Aerhril’s eyes widened.
“Well, don’t tell anyone,” said Flaihir. “My father did a great deal of work to conceal that fact, and the man who did the ruining was dueled to death. After he died, I was devastated. I did not think I would ever wish to marry anyone. I assumed a life like this was all I could have. But my father had covered it up, and if I had been less eager to move on, to have certainty about the future, if I had waited a year or two, I think my father would not have worried about the idea of it, would not have insisted I be punished for my dalliance.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Aerhril. “That all sounds very awful.”
Flaihir considered. “At the time it was. It was a very long time ago now, though. I have become used to this life instead, and I rather like it. I have more freedom than I ever would have as a wife.”
“Did you use these skills to attract this man?”
“All the women in my family are schooled in these skills. Yes, we all use the arts to secure a husband,” she said. “But I have to say, if I had not been so good at entangling him, perhaps he would not have been so intent on ruining me.Perhaps he would not have felt so hopeless and out of control that he agreed to duel. Such things can make a man desperate for you, you see.”
Did Aerhril want a man desperate for her? Shamefully, she thought she did. But she did not want a man to get killed for his trouble, she did not think. He’d be no good to her otherwise.
THAT NIGHT, SHElay awake thinking about Dathor, thinking about what it was that he was good at that she could also have need of. She thought of his strength and his skills doing all of the chores at the keep. But she did not think this was the sort of thing that she would use if she were attempting to use this strategy against Dathor.
Wait. Against?
She wasn’t using this against anyone. She would be using it on Dathor, she supposed, but she wasn’tagainsthim.
What was he good at doing that he also enjoyed doing? She wondered, and she couldn’t think of anything.
It had been over a year since they had run away together, a year during which they had seen very little of each other. She sat out in the sun sometimes, and then she would see him doing his chores, and she might have watched him overly carefully, and he might have looked up and seen her watching him, but this was really all that passed for communication between them these days.
She thought about him too much and watched him too much and still spent time at night with her fingers between her own thighs thinking about him. Sometimes, she tried pressing her fingers inside herself, but it was hard to do from the place where she could reach and it didn’t feel like much of anything. But she liked to imagine his big, thick orc cock prodding its way into her, liked to imagine that a lot. She liked to imagine running her hands all over his bare chest, over the scars on his back, over the muscles on hisarms.
She couldn’t go to him. The door to the stables was blocked at night, and she was busy during the day with Flaihir.
She did not know why she ultimately thought of him as the man she wanted to make desperate for her. Maybe because he used to be desperate for her, and now he was not.
But she could not think of any way to manipulate him. She realized she didn’t know him, didn’t know the sorts of things that gave him pleasure or the things he looked forward to. She knew only his struggles, his hurts, his pains.
But as she lay on the bed, she thought through everything that had happened between them.
If Flaihir was correct, then he would have wanted to be necessary to her, and what was it he’d said when he found out that her family could not send her a train ticket?Perhaps I can be useful to you in some way.
But then he had tried to be useful to her and it had turned out that he had not been that useful. He had not been able to plan out the trip or guarantee they would have somewhere to go. He had not protected them from having their things stolen. He had not been able to stop her from breaking her ankle.
Was that what had beaten him? Not them, but his own feelings for himself?
Flaihir said that a man had to feel as if he earned her, and she realized that Dathor had decided he could not earn her, and perhaps he couldn’t. What would he be able to do in order to…?
And then, she had her answer.
She knew exactly what to do to get him to be desperate for her.
DATHOR WAS SITTINGon the ground, gritting his teeth ashe tried to remove the broken wheel from the carriage, when she walked by and dropped a little piece of paper in his lap. He was annoyed with her for doing that, because that was dangerous and they could be discovered and this was all still a game for her.
She didn’t know the risks for him.
Even as he thought that, he knew it wasn’t exactly true. She was Celedin’s betrothed, after all, and if she were found with him, it could be very dire for her as well. Maybe he wasn’t being fair to her.
He looked at the letter, and it said that he should find a way to climb out of his window and meet her that night at midnight in the barn loft, where they used to meet as children.
Climb out of his window? As if it were so easy.
On the other hand, he was thinking about seven different ways he could do it. There was a rope that he could secure and he could probably use that to shimmy down, though climbing back up would be difficult, but he could also probably leave a ladder up against the stable if he needed to do so, just for one night. He could not do that regularly, but if he had to do it, he could. He could also just stretch out fixing the wagon wheel here and claim to be working on it late and he’d never have to climb out the window.
He settled on the last, but he felt better knowing that he had options, ways he could get free if he wanted. He realized he could have thought of these things all along, but he hadn’t. He’d been subdued and tired and beaten lately. Something about her being so assured he could meet her if he wished had woken him up in a certain way. He liked it.
