A quickie more reluctant than NC x
_______________________________________
When you realise your own true significance to others, what comes next is the measure of your true worth. A few false starts are only human, take my late husband for example. He was happy playing God to me for a time, but then we had three cold wet summers one after the other. As soon as he found he could no longer provide a living for me his battered ego easily took to drink. And he was a mean drunk. Worthless it turned out.
It wasn't long after he died my own pride took a beating. To spare me and my surviving children from destitution the bergmeister and his men forgave my husband's debts. My home, a smallholding just beyond Vienna's city limits had always been my own before, but now it became a place of rest and recuperation for my self styled saviours. Most brought meat, grain, trinkets to show their affection and support. The Bergmeister himself occasionally sought relief by my hand or mouth, relief he had surely earned with his patronage. Not Enzo.
This old flame of mine had never known my husband, having left to make his fortune elsewhere years ago. I had rejected his suite before then, the smart choice it appeared, for he was a bitter man, determined to show me he could own me any time he chose, and he chose to visit every couple of weeks.
My own worth? I loved it in my twisted way. I loved being his golgotha. He had a tall black gelding as part of his duty as a gendarmes. He'd berth his horse in my yard on his way home to his wife, I always insisted on seeing them both right in the morning when he paid for his livery.
Wordless contempt on his rugged face, he'd press his coin into my hand, three or four times the cost of feeding that beloved animal of his. I learned to open my gown and lift my skirts a long time before Enzo came back, but with him it always made me tremble. He never touched my tits, but they had to be out for him. He never touched my cunt, but it was always soaking wet for him. The first time he took my arse, only a thick gobbet of his spit eased the way and I bled for days.
It was my tears he wanted. It was my tears that paid for the roof over my head, tears for what might have been. His own wife was a dainty timid thing he'd picked up out east, who never showed me anything but respect.
So I had to be the whore for Enzo in private, and oil myself well before presenting my tithe. He'd have me in the stall, bent over the manger, and oiled or not I would weep for the indignity of it. I would beg him to spend quickly and he often obliged, but every now and then he took his time. He was above average in length and girth, a fit man with significant stamina.
Sometime in early July he came as usual, and cast his eye over my daughter. A part of me that had slept deeply over the last hard years woke. I shot him the kind of look that gets a whore slapped.
So I understood that my tribute the next morning would not be quick or easy.
I headed down just before first light, told the stable boy to keep look out as usual. I wore my finery as it were, not the widow's garb some might expect. He was already there with his horse tacked up to go. His eyes were not full of the rage I'd expected, the rage I'd been prepared to answer. That my daughter was meant for a higher path, that my daughter was not for sale, these things he already knew.
"Were you going to leave without... without saying goodbye?" Without paying. He was going to leave without paying. But it was never about the coin.
"Strip." He said coldly. "Since you're here."
I baulked at that for a second. If someone caught me naked in there... but only for a second. Early on a Sunday morning that was unlikely. I was more afraid of his displeasure.
"Yes my lord." I humbly shed my garments, draping them over the half door. A body in the cold of dawn. For the first time since our youth he reached out to touch my breast. Less firm than it had been, for time takes its toll, but fuller in a way thanks to him and his coin. Not the half starved girl he fell in love with.
He worried the teat, rolling it between his rough fingers until it softened despite the cold.
