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Councilor Hoskel’s fist struck the conference table with a rattling thud. “You ask for too much!” He barked. “You already have your sovereignty! Be happy we permitted you that much!”
Sevika narrowed her eyes at the bitter old man, and he visibly withered back as she leaned forward and said, “Piltover has been bleeding the daughters and sons of Zaun dry for generations, and your family has profited off of our blood and labor.”
“Those were legitimate business ventures!” Hoskel snarled.
“They were abattoirs!” Sevika threw a folder across the table where it came to a skidding halt in front of the Councilor. “Miners and factory workers died of accidents and overwork every week! You didn’t even have the good grace to bury them! Your overseers had them tossed into the Pilt! Unless you want these talks to end in blood, you’ll pay the reparations you owe!”
Before Hoskel could say something catastrophically impolitic, Mel Medarda raised a hand sharply for silence. Since House Medarda had no major interests in Zaun and had, by their measure, committed no real sins against the city, it was decided that she would act as a mediator in the reparation talks. Or, more accurately, she had been the only actual choice. Every other House had some kind of stake in Zaun that put them in a potential conflict of interest. None of the talks had gone particularly well, but Hoskel was by far the most belligerent of a bad lot.
“May I?” Mel held out a hand, and Sevika smugly produced what could only have been another copy of the reports, and the blood drained from Hoskel’s pallid features.
Mel made a show of thumbing through the documents even though she was well aware of what they contained. She had copies of similar reports stowed in case Hoskel ever turned into a problem, and she needed some leverage over him. It was a shame someone had beaten her to the punch, but she could exactly be upset. After all, she’d had the same plan.
Setting the folder down, Mel turned to Hoskel and said, “Unfortunately, Councilor, these allegations are both serious and well-supported. I’d say if reparations are all Zaun is demanding, you ought to count yourself lucky.”
“That’s preposterous!” Hoskel stood, now red-faced and full of bluster. “These scoundrels won’t see a single copper of the Hoskel fortune! Not while I’m alive!”
“I accept your counteroffer, then,” Sevika replied with a predatory sneer.
For the second time in as many moments, Hoskel went pale and began sputtering before Mel broke in and said, “Enough.” She turned to Hoskel. “Your House will meet its reparations just like everyone else!” She turned back to Sevika. “And we will not be trading the life of a Piltovan national to Zaun to be lynched. We don’t have an extradition treaty with you, and you know it.”
“You still have the death penalty for crimes like mass murder, though,” Sevika pointed out as she flashed that thin-lipped, leonine smile of hers. “Try him under your own courts.”
“P-Preposterous!” Hoskel blustered again, but more weakly this time.
“We’ve already agreed to your terms!” Mel snapped.
“He hasn’t agreed to shit,” Sevika replied, nodding at Hoskel. “And he’s the one I’m dealing with.”
“The Council will ensure compliance,” Mel said through her teeth.
Sevika turned her gaze back to the cowering Councilor and nailed him in place with a look. Then she stood, and despite herself, Mel’s breath caught in her chest. Sevika was a specimen if ever there was one. Tall, broad, and powerful with a sharp gaze and a sharper jawline. She held Hoskel in place with a look as well as if she had her fingers around his neck.
“Maybe Zaun would rather trade for blood,” Sevika said darkly. “Maybe we want justice from the illustrious House Hoskel.”
“You…you w—”
“Uber, for the last time, and by whatever you hold sacred, will you show some common sense and shut your damn mouth!”
Mel fixed him with a volcanic glare until what little bravado he’d managed to cling to curled up like a dying rat, and after a moment, he sat down and hung his head. Uber Hoskel was a miserable man-child at the best of times and never grew out of the apparently masculine urge to throw a bloody tantrum every time things went mildly sideways on him. He was a selfish little bastard of a man, and the fact that she was forced to defend him was simply grotesque.
When Mel turned back to Sevika, she was surprised to find the Zaunite woman was no longer staring at Hoskel but at her, and there was a whole different manner of heat to that look. For a moment, Mel Medarda forgot how to breathe, and in that moment, Sevika’s lip curled into a faint smile.
“Councilor Medarda,” Sevika said in a tone that seemed unnecessarily husky. “I’ve made my demands.”
“And I am asking you, politely, to reconsider,” Mel said through her teeth. “There’s been enough bloodshed.”
“Maybe for you,” Sevika said. “I could go for a little more.”
Closing her eyes, Mel counted backward as she considered her options, then sighed, opened them, and said to Hoskel. “Leave us. We’re getting nowhere like this. I’ll speak to the Zaunite representative privately, find a solution to this that doesn’t involve an execution or a war, and we’ll reconvene tomorrow afternoon.”
For once in his life, Hoskel obeyed without argument and slouched miserably out of the conference room, leaving Mel alone with Sevika, and Mel spent the first minute of the time alone glaring at Sevika. Piltovan Councilors, tycoons, and magnates alike had been soundly routed by that look alone, but not Sevika.
The Zaunite woman seemed to soak it up like a sunny day at the beach.
“So,” Sevika started as she sat back down in a languid, felid motion before putting her booted feet up on the conference table.
“We both know what your boss wants from this, and I’m happy to make that happen, but you’re not making it any easier,” Mel said flatly.
“I’m not in the business of making life easy for topsiders, you gilded hen,” Sevika replied.
Mel bit back a thoroughly unproductive retort. The whole reason for this farce was because Silco, quite frankly, had Piltover by the short-and-curlies. His daughter had somehow managed to leap ahead of their own hextech experts and engineer weapons of mass destruction from a single hextech gem and a fistful of scrap. Viktor had described the proof of the weapons as horrifying in both the implication of their existence and the fact that the mind which created them had been so thoroughly ignored until then. The girl, this ‘Jinx’, had taken theoretical documents and sprinted straight into practical applications two decades ahead of Piltover’s own programs.
It had left Piltover desperately suing for peace in order to prevent a catastrophic civil war, and the reparations had been a non-negotiable part of that. The resulting calculation of gross and negligent violation against Zaun had neatly left Mel in the unenviable position of handling those negotiations. She had dared to hope she would be dealing with the eminently more amicable and level-headed new leader of Zaun, but Silco was predisposed with handling the functions of a fledgling nation, so he had delegated the meetings to his direct subordinate.
Mel had never hated a woman more.
“Then allow me to be direct,” Mel said.
“Please do,” Sevika replied, still smiling.
Heat pooled in Mel’s cheeks as she clenched her teeth and asked, “What agreement must we come to that will take the head of Uber Hoskel off of the bargaining table?”
Sevika scoffed. “You’re telling me you’ve never laid back in your plush bed and silk sheets after a day of dealing with that toad-licking prig and imagined sending him to the gallows?”
Mel had, in fact, imagined much gorier scenarios than that some nights after being forced to deal with Councilor Hoskel’s utterly asinine excuse for a personality for hours on end, but she certainly wasn’t going to say that.
“What I may or may not have envisioned,” Mel said pointedly, “has no bearing on these negotiations. The head of a Piltovan Councilor is not up for bargain, so give me something else to work with.”
Sevika hummed thoughtfully, then stood up and began to pace—to rather prowl. There was something distinctly carnivorous about the woman. The children of Zaun were a rapacious brood on a good day, but Sevika was practically a paragon of the type. If there could ever be said to be a vice so pure it was near a virtue, then Sevika probably embodied that notion, and it always left Mel feeling vaguely off-kilter.
The woman’s scratched at her chin with the metal claw that made up the whole of her left arm. Even in the soft lighting of the conference room, its sickly purple radiance spilled from the chemical chambers that fueled it, and finally, Sevika came to a stop.
Directly in front of Mel.
She refused to be intimidated and simply leaned back in her chair, gave Sevika an arch look, and said, “Yes?”
Sevika leaned in, and Mel’s stiff upper lip began to suffer a rebellion as the woman stopped mere inches away, and purely against her own will did a flush travel from Mel’s chest, up her neck, and settled into her cheeks and temples. From that distance, she had the perspective to appreciate Sevika’s surprisingly fine features and her strong, aristocratic nose. It was bent just slightly—the memento of aspects only knew how many brawls—but it contrived to make her more attractive rather than less. It added something distinctly rakish that was obnoxiously appealing.
“What?” Mel bit out. “Was there something on my face you wanted more than Hoskel’s head?” She dared to lean in until the tips of their noses touched. “Because at this point, I’d consider it just to purchase some of my personal space back.”
She expected another sneering rejoinder. What she hadn’t expected was for Sevika to hook a hand—the real one—around the back of her head and drag her forward into a crushing kiss.
The act caught her so cleanly off guard that she actually squeaked, and that moment of weakness gave Sevika the momentum and space to drag Mel off balance. Out of reflex, she reached out and seized onto Sevika’s shirt as those almost offensively full lips continued to dominate her mouth. At some point, Sevika’s tongue had gotten inside, and at some other entirely unrelated point, Mel realized she’d actually started to return the kiss, and the moment she realized that her temper flared, and she did the only thing she could think of to do.
She bit Sevika.
Hard.
“Ah!’ Sevika let out a bark and reeled back, and Mel tasted the sweet tang of iron on her tongue as she surged up from her seat and jabbed a finger into Sevika’s chest.
“How dare you!” Mel snarled. “How—!”
“Oh, come off it, Medarda.” Sevika laughed as she wiped the blood from her lower lip with the back of her metal hand. “You wanted a new bargain well—” she licked the blood from her hand— “here it is.”
Mel responded with an open-palm slap across Sevika’s face. She hit hard enough to bruise her own fingers and yet somehow not hard enough for Sevika to move more than an inch. It didn’t even serve to knock the smile off the insufferable woman’s lips. If anything, she was smiling even more widely.
“If you wanted a whore,” Mel said witheringly, “then I’m sure you could have arranged something.”
“If I wanted a whore I’d have stayed in Zaun,” Sevika replied easily.
Mel spat phlegm and a bit of Sevika’s own blood onto the floor between them, reached behind herself, gripped the hilt hidden amongst the ornate filigree at the back of her dress, and slid the thin stiletto that had been hidden along the spine of her corset free before brandishing it at Sevika who let out another harsh bark of a laugh.
“If you think you can just take me, you’ll lose more than a finger, I guarantee it,” Mel said.
Sevika moved so fast that Mel didn’t even see it. One moment, she was holding the blade out even, centered, with her arm relaxed as she readied for a thrust. The next, Sevika had batted the blade out of her hand with contemptuous ease with her chemtech prosthesis, sending the knife clattering along the conference table from numb fingers.
“Don’t play coy with me, Councilor,” Sevika said in a voice like a throat being cut in the dark. “Look at me,” she gestured at herself, “and tell me you really think I don’t know when someone is looking at me like they want a bite.”
“Your insinuations—”
“I’m not ‘insinuating’ shit,” Sevika drawled. “You’ve wanted to fuck me since the moment you got eyes on me, and I—” she seized Mel by her expensive collar and dragged her forward— “have wanted to get a taste of you, too.”
She let go, got that hand around the back of Mel’s neck again, and dragged her forward again. This time, though, she went for the neck, and Mel let out a gasp as Sevika’s teeth found brief and gentle purchase in her skin, biting hard enough to bruise before she ran her tongue over the mark. It took Mel three unsteady breaths to realize she’d just let it happen. She hadn’t protested, argued, or even fought back.
Because Sevika wasn’t wrong.
Maybe it was just the frustration. Maybe it was the long days of work with too few nights of good rest. Maybe it was the aggravation of having to negotiate from the losing side. Maybe it was all of the above and more, but Mel couldn’t deny that she was more than a little pent-up, and Sevika was definitely her type of woman; tall, strong, strapping, with nice broad shoulders and an attitude to match.
“Tell me I’m lying,” Sevika whispered, her breath hot against Mel’s ear before nibbling at the lobe while her metal hand slipped down along Mel’s thigh to the hem of her dressed and began slowly hiking it up.
Without a word, Mel let out a snarl, turned her head, and caught Sevika’s mouth with hers while her hands dove down between them to start working at the woman’s belt. She had the buckle undone in a moment even as Sevika got both arms underneath her, lifted her up, and then dropped down onto the conference table smoothly. Mel’s dress was rolled barbarously up to her hips, and Sevika was getting a firm grip on two handfuls of ass as Mel dragged Sevika’s trousers down around her thighs before moving up to her shirt and gripping it from behind and pulling it up.
Sevika kissed her ravenously, and she could still taste blood from where she had bitten the taller woman. It made the kiss all that much sweeter as Mel let go to reach up and drag the pins and combs from her hair and throw them to the floor. Bejeweled ornaments clattered forgotten onto cold tile as Sevika leaned back, breaking the kiss for a moment to pull her top off and let it fall onto the table, and Mel took advantage by lunging forward to fix her lips around one dark nipple, and Sevika groaned as she gripped a fistful of Mel’s thick, curling hair.
“Enough foreplay,” Sevika snarled as she dragged Mel away from her, kicked the chair Mel had been sitting in out, and fell back into it before kicking her trousers away along with her boots.
Either Zaunites traditionally went without, or Sevika had chosen to forgo undergarments that day for an entirely different reason, and Mel found herself forced to her knees by Sevika’s grip directly in front of the woman who had spread both legs wide.
“Well?” Sevika said, tightening her grip a bit more and dragging Mel’s head a little closer to her dripping pussy. “I thought you wanted a taste?”
Licking her lips, Mel leaned in and buried her face in the dark mass of curls between Sevika’s legs and took a long lick, and Sevika shuddered as she relaxed her grip and leaned back. Mel clung to Sevika’s knees and thighs, lapping dazedly at the sweet pink core in front of her, suckling at the lips and the hood, and altogether indulging in every late-night fantasy she’d ever permitted herself regarding the powerful woman seated in front of her ever since these damned negotiations had begun.
Mel had very nearly shut out the outside world entirely when she heard a faint click and hiss, and she looked up, blinking in confusion to find Sevika watching her. She had, at some point, let go of Mel’s hair. Now, in one hand, she held a thick cigar, and in the other a gold lighter that was burning hot and blue.
“Don’t mind me, gorgeous,” Sevika said as she stuck the cigar between her lips, lit it, took a deep puff, then blew out an aromatic gray ring around Mel’s face, then said, “Stay down there as long as you like.”
Scowling, Mel dove deeper and went harder, and Sevika groaned as she spread her legs wider. The hand that had been holding the lighter seemed to fail at that task, and Mel took some satisfaction in hearing the little gold trinket fall with a clank and clatter to the floor before Sevika’s fingers found purchase again in her hair.
Fastening her lips around Sevika’s clit, Mel alternately sucked and licked as she slipped a hand down and deftly pushed two fingers deep inside of Sevika, then curled them hard, and Sevika bucked and gasped. The smell of ash and cigar smoke filled the air, redolent with the earthy herbs found only in certain parts of Zaun, and it was intoxicating. Still, she kept her legs open wide, showing remarkable restraint as she did as she’d promised and let Mel have her taste. More and more, though, Mel was finding her appetite growing and her passion rising until finally, she forced Sevika over that edge. Come splashed against Mel’s lips and into her mouth, and she lapped it up eagerly, licking every bit of Sevika’s pussy and thighs clean before pulling away, reaching down, hooking her fingers under the hem of her dress, and heaving it over her head.
She climbed Sevika like a spire wall before depositing herself squarely in the woman’s lap, gripping her face with both hands and dragging her up into a searing kiss.
The butt of the cigar fell from Sevika’s fingers as she reached between Mel’s legs and took an open-handed grip on her pussy, and Mel cried out as she ground her hips against Sevika’s palm. It was rough and calloused and perfect, and every roll of her hips traveled up her spine to her lips as she kissed and nipped and bit and kissed again; leaving more marks and bruises on Sevika’s plush mouth.
“That’s it,” Sevika hissed between breaths and kisses. “Give it to me! Come for me, you sweet little Noxian slut. Do it!”
Mel bit Sevika again at the insult, but that only seemed to scorch the woman’s passions higher as she swore and dove in for more, and the taste of blood and ash and fire sank into Mel’s marrow until it boiled through her blood and she was coming violently through a tirade of snarled oaths against Sevika’s hand. It was humiliating. The woman hadn’t even used her fingers, and yet it felt better than anything Mel could recall.
Dragging her away, Sevika reclaimed her hand and ran a tongue over her own wet palm before pressing her fingers to Mel’s mouth and saying, “Open up.”
Glaring at Sevika the whole time, Mel still obeyed, and Sevika slipped two fingers inside. Mel ran her tongue along the digits, tasting herself the way Sevika wanted, and the whole time Sevika watched her. Those dark eyes were burning with something unholy, and Mel couldn’t imagine not getting a taste of that, too.
Pulling her fingers free, Sevika drew Mel close again, and this time, the kiss was slower and sweeter, and at the same time more all-consuming. Everything about Sevika was hungry and domineering, and Mel wanted it all. She roamed her hands along those powerful shoulders and around to the hills and carved valleys of her back. Mel slipped them around Sevika’s taut waist, up her chiseled abdomen, and cupped her firm breasts as she rolled her hips in Sevika’s lap.
“Good…” Sevika whispered as she gripped Mel’s hips and let her ride.
Her fingers found Mel’s dripping cunt again, and this time she pushed them inside. Mel cried out again at the sudden feeling of being so damn full. One moment she was curled around Sevika, her back in a graceful c-curve as she dropped her hips in a desperate attempt to fill herself more. Only when Sevika obliged did Mel arch backward with another cry, and Sevika followed that arch without hesitation, towering over Mel until she was thrown into a depraved sprawl across the table with her arms out above her head while Sevika took her roughly from the front.
Without thinking, Mel’s hand curled around the hilt of the blade she’d drawn, and she lunged up to wrap her arms around Sevika’s whole body. Mel fastened her teeth into the thick, bunched muscle that joined neck and shoulder. Sevika grunted as she continued to pump and thrust and then froze as Mel pressed the point of the dagger to Sevika’s back across the broad plane of muscle covering the shoulder just behind her heart.
“Mine,” Mel whispered almost drunkenly as she dragged the knife down—slowly, gently—and Sevika let out a sigh of something like relief as she continued to ravage Mel’s cunt. “You’re mine, now…” she lifted the blade and then put it down again, dragging it across the skin in a thin red line.
She continued to carve lightly until finally, she finished—in more ways than one—and Sevika collapsed on top of her, breathing heavily and sweating like a beast, and Mel had never felt more satisfied in her life. Her knife had fallen away somewhere, and she couldn’t have cared less. The weight of the woman on top of her was all she could imagine wanting.
Mel had no accounting for the time they spent like that, only that eventually, Sevika pushed herself up and stopped to stare down. Their eyes met like pieces of flint, sparking and snapping, and Mel pulled herself up for another kiss. It was sweet with iron and heat, and Sevika gathered her up in both arms, holding her there for a long moment before pulling away.
“I think,” Mel husked, “that I’ll consider these negotiations promising but requiring…further discussion.”
Sevika’s bruised lips twitched into a smile. “Maybe somewhere more private next time?”
“Certainly,” Mel agreed as she brushed her fingers over the fresh marks on Sevika’s back, and Sevika hissed before leaning in and running her tongue along the column of Mel’s throat.
As she did that, Mel got a good look at Sevika’s back in the mirrored pillar behind them both. It showed powerful muscles, but it also showed the angry red where Mel cut the cruciform mark of House Medarda just into the first few layers of skin. The pain would have been exquisite.
She flashed herself a vulpine smile in the mirror. Sevika would notice it soon enough. Would she care, though? It didn’t matter.
‘Mine,’ Mel mouthed silently and closed her eyes as she allowed Sevika to tend to her while she imagined their next meeting.