Too Many Bad Days (Raxillene's Rogues Book 3)

by Max Keith

  But this? This was her naked flesh, wet and pimpled from the cool morning air, her face nonetheless calm as she turned, wringing hard at her long hair. “Getting an eyeful, Drinn?” she called, entirely without any shame. “Had to get the cheese washed out.”

  “Indeed.” Drinn forced himself to the casual tone, the droll voice. He cleared his throat, then waited till she had turned back downstream before he hauled his dick upright. “A fine morning for it.”

  She glanced back oddly, but then resumed scrubbing at herself while Drinn sighed raggedly. He was doing a lot of that these days. “Hey!” she called then, half-turning; he could now see the swell of one young, wet breast. “As long as you’re standing there, throw me the blanket.” Slim legs lifted her body upright, her flesh reddened and trembling, and he obeyed; she’d left her cloak and blanket draped over a nearby bush. He caught a quick glimpse of her full and rounded ass just as she wrapped herself up.

  She smirked at him as she stepped out of the stream, her wet hair lank down her back. “Never seen a woman bathe before, Drinn?” she taunted. “You’re not speaking much; I’d not have thought you’d be shy about this sort of thing.”

  “Nor me,” he shrugged, deciding the truth was best. “I’m usually not.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “So what’s the matter, then?” She was shivering, and he nearly reached out to pull her into him, erection be damned. Instead he took a deep, ragged breath and produced a false smile.

  “I wasn’t surprised when I thought you had the pox,” he tried. “It suited you.”

  “What did?” She was beginning to settle down, still covering herself tightly. Drinn thought he read mischief in her dark eyes. He wondered whether she was going into heat. “Not the pox, surely.”

  “No, but the thought of some soldier wanting to fuck you.” He watched the words sink in, fascinated at her reaction; she took it very much as a compliment, he was relieved to see. His cock swelled further. She had to notice, he thought; the tunic was long, but not that long. “You're exactly the sort of girl a soldier dreams about in his tent, Chiara.”

  “O ho!” She giggled. “Honesty, from a warrior of the Realm!” She cocked her head and regarded him carefully, then smiled with more warmth than he’d seen from her before. “Thank you, sir. You may dream about me too, if you wish, now that I’m no longer so shamefully afflicted.” She winked, then moved off up the riverbank. “I’ll just leave you to take care of yourself,” she finished, her voice deep and womanly as she tossed her hair, though more playfully than usual.

  Behind her, Drinn simply cursed as he realized he would have to wait again to piss. He gritted his teeth with frustration.

  * * *

  They walked in silence all morning, the rain sweeping back in off the distant sea, and in the first village they passed they saw word had gone on ahead: a tiny delegation of townsfolk stood there to meet them, their faces worried as they tried to figure out what might have brought soldiers to their doors. Franx merely ignored them, for the most part, or nodded as he went past. But when another delegation waited in the rain at the center of the next village, they all realized they’d need to say something.

  In the center of the dripping village stood the Emperor’s Pole, with the Imperial Banner hanging from the crossbar with all the enthusiasm of an executed convict. Grouped around were several of the locals, including some sort of mayor; he looked concerned; clearly he didn’t realize they were only faking being Legionaries on patrol. It was clear there had not been any other soldiers in this village, perhaps for years.

  The mage sighed, smiled, dropped his rucksack, and moved forward to deal with the mayor. In doing so, he left the carefully-downcast Chiara and the hopelessly aroused Drinn, the warrior stewing in frustration. He glanced about the rude little place and saw nothing but muddy paths, low huts, sickly dogs, and the oily black smoke of dung fires. He kept searching, avoiding Chiara’s furtive gaze, knowing he’d eventually find what he sought.

  There.

  Off to the side stood some of the more surly residents, the ones who wanted to see what was going on but also wanted nothing to do with the mayor. He examined them with a trained eye, sorting, until he spotted what he needed. He nudged Chiara. “I’m off to do a shit in one of the huts,” he said out of the side of his mouth. She gaped up at him.

  “These people won’t have latrines in their own homes,” she frowned. “What do you think this is, the Capital?”

  “I care not. I’m sick of shitting in the rain.” He jammed a hand deep into Franx’ rucksack, burrowing for the bag, and jerked it forth in triumph. They’d taken the Imperial money and put it into a smaller bag, and this is what Drinn wove through his leather belt. “I’ll pay someone to clean up after me. Stay with the bags,” he instructed her gruffly, thinking of nothing but her sleek pale back and his own eager erection. He did not wait for a response.

  The woman was standing huddled in a cloak, a little apart from the surly crowd. She watched him carefully as he approached, and he studied her more closely: he saw a dusky, rounded face of perhaps twenty-five years, startling blue eyes, and a hard-bitten mouth which, nevertheless, had a certain grim appeal. He caught her eye as he came up to her and let her see his hand reach into the bag. He withdrew a shiny brass coin and showed it to her as he came within muttering distance.

  “A penny for your cunt?” he asked, baldly and nastily, his voice quiet and urgent as he passed her. And then he walked on, past some of the huts and around an abandoned animal byre, safely hidden from view. He knew she was game as soon as she appeared and failed to slap him; all the rest was just haggling. She stood with her arms crossed underneath her cloak, silent and smirking with narrowed eyes.

  He waited, and when she said nothing he sighed. “Two pence, then.” The woman waited, then her smirk grew.

  “Whoring’s illegal in the Central Rump, soldier,” she chided, a challenging curl to her mouth. Her voice was as harsh as the rest of her. “You’re not from around here, plain enough.”

  “No,” he agreed, digging for a third penny. “Three.”

  She spat, but cocked her head. “Three pence. What do you expect that to buy you, soldier?”

  “I told you already,” he replied immediately. “Your cunt. And I’m looking to rent, not to buy.”

  She croaked a brutal laugh. “Already got a wife, have you?”

  He held her gaze; oh, those eyes! He felt his cock begin to leave some of its drool on the inside of his tight military breeches, and swallowed. “Four pence.” He felt his mouth fall open as she thought about it. “It’s not illegal if the Governor doesn’t find out, woman.”

  “True enough,” she muttered, and then he saw her eyes survey the village, leaning back to see around the ruined byre. She nodded, then stepped toward him. Wordlessly she unfolded her arms, her eyes boring into his, and came close enough for him to smell the food rotting between her teeth. She reached calmly out and clamped a strong, firm hand straight onto his scrotum, squeezing as a goodwife tests an avocado at the market, letting his balls squish between her fingers within the tight leather. She moved her hand then, weighing his shaft, before she gave a final squeeze and then stepped quickly back, leaving Drinn to catch his breath. “A silver imperial,” she announced.

  Excellent. It was just half the rate he’d expect to pay for lower service from a clean whore in the Realm, but this was a hovel in the impoverished Tangled Mountains with a war on, and she perhaps the only willing woman for miles. His instincts had been correct; he felt his dick throb. “Done.”

  She jerked her head sideways and at once started for a small cottage at the edge of town, clinging to the grassy mountainside. He watched her move as he followed, seeing the womanly sway there, trying to guess how she’d be; of course, he was hardly spoiled for choice here. He was certain she’d be adequate.

  “I’ll take your silver now,” she announced as she left him to shut the door behind them; the thing was hanging drunkenly open, but it wedged tightly e
nough against the weathered jamb once he pulled the rope latch tight. He pulled the sack from his belt and found a tiny shelf to set it on, at about waist height; the whole floor sloped upward toward a bed nook behind some curtains up high, but she seemed to have no interest in using her bed. The space was dimly lit through two horn windows, and the woman bent to a little table to light a candle. “Now,” she repeated, her voice firmer.

  Drinn found one of the silvers, big and cold beneath his searching fingers, and he drew it out and held it before her eyes; she squinted at it as she swept it from his hand, bit it, and tossed it onto the table next to the candle. A scrap of mirror hung haphazardly from the wall, and Drinn’s trembling hands seized the woman’s shoulders and turned her toward it; she let him, staring wordlessly at him through the mirror, and shrugged her shoulders as he pulled the dark cloak from her shoulders. It puddled on the packed earth of the floor.

  The shoulders had been wiry, thin but strong, and the rest of her body felt the same as he inspected it. Neither of them spoke as he stepped behind her, his arms coming roughly beneath hers to measure her tits; they filled his hands nicely, he thought as he mashed them together. He played for a moment until he saw her watching him carefully in the mirror, then he let go and stepped back.

  His swordbelt made a clanking racket as it fell to the ground, his straining breeches following to his knees; he pulled his tunic silently over his head and tossed it into a corner. At last she turned, just enough, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully as she studied his jutting prick. She snorted. “Been awhile, has it?”

  “This won’t take long,” he grated. He was not the longest man in the realm, he knew, but he certainly had girth, and he watched as her eyes measured his dimensions.

  “Add a penny, for your size,” she commanded, and with a grunt Drinn fished in the bag for the little bit of brass, which thunked excitedly beside the silver imperial. She nodded, satisfied, and turned back to watch him in the mirror. “What do you want?” Her voice was flat, emotionless, as if she were asking about his boot size.

  “I want you,” he shrugged, but his actions gave her a clearer answer; shuffling forward on legs constrained by his breeches, he shoved insistently at her waist until she got the message, bending slightly and bracing her strong hands on the wall either side of the mirror. She tossed her head then, and for the first time he took in long, straight hair, spreading russet across the simple knit gown she wore, but then he leaned down and flung her skirts all the way up and over her back.

  Before him waited the backs of her legs, young and strong as they rose from her stringy calves to her ass; this was bonier than he liked, though nicely muscled. Besides, what he needed from her was not a lush body; it was the beautiful symmetry of her pussy, peering out from between her thighs, nestled within a ragged patch of hair. The woman was certainly no maiden; she shifted her booted feet apart and let her head dip low.

  Drinn did not have time to waste; no telling what Franx was up to with the mayor, but it wouldn’t last forever. He spat roughly onto two fingers, then jammed them calmly into her cunt, feeling the warmth and the tightness as her body tensed. He was breathing hard now as he wiped his fingers on her ass, rolled his hips to line up his penis, and began to push it into her body.

  At once he could feel her close right up, her legs tightening as she rose to her tiptoes; her hard, no-nonsense manner was, as he’d expected, an act. “Shh,” he soothed, reaching far forward to stroke her dirty hair, swallowing as he batted back his intense pleasure as his first two inches or so lay wedged in her cunt. “It’s all right, gorgeous,” he lied thickly, and he gritted his teeth as he moved gently in and out, in and out, opening her slowly as he felt her calm down; he had no time for this, though, and he knew how much she’d hate him as soon as he got her properly breached.

  Not that he cared; good silver was lying on that table, and he expected her to work for it. And, right enough, she settled down after a minute or so of gasping strain, her hips moving experimentally, hesitantly, and Drinn bit his lip impatiently until he felt her relax a bit more, her pussy slackening just slightly, and then he seized her hipbones, took a deep breath, and battered all the way into her.

  There was a hiss from among the matted russet hair, and a glance at the mirror showed her glaring back at him through the glass, her face a tight mask of pain, but he simply smiled at her, waited for her to reform her walls around his invading shaft, and then sighed happily as, after three weeks of hell, he took his pleasure.

  And, after awhile, she even seemed to get into it. This was never going to last long enough, he knew, to fuck her properly, but at least she was able to start moving her legs and hips and ass enough to make things interesting. There followed two or three minutes of fast, brutal thrusts, her knuckles white as she gripped at the stone of the wall, but he did not care; he was too busy staring with a slackly grinning mouth at the twisty muscles of her lower back as he split her open.

  She felt it when he sped up, and suddenly she was squirming aside from the mirror, her face bright red as she stared back into his eyes. “Shoot it on my back,” she grunted, her voice low and tight, and he just stared back at her in disbelief. His balls were simmering as they swung against her sweaty flesh.

  “What – is it your time? Are you fertile?” He heard the grasping menace in his own voice as he strained to hold back. She bucked back into him in unconscious rhythm, grimacing, and her mouth took on a cruel snarl.

  “Whether I am or no,” she gasped, “it’s a chance I don’t feel like taking with the likes of you.” And then she turned back toward the mirror, her hair falling like a curtain across her face as she bowed her head again; her shoulderblades stood up prominently beneath the thin dress.

  “Shit,” he said, spitting disgustedly onto her spine. “Some whore you are.” Her head jerked when she heard the flat clunk of another silver imperial slapping down onto the table, and panting she met his eyes once more in the mirror, nodding and closing her eyes.

  “Fine,” she spat, the word bit savagely out.

  “Slut,” he hissed, and then he waited no longer, reaching underneath to fill his hands once more with those tautly swinging breasts of hers, the bruises already on the way as she struggled underneath his hard body; he hauled back hard, clasping his thighs against hers, and gave a strangled grunt as he unleashed his three weeks’ worth of sperm deep into her sinewy body.

  They both grunted, stopping to collect themselves as they felt his cock twitch wildly, the pleasure flooding through his brain in the usual cottony whiteness, the entire dung-stinking room disappearing for him in the moment he blew himself into her. The semen was already spilling out around his thick cock, even before he pulled it out; when at last he backed away from her, the spatter of his seed sounded like she was pissing. She stayed bent over, gasping dully into the mirror as she watched him behind her.

  “You’re a bitch,” he said quietly, “for not telling me before we started that you’d not take my cum.”

  “Fuck you,” she sneered defiantly, her head thrust back. “You shouldn’t want to leave a bastard up here.”

  “I don’t,” he admitted, tying his pants up, “but that’s not my problem.” He threw the tunic back over his head, gathered up his swordbelt, and sighed. “Thank you for your time,” he finished, for she had, in the end, given him what he’d needed; but she needed to be put into her place. “I’m not fond of hustlers.” She glared at him, her skirt falling slowly back down her cum-slick legs, as he deliberately took back the brass penny, then swept the entire sack off the sagging shelf. “Have a pleasant day.”

  He was feeling sour about the extra silver, but it was the normal lower-service rate, and it wasn’t like vaginas were falling out of the trees here. He swung the flapping door shut behind him, taking solace in his emptied balls and the knowledge that the faithless whore would be sore for days.

  Five

  He felt the usual lightness he’d been expecting, the sluggishness in his legs fading a
way; indeed, for the first hour after they left the stinking little village, he nearly felt like he could leap each of the mountains as if they were nothing more than pebbles.

  Chiara noticed. “Feeling sprightly, it seems?” she asked, her expression carefully blank. He managed a smile, feeling a small but surprising sense of guilt.

  “It was a mighty shit,” he smiled, and then he strode on up the muddy path, not even caring about the tinkle of the raindrops on his helmet. Behind him, the mage glanced narrowly over at Chiara.

  “There’s a problem?” It wasn’t really a question, though he couched it that way; he was not interested in dissention, though, not with the Claring getting closer and the pursuit sure to be there. In the back of his mind, Franx had been making careful plans for many days.

  But he was a shrewd observer of others and their actions, so he was not terribly surprised when Chiara sent a hooded glance up ahead toward Drinn before she looked away. “It’s nothing.”

  Franx’ eyes narrowed knowingly. “He disappeared at that last village, and I know why.” He’d been traveling for many years with Drinn; he did not even need to check the small bag for missing silver imperials. He nodded to himself. “I see,” he added quietly. “He’s not an unattractive man, I’m told. Though I wasn’t aware how strong your interest was.”

  “I was so glad to take out the cheese, as well.” She was hardly surprised at Franx’ guesses; one did not, after all, expect Shadowmages to be morons. “I saw her, the whore he found. A foul-looking bitch.”

  They trudged on in silence, up and over the next rocky hill; around them the world was sparse grass and towering grey rock under a sky the color of lead. After awhile Chiara spoke again, low and bitter. “He knew, too.”

  “Knew?”

  “That I’d be willing. I let him see me bathing.” He glanced over at her, but said nothing. “I knew he’d come around that bend; he’s always first up, and he always pisses right away.” She sighed heavily. “I did not bother covering myself, not quickly.”