[Author's note and the story so far: Well, my day job keeps stubbornly defying my goal of posting chapters weekly, but at least this one is slightly longer than the last. I hope you enjoy it!
We rejoin Simon Kettridge in his room at the inn, where he's just learned that a high snake-priestess's venom has knocked him out for days on end, interrupting his letter-writing campaign to save the Phaeland Empire. Utter destruction awaits the realm at the hands of the hordes of evil arch-mage Necromanata, and stopping this disaster has fallen to Simon. He has only himself to blame, because after being transported to the universe of his fantasy novel series, he accidentally screwed things up for the characters who were supposed to defeat the necromancer, and now there's no one but him standing in the way of hellish devastation for the unsuspecting people of Phaeland. One of these endangered folk is Leyna, the inn's delightful serving maid and resident prostitute, with whom Simon has grown increasingly infatuated ...]
"A week?"
Leyna nodded, but I still couldn't process it.
"Seriously, a week?"
"Yes," she said, her pretty brow gaining a hint of furrow to mar the relief and happiness of her expression. "That's not so bad, is it?"
I fell back against the pillows, still holding her, still feeling the comfort of her warmth and weight against my chest. "I don't know," I said. My mind struggled to throw off the furze of a week in wild hallucinatory unconsciousness. I sat up again, my face close to hers — close enough to kiss, if things had been different. If I weren't in a panic. "My letters — I've missed the post officer ..."
Her brow furrowed deeper, in frustration or annoyance. She sat up a bit.
"I mailed the one from your desk," she said. "It was already sealed and addressed. And you're always acting like they're so important, these letters of yours. So I thought I'd best."
"You did?" Now I pulled her close again and
did
kiss her — though only on her forehead. "Thank god! Bless you, Leyna."
The annoyance went to a blush. "Well, certainly. I had to dig into your pockets to pay for it, though. Most of my sheet money went to paying the healer and buying medicine."
"What? Leyna, you didn't have to do that."
"Oh, yes I
did!
" The blue of her eyes floated entirely in their whites, they went so wide. "Simon, you were afire after that snake-creature bit you. And bleeding from your shoulder, and delirious, and ..."
Her gaze slipped toward my crotch — where, I realized, my cock remained at full erection. Looking down at it with her, I found it painfully swollen, and linked to my balls by a deep ache.
"I hope this isn't too embarrassing," she went on, "but the healer said your stick and sack were going to burst if something didn't empty them now and again. So, I had to ... um ..."
"That's why you were blowing me when I woke up? How often did you ...?"
Half as if she were thinking, and half as if she couldn't meet my gaze, Leyna's eyes went up toward the ceiling. "I don't know. Three or four times a day, I suppose."
"Jesus, Leyna. I'm really sorry about that."
She gave a silly scowl and pushed at my right shoulder with one hand. "Don't be daft. I was happy to do it. Almost my favorite thing to do for a man, especially one I ... well, one needs it or his jewel-box will explode."
We watched each other quietly a moment. Then I lifted my hand and eased her blonde bangs aside with a finger. "I'm very lucky you've got such a good heart."
As the quiet went on, she bit her lower lip, released it, straightened her shoulders and sat up. "And that I love getting my mouth all over a man's root! You'd have been in a right spot of trouble if I were a prude."
"Well, thank you for not being a prude," I said. "And thank you for everything else, too. I'll find a way to pay back all the money you spent, I promise."
She laughed and winked. "I'm sure we can work out some sort of arrangement."
My venom-roused hard-on somehow swelled even stiffer, making me cough uneasily. Leyna laughed again.
In the corner of the room, the pot-bellied iron fireplace crackled. Light from the window over the desk told me it was daytime, though I had no idea exactly when. After a short stretch of quiet, Leyna's mouth and button nose squinched sideways just a bit, like she needed to work up her courage for something. A brand in the fire gave a loud pop, which she used as an excuse to look that direction.
"So ... Simon, do you remember anything about the ... those things you said? While the fever had hold of you?"
Something nervous in her voice put me on edge.
Fuck. Did I start rambling about Necromanata and his army?
Or even worse ...
God, I didn't blabber that this whole world is something I made up for my books, did I?
For that matter, even just mumbling in my sleep about cars and phones and the real world might be pretty damn awkward to explain.
Play dumb.
"Honestly, no," I said. "But I was dreaming some really crazy stuff. Did I talk a lot?"
She nodded, chewing her lip again, still facing the fireplace. "Most every time I popped in here to tend you. At first I thought,
Well, the poison's just giving him mad visions.
But sometimes — I mean, you repeated things an awful lot, for it to be just dreams and madness."
Oh great.
I tried to lie there as casually as possible, like the weak convalescent I really was. The stubborn monument of my erection can't have helped my plausibility, though.
Thanks, Eesia.
"My memory's
really
hazy," I said. "But if I was babbling about the stuff from my dreams, I hope you could tell I was just being delirious."
"Oh. Right."
I seemed to have said the wrong thing.
"We're talking about the same dreams, aren't we?" I asked, wondering if she thought I was lying to her, hiding the truth. "Uh, horrible armies of zombies and orcs and ... stuff? You wouldn't want that to be real, would you?"
She gave a startled laugh and turned to me, looking relieved. "No, silly! Of course I didn't believe
that
