Sea spray spilled over the nose of the Morrigan’s Kiss and washed across the deck. Foam and warm water alike sluiced past the toes of bare-footed sailors – burly humans, scarred lizardmen, a single elf who looked as if she could still barely believe that she was there, and a few goblins hurried about the deck. They tended to the wild profusion of cables and lines that connected to the sails, keeping them in position to catch the endless trade winds that rushed across the face of the Platonic Sea.
Kailey loved it. She held the wheel of her ship and felt her thrumming through the waves. Every plank felt like it was in alignment, and the new way of rigging the sails seemed to catch the wind better than the last. And there wasn’t a single crew on the oars, which were stacked in the hold. Hopefully never to be used again. Her hands squeezed the wheel tighter as she closed her eyes to thin slits.
She felt, for the moment, like a bird on the wing. A hunting bird.
A sharp bang came from behind her. Kailey opened her eyes, then looked back over her shoulder at the forecastle. Smoke roiled from the cabin that she shared with Quinn.
“You alive back that, Q?”
“Yes!” Quinn’s slightly dazed voice came from the doorway.
“Is anything on fire?”
The delay was just long enough to make Kailey nervous. “No!”
Kailey nodded again and then looked forward, port, starboard, and up. The Platonic Sea cupped her ship like a palm filled with water, with dry land providing the horizon and the skies. The sea itself made it easy to see any ships that were far enough away to clear the waves and the mist, but those that had fallen above the horizon could be easily seen. Especially if they were built with low hulls. She had noted several ships that might have been near, but most of them had moved in convoy and had the sleek, broad tipped look of warships.
And the Kiss didn’t go after warships.
Thaddious – a broad shouldered human whose face had met a trident at some point in his violent life – hurried over to her. His puckered cheek and split lip and missing eye made his grin extra horrific. He looked down at her, as he topped her by at least three feet, and put his hands on his hips.
“Captain, we hear a song coming from distance – sounds like Hellenes.”
Kailey leaned slowly back, letting herself hang from wheel. Her eyes half closed and she felt the spark of power that crackled in her breast. She caressed it with her mind, feeling the thundering excitement. The power she had been born with was urgent, desperately eager to be used. Kailey held it on a taut leash. She had never wanted to be her mother’s puppet. And that was what happened to those who became too dependent on the gods.
They became puppets.
She opened her eyes and saw that a spectral raven was now seated on the ship’s wheel. Crackling blue claws dug into the wood and a beak as sharp as a sword gleamed, pitiless black eyes set in feathers made of pure energy glared at her. Kailey gestured with one hand, a tossing motion, and felt her view snap from herself to the raven. She laughed a harsh, crowing laugh as Thaddious looped an arm around her shoulders to keep her from falling flat on the deck.
She looked like a child in his arms – a child in size, if not in proportion. And no human child had ever had green skin. But Kailey preferred not to look at herself when she was in the raven. The call of the sky was too strong. She beat her wings, caught the thermals that rose from the Platonic Sea, and soared upwards in a spiraling arc. She looked outwards and upwards, craning her head around. There was the sun, there were the tiny black specks of the thrice damned Watch Stations that made attacking any Babylonian ship nothing more than a slow motion suicide.
And there was the ship that they had heard. Hidden by the curve of the waves and its own low deck, it looked like it was in trouble. One mast had broken, the wild tangle of canvas and ropes making it clear that the sail design they had tried had either failed spectacularly, or the captain hadn’t managed to get them reefed before the blow last night. Either way, she could see the crew were all humans and they were working hard to try and correct their course. The ship rode low in the water, though. Low enough to make her think…
Treasure.
Kailey risked it. She beat her wings and shot towards the ship. She soared over the deck fast enough to catch the sounds of the voices – translating the Greek as easily as she could breathe.
“Get the wreckage cleared! God commanded us, we shall not fail him!”
“Amen!”
Ah, she thought. One of them.
Her wings beat and sculled and she came around into a dive. She slammed into her own body and her eyes opened – the transition from large raven to only slightly larger gobliness as natural one way as the other. Thaddious had set her down carefully, and Quinn had joined him. Quinn was, in many ways, her opposite. She was the stereotypical goblin, always streaked with alchemical oozes or gunpowder or bits of oil and grease from the tinkering she got up too. Her hair had gone sheet-white during her failed attempt to ascend the ladder of hermetic magic in the university of Brigid, and she had never dyed it. Kailey wasn’t sure if that was because she had simply never had the time, or if she had utterly forgotten her hair was unusual.
“Kay?” she asked.
“There’s a ship!” Kailey dragged herself to her feet. “Men! Ready weapons! Quinn, are you ready for some plunder?”
Quinn frowned and considered. “Well, no. Not really.”
Kailey made a face at her.
“I mean... yes?” Quinn said, then flushed. “I mean, very yes! I love plunder! I am a pirate who likes... plunder...” She trailed off, her forced grin growing more strained with every moment.
Kailey chuckled and shook her head. She reached out and cupped Quinn’s cheek. “Nice try, love. But I’ll need your magic for this – it’s a Monodeist ship.”
“Ares?” That did perk up Quinn. “Oh, I’ve heard stories! Let me get my notes!”
She turned and rushed off.
As she rushed, Thaddious glowered after her. “What do you see in her, captain?”
“I have no idea,” Kailey murmured, her eyes settled on the firm, heart-shaped rear jiggling and bouncing away from them.
Thaddious grumbled. “You can find that in any tavern.”
“Oh, are whores regularly educated in the first three circles of hermetic magic and have a passing knowledge of alchemy now?” Kailey asked, her voice acid-sweet. Thaddious had served long enough to recognize that tone and so he did the smartest thing that a first mate could do. He bowed, then turned and started bellowing orders at the crew.
Within a short time, the Kiss was cresting the wave and barreling towards the crippled Hellenic ship.
As they approached, the sails belling and crackling against the wind, Kailey breathed in, centered herself, and tried to use the methods that Quinn had taught her. Magic required a specific set of gestures and words, a kind of focus, one that told the power that filled Purgatory to do as you wished, rather than what it wanted. It could knit bones and bring down thunderous lightning. It could even snatch someone from one place to another – though that required a shrine built by the Ancients for that purpose. For those with a foci (something built by the Ancients) it could be done easier.
Kailey never could cast. The magic of the Ancients turned up its nose to the New Gods and to their children, as both had been banished to Purgatory to get them out of the hair of the Christian church. According to legend, they had been too feared on Earth, and so had been bundled off to this enclosed sphere, where they and their human and lilin followers (those who had chosen banishment over conversion) had met and warred with elves, goblinkind and lizardfolk.
But in the end, lust was sparked almost as much as wrath. Hence why Kailey’s mother was The Morrigan and not some gobliness.
But The Morrigan’s power could be controlled and refined and enhanced, Quinn had claimed. Meditation and focus had their uses even if the Ancient’s magic would never spring to Kailey’s hands as they did for her lover. She breathed in again, then out again. Her heart beat slower as she felt the power her mother had bequeathed her. She started to push into it, then expand it outwards. In. Out. In. Out.
Like the tides.
Like the bellows of a forge.
In. Out. In. Out.
The feathers that grew through Quinn’s hair – a natural reflection of her parentage – started to glow in time with her breath.
The crew saw it and cheered. As they cheered, they threw the grappling hooks. The Hellenic ship had managed to wallow to the side, enough to try and present their ram. But the Kiss was being piloted by one of the best helmsmen on the ship (other than Kailey, of course.) He kept them at a distance as grappling hooks bit into wood and ropes began to strain, dragging the Hellenic ship out of ramming formation.
“Come on, lads! Pull!”
From the other ship, a call came: “Ready! Fire!”
The crackling roar of a half a dozen muskets filled the air.
“No.”
The word was a simple one and it came with the last of Kailey’s breath. She had stoked the power within her to its height. It roared like an inferno. The ancient hero Cúchulainn had been... unfortunate. When the riastrad, the warp-spasm, came to him, it came uncontrolled. Unrefined. Untempered by a focused mind. Kailey’s skin did not twist inside out and her bones didn’t burst from her back like red tipped spears. Her blood did boil. Steam exploded from her mouth and her eyes flared like coals in a forge, and her small body did seem to grow almost twice its size. She moved forward, blindingly fast, and drew her sword in a single, twisting motion.
An explosion of water rose from the horizon that curved upwards behind the Hellenic ship, and the smoke from the muskets exploded away from an invisible line of force that she had cut through the air.
The crew standing to either side of her gaped as musketballs rained into the ocean – stopped by crashing into the sweep of her blade.
Kailey grinned, her teeth sharp.
“R-Re-” the enemy master-at-arms started, before his voice died in a gurgle, his back slamming into the deck. A full ship’s length had separated them, and he looked faintly disbelieving at the bronze blade plunged through his ribs. But as Kailey was the one standing on his chest, she supposed that was proof enough. She stood, leaving behind smoldering foot prints on the deck behind her, steam hissing up from the water spilling over the decks.
“Who’s next?” she growled.
“God wills it!” a man with more eagerness than sense rushed forward, bayonet glittering on the end of his crystal musket. He thrust. Kailey caught the bronze tip in her palm, bent it inwards and slammed him to the deck in the same motion. She kicked him in the side of the head, parried another bayonet with her other arm, drawing a knife from her belt. She plunged it into a man’s throat as she walked past, then slit another man from belly to chin with an upward sweep of her sword.
She had to hold back.
She didn’t want to break another set of blades.
The men around her were starting to back up, even as arrows thudded into the deck around her. Her crew had a few good archers, and they loosed every few moments as Hellenic soldiers fell and screamed and died. Then a knot of them wearing the thick cloth armor that Ares had settled on for his newly expanded armies stepped to the side.
Behind them was a Paladin.
Kailey’s razor sharp teeth glinted as her lips drew back in a steaming grin, starting to roil around her bared feet as she stood on the deck. “Good.”
The Paladin was a woman – human – but she was clad in a combination of flexible cloth, hardened crystal plates, and bronze that had been shaped to interlock and protect joints. The crystal itself was covered with a white cloth surcoat that had been decorated with the golden throne symbol that Ares had adopted. But what made Kailey pause was the sword the woman held.
It was made of metal.
A silvery, pale metal that glittered and glinted. It lacked the hues of bronze and copper, and yet it looked just as sturdy and just as sharp. She held it up in one gauntleted head and pointed it at Kailey as the two ships rocked against one another, pirates roaring as they started to leap over the railings. A few muskets cracked, swords clashed, bayonets thudded into wooden decks as their thrusts were deflected. But Kailey only had eyes for the Paladin.
She had heard stories.
They could take on ten men at once.
They could breathe fire.
They could fly.
They were blessed by the one true god of Purgatory. The one true god of the whole universe, the one who had made it all.
“Throw down your weapon,” the Paladin said, her voice muffled by her helmet. “And your death will be painless.”
Kailey rolled her shoulders. Then she flicked her wrist with the strength and speed of her riastrad. Her knife flew out, cutting a glittering line in the air, before the Paladin brought her sword up. The two blades met and Kailey’s shattered into a thousand fragments. Then the Paladin was moving – her body vanishing with a crack like a gunshot. She appeared five feet to her left and two feet forward, her feet skidding on the deck. But as she rushed forward, she vanished again, and again, appeared a short way off, her sword flashing as she rushed past Kailey.
Their blades met and Kailey was flung backwards. Even twice the size she normally was, she was overstepped by the other woman by a head. And more, the Paladin struck with the force of her war-god’s blessings. The impact sent Kailey tumbling and only her own enhanced reflexes got her back on her feet before the Paladin could casually impale her. Kailey ducked, then kicked out. Her leg caught the Paladin in a leg joint and bronze squealed as it was bent.
The Paladin slammed her helmeted head into Kailey’s. The impact set the pirate captain’s head ringing, riastrad or no riastrad. She staggered, then rolled away as the Paladin brought her sword down in a two handed stroke that split the railing and a good chunk of the deck. Wood splinters flew upwards, stinging across Kailey’s forearm. Then, moving with lightning speed, the Paladin swung her blade upwards and in a curving arc. Kailey’s sword met it and sheered in half with a spray of sparks. The impact sent her sprawling backwards. She skidded and came to a stop against the body of one of the Hellenes.
“God wills it,” the Paladin snarled, her voice coming in sharp pants as she advanced forward. Her boots thumped and clunked on the wooden deck, though her bent knee-plate meant that one leg had to drag rather than bend. She lifted her sword.
Kailey grabbed up the dropped musket of the Hellene and threw it like a spear. The bayonet hit the shoulder plate of the Paladin and the whole musket shattered, hard crystal going up against harder, thicker crystal. It still sent the Paladin staggering enough that Kailey could spring to her feet.
“Kay!”
Kailey risked a glance. Quinn was staying on their ship – thank the gods! - but her hands were twisting as she worked her fingers, muttering the focus words. She had been thrown from the hermetic school because of her, ah, reasons unrelated to her education. The magic she called formed and crackled into the shape of a flaming sword. She tossed it to Kailey and it was borne on a curtain of rippling air.
If Kailey’s own blood hadn’t been boiling, if her body hadn’t been blazing hot, she was sure the flaming hilt would have scorched her. As it was the sword felt utterly at home, and she brought it around and locked hilts with the Paladin. The Paladin forced her backwards. The strength of Ares and the Morrigan warred through their respective representatives. But Kailey felt her arms burning, then buzzing... and then pushing forward. The Paladin gave step by step, her whole body trembling.
Then her sword gave.
The burning blade in Kailey’s hands sunk half into the strange metal of the Paladin’s weapon, then sheared through with a flurry of sparks before biting deep into the woman’s side.
The Paladin’s eyes widened under her helmet’s visor. She made a gurgling noise, wavered.
Fell.
And as she fell, the last Hellene was cut down by Thaddious. The pirates looked around themselves, shocked at the savage fury of not only the enemy’s resistance, but at the end result. Not a single Hellene had survived to be ransomed. Kailey drew her power back into herself. Her blood cooled. Steam stopped trickling from her pores. She shrank slowly from her enhanced height to her normal one – her skin feeling taut, her bones aching. The deck stopped smoldering underneath her feet. And the flaming sword she felt faded to nothingness as Quinn scrambled awkwardly over the pitching, rolling decks.
“Are you okay?” she asked, desperately.
“Not even a scratch!” Kailey said, ignoring the many tiny scratches and bruises. “See to the men.”
Quinn closed her eyes. Counted to three. Then nodded and turned. As she rushed off to begin healing, Kailey shook her head and brushed her palm along the arm that had been covered with splinters, knocking them out. A few had sunk in enough to require her to pick them out. She hissed each time as Thaddious walked over to her.
“We have the deck – lots of muskets, and their shot too.”
“It’s the hold I want to see.”
Thaddious nodded. The two of them walked towards the hatch that led to the hold – and then Kailey held up her hand. Her feet slipped slightly on the blood slicked wood of the deck, but she didn’t take one step closer to the hatch. Something about the lack of a lock caused her paranoia to scream to life. She looked back at the crew and the bodies. She smirked.
“Oh, I hate it when you do that,” Thaddious muttered – but it was too late.
Kailey had thought, earlier, that this power should be kept on the leash. And it was true. She’d go weeks - months, sometimes - without calling on it. But when she used it once, the second time was easier. And the third? Oh, the third came like she did when Quinn got her head between her legs. Her fingers crooked as the magic of her mother flared through her arm and one of the less badly dismembered corpses twitched, wriggled, then started to stand. Eldritch blue fire crackled from their sightless eyes as they shambled like a drunk towards the unlatched hatch. Their uniform had turned almost red from the blood pumping from their neck wound.
Thaddious glowered at the scene.
Kailey stepped behind him with a wicked grin.
The corpse flipped open the hatch.
The rain of blood, bone, body parts and organs splashed across the deck like a breaching wave. Thaddious was soaked from his bald head to his bared toes. He spluttered, gagged, coughed, and an untouched Kailey stepped around him, skipped to the open hatch, then swung herself down into the hold with a cheerful whistle.
When her feet hit the hold’s deck, she almost balked her belly and breasts against something large and looming. A moment later, a still dripping Thaddious landed next to her, holding up a small stick with a glow-crystal attached to it. Pale blue light shone and Kailey breathed in a short, sharp gasp. The light glowed off long, thick tubes of pure crystal. Each one had a smooth hole bored in the front and a smaller one at the back, with firing pins made of bronze clockwork – finer than any work she had seen in her life. There were mountings shaped from wood and bronze along the edges, for wheels, though said wheels were stacked in the far back.
Kailey was almost afraid to count.
“Thirty six,” she breathed. “Thirty six cannons.”
The Battle of the Blood Groove had been famous for the twenty guns of the Cross Guard, whose cannonfire had rained down on the army of Brax the Golden. Each of those guns had been named in the ballads and the songs. No battle since, even in the grinding brutality of the civil war tearing the Dodekatheon apart, had matched it for the sheer amount of artillery. And here was almost twice that number.
“Dear gods,” Thaddious whispered.
Kailey walked past the guns, looking them over. She had never seen cannons up close, but she knew the basic idea. Jam gunpowder in the back, slip a ball down it – marble was popular, but stone could work too. Crystal was said to be the best, but the difficulty of chipping crystal into a sphere was well known. Lead was popular as well, but the alchemical process that created it was difficult and expensive…
“Quinn’s an alchemist,” she whispered. Then she saw that she had some time – the chests past the first of the cannons were filled with cannonballs. She brushed her finger along the metal, trying to feel what it was made of. But she wasn’t an artisan, she couldn’t tell.
“Captain!”
Thaddious had walked past her to another chest. His cry drew her attention and she rushed over.
“What are these?” he asked, holding up something strange.
“It’s an Ancient artifact!”
The pair turned to see Quinn coming down the hatch, her hair smeared with blood. “I didn’t manage to save any of the Hellenes, but Strap won’t be missing a foot,” she said, her voice distracted. “By Brigid’s titties, what is this?” She took the artifact from the Thaddious hands. Thaddious looked sulky, like a baby with its favorite new toy stolen. But before he could whine, Quinn started to eyeball the artifact.
To Kailey, it looked like a slave collar without a clasp and without any flexibility. A curved C shape made of solidified crystal and black metal, terminating in a pair of disks. Those disks would go over the temple on a human – though on a goblin, it would slide right off.
Quinn tested the give on the artifact, finding that it bent outwards, but not inwards. She whistled.
“Do you know what it is, Q?” Kailey asked, caressing her lover’s hair gingerly. She knew that Quinn would never wash her hair while something new – be it book or artifact – was waiting for her eyes. She’d have to crumble the blood out once it dried.
Quinn bit her lower lip. “I have no idea.”
“Well, put it on then,” Thaddious said, his voice gruff.
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Quinn asked.
“Of course!” Thaddious said. “These are weapons – these are cannons, cannonballs. Those casks contain gunpowder if I don’t miss my guess. This is a supply barge for the Hellenes. Not sure what they were doing so far off course, but there’s the breaks.” He shrugged. “Not sure why that idiot Ares didn’t just ship them overland.”
“Do you know how heavy a cannon is?” Quinn asked. She was normally a gentle soul, but even she could see through Thaddious’ irascibility. She started ticking off points. “They can weigh almost a hundred stone! And they’re not like the steel or iron cannons of Earth, these can shatter if they drop wrong!” She scoffed. “A ship can carry fifty cannons across Purgatory in a week, while an army might still be waiting for them after a month, and lost a quarter of them to accidents.”
“Better than losing all of them...” Thaddious muttered.
But then it clicked in Kailey’s brain. She had to check her thinking, though.
“What are the sides in the war again?” she asked. “It’s Ares and the gods he’s cowed into bending knee versus Zeus and his brothers, right?”
“Yeah. Zeus, Hades, and Pos-” Quinn’s eyes widened. “That storm last night wasn’t natural, I bet. It blew out of the Hellenic League hard enough to almost demast us. It did demast this ship. And Poseidon might have lost his sanctum and his home city, but he has worshipers enough. He could make the currents slip this ship even further than wind or wave could.”
“That’d buy them time. These are guns worthy of shattering a city’s walls...” Quinn rubbed her face. “By my count, Ares’ army had, eh, five, six cannons.”
“Your count,” Thaddious looked skeptical.
“The army’s visible on the horizon!” Quinn snapped. She looked at Kailey. “Ares will pay through the nose for this. Or Lord Vanderbilt! Or Thor! Or-”
She stopped when she heard Kailey’s giggle. The giggle became a laugh and the laugh became something close to utterly megalomanical. Kailey rolled her head back and leaned against her cannons as her shoulders shook and she wiped a tear of joy from her eye.
“Thaddious,” she said, her teeth glinting in the pale light of the glow-crystal. “Get the crew ready. We’re looting this ship. And get the charts for Melos and start plotting a course.”
“But-” Thaddious started. Then he stopped, then bowed low. “Yes, Captain.”
He hurried off.
Quinn looked confused. “Kay, we can’t use these. And we can’t sell them to Pleon. He doesn’t have the coin to buy cannons. Our ship-”
“Our ship is our ship,” Kailey murmured. “And we just took the oar positions out. If we went into Melos for some time, we could refashion those into something befitting this new age. We have enough gunpowder. And you? You’re an alchemist.”
“I am...” Quinn blinked. “I never made gunpowder before.”
Kailey grinned. She grabbed her lover’s hair, not caring if blood smeared her fingers. She dragged her close and the two goblins met in the darkness and closeness of the hold. The smell of battle overhead was washed away by the smell of the salt sea and the tang of gunpowder in the air. It smelled like victory. Quinn never took the lead while kissing, which suited Kailey just fine. Her tongue probed the other woman’s mouth like a man’s might have.
But Kailey remained softer and more knowing than a man would have been. Her breasts pressed to Quinn’s smaller ones, her hands cupped and squeezed Quinn’s rump. Quinn whimpered into the kiss, her eyes closing tight as she lost herself in the excitement of the moment. The stereotype was that librarians and mages were detached from physicality.
The truth, at least when it came to Quinn, was that she was quite a sensual being.
She just needed to be smacked in the forehead with her body’s needs to go: Oh. Right! I need this.
When Kailey drew her mouth back, she could see the eager glint in Quinn’s eyes that said that smack had been delivered.
“To the cabin?” Kailey whispered.
“Uhhh...” Quinn looked at the hatch to the deck. Then, with her hands grabbing her shift, she whispered. “Nah.”
The slight lift and then jiggle of her breasts as they were freed never ceased to drive Kailey wild. There was a delight in being the smaller partner, when it came to making love with other people of other races. But this moment, shared between her and Quinn, was unique. Not only were they the same build and the same height, but they often felt like they shared two halves of the same soul.
Quinn proved it by looking down at her own breasts, cupping and squeezing the firm, green orbs. “Yes. I have really nice breasts, now that I think about it.”
Kailey snorted, then grabbed her lover and dragged her close. She leaned forward and teased Quinn by kissing the flat expanse of her chest, then darting up to nuzzle and lick at her chin. She kissed her lower lip, sucking on it gently as Quinn began to pant and whimper. The faint rocking of the boat faded. The dimness of the hold faded. Everything faded as Kailey dragged her teeth along Quinn’s lower lip, freeing her mouth to fasten around Quinn’s neck. She bit and sucked at the same time, and through her hold on Quinn’s hips, she could feel the other woman’s knees quivering.
Well.
Kailey knew how to fix that. She took Quinn to the floor of the hold with a simple twist and roll, ending up on her back with Quinn straddling her. Kailey’s back was tough enough to absorb the impact and ignore the splinters, which freed her up to cup Quinn’s shoulders and draw the other gobliness over her. Quinn’s breasts swayed with the motion of the ship and the movement of her back, and her moans joined the song of the sea as Kailey fastened her mouth around one dark green nipple and sucked. Her hands slipped along Quinn’s back, taking her time to feel every inch of her alchemist.
She didn’t know exactly what Quinn did to keep coarse sea salt from leaving her back and exposed skin as weathered as old leather. But the result spoke – or at least slithered – against Kailey’s rough, battle scarred palms. Quinn gasped and moaned and rolled her head backwards, her pale white hair cascading along her shoulders. “Kailey...”
“I’m not hurting you, am I?” Kailey’s voice was as soft as the slick noise that Quinn’s sex was making against her belly. The heat of her. The wetness. Kailey couldn’t help herself, she started to push and lift Quinn up and over the mounds of her own breasts. Quinn let herself be moved. But her voice was shy.
“I... I love your scars, Kay...”
Quinn’s sex lowered to kiss against Kailey’s mouth and at this moment, she knew heaven. Her eyes closed and her tongue lapped against her lover’s sex, tasting her warmth and her flavor. It was a fierce, almost painful tang against her tongue. Going without Quinn’s pussy meant that when Kailey went down on her – or had Quinn sitting on her face – she tasted intensely enough to bring tears to Kailey’s eyes.
She drew her mouth back, gasping for air, and reveled in the closeness of the other woman’s green thighs enclosing her head. “Gods, I went without this for too long...”
“W-We, ah, made love, ah, this morning,” Quinn said, sounding bemused – and dazed and out of breath, all at once.
Kailey found a perfect rebuttal for her university educated lover.
She leaned up and dragged down in the same movement, her rough fingers digging into the pliant, giving flesh of Quinn’s ass. Her mouth pressed to Quinn’s pussy and her tongue plunged in deeply enough that Kailey felt an ache at the base of her mouth, and it still wasn’t long enough or far enough. Her nose ground against the hard nub of Quinn’s pussy, and Quinn mewled, then wailed her pleasure out. The fact they were still in the cargo hold of an enemy ship made no never mind to her.
As her back arched and her whole body jiggled, Kailey drank the nectar that flowed liberally from her cunny.
She was almost able to not hear the sound of Thaddious’ voice.
“Cap! Cap! Cap!”
Kailey withdrew her head from between Quinn’s thighs, sitting up as Quinn burbled random, incoherent sentence fragments – things like ‘oh my that...’ and ‘well, that is, uh...’
“What!?”
“Dreller is asking why we’re not putting a prize crew on this ship,” he said. “Dreller says-”
Quinn panted, softly. “Sink it...” She breathed. “The Monodeists might have riddled this thing with who knows how many magical traps.”
Kailey nodded. She had guessed as much. She sprang to her feet, then started out of the hold. She sprang up and into the sunlight and the drying blood of the deck of the ship. “Crew! We’ve got loot and we’ve got plunder and we’ve got a bastard lot of hard work to-” she scowled. “What are you snickering at, Cian!?”
One of her human crew flushed and schooled his features. “Uh...” He gestured vaguely around his face. “Got sommit on your lip, Cap’n.”
Kailey blinked.