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Felix came here for mercenaries. Jeralt’s company had a reputation for routing brigands. That was all there was to it. The fact that Leonie—a former classmate—lead that company now was coincidental. So how was it that he ended up in this dingy room above the tavern where he met the captain?
He had to ask. He had to search for the answer. Admitting the longing he’d felt for the freely given smiles she wore when speaking of life on the road would be too raw. Admitting the tankard they’d shared was no mere contractual obligation—“We’ll drink on the terms. It’s tradition,” she’d said—made him feel exposed. That the hand she’d place on his as she suggested first a duel and then a “second round” had lit a fire; that just burned.
He had to ask. There had to be some other reason why, even if he couldn’t find it yet.
The tavern was rank. They were rank. Their clothes had soaked up all the smoke, barley, and dust that floated in the air. That didn’t matter. Felix couldn’t afford the time it took to care. Not when he was racing a nimble fingered archer to the ties of her jacket.
Leonie’s fingers caught around his, twisting to prevent either from loosening the leather strands.
“A second,” Leonie groaned against his lips.
Her teeth nipped at him when he didn’t relent. Felix flinched away, one hand raising to the mark of the bite on his mouth, the other laying flat over the wall.
He glared.
“I need a second,” she said, shrugging out of the rust coloured garb in a series of jagged tugs. She threw it to the ground. “Don’t sulk.”
Felix thought he’d glared. Apparently, he’d sulked.
His cheeks burned red. His tongue hit against his teeth, air hissing from his mouth in a begrudging sound.
Leonie paid no mind, taking his hand and moving his palms over the cloth bindings around her chest. His fingers sank easily between the folds, pulling the fabric loose from around her until tan breast and dusky nipples were exposed to the rented room’s drafty air.
“You can touch me,” she told him, as his hands hovered just above skin. “If I can—”
“Yes,” he cut her off. If he sounded needy, that was a problem he could deal with later—with denial and a huff, no doubt. “Do whatever you want.”
His head bowed, lips closing around the peak of her breast. Her nipple felt soft on his tongue, a sensation that encouraged a flick of it, and a moan from Leonie.
While he pressed her to the wall—mouth exploring upwards now, towards lean, muscled shoulders, fingers downwards between naval and breeches—Leonie took on a different focus. Where he expected she might start to free him from his buckled clothes, she reached out with gentle hands to caress his neck. Her fingers paddled up, sending shivers down his spine, and pulled at the twine that tied back his hair.
“Ha,” she smiled as her fingers ran through the sleek locks. “It’s thicker than I imagined.”
“You—” He decided against his own words, sucking on her neck as her fingers wound tight in his hair.
It was better not to ask what she’d imagined, when she’d imagined it. That was outside this room, where brigands, contracts, and a moving world existed.
It didn’t take long between kissing on her bare skin, fingers teasing between legs, and grinding clothed middles up against a wall for their blood to be stoked. Leonie pushed Felix back. He followed the momentum of the motion as easily as if they were sparring: foot back, anchor, grab her by the arm, and swing. They tumbled to the bed, Felix rolling until he was atop her, with an ease others may have called grace.
“You want this?” He rasped the question.
“I do,” she said.
Leonie turned a new shade of red, legs kicking out of her pants. Felix helped her wriggle free, discarding her smallclothes with the rest.
She reached out greedily for the ties on his trousers. Felix fumbled, bewildered at what she went straight for when she lay bare and he was fully dressed above her. A moment’s thought of her own vulnerability, countered by the unwavering look her darkening copper brown eyes set on him, told him all he needed to know. He swatted away her hands, undoing the ties himself, and adjusting between her legs.
Sinking in was all heat: around his cock, from her breath in his ear, his skin confined beneath traveling clothes. Felix took a moment to adjust. But it was not long before the bed frame creaked and the room filled with the rhythmic racket of breath, skin, and buckles.
Lips met for molten kisses, as though trying to sear the other’s touch into them, never to be forgotten. Fervour built. Breath became moans and yelps in their passions. Then, as they reached out higher, and higher, Felix pulled away.
“Wha—“ Leonie started, but Felix ducked his head to break her questions with a kiss.
“Just a second,” the flush over his own body only brightened at the teasing he did.
His hand tore at leather straps and broke more than a few buttons and buckles tearing clothes from his skin. Leonie’s mouth fell open but no words came out.
“Don’t sulk,” he managed through a cracking voice.
Leonie’s face split in an infectious grin at that. Felix’s lip turned up in the smallest of smiles. As he leaned back into her, that smile was smothered by a kiss—slower, sweeter than the first.
The hours passed, teetering from sultry paces—mouths and fingers lingering between legs, hips rocking lazily—to frenzied chases up towards a mutual apex. When all went quiet, the blood settling from it’s thrumming insistence in their veins, they stayed locked.
If they had been rank before they were pure messes now, a bundle of sweaty limbs all tied up in sheets and panting.
Leonie’s head lay on the pillow beside his, brass waves all tangled up. He reached out to comb fingers through when a thought came to his head. He was there for mercenaries, wasn’t he? All that led him here was coincidental, right?
He gulped around the memory of longing, the desire, the indulgent fire, all the draws that lead him here, that he’d not admit to. They left him raw, exposed, and burnt beside her in the bed.
Slowly, he pulled his hand back. His muscles locked, about to stand, to clear his throat, ask about other business and forget about all this. But a hand reached out: not grasping, not holding, not even touching. Leonie’s hand hovered over his thick, sprawling locks, plastered in sweat down his face and neck.
“You can touch me,” she reassured him. “Can I...?”
Her voice trailed off, no interruption coming. Felix took her palm in his hand and brought it down to a strand of hair laying against his cheek.
It wasn’t such a bad thing, was it? To be raw, to be exposed, to burn.