Page 82 of The Orc Warrioress and the Elf Lord

“You and your pipe.”

“Also, I’m going to go down to the nearby stream to wash this.” He held up his cock sheath.

“Maybe that was the problem,” she said, pulling the covers up. “I’ve never done it with one of them before.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I suppose I likely would know if I was diseased. I suppose I’m not.”

“Well, honestly, if you were so worried about that, I think you should have stopped me from putting my mouth there.”

He grimaced. “I’m likely not.”

She sighed. She wasn’t concerned, truly, though perhaps she was being foolish.

“It does prevent you from getting with child, of course, so—”

“All right, all right,” she said. “Never mind.” She pulled the covers up over her head. She lay there, feeling sulky and she didn’t know why. She might have dozed, but she was aware, at some point, of the sweet smell of the smoke of Iahir’s pipe. She did like the smell of the pipe, she had to say, even if she was not sure if she liked the idea of pulling smoke into one’s lungs, which did not seem to be a particularly intelligent thing to do. She pulled the covers back, and he was puffing away on the edge of the blanket. “Hello,” she said, feeling affectionate towards him.

“Ah, you’re awake, warrioress.”

“You’re smoking,” she said. “Any particularly brilliant thoughts?”

“Well,” he said, “I was thinking, when I was out rinsing out the sheath, that I may never have been very attuned to my other partners, and they might have been exactly the way you are when I was on them. Far away. Not always, I don’t think. There have been times when it’s quite personal, staring into each other’s eyes, breathing together, all of that.”

“Certainly,” she said, sitting up.

“Oh, it’s been that way for you?” he said.

She shrugged. “Not often.”

“I’m jealous,” he said to his pipe. But there was no accusation to it. He was only resigned.

“Don’t be,” she said. “This, with us, it’s different.”

“Except you said it was quite the same,” he said softly.

She hunched up her shoulders and hugged her knees to her chest. She gazed into the fire.

“I am sort of ashamed of myself,” he said. “It simply didn’t occur to me to care, I don’t think, which I can’t make sense of right now. I suppose I thought that if I was paying a woman, it didn’t really matter if I pleased her, because she was getting coin, really. But it was beyond that. I really never thought much about her at all. I really thought only of myself. I suppose I was entirely selfish. The whole thing was about me selfishly using her body to rut into. It was entirely about finding my pleasure using her flesh. And now I look at you, and to do that to you, it feels…”

Gathren shifted, because, despite herself, all this talk of being selfishly used as a body to rut into, about being a vessel only for his pleasure, it was making her sort of warm. “I wouldn’t mind, I suppose, in some way. The idea of that, of being only there for some man’s use, it makes me feel a bit aroused.”

He raised his eyebrows, bringing the pipe to his mouth. “I had not expected that from you, warrioress.”

“Had you not, my lord?”

“I rather thought you’d want to use me for your pleasure.”

“I think I would,” she said, looking at him, his careless lock of blond hair falling over his forehead, and she liked the look of him, and she liked the idea of using him. That warmed her, too. “I simply don’t know what to do with you. I don’t see what there is about you that brings me pleasure. I want it to be riding your cock, I suppose. I’ve always wanted it to be that. And it simply… it’s nice enough, but it’s not… it feels as if that’s more for your pleasure than mine, that is all.”

“Mmm,” he said. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

“It’s some kind of design flaw,” she said. “The gods did not know what they were doing when they put women together.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think maybe the gods were trying to protect women. Think of what would happen if women went after it the way men did. Think how often they’d get themselves with child and think of how often women die in childbirth and think of how difficult it is on their bodies and all of that.”

She hadn’t thought of that. “That’s almost worse. We have all the pain and all of the difficulty and none of the pleasure.”

He smoked. “Well, perhaps, I suppose, but… well, have you noticed how empty pleasure is?”