The Inn

Author's note: As usual, I'm including a summary to remind everyone of the previous chapters. But I strongly recommend new readers go back and read from the start instead of trying to pick things up here. It's complicated! Either way, though, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the story.

The series so far: Simon Kettridge, fantasy novelist, has inexplicably wound up in the world of his most popular books. But his presence has disrupted what would have been the plot of the fourth novel, almost certainly dooming all of the main heroes to a horrible death and leaving the Phaeland Empire vulnerable to invasion by the ravaging hordes of a vile arch-mage named Necromanata. Stuck in a simple country inn with no real resources, Simon's only hope of stopping wholesale slaughter is to use his inside information on the world's movers and shakers to influence events with a few carefully planned letters. But letters cost money, and with the encouragement of Leyna (the inn's delightful serving maid and part-time prostitute), Simon has made a stab at turning gigolo in order to cover his rent and postal fees. His first client was a peculiar nonhuman woman named Kizaah. And now an even more peculiar - and intimidating - potential client has appeared: a dwarf-orc half-breed who happens to be traveling in the perfect direction to carry a couple of Simon's most critical letters ...

* * *

When I returned to the common room from my adventures in the stable, Galufrand eyed me appraisingly.

"Not spending your money over-freely, are you lad?" he asked as I sat down. Apparently, I looked like a man fresh from a sexual encounter, and everyone at the Nestled Goose knew how Leyna earned her extra coins. The old sage didn't come across as judgmental, though - more the picture of cautionary avuncular wisdom. His aged brown eyes glanced after the serving girl as she went back toward the kitchen in her form-flattering, sunny yellow dress. Then he looked at me and went on, "It's some days on still before I'll have more scribe-work to pay you for, you know."

If I hadn't already been flush from the incredible blow-job Leyna had just given me, Galufrand's words would probably have turned me red. But as it was, I simply let out a breath and said, "I'll do my best to stretch what I've earned out until then."

"Well. Just as you say."

We talked a little about the orf woman who'd come in earlier. Galufrand had an insatiable gossiping streak on top of an academic's tendency to inject his store of knowledge into conversation wherever possible. So I had to sit through a mix of hypotheses about what the woman might be up to and lectures on where orfs came from, how they tended to behave, and how a dwarf-orc cross-breed could end up with the best traits of both races, the worst, or some unpredictable blend in the middle.

I repeatedly bit my tongue to avoid saying,

Galufrand, look - I know all this. I'm the one who made it up in the first place.

Instead, I kept listening in case he might reveal some detail I'd never gotten around to writing into a book or making notes on. Leyna came by with a plate of mushrooms and potatoes for me. I thanked her and smiled, and she smiled back, a hint of pink in her pretty cheeks the only sign that she'd blown me like a very talented professional just a few minutes ago in the stables.

"It's more often than not that an orf's father's the orc and mother's the dwarf," my scholar friend explained as the serving girl set a mug tea down to go with my meal. "Dwarves are ... short and stout, in more ways than one, you know."

"More ways ...?"

Leyna cleared her throat meaningfully before Galufrand could go on. I looked up to find her wearing a frank expression. "What he's saying is, if you're not a lady dwarf, having a time with a dwarf fellow is a right proper stretch. In fact, more than proper - outside my pay schedule by quite a good several inches."

Well,

that's

definitely something I never spelled out in the books. Maybe it means I'm safe from having this orf take the same kind of interest in me that Kizaah did.

"Exactly," Galufrand picked up, clearly not wanting to be out-done in orfish trivia. "A male of the ganglier species like us and the orcs is a bit long and thin for a dwarf woman, but I gather the deed is more do-able than the reverse process of fitting a firkin into a champagne flute."

Leyna giggled and headed off to another table with a wave. When my eyes turned from her back to Galufrand, he'd taken on a measured expression.

"She's a comely one, right?" The tone of his voice left me uncertain what he might be getting at.

"Yes," I agreed, fighting the temptation to leap into a staunch defense of the blonde girl. "But she's got more to her than just her looks."

"I wondered if you might be thinking as much. You heard what she said about her pay schedule, I assume? You know what she does besides tending tables and cleaning rooms?"

I picked up my fork and speared a hunk of potato. "I do. What of it?"

Leaning back in his chair, the sage steepled his fingers and watched me chew for a bit. Then he said, "You're a man of learning, Simon. It's clear to anyone with ears, even if it didn't show in your scribing abilities or in the fact I've seen you make notes in a script I don't even recognize - something from far beyond the Empire."

"What's that got to do with Leyna?"

Is he going to tell me she's beneath me?

I wondered. Then, aghast, my mind took the next step and thought,

Is he going to tell me he's had

her

beneath

him

? Ack.

But neither of those turned out to be the case. Galufrand sat forward, the fingers of both hands now interlaced on the table before him.

"She's better than what she's about here, Simon. I think you can see that. I don't mean I think ill of her for it, just that she belongs somewhere else, doing something larger. And I don't know what it is you're up to with these letters of yours, but they're far-flung, my friend. It's in your voice and your eyes that you're hard at something very large indeed with them. Am I right?"

I scowled, my fork and food largely forgotten. I didn't realize I'd given so much away. "Even if you are," I said cautiously, "it still leaves me the same question. What's it got to do with Leyna?"

He looked down at his folded hands on the table. "I'm an old fellow who tries to keep himself occupied with books and papers," he said. "But I've been here a few weeks now, and she's the sort that makes you wish you weren't quite so old, and had better things to occupy you than papers. Even ten years younger, I'd probably be throwing myself at her and proving right everyone who's ever called me a fool." Now he looked up, furzy eyebrows pushed intently together. "My point is, she's a moth to the flame of whatever you've got going on in those letters, and I don't care to see her pulled into the fire and then left singed here in Piperville when you're done with the place and have moved on."

"Pff," I said, jabbing my fork into a mushroom to break away from his gaze. "I'll be lucky if moving on doesn't mean getting thrown out in the gutter a week from now because my money's all gone."

He shook his head. "I very much doubt that. Even if I'm wrong about your prospects, she's taken a shine to you, and I don't think she'd let you get tossed on your ear. I just want you to think about what it means if you connect with her - if you make her a part of whatever grand schemes you're aspiring to. When these letters carry you away to somewhere greater, I just want you to remember her, and do what you can to help her be what

she

can."

The feeling with which he said that last touched something in me, and I set my utensil down, mushroom uneaten.

"You don't really think I could forget someone like her, do you?"

A bit of the tension eased from his face. Picking up his mug, he raised it in a subtle toast, sipped at it, then nodded. "You're a good sort, Mister Kettridge. Keep that front and center, and this whole talk will amount to an old man worrying over nothing."

"Not over nothing," I said. "Trust me, I can use all the encouraging advice anyone's handing out."

"Good!" he said, rising with a grin. He drained his mug, set it down, and patted me on the shoulder. "My parting advice for now, then, is, 'Don't get an orf mad or pull one out on the wrong side of bed!'"

* * *

Shortly after dusk, I found myself outside Kurga Alderhaft's room, with those parting words of Galufrand's stuck in my head. The orf had left instructions with Leyna to bring her breakfast at sundown, and with the dinner crowd keeping my young blonde friend busy, she suggested I do the honors of rousting the inn's latest guest.

So there I stood with a serving tray balanced on one hand and a nervous sweat cooling the palm of the other.

Buck up, Simon,

I told myself.

Would Leyna be shaking in her shoes if she were the one standing here?

The answer was undoubtedly 'no' - but then, Leyna had spoken to orfs before, and dealt with gatorcats and who knows how many other Phaelandian oddities that I'd only ever seen in my mind's eye. And if Leyna were here, she wouldn't be bringing any odd requests for the hulgriff-rider to carry a letter hundreds of miles or asking what the orf might want in exchange. Nor would she have downed a capful of purity oil just in case that exchange shifted into sexual territory.

I, on the other hand ...

Jesus, this world is in trouble if

I'm

standing in for Juliette Ravendark trying to save it!

That settled me enough for a deep breath and then a knock on the door. I went for assertive-but-not-obnoxious, leaving my knuckles hovering for a bit after the third rap, in case more-assertive/borderline-obnoxious turned out to be necessary to wake an orf.

It did not - instead, a gruff, sleep-rasped voice said something in a language I didn't understand, then paused, then came out with, "Uhr. Awake. Just put the food on the floor by the door and I'll get it when I've done pissing."

Great. How do I get around that?

"Um ... it's no problem for me to bring it back in a few minutes ... and the hall's a bit narrow to just leave it where someone might kick it or trip on it if they're not paying attention."

I heard muttering, the creak of a bed, footsteps ... a slight ceramic

clink

... then the distinctive sound of urine streaming into a container.

"Where's the girl?" Kurga asked through the door and over the sound of her own pee. "Thought she'd be bringing things up."

"Well," I said, trying to sound casual, "it's busy downstairs, and ..."

The chamber-pot clinked again, followed by more footsteps and then the bolt of the door being thrown. With a creak, she drew it inward and looked up and out at me. In the dim light of the upstairs hallway, her yellow eyes had great, round pupils instead of slits. I could see in them right away that she recognized me.

"Oh, the looky-loo from last morning."

Fuck. This is off to a terrific start.

"Please, ma'am, I'm honestly very sorry about that -"

She gave a snorting laugh, fierce in sound but accompanied by a look of genuine humor. "'Ma'am?' You're a polite little pup, aren't you? Come in then and put that down."

The door opened wide for me, and I carried the tray in past her. I couldn't help noticing a number of things at once: first, that the deep hollows of her cheeks and scowling lines in her forehead seemed to have disappeared with sleep; second, that she now wore only a simple, thin cotton shift; third, that her bare aquamarine shoulders looked softer and rounder than I would have expected; and fourth, that her nightshirt left virtually nothing to be imagined about her breasts, full and round with enormous nipples and areolas plainly visible through the fabric.

This time, though, I managed to avoid staring, and I think I made it to the desk without ever letting my eyes dip below collar-level on her. Despite that overly long nose and the pair of upcurving tusks, she struck me as less menacing now than she had earlier. She had straight dark hair, long on the top, short on one side, shaved all the way up to the temple on the other. As I set the tray down, she raked her forelocks to the right, emphasizing the bare skin over her small, tapered left ear.

"This isn't your thing," she said, a challenge more than a question. But she had curiosity in her eyes as she crossed her arms and remained standing between me and the door. "You're not here just because the girl's busy."

"No," I admitted. "I'm not. Leyna told me you're headed for the undertowns, and I was hoping I could ask a favor of you."

"Huh. Go on."

I felt a bit stupid being intimidated by someone two heads shorter than me, tusks or no tusks. So I tried to swallow both my embarrassment and my nerves and just laid out my request. "I've got a couple of letters I need delivered, one to Stonekite and the other to Harnville. But really, all you'd need to do is hand them off to the local mails with a few pence, anywhere in the undertowns. I just need them to arrive sooner than the two months the imperial post will take to get them there."

"I'm headed to Stonekite. What are you offering?"

Here we go ...

"Well, ten pence each is about the most I can afford," I said, thinking I might compromise up to fifteen if she haggled.

But the orf merely snorted instead. "So half a shilling for me to keep track of these things over the next three weeks. I could fart more money than that out my arse."

"Of course," I said. "Um, I also do scribing work, if you've anything you need copied, or something you'd like to dictate and have written out ..."

"I have my own pen and know my letters. What else?"

My brain kept scrambling for any finish line but the gigolo one. "I'm a writer ... I could write you out a story, or a poem."

"Poems! Hah."

All out of cards,

I thought.

Nothing for it but to play my last one and hope she picks it up. Or that she doesn't?

Clearing my throat, I tugged around in my brain how to put it.

But Kurga interrupted before I figured it out.

"How are your hands?" she asked, glancing down at them. "Strong?"

I looked at them too. "I don't know. Moderately, I suppose?"

"My back's killing me from a night and a morning in the saddle and this sack of fluff they call a bed. If you can get the knots worked out, I'll think about taking your twenty pennies."

For once, I found myself glad that I'd been slow to come up with the right words. "A back rub? Sure, of course. I had a girlfriend who said I was pretty good at -"

"Don't need to hear about your girlfriend," she gruffed, turning and flopping face-down on the bed. A thumb hooked itself momentarily across one shoulder. "Get to it."

I moved over and sat on the edge of the bed beside her. In the dim light, her curves made hills beneath the thin cotton of her night-dress (day-dress?), taut contours of muscle and flesh broader than a human woman's back and waist and behind, yet not flabby or fat. Where the pale fabric hugged her shape, I could see that the width of it arose from natural proportions - she had a very fit physique with no ill-placed bulges. And she clearly wore no undergarments whatsoever.

"Getting to it?" she asked.

"Sure, definitely. Where should I start?"

"Shoulders." She hunched them tight together, a movement that also clenched the muscles along her spine and in her ass. My eyes lingered on the latter as I reached up for the trapezius muscles just above her shoulder blades.

Damn, that's actually a really nice ass if you like them wide.

I told myself to shut up and dug my thumbs into the dense flesh to either side of her upper back.

"Rrrhh,

there

." The rumble in her voice vibrated through my palms where I had them against her skin and the cloth of her shift. I became intimately aware that I had my hands on a woman's mostly bare shoulders - broad, yes, and strong, but soft at the same time. The blue-green skin felt lush beneath my fingers, the fabric gliding delicately as I pressed through to work the knotted sinews beneath. "Yes. More of that."

As I kept at it, thumbs circling with the strength of my forearms and some of my weight behind them, the sound of her breathing and a hint of scent came to me. It had a faint tang of sweat, but smelled more of corn chips than anything else.

Probably best not to mention that to her.

"Uhhhh," she said when I massaged my way out from the trapezius muscles to her deltoids. "If you have an hour of this in you, I won't need the twenty pence to carry those letters ..."

"I'll see what I can do." Although I knew from experience that my hands would be worn out in an hour, the price struck me as cheap, and I settled into a kneading rhythm with a real sense of relief.

After a few minutes on her deltoids, I moved to the central back below her scapulas, switching out between fingertips, knuckles, and palms to keep from exhausting any one part of my hands. Kurga groaned and loosened up beneath my hands. Slowly, I made my way farther and farther down until I reached the point where her upper glutes attached to the pelvis.

Jesus, she feels really good,

I thought.

If I was a dwarf, I'd be ripping this dress off to fuck her.

To get away from that kind of thinking, I started inching back up her spine - only to have her wiggle that round ass and complain: "No - keep going. Lower. My bum and thighs are like the windings on a catapult."

"Right," I said, turning so that I faced her feet. "No problem."

Problem.

The cotton hem of Kurga's shift hit her around mid-thigh, revealing the sleek blue-green flesh of her legs from there down. Even as proportionately thick as they were, those legs curved in and out in all the right ways, dimpling just as they should have behind the knees, rounding at the calves, narrowing to the ankles. And because they were short, mid-thigh was several inches closer to her crotch than would have been the case on a woman of the make I was used to. Which meant that as soon as I got my thumbs into the flesh at either side of her sacrum and my fingertips pressing into the ripe domes of her butt cheeks, that hem rode up within a hair's breadth of revealing not just her legs but what she had between them. With each roll of my wrist or clutch of my fingers into her ass muscles, that skirt went up and down and up and down until I could barely think.

Kizaah's pink-and-red patterned skin and exotic genitalia had apparently turned some switch on in my brain. Or maybe the welf-woman's open and unbridled eroticism had done it. Either way, having my hands so close to Kurga's orf cunt, so full of her firm and smooth ass, and so in control of the thin film of fabric covering her - well, the temptation to just hike the night-dress up and have a look all but overwhelmed me.

Keep it together, Simon. You've got a job to do, and one wrong grope could get you an orf-strong beating - not to mention blowing the chance for those letters to be delivered and maybe blowing the chance to keep Necromanata from slaughtering everyone on the continent.

Somehow I talked myself into keeping my hands steady and the pressure and rhythm of my massaging consistent. But I didn't nearly talk myself out of an immense boner that got harder and harder with every second I kept working her ass.

"Lower. Rrgh ... my thighs ..."

Oh, god.

I steeled myself and let my hands press their way down the lower slopes of her curvaceous bottom to the juncture between ass and leg, using as much friction as I could to drag the cloth of her skirt along with my palms. Once there, I gouged my thumbs steadily and deeply into the sinews and tendons of that transition, bringing low sounds of approval from Kurga's throat. I could feel the power of her leg muscles, and also the tension and stress within them slowly surrendering to my ministrations.