Tales from a Lewd Fantasy World – Tale 7 – A Knight Needs Her Armor – Part 2 (Patreon)

Author's Note: I obviously underestimated how much work there was left to do in this one. The piece ballooned up to 24k words, so... yeah, I feel guilty about only uploading this this week, but, on the other hand, I pulled about half a Nanowrimo in a week and I'm still dealing with Patreon's threat to close down my page, so I guess I should cut myself a bit of slack. Not too much though, because I definitely have plenty of things to do before the month's over. Anyway, that's my ranting over for today, and now it's Kohle and Inés' turn to rant away and for you to, hopefully, enjoy it, so go do that! (Pretty please.)

Kohle

Beautiful.

Just… beautiful.

She moves back and forth, sweeping around herself with a blade that seems to cover her in sparks cleaved from the sun itself, the blade going from close to her body to fully extended in whipping motions that are purely a flame expanding and contracting, growing and shrinking, dancing in a capricious breeze.

Her hair whirls about her, joining the wild dance of her sword, of her arms and legs, of her whole body moving as a single, harmonious being in which everything has its time and place, something that even the goblins can’t help but get dragged in, their clumsy, vicious strikes seeming to gain a measure of grace right before they are parried or dodged, seamlessly woven into steps only she knows, yet the world around her follows.

I wish I was a musician. I wish I was a poet. I wish I was a singer.

But I’m a blacksmith.

And there’s only one way in which I can contribute to her dance.

***

Inés

Sweat drips down my brow.

I’m not wearing a helmet.

It’s stupid. Reckless. Head injuries are the worse thing you can get in the middle of combat. The slightest one can make you clumsy enough, slow enough, that the next one will be the last.

I didn’t think about wearing a helmet when I left. I just… I just donned Kohle’s armor, and that was enough.

That was more than enough.

Because whatever it is that roars inside of me also sings along my blade and beats in my cuirass, a reassuring heat steadily making me faster and faster even as I draw things out unnecessarily.

Because I could end this right now.

Three goblins.

I already ended the first one. The armless one.

And the other three?

They surround me. They jump at me, forcing me to twist around swiftly enough that my hair whips about my shoulders before I trace another line across the powdery ground with my withdrawing boot, drawing them toward me in a retreat that is just slow enough that they can still hope to reach me.

But they are close enough that my arms could descend from my unnecessarily high guard, from the defensive stance that doesn’t make sense against opponents this short, and turn my falling blade into a sweeping arc wide enough to reach all their throats at once.

But I don’t.

I keep dodging, parrying, and leaving infuriating, teasing scratches along misshapen forearms.

Because Kohle told me he needed to see me fight.

Because he wanted to watch me.

And I’ll give him a show he won’t ever forget.

***

Fights don’t last this long. Not even ritualized duels last this long.

Because people grow tired, and they make mistakes when they do. Because the point is to end the fight as soon as possible to avoid unnecessary risks. Because no matter how skilled the opponent, how mighty the warrior, a single unlucky strike is all it takes to end things forever.

Or, at least, that’s what I was taught. What I used to think. What, maybe, at some point, was the truth.

Now it isn’t.

Sweat runs down my face but not into my eyes. My chemise is drenched, sticking to my breasts, to my nipples, gliding across the inside of my cuirass and sending thrills of heated metal inside of me.

My pants stretch with every new stance, tight around my thighs and ass, my boots showing off my calves.

I’m panting. Exhausted.

And so, I abort a last retreating step, advancing instead right into the forward goblin’s range, his eyes widening in shock as he finallysees the chance to reach me with my club.

A chance I take away from him with a single strike with my pommel to his temple.

His body is in the middle of falling when I turn my blade forward, the pommel acting as a pivot from where I landed the sideways strike before I lunge and spear another goblin through his heart, ending him as quickly as I can, granting him fortune for once in his agonizing life.

Then I twist to my right, my blade cutting sideways through his ribcage with ease it shouldn’t as my sweeping strike beheads the last of them.

I am sweating. Panting.

Grinning.

And I’ve never fought like this in my life.

***

Kohle

Fire.

I am a dwarf. A blacksmith. Coal is in my bloodline.

I know fire.

I know its scent, no matter if it springs from cloying mineral oils or from noble woods. I know its crackling melody and patternless dance. I know how wild it is, no matter how contained it may seem.

She is fire.

Fire that demands to be watched, that asks you to get mesmerized by its flickering, shifting colors, be it in peace when resting in front of your hearth or in heated motion when dancing and celebrating.

When warring.

Her steps could have been war drums, or they could have been fingertips rhythmically tapping across a tambourine. They could have been… anything.

Because she’s fire, and that’s both hungry flame and reassuring light. It’s both cruelty and kindness. It’s…

She.

Inés.

She’s fire.

And fire demands respect. Demands admiration.

Demands everything I can feed it before she leaves behind only ashes.

Or, maybe, if I’m really lucky…

Embers.

***

I don’t know what words we exchange on the way back because something like a fever washes across my brow, and nothing but her movements, her beauty, remains inside my head.

There’s no room for anything else.

Not until we reach the gates of the city, and the girl, flushed after a day of exertion under the mountain sun, makes a quick excuse and leaves for the inn where she’s currently hosted.

A pity. I was going to ask her to model.

But… Not a pity. Not really.

Because I’m going to make the things she can model.

Ideas for designs swim inside my mind, melding and merging seamlessly into one another like flames themselves would in a fireplace.

And then I reach my forge and I… the ideas…

Everything burns.

I don’t even remember lighting up my forge, the blazing coals greeting me with red light shifting to amber as the bellows bemoan the pace I put them through.

I should be tired. Thinking. Taking notes and drawing designs.

Before I can stop myself, I throw Inés’ cuirass into the flames.

This time, I don’t stop until it’s red hot, until the delicate engraving of my own take on the Arvanitaki’s emblem blurs like it was drawn on melting wax.

I almost reach in with my hand before I, for reasons I don’t quite understand, stop myself and use my tongs to pull it out of the flames.

Then, upon my anvil, with hammer and chisel, I split the metal into pieces, each one still a part of the cuirass, still a part of the same armor waiting to be joined like flames upon a fireplace.

And my forge blurs.

Greaves. Almost bladed along the shinbone so that every one of her strides will cut across the wind.

Cuisses, adorned with curlicues of broad flames lapping up her thighs, reaching higher and higher with every roar of her heart.

No fauld. No sabatons. She’s strong yet slender, her curves graceful and shifting. Ever moving.

Mesh. Mesh to wrap around them. No chainmail, but something like it. Filaments of steel stretched to the point of spun glass, passed through my smallest wire molds until they become soft like cotton upon the skin and unyielding against a blade, even if steel this fine should cut and draw fire-red blood.

Not enough.

The cuirass is abbreviated. Two cups shaped like the underside of her generous breasts, holding them up and together as the mesh covers them to give a glimpse into what she can offer.

Take the remaining metal from the cuirass. Embed shards of it into the rest of the armor. Sparks upon glimmering red steel. Make it all into a single flame.

Vambraces. Like her cuisses. Tongues of flame running up her limbs and along the rerebrace, melding into the round pauldrons that seem out of place until her hair comes into play, spreading above them with copper red brightness, turning into the tongues for the flames waiting to be unleashed from within red metal.

Her flames.

Her.

A circlet. Not a helmet that would bind down her hair, but one that pushes it away from emerald eyes and raises it up higher than it would be by itself, two tongues of flame reaching up from above and behind her ears as if she was a high elf descended from the Arvanitaki’s founding lineage.

Olive trees. Short. Branches spreading, twisting, and turning under a harsh sun.

They are trees of fire. Like the barrel of burning oil in which I’m clenching the red-hot steel again and again after every single attempt at reforging it into the things that are in my mind but not my hands.

And then…

It should be finished.

Good enough.

But it isn’t.

The full suit of armor gleams in a uniform red that is deeper than steel should ever reach just by itself, that would usually need lacquers to be carefully applied. The mesh is a gleaming coal black from which the flames can spring.

But fire isn’t red, is it?

Not fully.

I reach for my burin, biting into solid steel with its point, carving curlicues and daring patterns across her vambraces with careful, steady blows of a hammer that falls to the rhythm of the flames dancing on my forge, sending my shadow in its own wild caper across the soot-black ceiling.

Then I bite deeper along the edges, turning them into dovetail profiles, and I cut thin sheets of copper to hammer in place, to glimmer brighter than steel ever could, no matter how burnished, how carefully polished.

Better.

But not enough.

My only sheet of gold, the only precious metal I carry, turns into wild sparks and radiant beams of light scattered from the acute points of leaping flames before I resort to hammering coins into flat pieces of more detail, into the edge of rising protrusions and the heart of copper-orange flames, even if I leave a hole in the bottom of them, where blue lies in wait in the hottest of fires.

But I don’t have blue metal.

I… cobalt. Cobalt would do if ground and treated, but I don’t have any because why would I? It’s already a wonder that Dad insisted I take the sheet of gold just in case I ever worked for a noble, but cobalt? What would I do without cobalt other than give heart to dancing flames scattered across red steel?

No. I don’t have cobalt.

But I have coal.

And this time, I don’t think. I don’t stop myself. I don’t reach for my tongs.

No.

I just shove my hand into a roaring forge and take the largest ember I can find in my grasping, desperate fingers as I let the song of my work guide me.

I only stop for a single moment to wonder at how the hair in my bare arms glints when surrounded by burning embers. How black turns into so many shifting colors, all of them giving way to red and amber.

Then I take it out, and I whisper words that I don’t understand as I set the tip of the burning ember to the hole surrounded by gold and copper, burning hotter and hotter until red fades away into dull steel.

And then comes light yellow, orange, and, suddenly, a hue that steel doesn’t have, something that should go from violet to light blue rather than deepen into the shades of brightest cobalt.

My cheeks hurt, and I barely notice my smile before I move to the next flame.

And so I spend my night.

Surrounded by fire.

***

Inés

He’s going to hate me.

I… I played with those goblins, and yes, they are monsters, cruel and vicious like most humans can barely conceive in their nightmares. I know what they can do when left unchecked. I have seenwhat happened in the only goblin town that has ever existed within the borders of Galatea.

But nobody deserves to be played with. Not in war.

And he saw how I enjoyed it. How I let myself go, then he barely spoke to me as we came back, even if his eyes kept gliding across my body and staring right at—at…

Aaaaahhh!

This—this isn’t normal. This isn’t how things… How…

I just wanted a set of armor.

“Good morning, Inés,” the guild secretary that scammed me on my first day here says to, I guess, get me to look up from the table I’m sitting at while grasping my head with both hands.

“Ah,” I answer before I remember that regular people use words to communicate rather than intense, black-eyed stares that seem to burn through your very sense of self-restraint. “Good morning, Martha,” I say, as politely as I can manage to the scheming blonde who may or not be pursuing a relationship with half the male members of the guild.

It would explain why there are so many of them.

At least she isn’t a lesbian.

That—I mean! Not that there’s anything wrong with that! It’s just that I’m relieved she isn’t hitting on me, and also that if I’m friends with her people won’t misunderstand, and Kohle won’t give up on me thinking that I am—what am I even thinking?!

“So, how’s the demon den exploration going?” she says, sitting by my side and setting up a mug of ale and a dish with two slices of bread and enough dry saucisson with black pepper to make me miss Mom’s choice in breakfast.

I mean, yes, cold cuts are much better than what I used to get in the army, and Galatea’s cheeses are to kill for, but there’s something about a robust majorero goat cheese that just makes the mouth water. And when it comes to a good chorizo—

Oh. She asked me a question, didn’t she?

“I… I caught what may have been a scouting party of four goblins yesterday, but—”

“You did what?”

“I mean… kill them all? Oh. You did want me to capture one for interrogation? I’m so sorry! I just… It’s just that, well, goblins are impossible to torture, so I… I… Why are you looking at me like that?”

The blonde woman looks at me more or less like how Anna’s teachers used to look at her whenever she got too close to the stables, and I try not to fidget like I did when she used me as cover to get too close to the stables.

“You… You still haven’t gotten your armor. And you killed four goblins. By yourself. Is that what you’re telling me happened?”

“Yes? Uh… wait, are you saying I should carry some sort of proof when I do that? Sorry, I thought that, well, it was just a scouting party, so the job isn’t close to done, and—and you’re still looking at me like that. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Inés… You don’t even have your armor. You can’t just… The reports didn’t even hint at there being anywhere close to enough demons to get a scouting party of four. This is a serious matter, and I’m going to have to ask you to join an established party to deal with it. I’m sorry for our faulty information and the danger you had to face on your own—”

“Oh, I wasn’t on my own. The master blacksmith was with me,” I say, waving my hands to placate the incoming lecture that reminds me uncomfortably of General Louise’s worst tendencies—at least, those that didn’t involve any foul-tasting alcohol.

“The master what?” she says.

“You know, the dwarf? Kohle?” I say as I idly reach forward to get a slice of saucisson because, inferior choice of breakfast or not, I amhungry—

And now she’s blinking at me in precisely the same way Louise did when I claimed to be single, and why was she so confused about that, and, oh, it was because of—

“Kohle isn’t a master,” she says.

And I drop the saucisson.

***

Kohle

The ember turns to ashes on the palm of my hand right as I trace the last blue heart of flame in the middle of Inés’ circlet.

The rays of a low sun come in through my small windows, and I…

I hold my breath.

Because they gleam across the full set of armor lying on the stone floor, the floor I’m kneeling on, like the sun glints off the crests of rippling lakes at the top of the purest mountains.

It’s… each ray takes on a different note, a different color, and it’s like the light is singing over my creation.

My work.

My—

The door swings open, and in walks Inés, fire in her eyes, and something that was set to simmer in my breast leaps up, burning higher at her mere presence.

“It’s done,” I say.

“Wha—Kohle, I just learned that—”

“You’re wasting time. It’s done,” I repeat because she isn’t doing what she’s supposed to be doing.

“I—what are you even—what is—”

She stops.

And her mouth falls open.

I take a joy I didn’t know I could hold at the look in her eyes, at how emerald green glitters with the sun reflected off an armor that is hers, that can only be hers, but the thing in my chest burns hotter and more impatient.

“Put it on,” I say.

“What?” she asks without looking away.

“Wear it,” I insist.

And then she looks at me, cheeks once again flushed, maybe because she hurried to get here when something in the armor called to her.

“I… I can’t—”

“Now,” I tell her.

And get up.

She’s breathing faster, almost panting, and I keep looking at her eyes, searching for more of that wonder she felt when meeting her armor for the first time, hungering for more of that, that… fulfillment.

Acknowledgement.

I don’t even know.

But I want more. I want to watch her eyes sparkle with wonder when I craft her new sword, when I reforge her knives, when I get my hands on something better than mere steel to add to the roaring flames on the ground behind me.

So I reach her and snap her belt open with both hands.

“Wha—wha, wha, what the—what are you doing?!” she says, upset at the loss of a mere piece of leather when she’s about to get so much more.

“You don’t need it,” I whisper as I slide my hands along the waist of her pants before forcefully tugging them down, the bunched fabric biting into her yielding flesh like I knew it would because, if there’s anything I’ve learned over the past few days, it’s her body.

“Kohle—!”

“You don’t need anything other than what I’ll grant you,” I say, feeling the connection between her and her armor settling in, growing stronger with every moment she spends near it.

“I—at least let me undress myself!” she says, her hands fighting against mine to keep her pants up and around the middle of her backside, her sex still covered by white panties that would clash horribly with the armor design that was born from her.

“Fine,” I concede with a grunt, stepping away to let her do just that.

“I—” she seems surprised at me doing so, but I’ve got my arms crossed, and I’m tapping my foot impatiently on the broad flagstone we’re both standing on.

So she looks at me, wets her lips with a cherry-red tongue, and leaves her pants precisely where they are before she kneels down to unlace her boots.

And so, for the first time since I met her, Inés’ eyes are below mine.

They shouldn’t be.

She takes my displeasure for what it is and hurries to take off her footwear before standing up and taking a deep breath that strains the ties of her blue doublet.

Then she undoes them before shrugging the stiff piece of clothing off, showing me yet again the thin chemise I’ve already seen so many times, though it doesn’t smell like her, so she washed it yesterday, after soaking it with the sweat of battle, exertion, and dancing fire.

I’m briefly disappointed.

Then her doublet falls to the floor, and she hesitates for a fleeting moment before her hands travel to the pants wedged around her backside, and she shimmies down with swaying, side-to-side motions that bring her pants lower and lower until she can step out of them.

“Th—there. Done. I… I can put it on now,” she says, looking almost relieved.

And I, offended, raise my eyebrow.

“No. You are going to wear it properly,” I say.

“Wha—what do you mean by… properly?”

My eyes narrow, and her throat bobs in an audible, dry swallow.

Then, without further prodding, her trembling hands reach for the hem of her chemise before looking at me as if asking for permission.

Impatiently, I grant it with a single nod.

And her throat bobs up and down yet again.

I’ll have to brew her some tea after we’re done.

***

Inés

What is happening?!

What even is—I am naked—almost naked. I’m almost naked, and I don’t wear a brassiere because the doublet has always done a good job of keeping things in place, and he’s asking me to take off my chemise, and I’m about to do it.

Why am I about to do it?!

And no, intense, black eyes are not a valid answer! Neither is his chest gleaming in the light of the morning sun and his smoldering forge! Or his thick, crossed arms, with two fingers impatiently tapping over his left elbow. Or how the forge smells so… so…

So gosh darn good.

It’s… It should smell terrible because I can see he’s been working all night on… on that, and there’s enough smoke to tell me that he didn’t finish until right before I came through his door, so this should be a mix of asphyxiating fumes and dry dwarf sweat, which I can’t believe smells that different from human sweat, and that goes rank real fast if my marches across the Palatian border have taught me anything.

It doesn’t.

It… It smells of Kohle, and just the idea that I know what those words mean is enough to get my cheeks to burn hotter than they already were, which is saying quite something, and that something would usually need me to use words that make me even more embarrassed than I already am if that’s even possible.

I suspect it is.

Or, at least, that it’s about to be, because Kohle just uncrossed his arms and looks very much like he’s about to step forward and try to strip me himself yet again, which I don’t know if it would be worse or much, much better.

So I decide to not find out, and I pull my arms up before I can even think about my breasts sticking to the linen of my chemise due to my own sweat that the forge is making me let out—the heat of the forge and absolutely nothing else.

And… and I…

My chemise is over my face, so I can’t see anything.

But I know that my breasts are bare, naked to black eyes that always make me feel half nude already, and it’s almost like I can feel them roam over me, tracing the heavy curves that always made me feel a bit embarrassed when boys looked down from my eyes until I started wearing thicker, rigid clothes that hide the shape of my body.

But I’m not wearing them right now.

And he’s looking.

I just… I know he’s looking, and I don’t know how I want him to look. What will be worse when I finish taking off my chemise, if seeing him with wide-eyed lust or with his intense almost indifference that makes me want to rub my thighs together because…

…

Oh.

I… I just…

I am straight, okay? It’s perfectly normal for me to react to a man seeing my bare breasts. It means absolutely nothing other than me having been single for years and Kohle being intense enough that I can’t help but wonder how he would hold my waist with his thick fingers, and—

“What the Hell are you doing?!” I say as soon as those very same fingers touch my waist, only to glide down to the sides of my panties.

“Hurrying you,” he says.

And, before I can protest, he pulls down.

My face is burning.

I want to die.

I… His face is right in front of my—my pussy! And he’s breathing deeply enough that I can feel the warm air all over my thighs, and… and, oh, at least I shaved yesterday—why did I shave yesterday?!

“Good. No hair. It will fit better,” he says.

And, as my eyes shoot wide open, I throw off my chemise and gape at—

“What is going to fit better?!”

Kohle, straightening up so that his face raises uncomfortably close to my—to my you know what, silently meets my eyes without even looking at my bare breasts before he raises a reproachful eyebrow that makes me go weak-kneed and then points down at the…

At…

It’s beautiful.

It’s just…

I don’t have the words. I just… It’s…

Mine.

Mine. That’s the only word I can give it.

“Go on,” he says, and I, without even thinking about it, kneel on the floor to gather the strewn pieces of my armor.

There’s… I recognize each part, but there are no leather straps to fit them around my body. No, there’s a… a net of blackened steel that feels like water flowing over my hands, and I just know I have to wear it like a second skin. That each and every piece will fit right over it.

So I take it and lift it by the shoulders, letting it cascade down in front of me just so I can see how precisely it mirrors my form. How… how much of me there’s in the empty suit of woven metal.

I should ask him how to put it on, but I just know there’s a barely noticeable clasp behind the nape that will unlock a single line along the spine, so I work it with one hand and then step inside of it, the thin threads of steel gliding over my skin in a cool caress that soon warms with my body’s heat.

My feet are encased more perfectly than in any silk stockings I ever wore to ballroom attendances, and when I pull the suit up, it just flows over my bare calves. Over my thighs, where the openings between threads are wider and my skin peeks through, the tan color melding with the metallic glint until it becomes crimson ruby under the dying embers of his forge.

I pull up a bit more, and it… it rolls over my bare buttocks, a single line of pressure that sends a thrill of sensation between my thighs and makes me roll my eyes back right before my sex is perfectly framed, displayed,by the same threads wrapped around my lower body like I stood still for Kohle to weave it over my bare skin as I held my breath and only took as much air as he allowed me to.

I pull higher, and it glides over my bare belly like his fingers did when he took my measurements.

I stop breathing.

And pull it over my breasts.

I… I don’t have to push them in place with my hands, the threads just… just cupping me with barely any pressure, taking the shape of my natural slope and making my eyelids flutter as my nipples fit right through twin openings in the mesh made just for them.

I desperately try to wet my lips and end up licking them before I bite their corner to suppress a moan that just needs to come out before I force myself to push my arms down the sleeves, my fingers perfectly gloved, my nails comfortably sliding through ten openings as the steel sticks to my skin close enough that they don’t feel like opening but… but like my fingers.

Then I reach behind my neck with both arms, the gesture raising my breasts up and against the mesh, my sensitive skin pressing just soagainst the thin openings over my breasts that grow larger when stretched along my cleavage.

I close the clasp, and the net closes along my spine.

It… It fits even better. Like I’m not even wearing it. And…

And I immediately reach for the pieces of solid, red steel decorated with detailed flames and rays of light that I can’t help but run my own fingers across, marveling at how fully I can feel them despite the mesh suit I’m wearing.

I first take the left vambrace and hold it above my forearm before sliding it backward, something in the inner part of the protective piece catching on my mesh suit before it locks in place, moving slightly back and forth with the motion of my muscles as I open and close my hand.

But that’s as much give as it has: the give of my body, of which it is now a part.

The other vambrace fits just as well, then come the greaves, their sharp middle line fitting right along my shinbone, the cuisses set over those wider gaps in the netting that let my skin fully press against the embrace of metal that is soon just as warm as I am, even if I keep getting warmer and warmer.

The rerebraces fit just as well over my arms, raising a few goosebumps that fade before I even have time to reach for the rounded pauldrons, for the only part of the armor that isn’t made of leaping tongues of fire flowing along the frame of my body, making me… greater.

The circlet… It should be the last piece, what completes the ensemble, my transformation, but I don’t stop my hand reaching for it, and I don it on my head, the fires over my temples pushing my hair back and up to complete the interrupted fire that now skips over my pauldrons to make my mane a part of it.

Longer. I will let my hair grow longer, and it will snap and crack with my twists and turns, adding its sound to the roaring flame calling out inside my ears, erratically beating in my chest.

My chest.

The… The breast plate, made to fit me exquisitely. To wrap around my breasts and lift them, proudly displaying what I so often hid.

So I stand up and face Kohle, my hard nipples pointing at him when I lean slightly down to offer him as good a view across the thin netting over my cleavage as I can give him.

The chest piece snaps in place.

And heat runs up my thighs.

***

Kohle

Beautiful.

Just… Beautiful.

She… I knew what she would look like. I held the image in my mind for the entire night, engraving it upon her armor with every blow from my hammer, with every scratch from my burin, with every stroke of my file.

I knew.

But now I see, and those are such different things, such incredibly, unbelievably…

Beautiful.

I don’t have more words.

So, instead, I act.

I take my hammer from the anvil I dropped it on and take a single step toward the tall woman leaning over me, and then, with all my strength, with all the power I still have in my arms after an entire night of work, I strike.

There’s not a tolling bell clamoring inside my forge.

No.

There’s… There’s a whisper of the finest file across smooth steel, and Inés is holding my hammer’s head.

The hammer she just parried without any strain. Without even meaning to as her emerald eyes are stuck on mine.

We both let go at the same time, and now there’s the tolling of protesting metal as it falls upon our shared flagstone, where it clatters into mutism.

My breath catches.

And something ends.

I… I blink, disoriented, but every time I open my eyes, there are glittering emeralds in front of me, the dying embers on my forge lending them sparks that the morning sun can’t grant them.

She steps forward.

And she’s close. Still leaning down, and my lips are dry enough that I should be brewing that pot of tea, but I just end up licking them as tingling heat rushes along the sides of my neck when I’m faced by…

By her cleavage.

I… I distantly remember thinking about her body. Her curves. How it should be displayed. How it should proudly tell everyone who dared to look just how boldly beautiful Inés is.

What I don’t remember is ever thinking it would be a brilliant idea to get those breasts of hers tightly held together under almost transparent netting, the errant glimmers rushing along black metal threads only serving to guide my eyes to where her dark areolas almost peek over the low cups of what used to be a pretty chaste cuirass.

And… Wait. Her dark areolas.

I just saw Inés naked.

I forced her to strip.

I am going to die, and I can’t even claim I haven’t paid the price.

“I… does it fit well?” I say, trying not to stammer as my eyes keep traitorously roaming over dark cleavage, down a cinched waistline, and across rotund hips and thighs before I remember just how little I crafted where her legs meet, and the heat along the sides of my neck reaches up to my forehead.

“Perfectly,” she says, her voice almost purring. “It’s like a second skin.”

And then, just to show me how well it fits, I suppose, she grabs my hand and, rather than toss me on the ground before kicking my head in, she drags it over her left hip.

Again, I wish I had some tea.

Because… Because, under the mesh, under the open net that leaves much wider gaps across her tanned skin in this particular part of her body, her skin is soft, warm, and yielding.

The steel threads just make my touch glide over her in a single, roundabout caress that ends up with me unable to resist the urge to squeeze her bottom.

To dig my fingers into her flesh and engrave my touch on her like my burin did on her armor.

She moans.

And I grunt as my cock stiffens down too-tight pants.

I try to crouch over, to hide the stupid, involuntary, possibly fatal reaction, but her hand is still tightly clasped around my wrist, and I can’t move away, so I end up burying my face in her cleavage, the tall, athletic, generously proportioned woman immediately grasping the back of my head and pushing me deeper in until my chin is nestled right over the meeting of the twin cups of her chest piece, my beard bristling over the irregular brim as I am forced to inhale her scent.

I remember lamenting that she washed herself off her sweat after yesterday’s fight, the thoughts of the other Kohle mortifyingly clear in my current circumstances.

That… That is no longer an issue.

Because her skin is warm, and I catch drops of sweat rolling down the round slopes out of the corner of my eyes as her scent fills me and makes the issue in my pants that much worse.

“Fire,” she murmurs. “You lit the fire in me.”

My eyelids flutter as I once again squeeze her fantastically yielding bottom, as she pushes me deeper between her breasts, as her right thigh wraps around my bare torso.

And something I have been barely holding onto snaps.

“Hnn!” she moans as I turn my head sideways to kiss the soft skin pressing up through the wide gaps I left in there so she could be admired.

I don’t answer.

No, I lick her, tasting the salty aftertaste of dewing sweat before her body inundates yet another of my senses.

Then, from below, I wrap my arm under her raised thigh, my fingers taking the chance to dig into the lonely cheek I had not already been mauling before I can’t take anymore and push her back toward my anvil, the graceful woman stumbling a single time before she falls upon it, giggling at my reckless charge as the hand on the back of my head pushes me lower, past the cups holding her breasts up, down the toned belly that I lick all the way, my tongue detaining for as long as she lets me on every crevice between muscle proudly displayed by weaving patterns made to enhance what’s already there.

And I reach her sex.

Her bare sex.

Because I, stupidly, didn’t even think about what to put along her hips to protect her modesty, if nothing else, when I decided that a fauld would be too clunky for her agile movements, that it would clash with the harmony of her sword dance.

Or the other Kohle didn’t.

Because the other Kohle either had tunnel vision or was a horny bastard.

Yet here I am, standing between her spread thighs, each hand on one of her marvelously yielding cheeks, my face right in front of her sex, her fingers digging into my scalp, and her scent assaulting me even harder than it did when she buried my face between her breasts.

I think, carefully skirting around the alarming thoughts regarding scary nobles who may be terrifying to the Queen of Galatea herself, that nobody will blame me for what’s about to happen.

***

Inés

He’s… He’s everything I wanted.

Eager. Attentive. He kisses along the outside of my lips, his short, cropped beard rubbing the insides of my thighs in a way that my armor doesn’t protect me from.

I am defenseless in front of him.

And just that makes me wrap my legs around his neck and push him deeper with my heels on his back until his hot breath washes over my open, drenchedlips.

His lips are… softer than I would’ve thought from the severe line they usually set into, and the kiss he grants me makes me curl my toes and throw my head back, having to grasp the edge of his anvil behind me as I stare blankly at the soot-stained ceiling, my hair falling behind me, my breasts standing up, my nipples rising and falling with every labored breath that he drags out of me just with brief pecks, with careful touches, with short, broad, strong fingers digging into my ass.

“Kohle,” I whisper, murmur, or beg, “give me more.”

And out comes his tongue.

His broad, flat tongue that makes me clench both my eyes and mouth shut as he licks from the lower meeting of my lips up to my very erect clitoris in a single, slow, deliberate movement that I can feel rippling across his entire back with my legs resting on it, devoid of strength, unable to push him deeper as I feel like I’m about to claw out slivers of iron from his anvil.

He doesn’t let me.

The licks grow faster, attacking me from different angles, never letting me anticipate what he’s going to do next as he keeps massaging my ass, his broad shoulders pushing my thighs up so I have no option other than to sit in front of him as he devours me, as he makes me lose my mind in an entirely different way than he did when just looking at me with those black eyes of his that seemed ready to burn through me, that made me try not to think about so many things I have now running through my mind in a rush of burning fever that swallows all my other thoughts and turns them into more of Kohle playing with my body, pushing me higher and higher with every touch, every kiss, every lick.

Every look.

So I force myself to tear my eyes off his ceiling and back toward him.

He’s… waiting for me.

And I shudder.

Kohle immediately wraps his lips around my clitoris, sucking me harder than I thought he would, surprising me yet again, and forcing a moan out of my lips.

He’s… I am…

No.

Not yet.

So I push him away, my hand on his forehead right as I open my legs, and he stumbles back.

Which is when I stagger back to my feet and grasp him under his armpits before I lift him up and set him on the anvil.

“Wha—what the Hell are you doing, lass?” he says, but without the admonishment or reproach.

Just… disoriented.

And that makes another tongue of fire leap behind my breastbone as I sink to my knees and grab the hem of his pants.

“You’re about to find out,” I say, this time not stopping at wetting my lips but deliberately tracing them with my pointed tongue, running a slow, delightful circle that starts and ends in the middle of my upper lip.

And then, as his mouth falls open, I pull.

And…

Well, let’s just say that it looks even bigger with how short he is.

And maybe tastier.

So I take a deep breath and lunge forward, my lips engulfing the very tip of his hard, thick cock before I can even think about how long it’s been since I last did this, how clumsy I’ve always been, how I push too far, too fast, and too hard until I end up with tears in my eyes and dry heaving as some very embarrassed boy comfortingly pats my back.

He’s… He’s on my tongue. And he is tastier.

Salty, yes, but… but there’s… It’s like… There’s a spiceto it. To him. Something not far off from the regular taste, but that just… just…

My vambraces warm up, the heat running up the rerebraces and pauldrons until it dips down along my chest plate, my breasts tingling with the waves of heat washing over me in flickering tongues that then climb down and up, spreading both ways as if my body was a log set to burn from the middle.

It first reaches my tongue, and the heat inside of me meets something in him that has him gasping and grabbing two fistfuls of my red hair.

And then it reaches below, to my still wet pussy, to the lips he’s just kissed and licked, and I can’t help myself as my eyes roll back and I push, his whole head slipping past my tight lips, over my tongue, as his shaft soon follows and doesn’t stop until he’s pushing down my throat, stretching me open as I bury my nose in his pubes and twist side to side, my body protesting absolutely nothing and just asking for more.

I dig my fingers into the packed muscle of his thighs, into flesh as hard as mine after a day of uninterrupted marches, and the effort it takes for me to mark him, to leave indentations of my fingers on his legs, makes the heat inside roar that much louder.

So I twist my head side to side, my tongue running wild around him, around his shaft, going just a bit faster every time I feel a burning dollop of something pour out of him and slide down my clenching throat, as I try to swallow him more and more, to drain something out of the dwarf sitting above me.

I manage to stop trying to look toward the back of my own head, and I look up at him. At Kohle grabbing my hair and helping me move along his shaft when I finally relent and accept my need to breathe.

His eyes are, once more, waiting for mine.

And I can’t hold back anymore.

My left hand wraps around his base, thumb and forefinger making up for the slight distance my lips weren’t able to cover, and my right slides down my body, following the path of dried spit that his tongue left on me mere moments ago when he nearly drove me insane with caresses, kisses, and devotion.

I… I am not like him. Not half as dexterous, as attentive. I can’t be.

But I can be rougher.

So I throw my head back until only his head remains past my lips, his surprise not letting him follow my movement with his hands, so his tight grasp on my hair ends up on twin, sharp tugs that make something clenchinside of me.

Then I throw myself forward, his cock driving past my tight lips, and I spear my fingers right through that clenched something, forcing myself open like his thick shaft would if I wasn’t devouring it.

And then I do it again.

I… I fuck myself, both above and below, my head and fingers thrusting at the same pace, jerking back and forth as I lose all grace and just hunger remains. As I devote myself to his cock, to his pleasure, like he devoted his tongue and fingers to worshipping me.

I’m not as skilled. Not as attentive.

But I can be wilder.

I suck on him, spit pooling on my tongue when I pull back and splashing from my sealed lips when I rush forward and make him jerk his hips up, unwillingly lending me his strength to make this as powerful as we can make it between the two of us, his flavor and girth filling my mouth and throat like my fingers fill my yearning for him between my legs.

It should hurt.

It doesn’t.

The black mesh of steel covering my fingers glides past my folds like an oiled blade into a sheath until my drenched excitement makes even that impossible, my juices below splashing as abundantly as my spit past my lips, the droplets falling on his floor adding a perverse rhythm to everything else I’m already doing, to the scene I’m painting for Kohle.

Because he made me my armor. He made me look beautiful, daring, and wild.

And that’s precisely what I’m going to be for him.

So I don’t care if it feels like his cock in my mouth is fucking my thoughts away. I don’t care if the daze smothering my mind suddenly blazes into flames of excitement I haven’t felt in years and never this intensely. I don’t care if my fingers are about to make me come harder than any cock ever has.

I care about black, glittering eyes staring down at me in open wonder as his right hand lets go of my hair and tenderly caresses my sunken cheek as I suck on his cock, the back of his fingers soon running down the side of my neck and making my eyelids flutter as I—

He looks at me.

My fingers reach deep inside.

And I come.

The fire explodes, blazing across and through me, waves of heat running up my armor until they reach my circlet, and I feel the blue spot above the middle of my forehead brand my thoughts with a smokeless flame.

My nostrils flare open, and I bow forward, swallowing so much of him that there’s no more room for my fingers between us.

He tries to push me away, and I deny him, licking and suckling until he has no choice but to let go, shooting everything he has down my throat as I massage him inside of it with gulping motions that make the heat between my thighs blaze anew, bringing up another wave of sensation to rush up my spine until I have to moan on his thick cock as I lose my eyesight and my nostrils flare open, taking in as much of his scent as I can while unable to breathe.

It… It takes me a while to come down from it, my thoughts slowing as I delight in his shaft softening between my lips until it slips out of my throat, and I can take air that is not fresh because it’s still filled with his sweat, with my spit, with…

I force my eyes open and look up.

Black, glimmering irises meet me as thick fingers caress my cheek.

And I…

My hand is drenched with something sticky and disgusting, my tongue has his salty remains on top of it, and I just manhandled Kohle onto his own anvil after forcing him to lick my pussy.

Aaaaaahhhhh!

Before I can even think about something better to do, like, I don’t know, sticking my head into his forge, I jump up, his cock making a horribly loud noise when it slips past my lips because I forgot to open my mouth before doing this, and now I’ll have to forever remember the suckling sound echoing inside his forge at precisely the same time that I loudly took my fingers out of my pussy.

My cheeks can’t burn any hotter.

And I, my head still swimming in the aftermath of something that makes me doubt I ever came properly before, turn around on my feet and bolt out of his forge, the door slamming fully open behind me as I step into his shop and—

And I stop.

Not because I’m dizzy enough that I almost trip on my feet. Not because I just thought about how ridiculous it is to run away from Kohlewhile my mouth is still filled with his flavor. Not because I realize just how incredibly Inés I’m being right now.

But because there’s cum and spit running down the sides of my mouth, absolutely nothing covering my wet, raw pussy, my stiff nipples are still pushing through their openings with the chest plate meant to cover them lying on the floor of Kohle’s forge.

And because Martha, the blonde guild secretary, is sitting up on top of Kohle’s counter with her short blue skirt hitched around her waist and two fingers doing precisely the same thing I was doing a moment ago.

Also, staring at me open-mouthed in a way that I dearly hope is because of shock and embarrassment.

“Wha…” I try to ask before words, like everything else, fail me.

“I… You were quite angry when you left, so I decided to come and check up on you. Make sure things were all right,” she says.

Her fingers still moving.

“Stop that!” I say, pointing at that.

“Hn! Yes, command me,” she answers, leaning her head back and closing her eyes as she doesn’t stop doing that.

“Wha—no! Just—just stop! Stop touching yourself to Kohle—”

“Oh, you certainly contributed, dear.”

“Wha—I’m straight! Not that there would be anything wrong if I wasn’t! I recently learned that some of my best friends are lesbians!”

“And how did you learn that?” a gruff, manly voice says from behind me as a strong, short, broad, possessive hand slaps down on my hip and makes my eyes roll back as I rub my thighs together.

“Aww, pants?” Martha asks.

I’m going to murder her. No. Not murder. Murder is never the answer.

I’m going to execute her.

I’m sure my godmother will sign the sentence for me.

“Go back to harassing the alchemist’s familiar, Martha,” Kohle says with what could be exasperation.

“But they are more cautious than you two—”

“The next order of guild equipment will cost you fifteen percent extra. Consider it the price of admission.”

And, at that declaration, Martha finally stops doing thatand looks at Kohle with wide, pleading eyes that could very easily be misconstrued.

“Does that mean I get to stay—”

Before she can finish the line, I grab her by her armpits and throw her on the street.

Then I slam the door to Kohle’s shop closed behind me and turn around, clapping my hands twice in the universal sign of a job well done, or somebody throwing out the trash, or whatever clapping your hands twice is a universal sign for.

Only to remember that Martha wasn’t the only reason why I stopped running right after exiting Kohle’s forge, that plenty of fluidsare quickly drying up over my body, that I’m giving something far more indecent than a strip show just by walking around, and that Kohle is in the same room as I am.

Looking at me.

Right at me.

With black, mesmerizing eyes that hold me still as I once again feel the need to swallow the pooled spit in my mouth rather than letting it overflow past my lips like it did when his thick cock went past them.

…

A part of me thinks I should say something. The other parts of me agree that, at most, I can manage a panicked ‘eep’ swiftly followed by a fainting spell.

“Tea?” he incongruously offers with a raised eyebrow.

And I’ve never nodded faster in my life, so I can be excused when my vision darkens at the edges and I stumble forward until I catch myself on his counter.

Because of the nodding.

And absolutely nothing else.

***

The tea is… refreshing.

Which is kind of a weird thing to say about heated water with some herbs sprinkled on top, but, really, there’s not much else I can add. Kohle brewed the pot in nerve-wracking silence, and I only caught sight of what looked like fresh mint leaves and a few dollops of honey joining the water he boiled over his forge.

And… I’m kind of grateful because, no matter what just happened and how I managed to… to take him down my throat without gagging, now I’m feeling a bit sore, and the honey is supposed to help with that, but just holding the warm mug and taking slow sips is just… It’s calming.

Centering.

It’s like… I remember when I first learned my forms. The parries, strikes, and feints, and how I could chain them together when I was by myself in Anna’s yard.

I used to rush, at the start. To try to go as fast as I could because that was how fights should go, shouldn’t they? Surely, the first to hit would win?

‘You’re getting off balance. Speed doesn’t come from rushing, Inés; it comes from knowing. Do it again, but calmly. Feel it, the right way to move, and brand it in your flesh,” Mom told me in that faraway tone she had only when talking about swords and how to use them.

The tone I only started to understand after months in the army when I first used a weapon for what it was meant to do.

But, before that? There was calmness. There was… a peace I only found in movement, in the mindless rhythm that took me from what should have been to what should be.

And, looking down at the steaming mug of tea I hold with both hands over the meeting of my thighs, I can’t help but smile at those memories.

At the memories of peace and learning.

“Mint tea. I think the recipe comes from the Caliphate,” Kohle says.

“What?” I ask, looking up at him, blinking without meaning to.

And black eyes meet mine, yet again holding me still.

“Never mind,” he says, shaking his head with a wry something quirking his lips. “Just me making assumptions.”

It takes me a moment to figure it out.

“Oh. No, I… Mom and Dad are from the Ebran kingdoms, and I think my grandparents were from the Caliphate, but… I was born here. I am Galatean,” I say, rehashing a conversation I haven’t felt the need for in years because new recruits don’t question their lieutenant’s ancestry where they can be heard.

Or, well, not usually.

“You don’t know where your grandparents are from?” Kohle asks, pouring a new mug of tea for himself, the thin thread of falling water glimmering with the dying embers shining through it.

I smile at him with something as wry as his earlier gesture and shrug my shoulders.

“My parents… There’s a lot they don’t talk about. They always said to live in the present and not to burden myself with things that weren’t there,” I say.

His eyebrows flatten into a thick line that doesn’t quite meet in the middle as he looks into his own mug.

“That sounds like sage advice. Not one that I could follow, though,” he finally answers.

My smile is slightly less wry, and I take another sip of the refreshing, soothing tea.

“Advice you can’t follow doesn’t sound very sage to me,” I say.

Kohle grunts and nods.

And we let the silence stretch.

I finish my drink, and he notices, standing up and refilling my mug without saying a word.

Then, looking at the rising level of steaming tea…

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“What for?” I ask, not knowing why I’m not panicking or apologizing in return.

He doesn’t meet my eyes.

He just… He turns around, back toward his forge, and sets the kettle on top of an anvil that brings me out of my current calm just so I can blush in sheer mortification at the reminder of what I just put the blacksmithing tool through.

“It’s… I left my clan. Because I wasn’t a master. Do you know what a master is, Inés?” he says with the same tone he once called me ‘lass.’

“I… You’re supposed to—they are supposed to be like mages but working only through their craft. They turn objects into miracles. Into legends,” I say, unable to stop the breath of awe at the end of the line.

He nods.

“Not all of them. Not most of them. To many, it’s just… a connection. Something fleeting and ephemeral that happens in the middle of your work, that elevates it. You need to be skilled enough to take advantage of it, but all the skill and knowledge in the world… It’s not enough. It lets you create something good, but not something great.”

I stare at him. At his uncovered back, the muscles standing out as clearly as they ever have when I’ve walked into his forge to see him working with his hammer and… And his short hair is matted with sweat. Sweat running down his whole body, traces of soot smudged over his pale skin by my calves resting over his shoulders, Kohle dirty and tired after both his work and our… whatever just happened.

“So, a master…” I half-ask, my eyes tracing the tired slump of his shoulders as he keeps looking at dying embers.

“A master is somebody who has, at least once in his life, wrought a masterpiece.”

I look at my breastplate, the one once more affixed to my chest just so I could drink my tea without thinking about Kohle staring at my exposed nipples.

“I… Did I…” I can’t do it. I can’t ask the stupid, mortifying question.

“You. Yes, you,” he says, still not turning around. “You brought me that spark, Inés. You set me ablaze. I… I was consumed by the thought of you, the knowledge of you, and every moment I spent awake, it was devoted to thinking about you, and your armor, and what would make it yours. So, I apologize because I… I was warned that it could go out of control, that when the magic starts, it flows as it wants, as it means, and I… I wasn’t thinking—”

I don’t know when I have stood up.

And… I know what he’s saying. I know what it’s like for your sword to leap forward and parry a blow you hadn’t noticed, to strike when you meant to retreat, to stare dumbly at a sparring partner painedly rubbing a wrist you hadn’t been aiming for.

I know what it’s like to lose yourself in your craft.

But my craft is movement. It’s action. It’s…

Kohle blinks at me, surprised, the forge at his back sending flickering, errant glimmers of amber over his black hair as his eyes draw me in.

So I keep holding his shoulders with as much strength as I would my sword and lean down to softly, slowly steal his lips.

“Don’t apologize,” I murmur with lidded eyes. “Not to me. Not for giving me this.”

And, before he can think I’m talking about our armor, I renew our kiss.

Our first kiss.

Because magic does many things, and messing up the proper order of romance seems to be the least of them.

***

Kohle

“Are you certain?” I say.

Like somebody who isn’t.

And Inés, her cheeks darkened, peering at me through the fingers covering her eyes, nods.

Which is when I slowly pour a bucket of steaming water over her and into my tin tub.

She hisses out before relaxing into the heat suffusing her body, resting her back on the tub, her head and hair hanging back and over the high rim.

And I’m left with very few options other than to keep pouring the heated water over her large, perky breasts and pretend I’m not about to lose my mind at how they look when her tanned skin is wet and lit by recently renewed embers on a forge to her left.

There’s more water being heated right now, and I have to grab a second bucket and refill the first one to keep dribbling the steady stream over her lightly bent knees to cascade down her thighs, to briefly pool over her belly until the level of the water is high enough to cover all of it, to…

To make her entire body gleam under flickering light as I pretend I’m not going steadily insane.

A task she doesn’t make any easier when she, with her eyes closed, shifts her body side to side, her breasts magnifying the slight motion as she rubs her back against my tub, and Inés purrs in the pleasure of tension leaving her body.

Soap. Oils. Things I can think about other than the naked, beautiful woman enjoying the fall of water over her in a way that is almost as indecent as anything Martha has ever done.

“Kohle…” she murmurs, and I have to hold back a hiss as my member painfully protests against the restraints my pants provide.

“Yes?” I say past dry lips—

“When are you going to join me?” she asks, eyes still closed, cheeks still red enough to show through her olive skin, and arms now resting along the rim of the tub without covering her perfect breasts in the slightest.

An empty bucket clatters to the ground, and I snap my pants open with both hands in some poetic justice for Inés’ now defunct belt.

Then I stop acting like I’m still going through puberty and slowly undress the rest of the way without further hurting my sartorial budget.

Inés… She’s still leaning back with her eyes closed, a small smile widening when I move to the foot of the tub, and the light I was blocking with my body spreads over her.

Then I take a deep breath and climb over the lower part of the tub’s rim, my bare foot touching water that should be uncomfortably hot for a regular human but that she delights in, her legs spreading as far as the tub lets them to make room for me.

So I… I stand. In the middle of hot water, between her open legs, staring past two wet, glimmering breasts and at the close-lipped smile waiting for me above them.

Then a dainty, agile foot rubs along the side of my hip, and I…

I grab the lip of the tub with one hand on either side of Inés and lean forward. Until I hover above her breasts, above her sex, and she feels my presence, slowly opening her eyes to meet mine.

“This is really embarrassing,” she demurely says, her cheeks red with the heated water that reaches high enough that only the tip of my cock is left uncovered.

“It is,” I say, nodding just deep enough so as to not lose sight of emerald green eyes for even a single, precious moment.

“I… I’m not used to it. I haven’t had a boyfriend in years,” she tells me, eyes flickering away from mine and back.

“You mean you weren’t a virgin?” I ask.

She blinks at me, the color in her cheeks draining.

“What?” she says.

“A virgin?” I ask. “You know, if you are to join my clan through marriage…”

I let the words drift in the air between us as her face contorts in all those wonderfully erratic ways it usually did when I was too focused to be aware of, even if they still left an impression.

An enduring one.

“I… Is that important? Is that really, reallyimportant? And—wait, marriage?! I—I just—we’ve barely… Not that I’m against—well, I am against, but not strongly against, and, and—and you’re laughing you utter jerk!”

“You looked like you needed some levity,” I say, suppressing any audible signs of mirth.

“And you thought marriage and me not being a virgin were light topics?!”

“Wait you aren’t?”

“I—I mean… I am in my twenties, and, and—and you’re laughing again!”

“Well, maybe I needed some levity,” I argue in my defense.

“It isn’t funny! It makes me feel like… like you expected me to be this pure thing, and I’m not because I shared something with someone else, and now I am not… You know,” she says, finally looking away from me.

And I…

My right arm strains as I hold myself up solely with it as I, as tenderly as I can, clasp her chin with my left hand and turn emerald green back toward me.

I stare at her in silence, letting my smile slip away as I feel an echo of flames in my chest.

Her lips part.

Her breasts rise and fall. Deeper. Faster.

“You are pure. You are a purity I can only find in heated flames, in burning embers, in molten steel. You are purely you, and that’s more precious than anything else you could’ve given me. Anything else you’ll still give me.”

“Kohle…” she breathes out, my name on her lips making the echo in my chest rise higher and hotter, burning through the usual Kohle until the purer me remains.

“Inés, we’re about to share something no one else ever will,” I say.

And, with the same inevitable sense of events that led my hammer to craft her armor, I sink my body down into heated waters and find her open and ready for me.

We both hiss at the same time when her lower lips part around my head, but before it’s fully inside her, her thighs once more around me, her hooked heels on my back, spurring me on until I cede and do it.

Until her opening slides past the ridge of my glans, and she clenches around me, her hands on my cheeks holding me still as she bows forward to yet again take my lips, her tongue pushing in as my cock does the same.

I pause, unable to do anything other than feel her. Than letting her warmth seep into my body and my head, her tender tongue over mine like a fire poker coaxing flame out of ash-buried embers.

I close my eyes, and I don’t know how much of the muffled sound escaping our lips is Inés and how much is me as I strain to hold myself above her when all I want to do is fall.

Then the hands holding my cheeks caress me, rubbing down my beard before they ghost over my neck, wet with sweat rather than water, before they clasp behind my nape, and her lips part from mine.

“More,” she breathes out, forcing me to open my eyes just to watch her. Just to see her expression as she demands from me something I need to give her.

Other than her armor, I mean.

So, I stop holding her chin and wrap my arm around her waist before I slowly press in, digging farther inside her body as she gasps and writhes below me, her thighs moving along my sides as she slides down the tub until her chin touches the water’s surface and only the peaks of her breasts float up above it, still wet and glistening under the erratic flames to our side as she tilts her hips up to receive me, to let me fully sheathe myself inside of her warm, yielding yet firm body.

I pause once again, taking another moment just to… to savor it. Her. Her tightness. Her pulsing grip on me. Her hands moving up from my nape to bury deft fingers on my scalp.

Her beauty.

Emerald green eyes look at me full of wonder, and I, because of the heated water, feel a tingling warmth creep along my cheeks, hidden by my beard.

Hopefully.

And that’s… that’s enough not to break the spell, but to shift it in another direction. To have me pull back despite her mewled protest before going back in, slowly enough that the water between us ripples in lazy swirls rather than violently crest.

I meet her body again, my cock completely inside of her, and I can’t help but grind against her, to put enough strength in my push that she gasps before answering in kind, rubbing the walls of her sex around me in a corkscrewing motion that makes pulling out an even harder task.

“You are beautiful,” I say. Out loud. Maybe for the very first time.

Her lips spread into a silly, watery smile, and she pulls me forward with her hands on my hair until she can kiss the top of my head.

I briefly think about protesting the imminent risk of drowning, but…

But I let go of the rim of the tub, shifting my weight to my knees so I can hug her fully. So I can wrap both arms against her body and lift her up to kiss her breasts as jealous water takes too long to cascade down her shimmering curves.

I kneel on my bathtub, and the tall woman sits on top of me.

As it should be.

Her thighs move powerfully, taking advantage of our new position to rise and fall, to lower her hips increasingly faster as she pushes me against her breasts, and I nip at them with lip-wrapped teeth, her fingers fisting on my hair right before she guides me to a dark, perky nipple that I immediately swallow, playing with it, with the hardened flesh, much more adroitly than I did with her tongue when I was too stunned by her kiss to properly react as I should.

She moans, and that makes me thrill. Makes me tighten my hold on her, meet her descending hips with a rising thrust that sends water splattering around us and out of the tin tub.

“Kohle…” she whispers, the breath staggering out of her chest as I press her against me with as much strength as roars through my arms.

I thrust up, just to feel her clench, to feel that moment when she’s left unable to move, hovering above me before forcing herself to drive her hips back down and tighten her whole sex around me.

I do it again, my arm on her lower back lowering so I can grasp her ass. So I can lend my own strength to her movements. So I can make her fuck herself harder on my cock.

“Kohle!” she exclaims as I bottom out. As I feel my tip press against something unyielding and the water between us explodes away so that our wet skin can glide against one another unimpeded.

My hand between her shoulders rises up, and I grab her wet hair, the locks of dark red trapped between my fingers as I thrust again and again. As I force her to remain still as I drive in and out of her body, her back arched and her breasts thrust forward, the yielding flesh molded to my lips.

“Koh—Kohle!” she calls out yet again.

And… And I…

I just…

I fled my home, My clan. My country.

I left behind everything I ever knew except a handful of tools and years of training.

All for nothing. For a small, dilapidated forge in the middle of nowhere, near the border between three countries.

I resigned myself to mediocrity. To a long life of unsigned, functional, unremarkable works.

And then she walked into my life, and I became a master.

‘It’s not about becoming, Kohle. It’s about who you are. Who you’ve always been.’

She whimpers at my stillness, at how I hold her above me by her hair and buttocks. At my cock inside her, teasing her with all the pleasure I just gave her and what I am yet to give.

And… I can see it, Grandpa. I think I can finally see it.

But, then again, it was never about seeing, was it?

So I let go of her nipple, and her whimper turns mournful, stealing a brief smile from my lips.

And then, loudly, through my open mouth, I breathe in, a roar of wind coming into my lungs, making my chest press against her belly.

I let it out, just as loudly.

Like bellows working at a forge.

Maybe it’s my imagination. Maybe it’s magic doing what it does. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

But the embers in my forge flare just a tad brighter as the flame inside my chest roars, more and more air feeding it. Air that carries her scent, her taste.

Her.

“Wha—” she starts to ask.

“I love you,” I answer.

Powerful arms and thighs close around me, the thick muscle hard enough that it could bruise somebody who wasn’t me.

But I am me.

I am Kohle, the purer one. The coal turned into embers.

And today, I’m joining my fire.

So I move. Back and forth, up and down, against and away from her, like she did in her fight, both our bodies soon finding an irregular yet harmonious rhythm full of brief pauses that pretend to be peaceful before the both of us once again roar into motion, water splashing up and glittering with the dancing flames trapped in the fleeing droplets as only Inés and I matter, as I join my body to hers, my magic to hers.

As we become fire. A single fire.

She ends up pushing me back, the tub now almost empty, barely broad enough that my shoulders fit as her shins rest on my body, as she dancesabove me, moving faster and harder, her head thrown back as she screams toward my ceiling.

I reach down to grab her waist, and I help. I make her go even wilder as I force my eyes to remain open as the heat inside me now pools between my legs, and she asks for it.

“Give me! Give it! Me!”

I don’t know how she finds the words when I’m insane with the fever she brings me, when her body, her¸ once again chases all other thoughts away from me.

When I become hers. Hers and hers alone.

And so I can’t deny her.

My fingers clench around her waist, sinking into hard flesh yet again as I draw her down, and she shakes her head, sending wet hair whipping above me, scattering flying droplets that gleam as amber as the light rippling across her bouncing breasts.

And I let go.

The liquid heat shoots out, and she first moans and then screams, her hands leaving my chest to claw at her hair, her breasts rippling with the sudden movement right before I shoot another jet of it, of my seed inside her, of my fire in hers.

I pant, exhausted, drained as I have never been.

But she moans, clenches, shudders. And a third spurt flies out.

Then she falls.

On top of me, bowed over the legs bent on top of my body, her face by the side of my own as we both pant and gasp.

My hands tremble, all my strength spent after a night in the forge and a morning in Inés.

But I still manage to wrap my arms around her and hug her as hard as I can, even as my eyes dim and I sink into warm, wet, comfortable darkness.

***

“You heard me,” I tell Martha as I impatiently tap with two fingers the document on top of the guild’s counter. The stupid, inconsiderate thing that is not much lower than my own chest.

“It… This has been forsaken for years. Nobody even thinks this mission can be—”

“I do. I think it can be accomplished. And I’m paying out of pocket,” I say.

“Kohle…” the blonde woman seems lost for words, her eyes pleading with me to be reasonable.

And this is the woman who peeked on me having sex three days ago.

I guess that my raised eyebrow easily conveys just how baffling I find the irony of her appeals to common sense.

“Fine,” she grumbles. “If you can actually pay for a party to liberate a mine of—anthracite?”

“A kind of coal. The best kind,” I say, not elaborating on how slowly it burns, the heat easy to regulate on a forge that won’t need to be constantly replenished, how it barely smokes at all, and that’s a boon hard to argue with for indoor work.

How most blacksmithing clans would go to war for a whole mine of the wonderful fuel.

No, I most definitely don’t tell all of this to the worst gossip I’ve ever met and just keep staring her down or, well, up. But she gets the meaning, going by how she flushes in embarrassment at our prolonged silence.

“Coal. Of course it’s coal,” she says, pulling her finger along the collar of her blouse to, presumably, get rid of excess heat.

How curious. I didn’t think the guild was this hot.

Maybe I’m too used to my forge.

“If you had any other mines lying around, I may consider an alternative. You don’t. I checked,” I say, trying to get the conversation moving.

“You… You are impossible to argue with, you know that?” she says.

“Thank you,” I say, nodding my acceptance of her generous evaluation of my conversational skills.

“That wasn’t… Never mind. So, a full party would cost—”

“One person,” I say.

Martha blinks at me.

And then inconsiderately looks over my shoulder at the tall woman standing behind me, wrapped in a white cloak with flames embroidered along its bottom hem with thread of gold, bronze, and a spool of inexplicably crimson steel.

My second masterpiece. Except it’s still part of my first one.

Like the third, fourth, and fifth will be.

“This is crazy,” Martha says, either to me or Inés.

“I… I think…” Inés struggles to argue, likely squirming in that way she only does when the cloak hides her rubbing her thighs together.

“It’s—I can’t allow you to—”

“You can’t stop her, Martha. Nobody ever will,” I say, Inés gasping behind me for reasons entirely unclear.

“I won’t let her march alone into a mine turned into a demon’s nest generations ago! Kohle, this is just not—”

“She won’t be alone,” I say. “After all, somebody will need to take care of her equipment.”

Martha blinks down at me. Then at Inés presumably nodding in agreement.

Then at the document still firmly held beneath my finger.

And the blonde sighs.

“Even if… Even if I thought this wasn’t utter insanity—and it is, no matter how many goblins you slaughtered yesterday—the mission doesn’t have any allocated royal funds. If you really want to reopen the mine and claim it as your own—”

With my other hand, I slap down a second document on the countertop.

Martha takes a look at it, and her eyebrows fly up.

“Th—this… This is…” she says.

More or less.

So I point behind me with my thumb, straight at Inés left breast, on top of which, on her white cloak, a flamberge and an olive branch with burning leaves are embroidered with red steel thread.

Martha looks at the cloak, Inés likely blushes for some reason or another, and the blonde looks down at the second document.

The letter of credit with the Arvanitaki emblem.

The guild secretary groans in defeat, I smirk in victory, and Inés, knowing that we’re about to spend a few days alone trawling through a dark, abandoned mine, loudly swallows.

I don’t know why, really.

But the mine will make for a good dowry.

Not even my clan will argue about that.

***

Inés

I… I need to write a lot.

I need to answer Anna’s latest letter, the one that inexplicablyarrived yesterday morning at Kohle’s shop and effusively congratulated me, telling me how happy she is for me and how well her divination studies are going.

The last thing explains both her letter arriving before I could tell her about my new address and definitely before I told her absolutely anything that she could congratulate me about.

It also means that I am, more likely than not, going to have a talk with her college professor in the near future. One that will involve me telling him in exacting detail what is likely to happen to anyone who makes my Anna cry.

Then I should write to Mom and Dad. Tell them that… that I don’t know a lot of things. That I likely will never understand many others. But that I love them and that what they taught me has finally blossomed.

That I have.

I will definitely be writing to Louise, telling her about the ‘goddamn nutjob’ I’ve already met, even if he’s not technically an adventurer, despite him having accompanied me in all of my outings so far and that hammer of his having crushed a few more skulls than I think blacksmithing usually entails. And that’s accounting for Kohle’s temper and how frustrating he says that dealing with customers can get.

I’ll also… I’ll also thank her. For all the years that she took care of me. For memories that will never fade, even if I don’t know if I’ll ever rejoin the army in which she wants me to greet her as a fellow general.

For being there and helping me grow past who I was when I joined her command.

And for helping me leave.

I should also write to Jeanne and Laure, but that will take some maneuvering so that it looks like I haven’t come to a sudden epiphany regarding a couple of girls spending most of their nights in a shared bedroll.

I need to plot about how to exploit my newfound knowledge.

… Anna is likely to be involved in said plotting.

And then…

Then I need to write to my godmother.

To gush about the masterwork armor that she paid for, the one I’m wearing. My knight’s armor.

But also…

To, hopefully just a few days from now, tell her that I’m now a landed noble and that a coal mine is my first holding.

So I put aside thoughts of lengthy, likely embarrassing, and overly emotive letters aside, and I face the dark opening of a mine that was overrun by demons generations ago. That the kingdom gave up on.

That Kohle has decided we’ll conquer.

And that I have agreed to.

With barely a thought, my cloak spreads open, flaring around me in a light breeze that makes the flames running along the hem flare wildly, seemingly joining the dance of light and shadow over my burnished armor beneath as the white miniskirt mirroring the cloak’s design does much the same, both clinging to and dancing away from my hips.

Of course, before I can nobly stride forward to my adventure, the laconic dwarf standing by my side creeps a broad, short hand up the back of my thigh and possessively clutches my right ass cheek, the black mesh sticking to it like a second skin doing absolutely nothing to shield me from his touch.

I freeze in place as I’m forced to shudder at both the sensation and the reminder that we’re about to spend quite a bit of time away from anybody else.

And the other, not-so-subtle reminder that he’s yet to forge me my armor’s panties.