Chapter 38: Volume 1- [ - 39]
But the thought dissolved beneath the weight of grief and fear and the primal, animal need to be safe. The goblin attack had shattered something in both sisters — the illusion that their father’s wealth and walls and guards could protect them. The world was larger and darker and more full of teeth than they had imagined. And in that darkness, a lord had appeared — calm, capable, holding a weapon they did not understand, offering shelter.
Lira crawled to her sister. They held each other — Sera’s torn dress forgotten, Lira’s tears soaking into the dark wool, the two of them huddled on the floor of a house that was no longer safe, in a world that was no longer kind.
Caelum stood over them. His face was a portrait of sympathetic sorrow. His eyes, however — the amber eyes that reflected the lamplight — were fixed on the blood-smeared expanse of Sera’s exposed chest, where the torn dress had fallen away again, revealing the pink nipple and the curve of her breast and the goosebumps that covered her skin.
’She is beautiful,’ he thought, and the thought was cold, clear, the thought of a collector examining a new acquisition. ’The other one too. Different — softer — but beautiful. Pink nipples on the dark-haired one. I wonder what the chestnut one has.’
He looked at Lira — at the way her dress clung to her figure, at the curves that her modest clothing could not entirely conceal, at the tears on her round face. His cock stirred against his thigh.
But he waited. Patience. The weapon was not the pistol. The weapon was the moment.
"I should not be saying this," he said, breaking the silence with a tone of quiet, almost embarrassed hesitation. "But — is it possible for you to prepare a bath for me? I have been on the road for hours, and — I came directly here when I saw the smoke. I have not eaten. I have not rested. And I—"
He let his voice trail off. Let the weariness show — not the performed weariness of manipulation, but a real weariness, because even a transmigrator with a system and a pistol gets tired after a day of murder, manipulation, and cross-country carriage rides.
Sera looked up. Her eyes — red, swollen — found his face. For the first time, she looked at him. Really looked.
He was young. Perhaps twenty. Tall, lean, with ash-grey hair that fell around a face that was — she had to admit, even through the grief — beautiful. Not handsome in the rough, weathered way of the soldiers and merchants she had known, but beautiful in the way of a painting — fine-boned, elegant, with amber eyes that seemed to glow in the lamplight. His expression was gentle, concerned, the expression of a man who had gone out of his way to help strangers and was now too tired to maintain his composure.
’He is handsome,’ she thought, and the thought arrived without permission, startling her. ’He came here to help us. He killed that goblin. He brought us the contract. He is offering protection. And he is — he is—’
She shook the thought away. Now was not the time. But the thought had landed, and it would not entirely leave.
"Of course," she said, her voice rough. "We will prepare a bath for you, my lord."
Lira nodded, wiping her face. "Please — follow us."
They rose. Sera held her torn dress together with one hand, her other arm around Lira’s shoulder. They walked toward the bathing chamber — a modest room off the main hall, with a copper tub and a wood-fired boiler — and Caelum followed.
Behind them, his eyes traced the sway of their hips — Sera’s lean, angular walk, the fabric of her torn dress shifting with each step, and Lira’s softer, fuller gait, her chestnut hair swaying against her back. The system’s overlay was not active — no red marks, no point values — but his imagination supplied what the system did not.
He could see the points on their bodies in his mind’s eye. Breasts. Nipples. Thighs. The spaces between.
’Let’s test how delicious your daughters are, bastard,’ he thought, and the thought was directed at a dead man who could not hear it, which made it no less satisfying.
The bathing chamber was warm — the boiler had been lit that morning and the water was still hot. Steam rose from the copper tub, clouding the air, fogging the window. The sisters moved with the quiet efficiency of women who had performed this task a hundred times — Sera checking the water temperature, Lira laying out soap and towels, both of them avoiding eye contact with the lord who stood in the doorway watching them.
Caelum began to undress.
The coat came first — he shrugged it off, draping it over a chair. The shirt followed, pulled over his head, revealing a torso that was leaner than expected, the muscles of a man who had been in this body long enough for the physical memory of sword practice to begin shaping the flesh. Then the boots, the trousers, the smallclothes.
His cock emerged.
Sera had been reaching for the soap. Her hand stopped. Her eyes — moving without her permission, drawn by a gravity she could not resist — found it.
Ten inches. Thick as a gourd. The shaft arching upward in a gentle curve, the head a fat, crimson dome, the surface traced with veins that stood out like cables beneath smooth skin. His balls hung heavy beneath it — large, weighted, the sac dark and tight. Even soft, it was enormous. It hung between his thighs like a third arm, swaying slightly with his movements, the weight of it visible in the way it pulled the skin of his groin downward.
Sera’s mouth fell open.
Lira turned from the towel she was arranging and saw it. Her hands went slack. The towel slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor.
’Mother of — that is — that cannot be — that is the size of — I have never — is that what a man — is that normal? Is that what noblemen — it is bigger than my forearm. It is bigger than the — the rolling pin in the kitchen—’
Sera’s internal voice was no more coherent:
’What — how — that is — I did not know men could be — is that — it is not even — it is not even hard and it is already—’
"My lord," Sera said, and her voice came out strangled, higher than intended. "We will — we should leave you to—"
She turned toward the door. Lira was already moving — her face crimson, her eyes averted, her body angled toward the exit with the desperate urgency of a woman fleeing a fire.
Caelum’s hands found their waists. Both of them. One hand on each sister, his long fingers curling around the soft curves of their hips, pulling them back from the door with a gentle but unyielding pressure.
"Outside is dangerous," he said, and his voice was soft, concerned, the voice of a man who was worried for their safety. "The monsters — the goblins — they may still be in the area. I cannot let you both leave. Not alone. Not at night."
’He is right. The goblins — father is — the guards — we do not know how many are left — if we go outside and there are more—’
’But he is — he is naked. And that — that thing between his — I cannot — I should not look but it is right there and it is so—’