Completed Licking Love Off of Knives

[Everleigh Ebersol]

She looked down at his face. Erland looked younger somehow. She couldn’t quite place how or why, he just did. Everleigh huffed. She didn’t sleep in, whatever time it was, it would have to be close to when she usually awoke.

“I can’t believe you don’t have a clock in here.” She said. Then again, clocks weren’t the cheapest things to own. She could understand why a clock wouldn’t belong in a brothel, especially in the individual rooms. The rush of surprise was fading from her. Everleigh yawned.

She didn’t necessarily have an engagement but she needed to get back to the Academy. She couldn’t waste too much time. Her back hurt. She had fallen asleep with her binding still tight around her. Everleigh got up from her spot on top of Erland.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” She was removing her tunic and soon unwrapping the cotton around her chest. She’d braid her hair fresh, maybe splash some water on her face, and then quickly make her escape. “Especially not on top of you.” As quick glance to Erland. Praise be to whatever deity it was that she didn’t end up drooling on him.

Erland Karr

 

[Erland Karr]

“I can’t believe you don’t have a clock in here.”

"What is a clock?" he muttered.

He couldn't snooze through her climbing off of him. Erland blinked his eyes opened and rolled onto his side.

The nordenfiir displayed no shame in watching her.

"It is fine," he told her. "You are not heavy."

When he realised she was going to work through her hair, Erland yawned and moved to his feet.

Too long, lazy steps and he was stood behind her and helping her work her braids free.

"See you again...tomorrow night?" he offered.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“Clocks tell the time. Dwarves made them. Story goes that they made ‘em to prove they weren’t being overworked in the mines and whatnot.” It felt good to have her body free from the confines of clothing. Everything she wore was stretched around her entire form, pulling her curves in tight. When Erland came up behind her she expected his hands to go to her body instead of her hair.

She wasn’t sure which she would have preferred more but his fingers in her hair was a nice touch.

“I have to return to the Academy.” With her violet hair undone, Everleigh turned her head to look over her shoulder. There was a question that had been in her mind for awhile now, promoted now by Erland’s words. “Do you ever have a night off?”

Erland Karr

 

[Erland Karr]

"Not often," he replied.

Curiosity at the question was evident on his face.

Why would they give someone like him time off? They didn't make him work every night, but that was not the same as having fixed days off work.

In fact, those were the days he was busiest when the sun was still up.

"You have to go now?" he asked, with a one sided smile.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

Everleigh didn’t make a move to continue dressing herself or to pull her hair back in a braid. She turned on her heel, facing the blonde man with a quizzical expression.

“Do you…” Everleigh trailed off into a pause, thinking over the questions in her head and how to phrase them better. “Do you want me to stay?” She almost wanted to ask why but instead she kept that question to herself. “I thought you were tired. You could go back to sleep.”

Erland Karr

 

[Erland Karr]

"I do," he said and he meant it. "I am awake now."

His fingers dribbled downwards. Over the corner of her jaw and down to the hollow of her throat. On the way down it was a gentle woodland stream. On the way up it was a mountain erupting in fire.

His large hand, flat to her skin surged upwards into her throat. His fingertips tightened against her fluttering pulse and his thumb pressed against the outside of her jaw, forcing her head away from him.

Erland leaned down and pressed his grin into the side of her long, pale neck. Even if she could not stay, he was going to have a little fun with the way he sent her on her way.

"But if you must go..." he murmured right below the shell of her ear. "...I would be free tomorrow night."

The bear, roused from it's hibernation, wanted to play with its meal.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

A bundle of heat flared to life in her stomach as his hand collared her slender neck. Everleigh was like putty in his hands, helpless in how she looked at him with eyes overflowing of hunger. Last night it had been the farthest thing from her mind. This morning, however, it was moved to the forefront.

She was acutely aware of how she throbbed, how her heart rate quickened. She wondered if Erland could feel her rapid pulse, if it matched her voracious violet eyes. Everleigh pressed back against his thumb defiantly, challenging him to use more of his strength against her. She wanted to ask him why she couldn’t come back tonight, why it had to be tomorrow.

“I won’t be coming back tomorrow night. If you want me to stay then prove it.” They were both already halfway through undressing and Everleigh brought herself close to him, skin barely touching his. “I shouldn’t be missing any lessons when I visit you, should I?” Her hand skirted up along his inner thigh, fingers trailing languidly along as if she hadn’t been about to rush out.

Erland Karr

 

[Erland Karr]

Erland meandered through the small market that he was able to visit. He could almost always navigate through the city by orienting himself against the two black towers that guarded the port.

They had always sailed far away from the coastal city. His people had raided unprotected coastal towns. Seeing the city from the inside had given Erland a sense of how large a force would be required to attack it. The great outer walls only had a few entrances, which was what kept him trapped inside. There were inner fortifications and walls which controlled the flow of goods and people, which effectively kept him confined to one district.

It would have taken tens of thousands of men and siege equipment to take the city from land and sea.

Erland carried a relatively heavy coin purse. He hated to admit it to himself, but by doing his job without complaint or attempt to escape he had earned some freedoms and was paid enough to peruse the markets and buy personal comforts.

The city was a trade hub and even though only his own people were the experts in sailing far and wide, they brought in goods from across the region. He was able to buy wine grown from grapes along the Cortosi coast and spiced dried meat from further north.

---

"You have a visitor. Waiting."

Erland's eyebrows went up in surprise and then he bowed his head. He set the things he had bought down on a table. The hour and time did not matter. His freedoms did not extend to choosing when he had to work.

Erland walked around to the common area. It was only the second time he had met Everleigh there, the first being her original choice.

"You are back soon," he observed.

Her face was flushed red, constrained by the grip he maintained arounds her throat. Her mouth opened wide in a silent scream as her violet hair danced about her on the furs. Erland released his grip at just the right moment and her eyes snapped open.

That was why.

"I am sorry that I was out."

It was mid-afternoon. Essentially early morning by his standards.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“You really need to stop apologizing so much,” Everleigh said, looking over Erland. She was surprised that he had been out of the brothel. Somehow she had felt like he never left these grounds, that somehow he would spend his time here. He most definitely looked like he had been out, there was something about his face that seemed fresher and less dreary.

Usually he only looked alive in the midst of their coupling.

She fidgeted in the common room. She was back soon. And so early. She hadn’t ever thought about coming here when the sun was still up.

“Can we go to your room?” Why did she keep coming back? To be touched? Surely she wasn’t that desperate. And in truth, there was a part of her that felt such guilt over it, not just because it felt like she betrayed her feelings but because of Erland. She was putting money in the system that kept him here. She helped to keep him here.

Everleigh held out her hand. She knew where his room was. After the first night she had it memorized. Still, she waited for him to lead her there. When they began walking, she glanced up towards him. “How was your time, being out?”

Erland Karr

 

[Erland Karr]

Erland briefly wondered if he would stop apologising. It was another one of the small things that showed how different his life was now. It had become a habit, to apologise if he wasn't at the beck and call of every regular visitor.

There was no one in the short corridor to his room, so he took her right hand with his right. His left hand stroked her hair and came to settle against the small of her back. Small tokens of physical affection that he knew she liked.

Erland was not typically as introspective when he had a visitor, but even though he could be asked for at any moment, he usually had a little time to prepare himself for a work shift. There had been a time when he took pride in taking from those too weak to stop him, now he took pride in attending to those who had the coin to own him, for a time.

"It was a good walk," he told her. "The city is too big, but there is much to buy."

Erland closed the door, wondering if she wanted to talk to him today.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“Vel Luin is a good size. Not as big as Vel Anir. The city.” She probably didn’t have to clarify that but she did just in case as she stood in his room. Instinctively, to ward off that awkwardness that always reared its head at the worst time, Everleigh leaned into Erland’s touch.

She felt foolish for doing so considering why she came today. It was ridiculous for her to even come and to announce it to him. She had no obligation to do so and thought that it wouldn’t have mattered much to someone like Erland anyways.

Everleigh pressed the side of her body against him, leaning her head against his shoulder.

“What do you dream about? I told you what I dream about but didn’t get to ask you what your dreams are made of.”

Erland Karr

 

[Erland Karr]

Erland silently reflected that she was uncharacteristically seeking physical affection without hesitation today. There had often been a short time at the start of each visit where she seemed to bring herself around to what she was doing.

He was always warm in the Southlands. He wrapped both arms around her and kept her close.

"I have many dreams," he said.

He thought upon which of those she might want to hear about. Which would be appropriate to disclose.

"I dream of the sea. I sailed. A lot. It is different. A long trip. Have you ever gone far on the sea?"

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“Yes.” Everleigh said. She had for a few missions been on a couple of boats. She would be going on another boat soon enough. “But they were large ships. Didn’t feel the rock of the waves too much. Being on a dinghy was much different.” She thought about how that night after the Pasiphae burned down, her and Zael and others had been captured by pirates and brought to Cerak.

It was that night that he had laid his head in her lap. She smiled at the memory. At that time she had been so awkward. She still was awkward in some regard when it came to physical touch.

“What did you do when you were out in sea? All there is to do is waiting. And thinking.” A hand caressed up Erland’s forearm to his bicep. Everleigh clung onto his arm with her small hand, fingers flexing against the bulge of muscle. “You must do a lot of thinking.”

Erland Karr

 

[Erland Karr]

“You must do a lot of thinking.”

"A little," Erland replied.

"I find it...quiet," he said. It was clear that quiet was not quite the word he wanted, but the closest he could find in the common tongue.

"My thinking is quiet too. The stars and the wind and the water."

"When we arrived it was the time to be loud and angry."

They had normally scouted out their targets and knew where they were going. Landing uncontested, the few hours of marching were enough to start working themselves up for the battle.

As he spoke, he let the flat palm of his hand trail down her spine. In that first night he had asked many questions on the matter of what she came for. It would have seemed rude now and he usually let her visits play out more naturally.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“The calm before the storm.” Everleigh murmured with a wisp of a smile. She had realized long ago that Erland tended to be far more of a romantic than she was. Or maybe it was the dreadlord sensibility that kept her blooming heart repressed. When he spoke of the past, of the nature and environment he grew up in, even with such simple words she could feel a unspoken, electrifying magnitude.

“I would have liked to see you in battle.” Everleigh said, her face turning red. She wondered what it would be like to see him that way, if it was like how he was in bed. There still seemed to be a stolid security about him though when they exchanged their desires. She wondered if it completely disappeared when he fought, faced between life and death. She found it alluring, this idea of Erland.

A warrior in battle, surrounded by friends and foes. His blonde hair tangling in the wind, blood splattering his chest and face. The full power of his body, no longer holding back, the flash of his teeth as he shouted and…. Everleigh was biting her bottom lip, body flushed and beginning to arch against Erland’s touch.

“In your dreams, when you’re out on the sea, what are you doing?” She took a step away from him and went further into the room. Her feet carried her to the cot and she sat down on the furs.

Erland Karr

 

[Erland Karr]

“The calm before the storm.”

Erland had not heard that turn of phrase before. He quite liked it. In his case, sometimes the calm before the storm was also a literal storm but the expression held.

“I would have liked to see you in battle.”

"You would have killed me and all of my kind," he thought out loud. If the rumours of Dreadlord magic were true, then one of their kind would have matched his raiding party.

By contrast, their regular guards were feeble defence for their smaller towns.

Erland looked down upon Everleigh. He saw the warmth bloom across her pale skin, felt the subtle shift in her stance.

That was not - he thought to himself - the idea she was entertaining.

"But would you have me fight beside you?" he asked as she walked away.

He shrugged off his jerkin as he followed slowly. Everleigh would see those well-healed scars his past. On his shoulder was a more recent sign of struggle. Five crescent moons on his shoulder that she would remember.

“In your dreams, when you’re out on the sea, what are you doing?”

"Watching the stars. Seeing the shores of home. Maybe shores of the south. Maybe the feel of axe and shield in hand as we prepare to land."

Erland flexed his hands and realised that he missed that sensation. The first rush of adrenaline before it became steely and cold.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

She didn’t deny the fact that she fully believed in her capabilities to bring everyone around her down. Cocky of her to be so confident but it was this magic that put her on equal footing with men like Erland. She could kill them with a scratch and if she wasn’t careful then she was done for. She had never been sturdy like the rest of her fellows.

“Yes. I’d rather have you on my side.” Everleigh said, caressing over the furs. She wondered why Erland, who ran hot, had so many furs. It was then that she realized that these were here not for his comfort but the comfort of others. Her shoulders were no longer tight and straight across and Everleigh slouched as she relaxed in this room.

“This room is nothing like the sea.” She looked over her shoulder back to the broken shield and axe that hung like nothing more than blunted decorations on the wall. “It must make you more homesick, even after all the years you’ve been here.”

Erland Karr

 

[Erland Karr]

Erland slowed his approach. A tiger, stalking through the grass that had seen something about it's prey that brought pause.

"It is not like the sea. It is not like home," Erland said.

In some ways he could appreciate the warmth of the Southlands.

"You do not always need fire. Less smoke," he explained.

But that was not what he missed of home.

"You want to know more of Erland today?" he asked, curiously.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“Still stuffy.” Everleigh quipped quickly after he said there was less smoke. She knew that whether or not he needed a fire or not meant little. Even Everleigh who hated the cold would suffer through it if it meant she could be where her heart belonged. Everleigh patted the spot next to her, giving Erland a look that told him she didn’t want to keep waiting.

“It’s ‘you want to know more of me, today’ but, yes, I do. What can you tell me about your home? Your family? Did you have brothers or sisters?”

Erland Karr

 

[Erland Karr]

"You want to know more of Erland...today," he went, thinking that he correction was the gap left before the word today.

Erland sat down beside her. He turned to face her, drawing one bent leg up onto the bed with his foot dangling over the edge.

"This is not usual," he said, but he did not offer any further protest.

"Straven, Girren, Anre and Harve," Erland listed out. "Two brothers, two sisters."

"Our town is small. Near the water. The wind in winter is...yes. Very cold. But we know each other, the stars and the sea. And we know how to take," he added.

Erland assumed she wouldn't want to know how they raided the shores of her homeland.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

Nordenfiir names were… interesting. Everleigh didn’t comment on them. It would have been strange to do so when depending where was from Vel Anir they either called her Ever-LEE or Ever-LAY. There were times when Erland spoke in his native tongue, she was certain it must have sounded beautiful when all those words fitted together to sound warlike and romantic at once.

“Raiding.” Everleigh said. “When you took from Vel Anir, did you… you know, turn into a bear?”

Erland Karr

 

[Erland Karr]

"If I needed to...or if I felt like it," he said.

It seemed like such a crude way to phrase it. Turning into a bear. In their own language it was more akin to revealing their true selves, their souls.

Instead of correcting her, he shuffled further back onto the bed. His left leg extended out and he sat behind her. Erland placed one hand on her shoulder, the other around her waist. He pulled her back into his chest.

"We did not need to take our true selves to send soft, southern guards running in fear," he remenisced.

"But when we were ambushed, it took many to catch Erland," he said, voice tinged with equal dashings of pride and regret.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

Everleigh grinned when he pulled her back although she was quick to hide how much she enjoyed him pushing or pulling her around. She used her hands to keep his arm around her waist where she wanted it, leaning back into him and getting comfortable.

Before she would have pulled out of his arms. Now she nestled herself into his warmth.

“Is that so?” She asked, the smile could be heard and she tilted her chin up and toward Erland. She heard the edge of regret. “If they ambushed you it meant that were scared.” Not there was anything wrong with fear. It meant one valued their life. “Are you… the only one alive from your raiding party?”

Erland Karr

 

[Erland Karr]

“Are you… the only one alive from your raiding party?”

Erland had settled comfortably into position. Her questions were more direct than usual, but this one was like an arrow.

"I do not think so. Some of us were..." Erland held a hand before her and traced a circle in the air.

"I am the only one from those."

He remembered them trying to hold a handful of rocks. Spears and arrows rained down upon their shields. The first charge broke them. Those who could change to Svalen had done so.

"It was a long chase. Running us down. One by one."

Beneath her, Erland had become noticeably tense.

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

She didn’t need to look at his face to know this was a subject that was hard for him to speak about. She could hear it in his tone, an underlying somberness that matched his speech. The pauses between the short sentences were just as poignant as the way he moved beneath her. Erland had always had a stillness about him, one that was contrary to her restlessness.

Everleigh could feel the taut pull of his muscles, that ever-slight tightening of the body as if preparing for Everleigh to turn around and begin chasing him. She shifted, turning her torso to the side and reaching out with a hand. With gentleness she had yet to express, she caressed his cheek with the back of her fingers, pushing his too-straight blonde hair over a ear and broad shoulder.

Her thumb spread over his cheek, soft warmth that lingered over his already hot skin. Her other hand was over his and ever slowly she spread his thick fingers with her own; far more slender and delicate than his so it was easy for them to fit.

“I’m sorry. Is it hard to think about?” Perhaps she should have asked that first.

Erland Karr