The Inn

Author's note: As usual, I'm including a summary to remind everyone of the previous chapters. But for new readers, it's probably much better to go back and read from the start. By this point, things have gotten really 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, where it's up to him to fend off worldwide doom with the only tools at his disposal: a pen and the authorial knowledge in his brain. To pay for expensive letters to high and mighty folk far across the empire, Simon first tries his hand working as a scribe. Then Leyna, the buxom serving maid and courtesan at the inn where he's staying, gets him to take a shot at sex work, which turns out to be far more lucrative. After an afternoon pleasuring a dwarf-orc half-breed named Kurga, Simon tells the tale of his latest adventure to his prostitute mentor ...

(Disclaimer: All characters are 18 years of age or older.)

"Your

whole

fist?" Leyna's blue eyes went wide. Then she balled her hand up in front of her face and let her gaze follow it downward until it hovered in front of her skirt right in the vicinity of her groin. After just a second, she shook the fist loose and returned both hands to the bath pump. "My goodness!"

"And it wasn't even that much of a squeeze," I said, finishing off the buttons of my shirt and getting my belt buckle undone.

The bath-chamber of the Nestled Goose felt intimate by the light of the oil lamp Leyna had brought in with us. Its simple furnishings – a towel cabinet, a basket of bathing additives, and the huge galvanized tub – hadn't made that much of an impression on me during yesterday's bath, but now seemed endearingly minimalist and cozy.

"I've certainly heard of dwarf and orf men having a burly breadth to their equipment," the inn's buxom young serving maid said as she filled the tub, "and that the women are sized to accommodate – but a whole fist!"

I pulled loose my belt and coiled it to drop atop my shoes. "Where I'm from, there are people who make a fetish of it – women working their way up until they can stretch far enough to make it fit. But Kurga just had me plop it right in there."

"Women of

our

type?" she asked, momentarily distracted from her work at the pump again. "I mean, they say there's brothels in the capital where people will get up to most anything, but that's a new one on me. Here now – aren't you going to get out of those pants? You're not being shy on me again are you?"

In fact, I was. Just thinking about my strange sexual commerce with the half-dwarvish, half-orcish Kurga Alderhaft would have given me a boner all on its own. But adding to that the risqué thrill of relating the story to Leyna – while she worked that pump handle up and down and up and down – well, it had me swelling and granite-hard within the first few sentences. But I didn't want to admit to that, so I used a handy excuse.

"The thing is," I said, "it wasn't just a fisting that she wanted. She also had me, um, fill her up in the back end while I hand-reamed her. I'm pretty sure it left me smelling a lot worse down there than Kizaah did with her welf-pussy, so I thought I'd spare your nose by leaving things on until right before I got in the tub."

"Mm-hm." The way she said it and looked at me with those innocently blue but deeply knowing eyes made me blush.

"All right, all right – yes, I'm being kind of shy again. I've got a giant erection, and I don't want you to think I'm being forward."

"Forward? Oh, please, Simon. I may not be a month past twenty-one, but I'm an old hand at fucking for money, and even

I'm

as wet as this bathtub at the story you're spinning here. To be honest, if you didn't have a broom-handle going on in your pants, I'd think there was something wrong with you. And as for smells, I'm out to the stables several times a day and emptying the chamber pots is my job as well."

Helpless against her logic, I stripped away my pants and shorts, leaving me once again standing in front of her with my cock out and waving in the breeze. Her eyes stayed on it as she lifted and lowered the pump handle.

"Doesn't look so bad from here, but unlike the welf smell, I'll take your word on it." Satisfied that the tub had reached capacity, she stepped closer to me and pointed at the basket of bathing sundries. "Hand me the simmer-oil, would you? Thanks. She really had you stopper her bunghole? That one's a trick I won't do. Ick. And ow as well!"

I found the bottle of alchemical water-heating fluid and passed it to her. "I suppose it's a lot worse on the girl's end."

Taking the bottle, she slapped my bare shoulder. "Worse on the girl's

end!

Ha, Simon, you're a sly one, aren't you."

Although I hadn't meant it as a pun, the brightness of her laugh made me more than willing to take credit. I shrugged with an attempt at nonchalance. "Can't help it. Sometimes I get in the mood to be a bit cheeky."

Leyna gave another laugh as she dripped the oil into the tub, a couple of steam-spouts going off in response. "Oh, did she have you bite them too?"

"No," I said, waiting for her to stir the water and even out the heat. I watched the muscles of her soft, white arms move as she picked up the long back-scrubber and leaned one-handed on the rim of the basin to mix its contents.

If there's an inch of her that's less than perfect,

I thought,

she keeps it well hidden under her dress.

With a one-fingered test, Leyna decided the water wouldn't scald or freeze me, and she tapped the brush on the lip of the tub before setting it back on the floor.

"Climb on in, then," she said, stepping aside.

"I haven't picked out my bath scents yet," I said, not wanting her to go so soon.

"I'm picking for you." She got between me and the basket and propelled me toward the bath with one small hand on my back. "And I'll scrub your back, too, if you'll tell me more about stuffing Kurga's orfish behind while I'm at it."

"Oh," I said. "Sure."

I stepped into the tub, which she'd gotten almost the perfect temperature. One degree hotter and it would have been too hot to comfortably sit down in. But as it was, I lowered myself quickly and smoothly into the water, grateful both for some relief from the cool air of the inn and for something to take my mind off the throbbing state of my erection. "Ohhh, that's good."

"I'm an expert at putting hot and wet together, and then getting a man to slide into the mix." She smirked at me as she returned to the head-end of the washbasin, a canister of bath salts in one hand and some powdered soap and a washcloth in the other. With a tiny glass spoon, she tossed a few measures of the salt into the water with me, which set my skin tingling and filled my nose with a smell halfway between a fresh sunny beach and the exhaust spout of a clothes-dryer. "Miss Hazelwort – she's the town alchemist – calls this 'coddlesalt.' It'll fizzle the aches right out of you."

"Is it expensive?" I asked, not that I had any complaints about paying for the soothing effervescence that had spread throughout the tub and across every inch of me currently submerged. "It feels expensive. Holy cow."

She giggled and tossed the washcloth over my shoulder to land near my lap. "You certainly have some peculiar oaths, Simon. Are you swearing to a cow that's holy, or is there something expensive about a cow with holes where you come from? Hand that back to me now that it's good and soggy."

"I don't actually know what that means," I said, passing the washcloth up over my shoulder to her. I turned my head as I did so, and found her kneeling just behind me to my right, leaning in so that her cleavage showed just inches away from me. Hot water and coddlesalt or not, my dick sprang right back to full attention. If I hadn't been slouched so far down, I'm sure it would have broken the surface with a splash. Thankfully, Leyna's attention was on the washcloth and the container of powdered soap she dusted it with. I cleared my throat and went on. "We do have people who think cows are sacred in my w –"

Dude, do

not say 'world!'

"part of the world. But I don't actually know any of them. It's one of those sayings you don't think about."

"At some point, I'm going to make you tell me more about this odd-knob place you come from," she said. With the soap folded between two halves of the washcloth, she rubbed until the whole thing grew a beard of foam and then pushed at me with a slippery hand. "Only right now, I want to hear more about you and the orf. Lean forward and spill your blabberbasket."

I leaned and felt her spread the soapy cloth across my back to scrub it. "I guess for starters, the room was pitch black the whole time. So she could see me, but I had to do everything by touch."

Circling across my shoulders with a light, slow touch, the washcloth lathered them up as Leyna grilled me. "And was that a good thing or a bad one?"

"Hmm." I found I had to think about it. "A little of both. I felt awkward and embarrassed, and I didn't get to see what my hand or dick looked like sliding into her – or even how she looked naked. But it was also pretty damned hot – I mean, exciting, arousing. And it kind of made my sense of touch hyper-alert. It was all physical contact and scents and sounds."

I went on for a while as she scrubbed, telling her about the orf's vast slippery hole, how it swallowed my cock like I was a total pencil-dick, how it took my entire hand with only the barest resistance. How the tight ring of her ass felt when I plunged in.

Somewhere along the way, I realized Leyna had been washing my back for a

really

long time, which of course I didn't mind at all. Then, somewhere after that, I heard something – a little catch in her breath – and when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw her face tight, eyes shut, lips and teeth parted with the tip of her tongue just visible, and the shoulder of her free arm angled a little strangely ...

"

Leyna,

" I said, unable to help myself, the words making her eyes fly open, "have you got your hand up your skirt?"

"Oh!" The pretty, round face went absolutely crimson and her shoulder straightened itself out in an instant – accompanied by a quick sound of falling cloth out of sight below the edge of the tub. "I'm sorry! It was just so ... so ..."

"Don't apologize." I turned halfway around so that I could face her without straining my neck. "Look – I mean, I think that's awesome."

"You do?"

"Sure. Getting Kurga to make those noises with my fist and my cock was pretty fantastic all by itself, but getting you so worked up just telling you about it ... that's ... well, it definitely makes me feel like I'm getting the hang of this business."

She laughed, some of the embarrassment leaving her face and voice. "I think it's more of a natural knack you've got," she said. Then she looked at the soapy cloth in her hand and sighed. "But your back's about as clean as clean can be, so I'd probably best be about my other chores."

"Oh," I said. Her hand came out toward me, offering the sudsy cloth, which I took. "I feel like I've run you off."

"Nope." Pushing up from the floor, she brought the hand she'd been fingering herself with close in front of her nose and made a face at the smell. Then she leaned and swished it in the bubbly water not six inches from my dick, standing and shaking the excess water from her fingers before I could so much as blink. Whatever that did to my expression made her grin. "Just made me come to my senses and realize Burgham's going to be shouting for me to get back to work any moment now. Enjoy the rest of your bath!"

Then she flicked a tiny spray of droplets at my face and headed to the door – leaving me and my erection to finish our bath.

* * *

The next couple of days dragged. Galufrand hadn't finished his new treatise of herbaceous philosophizing yet, and no further libidinous women of exotic races happened into the inn looking for a gigolo. With the arrival of a small caravan my fifth day in Phaeland, Leyna had her hands full serving tables the entire afternoon – and had something else full with conspicuous trips upstairs, one caravaner at a time, the entire evening. Every time I saw her laughing arm-in-arm with some coarse wainsman, I wanted more and more to be the one taking her to bed, while finding it less and less conscionable that I might sleep with her as a commercial transaction.

I don't want what they're getting,

I thought.

I don't want to have her as a commodity.

But for some reason, the fact that she

could

be had as a commodity absolutely inflamed me with erotic hunger. I had to stop myself – more than once – from leaving the common room and wandering upstairs to see if I might get an earful of Leyna's salable delights in action on the far side of a door. Finally, out of desperation, I interrupted Galufrand at his corner table and asked if he might take a break from composing his next scholarly paper for a chat.

He declined: "The muse has me in her grasp!"

But then, seeing something in my expression, he offered me the other side of his table and one of the academic tomes he had at hand for his research. So I nursed a mug of weak ale and struggled with the Phaeland alphabet (a little) and with the density of the book's herbalistic minutiae (a lot). It at least did the trick of numbing my mental faculties so that I was able to make an early night of it and fall asleep under the leaden weight of botanical theory.

The following day, an overlong breakfast crowd followed by a whole caravan's worth of rooms to clean and sheets to launder kept me from getting anything but than a couple of smiles from Leyna, who did more blinking and yawning than her usual quipping and laughing. I continued to struggle along through Galufrand's loaner book – and as a result, I probably spent as much of the day yawning as Leyna did.

Finally, in late afternoon she showed up at my shoulder with something in hand. I expected it to be a refill of the tea I'd been drinking or something of the sort – but when I looked up, happy for any chance to interact with her, I found her with her arms folded about a book of her own across her chest. Her expression looked tired and excited and shy all at once.

"Galufrand's not paying you to read that awful cyclopedia of his, is he?" she asked, swiveling a bit on the balls of her feet as she held her book and looked down at me.

"No," I said. "But how do you know it's awful? Have you read it?"

Before she could answer, another yawn came over me, and she pointed and laughed. "

That's

how I know. The caravan fellows kept

me

up all night, but you managed to turn in early, and I know there weren't any womenfolk wearing you out the way the men did me."

"And how do you know that?" I asked, shutting the book in front of me and not even pretending to mark the page I was on. "There were a couple of ladies in the caravan crew."

"Well, yes, there were. But I knew which rooms they were in and I know which room you're in, and ..." Her voice trailed off as she realized she'd started a sentence she didn't want to finish.

"And?"

Caught, she went red. "And I didn't hear anything but snores behind any of those doors as I went to and fro along the hall earning my two and five p a shot. There. Now you've caught me eavesdropping on you. Happy?"

Not as happy as if I'd opened my door and caught you at it last night,

I thought. But aloud, I just said, "Perfectly. Now what have you got there?"

A different sort of embarrassment washed over her face as she looked down at the book clutched to her bosom.

"It's a book," she said. "I thought it might be a little less dreadful than Galufrand's. But maybe not – it's a folio of plays. Elterawisse. I know he's not everyone's draught of drink ..."

Elterawisse!

The far-famed playwright whose witch-cursed production played a central role in

The Grievous Stage.

Without thinking, I pulled up the first Elterawisse quote I could remember.

"'When once the best, man's endless pressed

To match that mark good days and bad.

Such weight I'd rue and thus I do

Aspire no life beyond a cad's.'"

Leyna blinked as if uncertain whether to be pleased or disappointed. "Oh! You've already read him! And here I'd hoped to show you something new."

To stave that disappointment off, I grabbed at something to say and came up with the truth: "Actually, I just happen to know a couple of lines from fragments that made it over to my homeland. I've wished I could read a whole play of his for years."

The truth of that idea took a second to sink in for me.

Holy crap, a whole book of Elterawisse's plays?

I'd slaved for hours over the few quotations I wrote into

The Grievous Stage,

because I wanted Elterawisse to come across as a better writer than I was. And now I had a chance to read the whole thing?

Leyna's uncertainty disappeared, and she held out the book with wide eyes and an excited smile. "You won't be disappointed – it's genius on the page. I'd slay a swamp sloth barehanded to see an actual performance!"

I took the folio – hardbound and a couple hundred pages long, at least. The weight of it and the quality of the leathern cover impressed me.

"This is quite a book – was it expensive? I'll have to take care of it."

Her hands went behind her back, and she held them there and shrugged, biting her lip for just a moment. "It was my mother's."

I stopped my fingers where they'd been running along one edge of the book, about to open it. This was the second time she'd mentioned her mother in the past tense, I realized.

"Well ..." I wanted to ask what had happened, but something fragile in her pose and expression made me hesitate. So I just said, "... then I'll be especially careful with it."

She smiled and nodded, her shoulders relaxing and hands coming back into sight. "Let me know what you think. Maybe we can have a chat about some of it after the dinner hour tonight – if neither of us has any mattress-work to do!"

And with that she waved and left, and I pushed aside Galufrand's tome for something much more enticing.

* * *

Although beggars can't be choosers, I found myself mildly disappointed that Leyna's book didn't include

The Madrigal of Frost,

a play I'd presented in my novels as Elterawisse's crowning literary achievement. These ones all seemed to be lesser works, and only two of the six titles rang any bells – I'd had no reason to list the playwright's entire canon in Juliette Ravendark's adventures. Thankfully, the last entry in the table of contents was

A Gadabout in Disarray,

so I started with that one. It contained the quote I'd rattled off a few minutes earlier.

Dinner came and went. I only noticed the sun going down outside because I had to move from my window table to one near a wall lamp in order to continue reading. Leyna appeared with a bowl of rice and beans just as I finished Act Two.

"You're yawning less than earlier, I see!" my blonde friend said as she set my food down – not too near the book.

"This guy's

amazing

," I replied, making sure to hold my place when I looked up at her. "I mean, I meant for him to be, but this is beyond anything I imagined."

She laughed. "What do you mean, 'meant for him to be?'"

Crap!

"You know ... what I expected. Sorry if I'm a little tongue-tied – I haven't read anything this extraordinary in ages."

Okay, good save, Simon.

Leyna sailed obliviously back into the topic at hand. "He does make you doubt your own knack at putting words together, doesn't he? I'm so glad you're liking it. But I won't keep you any longer – we can talk over the whole thing when you're through."