Chapter 710: The Morning After

The pale gray light of early morning slipped through a seam in the heavy velvet curtains and cut a sharp line across the bed.

Silas stared up at the carved canopy with his head sunk into a down pillow that smelled of salt spray and crushed sea-fern.

Every muscle across his chest and shoulders felt warm and heavy though it was the kind of deep ache that only came after hours of unyielding exertion.

He tried to roll onto his side, and the linen under him crackled with a dry stiff crunch.

’Crunch,’ he thought. ’Right. That’s going to be a problem.’

Beside him, Morwenna lay sprawled on her stomach like she’d been dropped from the crow’s nest.

Her long dark hair was tangled across the white sheets like seaweed thrown onto a beach.

One bare arm was flung over his waist feeling heavy and slack in sleep and her scarred knuckles rested against his hip.

Her back was bare as faint purplish bruises bloomed along her ribs where his hands had held her against the headboard, and three reddened crescents marked her throat where his teeth had gone in deep.

"Haah..."

She breathed with a low whistling rattle, completely dead to the world as a tiny line of drool pooled in the crease of her cheek and darkened the silk.

Silas reached up and touched the side of his neck.

His fingers found a raw throbbing dent right below his jawline, and he hissed through his teeth.

’Damn... She really put her back into that one.’

Last night had been rough, loud, and thoroughly exhausting.

For a woman who’d spent centuries on nothing but being a Pirate probably, Morwenna had taken to the mattress with a shameless enthusiasm that had nearly cracked the headboard in two.

They’d gone back and forth until the small hours, neither of them willing to yield an inch, until her rasping moans had melted into breathless whimpers.

...It was good, better than good, honestly.

There was something refreshing about her rough hands and greedy mouth that cut straight through the polite manners he usually had to dance around with the others.

’Heh.’

His eyes drifted down the long line of her back.

The wool blanket had slid off sometime in the night.

It stopped just short of her hips, and below it the sheet had given up entirely, leaving one very round and very bare cheek sticking out into the morning like a beacon.

Silas looked at it for a moment then the corner of his mouth curled.

SMACK!

The sound cracked through the quiet master suite like a dropped book as a pink handprint blossomed on pale skin, and the whole cheek gave a small jiggling shiver.

"Mnh...!"

Morwenna’s body arched under his palm.

Her fingers curled into the pillow, her back dipped, and a low drowsy moan slid out of her throat, sticky and sweet and nothing at all like the voice she used normally.

"Ahn... M-Master... mmh..."

Silas froze with his hand still resting on the warm stinging skin.

Her eyes were still shut, her breathing hadn’t changed a she was asleep, and her body was cheerfully answering anyway.

’That’s not fair,’ he thought, and felt his ears heat up. ’That’s not fair at all...’

He swallowed, pulled his hand back, and made himself breathe.

Then he leaned over and brushed the dark curtain of hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear one lock at a time.

Up close, her lashes lay against her cheek like tiny black fans, and her scowl, the permanent one she wore awake, had smoothed out into joy.

The drool had to stay though... He decided he’d leave her with a little dignity.

Silas pressed his lips to her forehead. It was warm and a little damp, and she smelled like sea salt and sweat and him.

"Good morning..." he whispered.

"...five more minutes," Morwenna mumbled into the pillow, her brow twitching. "...not the main sail, you... idiot... the other... mmh... harder... Master..."

Her lips curved into a small completely shameless smile, and she snuggled closer to his arm like it was a pillow of her own.

Silas pressed his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing.

’She’s dreaming about me... She’s dreaming about me and she’s still bossing me around, huh?’

He stayed there a second longer than he needed to, just watching her breathe then the cold light of day caught up with him, and he looked around the room properly for the first time.

"Oh, hell..." he muttered.

The room looked like a battlefield after a siege.

...The bed was a catastrophe.

The top duvet lay in a tangled knot on the carpet, soaked in sweat and everything else, the fitted sheet had been dragged half off the mattress and stiffened in several wide patches into something like crinkly parchment.

Puddles of bathwater from their first tumble still glistened on the dark hardwood near the vanity, and two shattered crystal tumblers lay in shards by the nightstand where Morwenna’s swinging leg had kicked them off during round two.

A pillow hung from the bedpost by one corner and he didn’t want to know how it had gotten up there.

If the housekeeping staff of the Celestial Reach Hotel walked in to change the linens, they’d probably call a warden or the health board.

The smell alone, a thick unmistakable musk of sex, ocean brine, and sweat, was enough to flatten a normal person.

"Fuckkkkkkk...."

Silas rubbed his temples with his Gold Core humming quietly in his chest.

He could have dumped the whole mess in his Lord Inventory and been done with it.

He considered that for about two seconds but wasn’t everything in his Lord Inventory in one world...? Dirty linen sitting next to his food rations and clean ore...? No, Absolutely not!

’I actually have standards unlike some people...’

"Fine," he whispered. "Manual labor it is."

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and planted his bare feet on the cold floor.

Pssh!

He used water mana first, Silas focused on the damp lingering in the air and the wet spots soaking the fabric, and a faint cool ripple spread from his fingertips, drawing the moisture out of the mattress in tiny trembling spheres.

SPLAT!

He lost his grip for half a second, and the whole floating bundle dropped straight back down, splashing across his shins and soaking the duvet worse than before.

"Tch." Silas wiped his leg with the back of his hand. "I really shouldn’t have rough sex for a long amount of time..."

His waist hurt a bit.

He took a slow breath and steadied his pathways.

The water lifted again, gathering into one wobbling orb the size of a melon as he held it steady with his left hand, raised his right, and shaped a tight pressurized funnel of wind mana.

FWOOOOOSH!

The miniature gale burst from his palm like an uncapped air compressor.

It was supposed to gently dry the linen but it caught the edge of the sheet instead and ripped it off the corners with a loud tear, sent the loose pillows tumbling across the room, and flung the hovering orb of dirty water across the entire opposite wall!

SPLASH!

A single torn feather fluttered down through the draft and landed directly on Morwenna’s nose.

She grunted and her brow furrowed.

Morwenna swatted blindly at her face with a heavy fist, muttered something that sounded a lot like "sink the port quarter, ye bastards" and rolled over, burying her face in the mattress and snoring louder than before.

’Cute...’

Silas stopped breathing until the rhythmic wheeze settled again.

"Right," he whispered, lowering his hands and letting the wind die. "No more shortcuts... Housekeeping spells are for mages with patience."

He looked at the dripping wall.

A long dark streak ran down the wallpaper from the ceiling to the skirting board, and in the middle of it, one tiny soaked feather had stuck to the plaster like a flag planted on conquered ground.

’I’ll deal with that later... Much later...’

He picked up the ripped sheet, wadded the damp mess into a tight ball, and shoved it behind the dressing screen in the corner where nobody would see it right away.

Then he pulled a spare wool blanket from the wardrobe and draped it gently across Morwenna’s exposed back, tucking the edge beneath her chin.

His palm lingered on the warm print he’d left on her cheek a moment longer than necessary.

’Fuck, stop looking so spankable...’

She needed a bath, badly.

Her skin was sticky with dried sweat, and the musk of their night clung to her hair but looking at the dark circles under her eyes and the relaxed curve of her lips, he couldn’t bring himself to wake her.

She’d earned the rest.

When she finally dragged herself out of that coma, she’d want to soak for an hour anyway, and he already knew he’d be the one getting dragged in with her.

Silas slipped into the adjoining private bathhouse and shut the heavy oak door with a quiet click.

The room was lined with pale gray slate and brass fixtures.

He turned the main valve on the sunken marble tub, let the steaming water roar into the basin, and stepped in without waiting for it to fill.

The heat hit his skin like a shock and sank into his sore joints, flushing the tension from his spine.

He leaned his head against the smooth marble lip, let the steam fill his lungs, and closed his eyes.

’Am I have post-nut clarity or something...?’

...It was strange, looking back on it now.

Morwenna had carried that fierce pride for as long as he’d known her... She’d been an immovable rock.

Yet last night she’d given him her first time, and under all the swagger she’d been clumsy and trembling and so quietly vulnerable it had caught him off guard.

She’d talked big, thrown out lines she’d clearly skimmed from some terrible romance book, and then melted into shy little gasps the second he actually pulled her into his arms.

His fingers drifted up to his throat as he tapped his collarbone, and the thin layer of illusion mana let go.

In the steamy mirror above the vanity, the marks Eluned had left on his neck came back into view... a collar of purple and red bites ringing his throat, each one fresh and angry and completely unfaded.

They never faded.

Beside them, high on the left side of his neck where the pulse beat strongest, sat Morwenna’s fresh contribution.

It was darker and rougher than Eluned’s with the tooth marks jagged and deep.

A wry smile touched his lips.

’Okay. One more for the collection...’

He pressed two fingers to the new bite and let his Radiant Cellular Reconstruction flow into it.

Warm light spread across the skin as the swelling went down, the angry red faded, and the sting melted away.

Morwenna’s bite knit itself closed under his fingertips like it had never happened then he moved his hand to Eluned’s marks and tried the same thing.

The light rolled across them and bounced right off like water off a duck’s back... Not a single mark so much as twitched.

"Smug little menace," Silas muttered at his own reflection.

He glanced back at the spot where Morwenna’s bite had been and winced.

A clean unmarked patch of skin stared back. She’d get offended if she woke up and found no evidence she’d left a mark on him at all so he drew a trickle of mana back out of the skin, just enough to bring a faint pink crescent back to the surface.

’There... Just a souvenir... She’ll be insufferable about it, but she’ll be happy.’

He slid lower in the tub and let his mind drift.

His Gold Core felt remarkably dense this morning.

The mana in his meridians flowed cleaner and the warm tight pressure of last night’s boost still sat in his chest.

’I feel like I’ll break through one of these days...’

He was going to develop himself... this didn’t need to be only source of his power too.

’But I’ll take what I get of course.’

Morwenna wasn’t a fling, and neither was Eluned.

Silas wasn’t naive... Every one of them had put herself in his hands, whether she said it out loud or not.

They were his people, and if the sky ever fell, he’d be the idiot standing in front of them with his arms spread wide.

’I’m just busy this morning...’

He shut off the valve, grabbed a coarse linen towel, and scrubbed the dried sweat from his skin.

When he climbed out, he sent a gentle breeze across his body and he got dry in seconds this time then he pulled on a clean pair of dark trousers and a simple black tunic with a high collar.

After that, he tapped his collarbone again, and the illusion veil settled back over his neck, hiding every mark.

He didn’t reach for Kara’s ring.

’I’ll need it when I go out though...’

He cracked the bathroom door open and looked back one last time at the sleeping woman tangled in her blanket.

One bare foot had escaped and was twitching, like she was still kicking someone off the deck.

"Rest well, Morwenna," he murmured. "Don’t wake up until I’ve fixed the wall."

He stepped out into the corridor.

The scent of hot oil and toasted grain hit his nose before he’d made it halfway down the hall.

Somewhere ahead, a spatula scraped against iron, and a low voice hummed a quiet melody.

Silas slowed as he hadn’t expected anyone to be awake yet.

’Aeliana was supposed to be out cold,’ he thought. ’Same as the others.’

He pulled his collar a little higher, checked the veil one more time, and walked toward the smell of breakfast.