Chapter 63: I Belong To Nobody, So… Don’t Be Gentle!(18+)

Chapter 63: Chapter 63: I Belong To Nobody, So... Don’t Be Gentle!(18+)

The water channel ran coldest just before the sun cleared the eastern ridges.

Lira was there before most of the valley stirred, rinsing the night’s bindings against the current until the last of the brown left the hide.

Her hands worked with the same steady rhythm she used on wounds no wasted motion, no hesitation when the water bit cold against old scars on her knuckles.

The hide wrap clung to her body in the damp air.

She did not bother to adjust it.

Modesty was a luxury for people who did not spend their nights elbow-deep in other people’s blood.

~~~~

She heard the footsteps behind her long before the man spoke. She did not turn.

"You’re early," she said.

"So are you."

Drak’s voice was low, even, the kind that did not need to raise itself to be obeyed.

He stopped a few paces back, close enough to be heard, far enough not to crowd.

"Elka sent me."

Lira wrung out a binding and set it with the others.

"I assumed someone would.

The Matron’s people watch. Yours watch. Everyone wants to know what the wounded say when the pain is high."

She finally turned her head just enough to look at him over one shoulder.

River-stone eyes, calm and unimpressed.

"What does Elka want to know badly enough to send her quiet knife instead of a second-band runner?"

Drak’s expression did not change.

He was heavier through the shoulders than most of the men who came to the channel this early, scarred in the practical places, eyes that measured without lingering too obviously on the way the wet wrap clung to her chest and hips.

"She wants to know if you’re a risk.

Or a resource."

"I’m a cleaner of blood," Lira said.

"Risk and resource look the same from the floor of the wounded caves."

"Then talk," Drak said.

"Not about the wounded. About you... Where you came from? Why you stayed?

Why a woman who could have taken a spear and a place on the counts chose the smell of boiled herbs and dying men instead."

Lira studied him for a long moment.

Most men who wanted something from her started with softer lies.

Drak had not bothered.

That, more than anything, decided her.

"Walk," she said.

"If I’m going to waste breath, I’m not doing it with my hands in cold water."

They followed the channel upstream, away from the main paths, to a narrower stretch where the rock walls rose high enough to keep voices from carrying.

Lira sat on a flat stone and began re-coiling her dark hair with practiced fingers.

The movement lifted her chest and bared the long line of her throat.

She knew exactly what it looked like.

She did it anyway.

"I was river-born," she said.

"Not the main villages.

A smaller settlement farther east, the kind that only gets remembered when someone larger decides it has something worth taking. We had healers.... Real ones.

Women who knew which roots closed a wound and which ones only made the dying quieter.

I learned from them because I was good at it and because my mother decided a daughter who could keep fighters alive was more useful than a daughter who could only bleed for them."

Drak leaned against the opposite rock face, arms folded, listening with the same flat attention he gave to reports from the lower fires.

~~~~

"When the larger raid came, the useful daughters were taken with the food and the tools.

The rest were left for the crows. mI was fifteen.

Old enough to understand what the men who took us wanted.

Young enough that some of them still pretended it was a kindness."

Her hands finished the coil of hair and dropped to her lap.

"I cleaned their wounds.

I delivered their children.

I learned that a woman who can keep a man from dying of fever is harder to throw away than one who only knows how to lie under him.

When the Tribunal’s people eventually broke that camp and folded the survivors into the valley, I kept cleaning blood.

It was the only work that still made sense."

"And now?" Drak asked.

"Now the first band is a fraction of what it was, the Matron is watching her own survivors for cracks, and Elka is sending quiet men to ask me questions by the water at dawn." Lira met his eyes directly.

"I don’t choose centers.

I choose which wounds I allow to close.

If that becomes a problem for either of you, you can find another pair of hands.

There are always more dying men."

Something that might have been respect moved through Drak’s expression, there and gone.

He pushed off the rock and closed the distance between them without hurry.

Lira did not stand.

She watched him come with the same calm she brought to a deep cut.

"Elka didn’t send me only for the story," he said. "She sent me to see if you could be moved.

Or at least reminded that the lower fires notice women who hear too much and say too little."

~~~~

"And what’s your conclusion?"

Drak stopped in front of her.

Close enough that she had to tip her head back to hold his gaze. "That you’re not afraid of me....

That you’re tired.

And that tired people sometimes want a different kind of attention than the kind that comes with questions."

Lira’s mouth curved, small and sharp.

"Is that what this is? Attention?"

"It can be." His voice stayed low.

"Or it can be nothing. You decide."

For a long moment the only sound was the channel moving over stone.

Then Lira reached up, hooked two fingers in the front of his leather, and pulled him down into a kiss that had nothing soft in it at all.

Drak answered with equal force.

One hand braced on the rock behind her.

The other slid into the thick coil of her hair and held her in place while he kissed her like a man who had been given permission to stop measuring and start taking.

Lira made a low sound against his mouth and bit his lower lip hard enough to taste copper.

"Not here," she said when they broke apart. "The wounded caves have a back alcove the night watch doesn’t bother with.

If we’re doing this, we’re doing it where I can control the sound."

~~~~

They barely made it inside.

The moment the hide flap fell closed behind them Lira shoved Drak back against the stone and dragged his leather down with impatient hands.

His cock was already thick and heavy in her soft palm.

She stroked him once, hard, and watched his eyes darken.

"I clean blood for a living," she said, voice rough. "I don’t need gentle.

I need to feel something that isn’t fever and dying men.... Can you manage that?"

Drak’s answer was to spin her around, push her chest-first against the stone, and yank her skirt up over her hips.

His fingers found her already wet.

He pushed two of them inside her without preamble and curled them hard.

Lira’s breath left her in a sharp, hungry sound.

"Urgh... Fuck yes, Like that."

He fingered her with deep, steady strokes, thumb rubbing tight circles on her clit, until her hips were pushing back against his hand and low, continuous noises were spilling out of her throat.

When she came the first time it was with a muffled, shaking moan, cunt clenching around his fingers, thighs trembling.

Drak pulled his fingers out, smeared the wetness over the head of his cock, and pushed into her in one long, heavy thrust. The stretch pulled a raw sound from Lira’s chest.

~~~~

He did not give her time to adjust.

He fucked her with deep, punishing strokes, one hand locked on her hip, the other braced on the stone beside her head.

The wet slap of skin filled the small alcove.

"Harder," Lira demanded, voice breaking.

"I said I didn’t need gentle! Prove it."

Drak gave her harder.

He fucked her like he was trying to drive the smell of the wounded caves out of both of them deep, relentless, almost angry.

Lira moaned openly against the stone, pushing back to meet every thrust, the careful healer’s control stripped down to something raw and thirsty.

"Talk to me," she gasped.

"I want to hear you. Don’t do this quiet."

"You feel fucking perfect," Drak growled against her ear. "Tasty, Juicy...."

"Then don’t hold back...." Her voice cracked into a moan as he angled deeper.

"Fill me.....

I want to feel it running down my legs when I walk back to the bindings."

He reached around and rubbed her clit in rough, tight circles timed to the snap of his hips.

Lira came a second time body locking around his cock hard enough to make his rhythm stutter.

~~~~

Drak cursed under his breath, drove deep, and kept fucking her through it until she was shaking and dripping and making continuous filthy sounds against the stone.

He pulled out only long enough to turn her around, lift one of her legs over his hip, and sink back into her face to face.

This angle let him go even deeper.

Lira’s head fell back against the rock.

Her mouth opened on a continuous, hungry moan.

"Look at me," Drak ordered.

"I want to see your face when I fuck this perfect pussy."

She looked at him.

River-stone eyes dark, lips parted, the striking calm completely broken open into raw need.

He fucked her harder, deeper, the wet sounds of it obscene in the small space. One of her hands raked down his back.

The other locked on his shoulder hard enough to leave marks.

"I’m close again" she moaned.

"Urgh... Don’t you dare stop.

Fuck it out of me, Harder....."

Drak gave her everything.

He fucked her with short, brutal strokes that forced a raw, continuous sound from her throat, rubbing her clit without mercy until she came a third time with a shaking, almost silent scream, cunt spasming around him in strong pulses.

The force of it dragged him over the edge with her.

He buried himself to the root and came hard, flooding her in thick, heavy pulses while she moaned through every spurt, hips still moving to take it all.

They stayed locked together afterward, breathing ragged, sweat and come and the smell of sex thick in the confined air.

Lira’s forehead rested against his shoulder.

Drak’s hand stayed on her hip, fingers pressed into the marks he had left.

When she finally spoke, her voice was rough but steady again.

~~~~

"You can tell Elka I talked.

You can tell her I fucked you... Neither one makes me hers.

Or the Matron’s. I clean blood.

That’s the only center I stand under until someone gives me a better reason."

Drak pulled out slowly.

The wet evidence of him slipped down the inside of her thigh.

He looked at her for a long moment the striking face, the capable hands, the calm that had already begun to settle back over her like a second skin.

"I’ll tell her you’re not a risk she can easily move," he said.

"And that you’re more interesting than she expected."

Lira adjusted her wrap and skirt with steady hands, the same way she finished a binding. "Interesting gets people killed in this valley.

Tell her I’m useful instead.

Useful people last longer."