Wherever they went with Simon and Miller it was thus; their needs were anticipated and met before they even realized it. It seemed not to trouble the others to be treated as nobility. Then again, why should anything trouble them? Their senses were not failing them, as they had Col when he had gone out on his own.
He was still vexed with having been captured, and by those who were noWaryeors. And the fact that all of his senses had gone mad in the parking lot heaped on even more worry.
“Penny for your thoughts, big guy?” A cloud of strong perfume hit his faculties, chasing away the subtle notes of the ale. The soft form of a woman slid in the seat beside him, pushing up into the space between him and the wall.
He looked at her, and was struck by a surge of disappointment. She was attractive, perhaps even beautiful. But her hair was sleek and fair, not rich brown waves. Her eyes were not those that held his somagickallythrough the glass, across the grounds. Her body…did not cause his body to seek union, even though he had been assailed with its urges earlier.
And although he did not quite comprehend her strange words, he did recognize that she was offering an exchange of some sort, with coinage involved. She had an eager, expectant look on her face. He remembered the polite phrase he had been taught.
“No thanks.”
She recoiled as if he had blasphemed, and called him a body part that was also one of Barric’s first and oft-used words in this new language. Col took no offense; her ire at being denied commerce in sexual service was understandable, as the other wenches were supplying hisBredhrenfor free. She left his side hastily, in a cloud of cloying fragrance and even heavier resentment.
Simon was staring right at him, his brows knitted with puzzlement. Col shrugged. He felt like wenching before, and now he didn’t. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The woman whose eyes he’d met earlier…of course, that was madness. He couldn’t even say what she looked like. Could she have been?
No. There were none of them left. And yet, the way she inflamed his senses with but a mere glance…
Perhaps his brows knitted with puzzlement, also.
Just as Simon opened his mouth to speak, he too was beset by a wench, also drenched in a fragrance that aggressively filled the air and invaded the nostrils. “Hey sugar, I hear you’re the one to get to know. Are those your cars, out there? Those are some fancy cars. How much did they cost?”
Simon’s face flushed, and his lower jaw weakly flapped up and down, much as a fish landed on a water-less place, as the wench pressed into the space in between him and Tybalt. TheVixarlifted his eyebrows, and slid to make more room, as he continued drinking his new ale.
The wench took Simon’s lack of speech as encouragement, as she began a stream of patter that Col could not follow. Simon looked at Col, his eyes wide and beseeching.
Col knew of Simon’s incapacitation around most attractive women, where his tongue refused to work, and the very air around the male seemed to thicken and hold him still. Col could not sit by and watch him act the small animal, frozen in fear as a large predator picked at him.
And so he helped.
“Waste not your breath, he is unwilling and not in need of your services. ‘Twould be a better use of your efforts to ply your trade elsewhere.”
“Ply my trade—wait, are you calling me a hooker?” The woman leapt to her feet in indignation, her ample bosom heaving in the shelf formed by her tight corset. Around them there was a sudden hush, and then the woman’s hand swung to where Tybalt had set down his glass, snatched it up and hurled its contents at Col’s face.
He dodged it reflexively, although some of the liquid splashed back from the wall and hit him as he instantaneously rose to his feet, adrenaline surging in his 6’6 body as the correct response to an attack.
But absolutely the wrong response here, as the woman’s eyes widened with fright and she quickly freed herself from Simon’s side.
She screamed a curse at him as she scurried away, to much laughter and the shouts of “You tell him, girl!” and “Striiiiike out!” The Taverne came back to life again, as everyone resumed what they had been doing before interrupted by the little show.
Col sat back down, and Simon regained his voice enough to mutter his thanks.
“You are welcome,” Col replied. “Although I am perplexed as to why she would say I fornicate with my mother.”
Simon had a tight smile. “Miller will explain it to you later.”
Tybalt laughed. “No need. It is a popular phrase that is one of Barric’s favorites.”
Col and Simon both snorted. Barric had many favorite phrases, none of which were to be taken literally, and in some cases quite impossible even for the most gifted in flexibility.
“But I am surprised that this is not a concern of yours,” Simon said, now that a companionable mood had been reestablished.
“What is?” Tybalt took a replacement glass of ale from an ever-vigilant serving wench.
Simon blushed, stumbling over the word. “Fornication.”
Col raised an eyebrow.
Simon cleared his throat. “Make the beast with two backs. Tumble.Swive. Make Love. Do the Nasty.”
