The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

Headless Over Heels picks up right after the remarkable question.

Seth laughed.

Lisa joined in. The will-o-wisps in her eyes gleamed brightly.

“You’re joking,” he said.

Her lips closed around her laugh, muffling it into a giggling hum.

“You’re joking, right?”

“You can say no,” she said. “I promise not to mope if you say no. But I want to do this for you, Seth. I’d love to. You’re a good man—”

“Not really.”

“Yes, you are.” Her expression sharpened. “You’ve lived a life where being good gets you nowhere. Gets you a bed in the stables and a knife to your throat. You’ve been taught to hold it in, that goodness is foolishness or weakness. You have been longing and longing for permission to be a good man. And your opportunity came, and you took it. You might not believe that but I do.”

Seth’s eyes darted from Lisa’s face to the shadow of his discarded boots. The stolen stiletto still tucked into the bootleg, probably. How would she feel if she knew he was still stealing, everywhere they went?

We could be warm together.

“You’ve won over my children,” she said. “You’ve had their backs. You’re good-looking and hard-working, and you really deserve to cum in someone’s mouth, and I’d be delighted if it was mine.”

She was so close. She was practically straddling him now. There were reasons he couldn’t do this. There were, right? What were the reasons? He stalled: “Wouldn’t I—” You’d unlight, dummy. “I’d turn. Wouldn’t I?”

She rested her hand on the lower curve of her abdominals. “My cunt would unlight you, Seth. Not my mouth. But if you really want to be careful, you could cum on my face. Or between my tits. Or wherever you’d like.” A soft laugh. “I’m rather curious, really, where you’d like.”

She made those jagged vulgarities, cunt and tits, sound so gentle. So cute, like pet names whispered in the dark. Seth was finding it difficult to breathe.

“Though there’s a tidiness to the face, isn’t there,” she mused. “Keeping it all strictly Lisa. The slow skin-contact unlighting will be a factor, of course. Maybe a little faster, even, thanks to the saliva. But we can be quick. I haven’t pleasured anyone with this mouth yet, but the sorceress who gave it to me has quite the trove of technique up here.” She rested a hand on his forearm and clucked her tongue sympathetically when he shuddered under her touch. “And you are pent-up. Poor thing. I can tell. You’re being such a saint for me. I could release some of this pressure for you. I’d barely need a minute. The first time, anyway.”

“You said Annalise first.” Why was he saying these things? Why was he squinting at this brilliant diamond she’d handed him?

“I said you have to kiss Annalise first. This isn’t a kiss.”

“I guess not,” he murmured. “I mean, not on my part, I guess.”

“I reserve the right to kiss it,” she said. “Before I suck it. And after, probably. And a few times during. But that’s not breaking the rule either.”

“Well, you are the lawman.” He raised his forearm beneath her hand, putting their radii flush together, and rested his own palm on the ink-etched Weeping Razor hexentat that curved out from her elbow. “Does Annalise see it that way?”

Lisa sank lower. Her chest brushed his, just enough for him to feel the unspeakably erotic nudge of a firm nipple through the fabric. “Do you think I wrestled my way onto the stump?” she asked, hopefully loud enough she didn’t hear the gasp she just drew from him. “I’m here because Annalise wanted me to be. She dug me out and put me on, so that I could visit you. She realized the answer to your question, Seth. What is it about me, you asked. You remember? What makes Lisa sure, and Annalise unsure?”

When she breathed in, it brought her breasts a hair’s breadth closer once again. They rested lightly on him now. Just the slightest smush. Soft, downy deformation. “I remember,” he said.

“The answer,” she said, “is nothing.”

His head was swimming.

“It’s just me, Seth.” Her thumbs kneaded against his upper arms. “It’s always just me. It’s me and Annalise and even Anna. It’s just that I’m the only one who can say things like this:”

Her hips touched down. She was sitting in his lap now.

“I want to feel your hands in my hair while you fuck my throat, Seth. I want to choke on you. I want to know what sounds you make when you finally let go. I want to stop being a weapon for a night. I want to feel like a woman again. I want to feel like your woman.”

The sensation of her body making firm, unashamed contact with his was so shockingly substantial after the strange half-dream, half-nightmare his new job had been. She was so real. So solid and big and hot. The reality of her, of how close she was, of the unimaginable things she had just said to him, thundered through him like a slap. Fucking saints—he could feel her plump round ass settle into a heart shape as she let her weight spread across him. His fists balled into the blankets.

“Annalise wants to say that, and she can’t,” she said. “And instead she came back to the carriage, and found her Lisa head, and now here she is. Here I am.”

“Should we—should I talk to her, then? About this?”

“No, Seth.” Lisa’s smile and softness made no retreat, but her tone brooked no argument. “I’m sorry, but no. I am making a clear delineation. Neat and tidy. I’m Anna when it’s time to hunt seraphs because she’s best at hunting seraphs. I’m Annalise for executions because she’s best at executions. And when it comes time for dealing with beautiful boys, I’ve refused my own expertise, for some ridiculous reason. No longer. No more of this angsty nonsense. Annalise can be your friend and mentor, Anna can be your taskmaster, and Lisa…”

She pressed her lips to his forehead again. He nearly fainted.

“Lisa can take care of you. In ways that’ll keep you lit. My mouth, my hands, my chest. There are some wonderful things I can do for you with my thighs. Whatever you’d like. I can keep you focused during the day, and keep you company at night. They keep getting colder.”

Her palm slid into his. Their fingers interlaced. She had calluses at the base of each digit, marks of training in strength and swordwork. With slow, deliberate intention, she lifted his captured hand and placed it on her chest, right over her heart. Her collarbone under the tip of his middle finger, her breasts cushioning his wrist. Her heart, pounding hard under his palm. Her spine arched and pressed her stomach to his and rolled her hips, and he felt what he was doing to her. She was burning for him.

“We could be warm together,” she whispered.

He could barely breathe. He was dizzyingly, brain-chokingly hard. Something tore inside him and what had been an unspoken, nebulous yearning became profoundly explicit:

Seth wanted to go unlit.

He didn’t just want those other things she’d offered. He wanted to lose his soul inside this woman, more than he’d ever wanted anything. And who the hell was he kidding acting otherwise, like there was still any kind of decision to be made or doubt to be pretended at?

Why wasn’t he saying this out loud? Why wasn’t he grasping her around the muscular swoop of her waist, where her childbearing hips flared into perfect handholds, and begging her to snuff his wick?

“You don’t have to answer yet, of course,” she whispered, as the maddening moment passed. “We haven’t even gotten the job done yet. But I am offering this to you.”

“I—” He swallowed down the youthful shake in him. “I’ll think about it. Is it okay if I think about it?”

“Of course it is. Think as much on it as you like. Only get me my head, Mr. il Gutierre.” Their faces were so near that he could hear the click of her eyelid as she winked. “And I’ll give you yours.”

And then she was getting up. Her weight and heat were departing. “Wait,” he gasped, and there went his nerve again when she paused, partway out of her straddle. His hand slipped through the unbuttoned gap in the front of her tunic and brushed the defined abdominal groove on her stomach. “Do you want to stay? Not to do anything, just… stay.”

She shook her head. “Not yet. My heart is beating too fast. I don’t think I could keep my hands off you. And then you really will go unlit.”

He released a strained sigh and nodded, and she shifted the rest of the way off him.

“But soon, Seth.” Lisa drew herself up to her knees. “Lift your head a second.”

He obeyed and craned his neck up from his bedroll. “What are you doing?”

She leaned over him again and slid his pillow out from beneath his head. “Nothing.” The cool cotton of a replacement pillow rubbed the nape of his neck. “A little trade.”

“Why?” He settled back warily. “What’s wrong with this one?”

She rose to a crouch and hugged the stolen pillow to her chest. “That one doesn’t smell like you.”

She ducked out of the tent flap and was gone. He heard the dewy sound of the grass brushing against her bare ankles.

He lay back and felt the blood rush past his throat and wrists and aching chest. Sleep would elude him tonight, he was sure of it. He’d have to chase it down with this abject need dragging at his heels. Need and what else? He probed for answers in the troubled turning of his stomach. What was this streak of melancholy in him? Why did he feel that itch, that maddening little thief-itch?

Greedy, thieving Seth. Nothing is ever enough, is it? It always comes back. She’s offering you so much. More than you deserve, surely.

But you want all of her, don’t you?

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...m-together
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2445240/