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Lurk is a handful of years past the cusp of adulthood. Her body is now hard and powerful, muscles and a thin layer of fat showing where there used to be naught but skin and bone. Breasts have come in, and hips, and though not a large amount of either manifests, they are enough to set her apart from the other assassins. There are many both younger and older than her, but none better, none harder. She secludes herself from them with increasing frequency, but whether the cause is her standoffishness or her femaleness or a combination of both, Daud cannot say.
She spends more time alone with him, learning. He is training her now as a second in command, adding another reason for the men to mistrust and envy her. For all that he can tell, she has no complaints, though a few of her fellow Whalers turn up sporting mysterious black eyes. Daud stays out of it.
At least none of them can assert that he is exhibiting favoritism. Billie outshines the rest in every regard, but particularly in her intelligence. For a street rat, child of the slums, she is incredibly perceptive. Every new skill he teaches her, she seizes in an instant. She has a hunger for it. He hasn’t had to teach her to read, but cartography is another thing. Biology. Anatomy. Mathematics. These skills would have no bearing on the life of a common mercenary, but she is being groomed for a particularly important position.
He gives her the coat in honor of his intentions and her newest rank – she is named his lieutenant, someday soon to be his second in command. They do not stand on ceremony, but there is a smile on her face when she takes the red leather in her hands and drinks in its texture with her fingertips. That’s the first time it happens.
She removes the old, black coat and drapes it across a table, left in only her shirtsleeves now. The impropriety doesn’t strike him; he’s seen her in them many times before. But then she sets her shoulders back and cocks her hips to the side, her hands caressing their scant curves. They do nothing more than stare at each other while his attention flicks quickly over her posture, then back to her face. Confusion is his dominant emotion, and it must show.
She bites her lip and dons the coat as if nothing has happened, but he believes he might spy a faint blush on her cheeks as she buckles her harness.
Their conversation afterward is normal. He shows her how to measure scale in a chart, something she will need to know when she maps the residences of their targets. Their fingers touch more often than usual over the drafting compass, but she will not meet his eyes. Her foot seems to gravitate toward his calf beneath the table. Bewildered by the unfamiliar contact, he shifts in his seat and tucks his leg away.
All too soon, she is nudging him again, the toe of her boot rubbing up and down the back of his lower leg. He narrows his eyes at her, watches her bend over intently to examine the parchment.
“Billie,” he says, quiet and uneasy.
She lifts her head immediately, raising her brows in inquiry. “Sir?”
He swallows thickly and looks from Lurk to the maps laid between them. Maybe he’s misjudged her behavior. Perhaps her peculiar conduct is simply imagined. It could be some queer, female preoccupation. If that’s the case, he certainly doesn’t want to know any details.
There’s no way that she could possibly be…
No.
He stares at her for a beat and shakes his head, breaking off the line of thought threatening to absorb him.
“Nothing.”
She quirks her head to the side. There is a hint of something like disappointment in her expression, small and faded as if seen from a vast distance. He is not equipped to deal with female emotions at this time. The evening is nearly out. No harm will be done if they finish early.
“I believe we’re done here.”
Now the discontent is obvious, legible in the stubborn pout of her lips. She nods and stands without a word of protest, enveloped by an air of resignation. “Yes, Master.”
He shakes off the jitters that she’s saddled him with and stares down at the charts until she’s far from his sight. Against his own will, he remembers the angle of her frame, shifted toward him as if to better display herself. He remembers the lightning that arced through his fingers when they brushed his own. He remembers the way his breath caught when he felt her foot inching its way up toward his thigh.
This feeling is foreign to him.
He knows every bone, every hair, and every muscle in her body, but he has never viewed her anatomy in this context before. He knows what it is to lie with a woman, to taste her essence, and to study her shape beneath the eager flesh of his fingers. But Billie Lurk’s body is a machine to be oiled, a weapon to be honed.
Nothing more.
He casts the quandary from his mind and returns to his work. His fingers shake as they grip his compass, and all he can see with his own waking eyes is his student’s nubile body angled toward his.
She stares at him. Constantly.
There are remnants of the street kid’s hypnotizing gaze in her expression, but they are intensified with the potency and the hunger of womanhood.
Her eyes were on his technique those seven years ago: the position of his hand on the grip of his sword, the pivot of his feet on the well-worn floor, the posture of his body as he danced amid a flood of blood and darkness. Now they are on his body: the rigid set of his shoulders, the agile flex of his muscles, the masculine contours of his form.
He pretends not to pay her any mind as he goes about his business, but she is always there. When, by rare accident, he catches her watching, she does not look away. Instead, she scrapes her stare across his body and her teeth across her lower lip and strips him bare with her eyes.
All he can do is gape at her and feel her thoughts rake his skin. It is always he who looks away first, turning aside and hiding his face for as long as he requires. There is heat on the back of his neck and deep in his belly, and it isn’t until the fire dies down that he can look at her again. Pretend that nothing happened and try to shake off the sensation of being eaten alive.
The stubborn thoughts of her plague him increasingly often. He is running out of explanations for her behavior, and is no longer sure if he wants them.
How sweet it would be to believe that that desire was for him.
Months, it continues, and Daud doesn’t have the nerve to address it. The pressure builds in him every moment, long after he’s convinced himself that he has imagined her devouring glances. In all these weeks, she has never advanced on him, never spoken a word of her desire. Her furtive touches have never progressed past a lingering few seconds of contact. Their fingertips. Their shoulders. Their feet.
Most memorably, there is her back against his chest while he corrects her fighting stance, when she leans backward instead of forward and an assassin’s untimely arrival sends them both leaping apart.
Not that he would ever have allowed her to push him further.
He is fervently hopeful that she could not feel him on that occasion, cock hard against her back. He hopes that she could not feel his heartbeat thumping through his chest and into hers. He hopes that she could not hear his breath catch in its flow against her neck when he felt her, warm and solid, in his arms.
Regrettably, he begins to avoid her. Their private lessons are postponed and thinned over time. Other assassins are present for many of them, where it was only Billie and her master before. She seems disgruntled by it, a small scowl forming on her face each time someone like Tynan or Fergus shows up for a lesson. She stares the offending Whaler down as if that time is meant for her alone, as if sole ownership of Daud’s instruction belongs to her. And she’s right, of course – the red coat proves it.
He should have thought twice before promoting her, but he never saw this… peculiarity coming. Now he has only himself to blame.
They all suffer from it.
She is angry with him for discontinuing his tutelage, but finds new opportunities to corner him. She asks a question when the others have left and comes unnecessarily close to hear the answer. She happens across him when he leaves the bath, when he’s reading, when he writes his notes. She hunts him.
All he can do is run - wary of confronting her, tired of avoiding her. He endures their chase for an entire three seasons before she finally catches him.
He has nothing much planned for the day.
For over half a year, he has been taking out more contracts than ever before, trying to keep busy. He has competent assistants handle the paperwork while he goes out under the pretense of training - in the field, where Lurk cannot possibly corner him. He takes a keen interest in the newest recruits, those who need the greatest amount of work. He teaches them in large, seemingly interminable classes, until each one of the group is exhausted. He goes to bed early and wakes at dawn to catch up on what he’s missed. The routine becomes a part of him.
But there comes a time when no men need killing, when the streets are peaceful and each trainee has grown past the use of the dummy. The poisons are made. The blades are sharpened. His books have been pored over time and time again.
There is nothing to tend, no work to throw himself into, and he finds himself restless, searching for a solution.
Devoid of an occupation, he sits at his desk and tends to his journal - thinking, but not writing, of Billie Lurk. It would be far too typical of her to creep into his quarters and read his record. If she were ever to do so, to discover what lascivious fantasies skulk inside his head, he’d be ruined. And it is for that reason that he keeps his thoughts to himself, not even daring to touch himself at night, though Outsider knows he wants to. Her endeavors to tempt him have been maddening, but Daud cannot allow himself to be seduced.
Billie, of course, has other plans.
On this particular day, she materializes in his office, uninvited, making him jump at his desk. From his sedentary posture, it’s clear that there is nothing pressing to be done, and so she makes herself at home. Perches on the edge of the table, facing him. Her thigh is just a few agitating inches from his hand, and he is trying hard not to lean away.
“Daud. What are you up to?”
“Writing,” he says, staring at her impassively. Behind his mask of indifference, however, he is scrambling for a way to escape her.
“It’s been a while since I had my last lesson. You’re not doing anything now, are you?”
He considers lying, finding yet another way to evade her, but their game of cat and mouse is exhausting him. After all these months, it has been made clear that he will not benefit from avoiding the facts. All he has left is naked honesty.
He folds his hands atop his open journal and stares up at her. “I don’t have anything planned.”
She seizes a pen and poises it delicately in her slender fingers. Its tip hovers in the air, and it is made clear by her motion that Billie Lurk is not going anywhere.
“Get a chair,” Daud finally says after a minute of pretending to finish his writing. “Sit across from me.”
She does as told and he spreads a blank notebook between them. In its previous pages are scribbles of code, nearly a year old now, that they practiced forging before she began this escapade.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she accuses before they can even start. He puts down his pen and blinks at her, bereft of a single thing to say. Denying the truth of that statement would be churlish. He’s above that.
“I have.”
“Why?”
He sucks in a deep breath and stares elsewhere, anywhere but her. There is no way to say this without hinting at his desire for her. And if he’s wrong about her behavior, there will be no way to repair the damage. She will know how he thinks of her, that he thinks of her at all. It will ruin them.
“You’ve grown up,” he says, a dramatically conservative answer. “I feel strange about it.”
She props her chin on her hand and bores her eyes into him. “Strange how?”
He dares to answer, feeling her questions cut closer to the truth. “You’re a woman.”
“Why would that be a problem?” she asks, and now she looks genuinely concerned.
The moment of truth, he thinks, biting the tip of his tongue. He averts his eyes again and measures his words carefully, taking some effort to keep his voice even.
“Because I’m attracted to women.”
She leans back in her chair and gapes at him. Her face is oddly impassive, but her lips quiver as if perched on the breaking point of something. He braces himself for her tirade of disgust, if it comes. When it comes.
“You’re attracted to me?” Her voices coaxes him now, quiet and hesitant.
“Yes,” he says, and he finally forces his timid gaze to meet hers.
“…Then why do you keep avoiding me?”
His nostrils flare. He stares at the fist clenched on his desk, opens it, then closes it again. There is a soft vibrato to his speech, but he forces it out, determined not to muddle this explanation.
“I can’t touch you, Billie.” He takes a breath, wrenches out the rest like pulling teeth. “You’re so much younger—”
“I’m not a girl anymore, Daud,” she interrupts with passion. “I knew you would offer me this lame damn excuse.”
This biting, acid reply is not at all what he expected. He stares at her, mouth open, for what seems like ages.
“Have you been seducing me?”
“It’s not quite seducing if we never fuck, I think.” Frustration reads loud and clear in her voice. The word ‘fuck’, spat out so callously, makes him wince. Should he not be more noble than that?
He rests his head in his hands, scraping fingers through his slicked-back hair. His posture is pathetically defeated, shoulders drooping, body nearly collapsed onto his desk. “Billie, you can’t.”
“Why?” She flings the question, harsh. Her words sting as if she spits needles.
“You’re my student. I’ve known you for years. It would be taking advantage.”
“I’m a grown woman, Daud. If I can decide that I want to kill a man, I can sure as hell decide that I want to bed him. My decisions are my own.”
For a horrible, exquisite moment, he is tempted to say yes. It would be too easy to let her entice him.
He could take her upstairs and fuck her now, explore the contours of the body that he helped forge. He could bring her under his power in yet another way, or let her take over his command for just a few hours. He could taste those plum-colored lips and that smooth, even brown skin. He could feel her surrounding him, engulfing him, every inch of her form pressed against his own.
But it’s a violation of his conscience to come near her - besides the obvious age gap, there are the repercussions it would have on their relationship professionally. And Daud is a disaster of a lover. She would be better off with someone her age.
“There are plenty of men who are perfectly eligible. I don’t understand why you would choose me.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
He says nothing. No, of course it isn’t obvious. His head remains in his hands and he makes no attempt whatsoever to draft an answer to her question.
“Daud, look at me.”
His head tilts up slowly as if he’s looking into his grave. His hands drop to the desk with a thump. An expression of absolute mortification dominates his face.
“I don’t want any other man. They don’t have your skill or your experience. They didn’t take me in when I was nothing but a scrap of street filth. They haven’t known me, or cared for me, for seven years. And they don’t mean to me what you do.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
Too late, he realizes that he’s crossed some line there. Her face goes from short-tempered to savagely animal. Daud almost braces himself for a blow, but it never comes. Billie Lurk sits just feet away from him, bitterly staring daggers into his soul.
At last, her pen drops to the table and her chair screams across the floor as she stands.
“I’m nineteen years old, Daud. Almost twenty. Girls my age are turning tricks or birthing babies on the street as we speak, and I’ve killed more men than I can count. You’re not going to destroy my innocence with a little sex.” She grits her teeth and shakes her head at him, just once. “We can have this conversation again when you’re ready to be an adult about it.”
With that, she turns on her heel and storms out, but Daud has the nagging suspicion that he’ll see her again. If not in his office, then in his dreams, both waking and otherwise. For now, he only stares after her, aching, as the double doors slam shut in his face.
Days pass. They amalgamate into weeks. She’s stopped flirting with him. He can sense her frustration, though she’s far from giving him the silent treatment. The two have begun to work in close quarters again, though not a single private lesson has been given since the dual fiascos that were the previous two.
Billie Lurk can’t remember her exact birth date, but she knows that it’s sometime in the Month of Darkness. As such, they have always celebrated it on the longest night of the year, which suits her impeccably. He brings her something this midwinter, as he has since the beginning. Two things, actually. He summons her to his office after dinner and she comes quickly, unburdened with other gifts. The men barely associate with her; they would never think to give her a birthday present, and never have.
Daud, on the other hand, picked something up from the Estate District a few days ago with his student in mind. It’s wrapped neatly in brown paper and a bit of twine, devoid of any card or label. He isn’t comfortable sharing feelings, even in the form of a note on a birthday gift. He pushes it toward her from the safety on the other side of his desk, turning away as she opens it.
Her gasp of joy signals that she approves. He decides that looking at her is worth the risk.
When he glances back, she is roughly applying the silvery grey eye shadow he’s given her using a fingertip and the circular mirror also enclosed. It looks well on her skin, a shimmering highlight against her strikingly dark canvas. He knew both that she would enjoy it and that she would look beautiful as she wore it, even if it was concealed behind the metal and glass of her mask for the majority of the day. Lurk has proven herself to be a devout connoisseur of cosmetics. But that isn’t all he intends to give to her.
“Billie,” he begins, hunched, quiet. He holds a pouch in two clasped hands, hidden in his palms to evade her sight. “You’re of an age now. I was a fool to try to shelter you before. You know what you want.”
He lays the pouch down on the table between them – a scrap of black satin with a drawstring closure. Inside it is a hard lump, slightly triangular in outline against the fabric.
“What is it?” she asks.
“It’ll keep you from getting pregnant. Use it however you like, or not at all. It’s none of my business.”
She steps forward and gathers up the second present, staring at him curiously as she does so. There is a distant quality about her, an almost tentative air to her actions. Tucking the pouch into her pocket, she moves back again.
“Thank you,” she says, a strange, lilting note creeping into her voice. “I’ll see if I can find a use for it.”
Moving slowly as if traveling through water, she puts her back to him again and excuses herself. Unless his eyes deceive, there is a smile on her face when she turns away.
He props his head on his folded arms in bed, staring through the holes in his ceiling. Cool night air settles on his chest as he waits for sleep to come, but it does not yet present itself. Daud senses there is something else waiting for him.
It is almost an hour before his destiny arrives, unsurprisingly in the form of Billie Lurk.
She appears barefoot in his loft with a flash of black smoke, clad in her nightshirt. The garment falls to her knees and hikes up on her legs when she walks toward him, exposing a flash of thigh. For a moment, he thinks he’s dreaming, but opportunities this sweet never come about in his dreams.
“I came to talk,” she says. “About us.”
He sits up silently and she takes advantage of the empty space, sinking onto the mattress beside him. His residual heat seeps into her skin, warming her.
“I want you to be the one that bone charm is for. Maybe you’d hoped I’d find someone else, but I’m not going to.”
Her master nods his head silently, gazing into the open air directly in front of him. He can accept that.
Her hand finds his and squeezes. He squeezes back.
“If you don’t want me, then you don’t want me, but I don’t want that to be because you think I’m not ready. I am. I have been for years. And I know that I’m nothing but bad luck and we’re both stone cold murderers, but I think that something good could come from this.”
At last, Daud breaks her monologue to add his lament. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
She turns toward him now, her knee resting in his lap. His free hand comes to rest upon it, rubbing her idly when he senses the coldness of her skin.
“Just treat it like another lesson.”
I can do that, he thinks. Doesn’t say it. But he reaches over and places a finger under her chin, tilts her face toward his and looks into her eyes.
Their breath mingles. His pulse races.
Then he kisses her, smooth and slow, just a few seconds’ grace on her ample lips.
She looks at him when he pulls away.
Smiles.
And throws herself into his arms.
He wakes up with dawn across his face, trousers on, and Lurk nestled in the crook of his arm. Her shirt is generously rumpled, but all of its buttons remain in place. He’s seen her sleeping before – it’s no remarkable sight. But he cannot stop staring at her lips, knowing that they have touched and played against his own.
He can’t remember falling asleep last night, but knows that it happened shortly after she arrived. Thinking back on it desperately, fighting through a fog as if pushing against a hangover, he realizes that there was … nothing. They did nothing.
In some ways, it’s a relief, and in others, doubly terrifying. He doubts she is going to forget his agreement, especially after what happened last night.
Billie stirs as if sensing his wakefulness and forces her eyes open. They dart across his body briefly before something clicks internally and her brows knit into a scowl. She collapses like a ragdoll back onto his pillow, grumbling and grousing.
“Outsider’s eyes,” she curses vehemently. Daud holds back a chuckle. “All that effort and you couldn’t even bring yourself to screw me?”
“There will be other nights,” he assures her. He moves a lock of hair from where it rests in front of her eyes and leans over her. “If you’ll have me.”
She snorts and stretches, suppressing a yawn. “I certainly hope I will.”
The following day is an exercise in masochism. All he wants from the moment he rises that morning is to consummate his agreement with Lurk. Every endeavor he has planned can wait until another day while he finally indulges his desires, but they won’t. Daud has schooled himself into rigorous discipline on the matter. If he starts to rearrange his schedule to accommodate their relationship now, he will have done nothing but lay a trap for himself to fall victim to in the future.
So he plods through the scouting. The contracts. The training. He weathers each meal diligently, though the food tastes of ash in his mouth. He writes his reports, makes notes in his journal. He studies his maps, shines his boots, peruses a treatise.
Then Billie Lurk arrives, and he slams the volume shut so fast he nearly chokes on the resulting cloud of dust.
She is not dressed to seduce this time. Wearing her Whaler uniform, she is just as sweaty and uncomfortable and exhausted as he is. Her mask dangles from its strap on her neck, and she is still gently puffing from some recent exercise.
“Daud. Are we still going to…?”
“Yes,” he says firmly. “We are.”
He takes off his gloves and tosses them onto his desk before coming to her. His bare fingers remove her mask, pulling the strap off over her head. He simply stands there, clutching it in his hands and looking down at her from what little height he has to his advantage. She puts two fingertips against his cheek and tilts her head, dark brown eyes meeting grey.
“What do I need to teach you?”
She shrugs. “Everything, I guess. I’ve never been with a man before.”
“You’re a virgin.” There is a defeated flatness to his tone. It’s just his luck, really.
“Yes,” Lurk says, a seed of restlessness sprouting in her face when she thinks he might consider being too gentle with her. “But I don’t want you to go easy on me. Be thorough.”
“Where should I start?”
“Wherever you want to.”
It’s difficult to come to terms with, especially when he’s confronted with the necessity of deflowering his apprentice. Daud circles her for a while, trying to determine his course of action.
He pulls off her gloves, then her sword, and sets them both aside. He toys with the ends of her hair, the points of her collar. He touches her over her clothes – at the hip, at her neck, under her breast. Her eyes follow him, but she remains still, almost afraid to move.
Daud leads her upstairs, to the balcony that houses his bed. She seems frozen in place, staring at the depression that they made in it last night. There is warm, eager satisfaction in her face as he stands in front of her.
He will teach her the formula of sex. Just another lesson in technique, when it all comes down to it. That is how he must break down the process to maintain his control. Passion must not be allowed to take over.
He decides to do it slowly, standing as they did that day – her back to his chest, his arms circling round. His mouth is at her ear as he does so, kissing, sucking, nipping at her earlobe. His hands reach around and guide hers, first to her belt. When she has taken up the task and begun to pull the leather free, he turns his attention to her neck. Traces naked fingers across the curve of her throat. The windpipe, easily crushed. Artery, easily severed.
“The neck is an erotic zone,” he advises, toying with the skin over her larynx. “It induces a feeling of vulnerability.”
He undoes the buttons at her throat until cold air brushes her ribcage. Her belts lay strewn near her feet and her hands follow his, tips of her fingers perched against his knuckles and ghosting along with every movement. She gasps, and he feels the sensation ripple through his own body.
The shirt is drawn aside and downturned, draped loosely on either side of her shoulders. He lowers his lips to graze the newly revealed skin, bony shoulders and stark collarbone and sharp, fragile shoulder blades. His hands slip between the fabric and her sides, under her arms and around to the front of her body. The laces of her corset are whipped away and the garment tugged off with bitter impatience.
He grips her in a vice, one she could not possibly escape even if she wanted to. One arm holds her tightly against his chest while the other explores, toying with her bare skin until it finds the hardened peaks of her nipples. She has given up tracing his movements now and simply reaches up behind her own head, fingers threading into his hair and clutching at his neck. She tugs at his scalp as he etches a spiral at the perimeter of one small breast, growing ever closer but never quite reaching its center. Only a quarter of the way undressed and she is already mewling, leaning back in rapture and allowing him to support her weight.
“Suspense is key.”
Daud illustrates the lesson by intensifying her cries, reversing his direction and making her whine in disappointment as his touch draws farther and farther away. She struggles against his hold in vain, protesting again with a defeated whimper. He chuckles and finally has mercy on her after a few exquisite moments. Taking her nipple between thumb and forefinger, he pinches and twists. Slow. Controlled. But harsh.
Her reaction is exaggerated, to say the least. She remains standing mostly through his efforts, and he wonders if someone on patrol outside has heard her.
“The longer you wait, the better it will feel,” he says, releasing her breast to trace the contours of its muscle. She shivers against him, but he goes no faster, making her wriggle with discontent.
“I’ve waited long enough,” she snaps impatiently, and seems to realize her transgression when the giving hand pulls away.
“Don’t tell me what to do, Billie. You wanted this lesson.”
She seems to deflate somewhat when she realizes that his fingers will not return to their work and sags back against him again, this time with a heavy sigh.
“Yes, Master.”
The arm that restricts her middle shifts to take grip of her throat. Her head is tilted back, trapped against his shoulder, and her wide eyes study the ceiling. His other hand travels downward, finishing the rest of the buttons. Her shirt whispers off of her shoulders and drifts to the ground between them.
He skims the light trail of hair leading down from her navel. She is too well-behaved now to struggle in protest, but he can hear her swallow a moan before it leaves her throat. His blunted fingernails roam her midsection, making the tips of her breasts harden all over again when his touch drifts across the vulnerable flesh of her sides.
“The stomach is important because it is the path to something. I could drive you insane by avoiding its conclusion.”
“Please don’t,” she begs, and the request is polite enough now that he acquiesces. Daud sets her free and pushes lightly at the small of her back, inching her forward. Before them, white sheets beckon, thin cot and pillows left in disarray.
“Get in my bed.”
She glances over her shoulder at him with a look that contains a silent question, but only for a moment. Soon, kicking her discarded uniform to the side, she perches on his mattress in only her trousers, eager lips and dark skin and flat chest catching the twilight.
He doesn’t leave her sitting there for long, however, coming forward after a few, exquisite moments of admiring the view. He kneels before her and slips a hand behind the back of her knee. The other works the laces of her boot until he can wiggle it free. Soon enough, it is joined by its partner, arranged neatly side by side at the corner of his bed.
He feels the arches of her feet through her stockings and takes a moment to massage them, pressing on the aching flesh with the pads of his thumbs. A grateful smile forms on her face and a moan rises into the air – not necessarily erotic, but certainly pleasurable. And that’s fine. After all, he could transform it into a cry of ecstasy, but he’d have to take her stockings off first, and he isn’t quite ready to do that.
Eventually, he straightens, coming forward to cup his hand behind Billie’s neck. He touches her lips, softly, gently, but there is a vacuum in his soul that needs filling. In an instant, his eager kisses draw her out, swallow her beauty and her fire as their mouths and tongues meet. Her teeth find his bottom lip and trap it, nipping sharply. When he stares at her, startled, breathing hard, there is approval in his face.
“That’s very good.”
His hands find work on her curves as he leans in to kiss her again. He shifts to get a knee onto the bed, easing her body back until she’s almost lying flat. His fingers follow the knobs of her spine and ghost across the muscles of her back. They brush her sides on their way to her hips and handle her like a masterpiece. Her arms are strung around his neck, bending her up closer to him. She breaks away from the kiss and trails her mouth down his jaw and over to the crook of his throat. Her fingers tug down his collar so her teeth can latch on and she sucks at his skin, making no effort to be gentle. It’s not in her nature, his Billie Lurk.
He gasps as she continues, breaking away from the bruise that she’s left him and tracing it with quizzical fingers. She looks up at him through her lashes, not remorseful, but curious, her head inquisitively cocked to the side.
“That looks like it hurt. Why didn’t you say anything?”
It’s a small wonder to him how she could be so naïve, but he’s too sensitive toward her pride to bring the subject up. She’s lived in a world of men since she was young – no girls her age to talk or gossip with. And Daud was always too awkward to describe these things to her, always willfully oblivious to her gender. At least, until now.
“It’s a love bite,” he explains. “They feel pleasant.”
To illustrate his point, he braces a thumb under her jaw and tips her head back. He hunches over and lowers his teeth to her neck, taking his time about marking her. A murmur of pleasure escapes from her open mouth, soft and fragile, before he pulls away.
“You see?”
She nods, pretty lips spread in a satisfied smile. The shadow of his mouth hovers on her throat and, as he regards it, he decides that he wouldn’t mind seeing it there more often. Apparently, Billie thinks the same, because she tugs him down by the hair and guides his face to her throat.
“I like that. Do it again.”
He obeys this time, tilting his head to repeat the action on her other side. It is not done quickly; his lips and teeth linger. He makes love to her neck, kissing, sucking, mumbling sweet nothings into her skin. Her elated sounds intensify until her chest is heaving.
Daud continues onward once he finishes his work there. His nose and lips brush against her shoulder, her sternum, across and down, until reaching her breast. She goes limp on the bed and waits for him to act, arms splayed at her sides.
It’s after a brief hesitation that he finally takes her nipple into his mouth and tongues it, hard and sensitive flesh pinned between his teeth. He runs a thumb over the other, feeling her shiver and strain for more. And it’s the first time he hears her speak his name that way.
“Daud,” she says, and though it is quiet, her voice cries out for him. His name is a plea, tender but desperate. She is his now, not just a pupil. A lover, a sweetheart. She means more to him than he ever thought possible.
He needs her.
It’s with that thought on his mind that he lunges forward, kisses her neck for a brief moment before moving on to her lips, devouring her. Now there is no control, only wrath and need. He partakes of her like the wolf he names himself for, surprising himself with a growl that mimics an animal snarl.
Startled at first, she soon responds with equal force. They feed off of each other now, two of the same kind. He gathers her up into his arms and shifts to set her in his lap, his hands wound loosely around her waist. She exhales into his mouth and he breathes her in, his tongue darting out to meet hers.
It’s a messy business, kissing, but Lurk does it well. Almost suspiciously so.
“You’ve kissed a man before,” he observes warily, pulling back so that each can catch their breath. He’s panting, the tingle of adrenaline filling his veins, and still hungry for the taste of woman.
“I have,” she admits. “Julian was handsome, but he couldn’t kiss for shit, and he wasn’t you. I want the best.”
Daud shakes his head, a grimace twisting his mouth as he thinks of the young, promising Serkonan in comparison to himself. “I’m not the best, Billie.”
“Yes, you are.”
She leans forward to challenge him, pressing his body into the bed. Her hands find his belt, making him swallow any argument he might produce. Deft hands work his clothing free, tossing pouches, straps, and coat onto the floor. As she undoes his buttons, she leans forward to nibble his earlobe the way he taught her, stirring a low growl from the depths of his throat. Her fingers stroke the hair nestled at the base of his neck and scattered lightly across his chest. They find the muscles of his arms, the scars littering his torso. They slip around his back and down to his padded belly, a layer of insulation over a strong core. She smiles sweetly against the side of his face.
“You’re perfect, sir.”
Tender now, she shoves his shirt to the floor and shifts back onto her haunches to look at him. Her gaze intent, she traces each mark and curve of his upper body - from broad, solid shoulders to hard, narrow hips. Lastly, she touches the beginning of the scar that bisects his brow. He closes his eyes to welcome her and she follows it to his cheek. After a moment, her thumb finally nestles on his lips. Thin. Pale. Yielding.
Her attention lingers on his face. She turns his head to the side, the scar toward her. For a long while, she simply studies it, but her inquiry finally comes. It has the timid, rehearsed sound of a question she has saved up for years until this very moment.
“How did you get this scar?”
Since the hour they’d met, he knew that it was coming. He’s been asked before, of course. The defining feature of his appearance for almost as long as anyone could remember has been that long, ragged, shudder-inducing scar.
“It was a long time ago,” he begins. “I worked for a man who led a group of mercenaries. A few months into the job, I realized that I was stronger. I deserved his place. We fought a duel for leadership. He tried to blind me, but I finished him. I’ve had this scar to remember him by since that day.”
She touches his hand - the left, the Marked. “Were you with… him yet?”
Daud turns back and faces her head on. “The Outsider? No. He came after. Soon after.”
“Will you tell me about him?”
“Later.” He looks away now, avoiding her probing gaze. For some reason, he has never been quite comfortable speaking about the Outsider with Lurk, though she is raptly curious about him. Perhaps it is a journey she will need to embark upon herself.
Her question does remind him, however, of the gift he gave her yesterday. Though he is more than happy to lie with Lurk, he isn’t quite sure that he wants any children by her.
“Where’s the bone charm?” he asks, hoping that she won’t have to sneak into her quarters half-naked to get it.
Thankfully, she glances to her discarded clothes and slips sideways, rising from his bed. The rustling of fabric fills the silence as she kneels and searches for the pouch. When she stands, the charm hangs by a length of leather, swinging like a pendulum from her closed fist. He can hear it whispering in some ancient tongue and vaguely wonders if the Outsider is watching them.
He swiftly decides that he would prefer not to think about it.
Daud summons her forward with a twitch of his fingers. “Bring it here.”
Billie obeys, extending the ends of the strap toward him. He takes them in each hand and motions for her to turn around, winding the cord twice about her neck before tying it. The charm hangs to her collarbone, its tether coiled in another loop around her throat. Though she wears it for practical reasons, the accessory suits her. She looks arcane, powerful, and deeply gorgeous with the pale chip of bone on her sleek black skin. He takes some time to marvel at her before they continue.
“…You’re certain about this.”
He stares at her earnestly, wary that he’ll see denial in her eyes. Though he can hardly ignore her repeated insistences, there is still something inside of him that asserts that this is wrong. He is a lecher for wanting her, though he can see that the Billie he knew as a desperate street rat has grown into an exquisite and headstrong young woman. She knows what she wants.
Still. An old man is allowed to be a little self-conscious.
“Of course I am,” she replies. There is a bite to her words that suggests she’s grown mildly impatient with his lack of faith. “I’ve had four years to think about it.”
“Four?” Daud repeats, incredulous. He has trouble allowing himself to believe that she could have fancied him even as a teenager.
But she nods, confirming her words and utterly confounding him. “I’ve had my eye on you since I was a girl, but you never seemed to notice me. You were so mysterious,” she says, almost shyly turning away from him, “so powerful. I always wanted you. When I was older, I decided to go after you in a way you couldn’t possibly ignore.”
His lips twitch downward. His voice is brimming with irony. “Not for lack of trying.”
“You were so frustrating.” An exasperated sigh splits the air as she comes forward and straddles him, placing her hands on either side of his head to force his eyes onto her face. “But I did what you told me. I waited for the right moment. Struck when I saw an opening. And I’m not going to give up until the job is finished.”
“You already have me,” he says.
“Not yet.”
With that, she reaches down to the fastenings of his trousers. His cock is half-hard, but it stiffens quickly under her touch. She strokes it through the rough fabric, a grin tickling her features as if she’s playing. Her fingers fascinate him, but they are not enough. He wants more.
After what seems like an interminable length of teasing, she finally draws him out and has a look. The sound is faint, but Daud thinks he may hear her catch her breath.
“Surprised?”
“I know what a prick looks like,” she snaps. The room is very dark, but he imagines a blush on her face. Perhaps just wishful thinking.
There’s no time for musing, however, as she takes his shaft in hand. Her fingers follow it greedily, all the way down to the base and back up to the tip, and he groans. She leans forward, intrigued, and tightens her hold. His jaw drops and he leans back onto the bed, his eyes closed to the sight of her. It’s all he can do to keep quiet as she pumps her fist up and down, but when he feels the wet heat of her tongue against his head, that effort is abandoned.
“Billie.”
She gives no answer, already fitting the rest of him into her mouth. She sucks his length in deeply, and he can feel the desire burning in the pit of his stomach. Her teeth collide with his cock and her lips fumble around his girth, but that makes no matter to him. This is Billie. This is his girl. Her mouth is like lightning on his skin, electrifying all that it touches. She could fling him into ecstasy with a knife, a crossbow, or a sword, but her dark, full lips - whether smiling or frowning - are the most dangerous weapon in her arsenal. She could slay him with them.
With a wet, sucking noise, she pulls away from him. Saliva shines on her lips and chin. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, brushing away the taste of his skin, and swallows awkwardly around a new sensation.
“Billie,” he repeats, feeling emptiness begin to seep into his bones once her touch is withdrawn. He hasn’t the strength to lift his head, but another part of his anatomy continues to strain up for him. He wants her body, wants the refuge of her hands, her fingers, her cunt.
The thinness of the air seems to drink up his spirit, pulling him away from his body. All he wants is to feel her touch, but for the longest time, it doesn’t come.
At last, shot through the hollowness, is the imprint of her fingers, circling gently around the base of his cock. His lower abdomen, taut with anticipation, shivers under her touch. He moans with mindless need when she combs through his pubic hair, lifts her hand away again and poises it in the air.
“Suspense is key,” she quotes with vindictive pleasure.
Daud reserves a sarcastic response. He doesn’t want to be responsible for making her motions even slower, and this sensual torture is actually doing wonders to please him. There is truth to his theory, however much he hates to have it reversed on him.
Instead, he substitutes a compliment, hoping that it will encourage her to indulge him. Despite its strategic placing, not a single scrap of the sentiment is a lie.
“You always were a quick learner.”
The flattery works.
Billie flashes a warm smile as she lowers her face to his groin again. The action is slower this time, gradual. She feels around his foreskin, his base, his underside. Her lips caress him, admiring the slippery smooth texture of his skin. Her fingers flirt across the side of his member, guessing its size, almost like an introduction. He sighs now, no longer straining. His body relaxes and he gives himself over to her.
“Does that feel good?” she questions, and it’s almost as if she’s asking simply to hear him say yes. He does, of course, piling as much emphasis on the word as a syllable can possibly handle. Yes, it feels good. Better than anything he’s ever felt before.
Billie, he thinks again. My Billie.
That must be why. Even with no experience and unfamiliar lips and a tongue that doesn’t yet know its way around a man’s body, she brings him more pleasure than anyone ever has before. He reaches down and threads his fingers into her hair and it feels right. Like they belong to each other.
It’s a bit rude of him, though, to make her do all the work her first time. So he drags himself out of the sea of emotion that she’s cast him into and props up onto his elbows. He watches her as she lifts her face, opens her eyes, parts her lips with the tip of his cock still brushing between them.
“Come here,” Daud says, and she follows. He pulls her to him by the waistband of her pants and lays her down on her back. He kisses each part in turn – each chapter of the lesson.
He begins at her lips, then diverts to her neck. After leaving another bite at her throat, he spirals his tongue around the tip of her breast. Her moans are like music to him, and he has half a mind to grab the audiograph and set it at his bedside so they can ring around his office at all hours.
Maybe next time.
For now, his venture takes him lower, to her flat, tight abdomen. His fingers skate over the gentle peaks and valleys that form her taut muscles. He noses at her bellybutton, kisses any tiny vestige of fat that pads her belly.
She’s so beautiful, it almost hurts him. He straightens slightly to admire her from this new angle, the details of her body growing more difficult to see in the gathering darkness.
At last, he unbuttons her trousers. His fingers curl into the fabric and slide it off with closely curbed anticipation, cautious of revealing her too soon. Her bony hips greet him, and the knotted muscles of her thighs. Her knees and calves still sheathed in stockings, toes that curl with pleasure and delight as he tosses her clothes onto the floor.
Her vagina, there, lips flushed with blood and slick with wetness. He brings his mouth to her slit even before she has the presence of mind to realize he’s doing it. His fingers probe, spreading her apart to ease his access. She tastes like salt and Serkonos, like wildness and sweetness and shattered Strictures. He uses teeth and tongue to sate his hunger, pinning her thighs to cut off all escape.
Her nails scrape his back, but it is not enough. He pushes for more, sucking at her clit, slipping a finger inside of her and curling it upward.
Now, her fingers flex hard enough to draw blood and she shouts loud enough to be heard outside. Part of him hopes she will be.
His hands lift her legs to open wide, catching hold of her stockings on their way down. He tugs and rolls them down to her ankles, then free, leaving Billie without a scrap of clothing left. His lips slip down from her cunt and along her inner thigh, settling for a moment at the back of her knee. He licks and blows air across the rarely handled skin, earning him a moan of both surprise and pleasure.
Daud says nothing of the technique. He isn’t about to teach her every trick in one night.
He kisses her ankles - both of them - and the bottoms of her feet. Luckily, she’s rarely ticklish, so he manages to avoid a kick to the face. When he takes her toe in his mouth, however, she begins to wriggle, bucking and whimpering under his ministrations. Her breath quickens and he glances up to grin at her just as she begins to lose her grip on any remaining self-control. He licks the vulnerable space between her toes and she cries out, arching her back and gripping the covers for aid.
He tongues her arch again before crawling up the bed to meet her face to face. His mouth grazes against her cheek, his fingertips still drinking in the texture of her skin.
“Are you ready?”
As evidenced by the moisture on his face and fingers, she’s certainly wet enough, but her body is one thing. Whether she is mentally prepared for what’s to come is another.
“I’ve been ready for years,” she answers firmly. “I want you.”
He presses down against her, rustles the mattress and the thin sheet she lies across. His lips nestle next to her ear, soft, gentle, whispering.
“This is going to hurt, Billie.”
She responds with a short laugh, touched with derision, and tilts her face toward him. Their eyes meet, and hers smile.
“You think I’m afraid of a little pain?”
After all the bruises, cuts, scrapes, and sprained muscles he’s given her, one moment of discomfort will be as a single drop in the vast ocean. She puts a hand on the center of his back, presses the insides of her knees against his hips, and bucks up against his cock.
“I’m ready.”
Daud sweeps his gaze over her face, frozen for a moment. Once he’s confirmed to himself that she speaks the truth, he finally lines up with her entrance. There is a fraction of a pause as he steels himself.
Then, with a slow, soft, but confident push, he penetrates her. The noise she makes upon his entrance is a mix of both pleasure and pain, and she curls her lip in discomfort. He winces in sympathy, using every scrap of self-control he owns to make himself continue. Her hands find his shoulders and squeeze as he continues to push, stopping to let her adjust once he’s in to the hilt. He can feel her flexing around him, sees the occasional twitch in her face while she shifts. His breathing falls in time with hers as he waits. Her heart hammers against his chest.
This isn’t what he thought it would be, he ruminates. This isn’t debauchery. This isn’t a violation of their trust. He’s never felt closer to Lurk than now, on top of her, inside her. This is a means of making himself whole. Both of them.
He muses as he studies her face, thumb on her cheek, fingers in her hair.
“I should have done this a long time ago.”
Her answer comes with a laugh and a breathless smile.
“No shit, you should have.”
A moment later, she arches under him and presses her stomach flush to his. Her hands find the beads of sweat at the nape of his neck and the small of his back and pull him eagerly toward her.
“Well, go on then. I’ve waited long enough already.”
He chuckles and does as she asks, pulling out of her only to plunge back in. The first thrusts are delicate and smooth, drawing dual sighs from them that merge together in the air. Daud kisses her cheeks, her forehead, her nose, her eyelids, her chin. He moves against her like a rising tide, intensifying when he feels her push back against him. Her name is tattooed across his lips, beating.
Her moans come thick and fast, her nails biting into his skin. There is a plume of fire in his chest and rippling across the surface of his skin, tempering his body with her heat. He feels it mold and change him as he goes, sweet friction and exquisite tightness making him a different man. Billie presses against him until he thinks they’ll fuse together, close enough that he can imagine simply staying here. Forever. With her.
It’s that thought that makes him slow again, easing back into a pace that can only be described as lovemaking. Not fucking. Not screwing. This is the last lesson he teaches her – how to be loved.
Her fingers toy with his hair, teasing it into waves. Her toes are curled against the backs of his thighs and her lips crane up to brush his face. The right side.
Her breath continues to puff against his skin. He inches them toward climax slowly, torturously, but will not go any faster.
In this instance, it doesn’t matter who comes first. As it happens, it’s Billie, whose moans soon intensify into one, continuous, elated sound. She strokes his muscles and calls his name until he as well is on the brink of release. He can feel her convulsing around him, each pulse seeming to draw forth his own conclusion.
He follows soon after with a shudder and a groan, plunging and emptying into her. He checks, double checks the bone charm, thankfully still knotted at her neck when he pulls out.
Drained and sated, he lowers himself down onto the bed beside her. She curls in against his side and rests her head on his shoulder, still blinking stars out of her eyes. Though she looks exhausted, Lurk fights to keep them open, watching him silently while she catches her breath.
“That was worth the trouble,” she gasps, wrapping her arm around his chest. Her gaze is on his face, wide-eyed with that familiar, curious stare. “How do you feel, Daud?”
It takes him a while to formulate the answer, looking out into space as he searches for the proper words. He notices that the moon has risen, the stars emerging to beam down at him. The night air is bitingly cold, but her body is hot and moist and wonderful against his.
His eyes slip shut and he feels his way blindly to the silken black strands of her hair. The world fades and he is left in a new kind of void – one of sex and bone-deep tiredness and a woman who has sprouted in the place of a deeply unfortunate girl.
And he feels the words between his lips before he hears them in his mind, forgets that they were said the second they are uttered. But the sentence does slip before he stumbles into sleep, a dreamless slumber that engulfs him like a blessing.
“I feel perfect.”