In Shadowed Silence: Chapter 5
Olus ducked his head to enter his house. The door frames were annoyingly low; but then,
all
doorframes were low to him. At nearly seven and a half feet tall, with shoulders broader than the back of a draft horse, doors were the enemy. He couldn't count the times he had concussed himself just trying to get out of a taproom to go home. He scanned the small room grumpily, getting more irritated by the month at his cramped quarters. He shut the night sounds of the docks of Loria out and barred the portal.
By all rights, one with his talents and sheer bodily power should not be made to live in such a hovel. His house was a single, L-shaped room, partitioned into a bedroom, kitchen and a tiny office space where he'd do his books, into which he could barely squeeze his bulk. It was called a 'breakfast nook'. There was a crude joke there, but since his mind plodded along too slowly, he couldn't think just what it was, so he just grinned maliciously at the notion. The Kitchen had the house's fireplace, with ill-used cooking implements, with the exception of the kettle, which was large enough to boil a halfling or dwarf, and had done just that service a time or two. A table just big enough for a plate, tankard and his meaty elbows separated the kitchen are from the bedroom and office. The furniture was heavily reinforced with iron, so much that the average man couldn't lift them with any amount of ease. There was, however, a sense of comfort in the space for him. If just the doors were larger, he could deal with such squalid quarters.
But, really, He should have long since had a posting at a Lord's keep, at the very least.
His bed was simply huge, taking up most of the available floor space at the foot of the L shape of the living space. It was patch-worked and lumpy, having been made from a pair of military tents and stuffed with the wool of four dozen mountain sheep. It sat upon a thick wooden frame, strung with springy steel straps. An invention of Olus's own design, they lent the mattress both comfort and support. If he slept upon it carefully, his feet didn't even hang off the end. Under the foot of the bed, he had dug a hole in the flagstone floor, excavating a pit in which to store... illicit items. The bones of former victims littered the bottom of the oubliette, along with its only living resident: a certain green-eyed slip of a girl.
His house was uncharacteristically clean, however, thanks to same girl. While she didn't serve his tastes exactly, she still had uses. She could clean the house and amuse him in certain ways, even without breaching the restrictions the Patrons put upon his treatment of her. Even so, she was as much a chain on his own ankle; he was trapped here, watching over her, barely able to attend to business. And the damned street rat, Aulric had seen her. Fuck! That boy could be trouble as well, as stupid and weak as he was. The girl had gone all moon-eyed at him, too; he was sure if he just let them be together for a few hours alone, she'd no longer be his problem. He'd as soon sell her, or sell rights to lay with her, but that was strictly forbidden.
Forbidden! Bah!
Xarek and his ilk had laid stifling limits on what uses to which he could put her. Why the hell saddle him with this shit detail, when mayhem was always at his fingertips? He was sure the problem lay in their plans for him and his forge. They paid him well, and no mistake, but forbade him to spoil her, in any fashion, so the pastimes he would choose with the girl were out of the question. The also forbade him, likewise, to let others spoil her. She was a virgin, then, but what use was that? Lastly, they forbade him to draw undue attention, lest his 'guest' be discovered.
That part was easy. Olus Grogan enjoyed a great deal of privacy, as the general populace and most of the guardsmen feared him. Crush a watchman's helmet with bare hands, and the message was clear. Crush the same guardsman's helmet
while the guard was wearing it
, and that was the kind of message the ogrish smith relished sending. His standing retainer on a couple of guard captains pretty much assured his pursuits would remain unhindered, and they would keep the others from asking too many questions. No one was going to be the wiser, except for the street rat having seen her, that is.
The part that wasn't easy was not spoiling her. The temptation was always there; to hear her scream and sob, to force his rod upon her unwilling flesh. To see the inches-thick, foot-long shaft force its way into her virgin cunt...
Olus shivered a little and chuckled at the visual. His balls tingled and his manhood stirred like a beast waking from restless sleep. Her horror and her pain would be delicious. And after...
But there were penalties. Plateaus of agony, of which he had tasted; sampled mountainous wracking tortures that caused even his cruel heart to quail. Xarek had shown him. Talarin had hinted at even loftier peaks of pain. Those two had unearthed positively fiendish secrets of dispensing harm that Olus could scarcely even imagine. Their magics made almost anything possible.
But there were no such limits in other arenas. His cock strained at his leather pants fiercely, even in the face of such fears of retribution; in fact, it was because of those fears his blood quickened. For the giant smith, blood equaled thought, overrode it, supplanted it.
Grogan did not think. He lifted the foot of the bed with one massive paw, and pulled the grate over the girl's prison open with the other. He propped the bed up on the open trapdoor. An eyebolt was set into the floor at the rim of the pit, the chain trailing down from the hardware into the darkness. He took up the links in his fist and rattled them to get his ward's attention.
A whimper came from the bottom. Olus began pulling up the chain. "Yer coming up, girl. Grab on tight," he was breathless, his growling voice almost painfully deep with his arousal. "Don't want to rip yer foot off, do we?"
Hand over hand he lifted the taut length of chain into the lamplight of his chamber. It swayed with the weight of its burden, not overmuch, but as though he drew in a catch at his favorite fishing spot on the deep, wide Jhalin river, where it wended its way out of Loria's docks district. His grey eyes could just pick out the shape of the girl dangling by her hands from the cold iron links. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but he could almost see her wide, canted emerald eyes shining, verdant in the darkness below.
As she reached the lip of the oubliette, Olus slid his left hand down the chain to just above where she gripped it. Then, with a grunt, he lifted her with just the one hand, holding her at arm's length to regard her with piggish, grey eyes. Dangling from the chain had positioned her arms above her head, which lifted her rough shift so that her hips and milky-white ass was visible. Leering at her, he turned her to see the fine downy hair of her mound, as deep, dark red as that upon her head.
She smelled of the pit, and Grogan inhaled deeply of the stench; it only served to heighten his arousal. Her suffering was to Olus as a fine wine was to one of the noble Patrons. They wouldn't be able to appreciate it as he did, the fools. He roughly took her chin in his right hand, more or less covering her mouth and nose as he did, the better to see her almost elfin eyes.
She stared at him. She actually stared at him. Grogan was always giddy, each time she declined to shut her eyes, as though refusing to deny what was about to happen to her. Indeed, her glare from her strange eyes was nearly defiant. She faced the horrors he visited upon her with open eyes, however sadly limited those horrors were. His small, grey orbs bored into her dazzlingly green, and he sneered derisively, but the expression was so loaded with cruel lust, that it couldn't have been mistaken for anything but.
The chain clinked and clattered as it swung, and dragged against the flagstones. The sounds of the city were muted outside the sealed shutters. There was a hiss of air against Olus' palm as she forced her breath past it, and it grew warm and cool in turn as she exhaled and inhaled. The smith's malice and lust shortened his breath, making it shallow and sharp.
"Stand." he commanded, and set the odd girl on her feet, among the loose, coiling chain looping over the floor.
The girl stared up at him silently, standing only just taller than waist-level to the ogrish man. He cracked his neck and knuckles, scowling down at her. He could feel his blood pumping through his veins, strong and hot. His monstrous cock pulsed almost painfully, trapped in the confines of his leather breeches.
She said nothing. No pleading. Not any more. She was perfect. Small, defenseless, and beaten... but still, defiant, proud. Not broken, but cracked, just the way Olus liked them.
"Take off the tunic," his voice grated. 'The tunic.' Not 'your.' To say that would give her possession; allow her an identity. Unacceptable. She was
his
