileged perches when he killed other men. It tried to wrap itself around his boot and he shifted to scare it away. It moved in tighter coils against him. Not even when he brushed it with the cane did it leave him alone. For the life of him, he couldn't think of any other scent than death on the leather footwear for the animal to be attracted to. Even cats knew there was very little to eat in the Berrenger house, these days, so he wasn't used to them indoors.