"What Was Mine" 7
The water wasn’t exactly hot, but it wasn’t cold. Either way, it felt good enough on my filthy body, and the harsh brown soap was doing its job. The bathroom was as cramped as any other room in this facility, and the tin wash-tub didn’t quite hold my gangly form, but it was a bath, and it was good. I soaked, scrubbing my skin, which was finally healed enough to get a proper wash, and thought back over the information I’d learned today. I was angry, right pissed off actually, but I wasn’t sure who I was more mad at: the people who had paid to put me here, or that fucker Peyd, who’d carried out their wishes.
I decided on Peyd, for now, since he was the man standing between me and freedom, the man I needed to defeat or kill (I wasn’t clear on that point) to get my kit out of storage and put this place at my back, and anger was useful in a fight, especially in a sword-fight. The sabre was not my weapon of choice, and if I wanted to get the better of a man who’d probably been born with a military blade in his hand, I was going to need some raw ferocity.There was a quiet knock on the door, the sort made by a slender woman’s hand. “Yeah?” I growled.The door swung open, and a girl entered, looking shyly in my direction, carrying a platter with an earthen mug and a bowl of steaming soup. She wasn’t the cutest girl I’d ever seen, but she had a certain kind of frontier handsomeness, a pert bosom and thick legs that looked like they could take a lot of punishment. More to the point, she was old enough. “Thought you might like some lunch,” she said with a light smile, and the voice was familiar.A life without risks is a life unlived, a fellow once said, before his brain ate a round from my Break-Smythe. “Did you like what you saw?” I asked her, in the harsh almost-whisper that was my voice these days. Her back was to me as she set the food tray on a table, but I saw her stiffen up nervously. My eyes lingered on her ample ass, and the way it filled out her drab green dress. Yeah, she’d do fine to break me in. “Turn around,” I said, stern but kind. She slowly revolved to face me, and I saw that she was blushing. “You want a better look?” She didn’t respond, but her eyes widened and there was hungry curiosity there.I stood, right there in the tin washtub. I flatter myself that I’m a sight to look at, especially for a young country girl like this, surrounded my hard military men. Somebody’d once said I was the prettiest man he’d ever seen kill. I didn’t know if that was true, or if that gent had just seen a lot of dead-ugly sons-of-bitches, but from that moment on I’d paid special attention to the way that women looked at me, and the way they looked at me was exactly the way that this girl was now.Her eyes looked down at all the important parts. Her breasts were heaving hard, with a slight shudder. “What’s your name?” I asked, splashing out of the tub.“S-Suelanne,” she said.“Suelanne, I’m not gonna hurt you…that’s not the way I do. But if you want to get to know me, all you have to do is lock the door.” I paused and swallowed. All this talking hurt like hell. “If not…just leave, and no harm. You understand?”I looked at all the perfect parts of her where the dress tugged and swelled just right. I could feel myself getting stiff just from the looking, and she could see it, too.She nodded once to herself, then quickly crossed and locked the door. She turned around, looked at me with those wide, hungry eyes again, and started unbuttoning the front of her dress.If you can fuck, you can fight, a guy said once, as I was rolling off of his wife. I pushed Suelanne hands-first against the table with my lunch on it and pulled her dress up, her britches down. She gasped with something like relief.The soup spilled.I could fight.