Matilde

Reaching Celandine remained a soggy slog of a journey for the half-day they spent finishing it.

Matilde felt childish excitement at the sight of the Silver Hammer Inn, pillar of the Celandine community and the largest building in town, appearing on the horizon. Despite the sun’s seat overhead notifying her it could not possibly be later than one in the afternoon, she was gasping for a deep goblet of wine and a dry bed, dry clothes, dry hair…

They led their horses to the covered shelter leaning against the inn; it had kept the hay inside free of moisture from the never-ending sprinkle of rain, so it couldn’t be so awful. Their steeds would be dry while they rested. A scrawny young man with pocked cheeks and scabby elbows squatted just inside the wooden frame, observing their approach through half-lidded green eyes. When they were close enough to speak, he hopped up to his feet and slid slightly on the damp ground.

“We will be taking room until tomorrow at the least,” Matilde stated, leaning down over her horse’s neck and taking the boy’s left hand. She pressed a dull silver coin into his palm with a stern look. “See that our steeds are well kept, won’t you?”

Upon checking the colour of the coin, the boy brightened significantly; it was unlikely he had ever left this small town and even more unlikely he had received more than a copper per horse in gratuity from the clientele of the Silver Hammer.

“Yes, m’lady!” he answered cheerfully. No doubt he knew no other formal titles to describe wealthy-looking women.

“I’m no lady,” Matilde snorted, dismounting and handing him the reins of her large mount. “But you treat my horse like one and we’ll get along just fine.” Alina had a better temperament than Matilde herself, she would make the finer lady.

“Yes… miss.”

Matilde nodded approvingly.

Dani and Kali dismounted and the three of them slung as many bags over their backs as could possibly be balanced until they resembled a pack of donkeys trudging to the inn’s entrance. Luckily, Matilde could still swing her hips, using one to knock the front door ajar.

A plump woman with eyes the same shade of deep green as the stable boy’s started with the creak of the front door opening, signalling the entrance of Matilde leading her girls in a short line.

“Good day,” She called from behind a high counter at the back of the room, twin staircases sat either side of her leading to dim corridors dotted with narrow wooden doors.

“Good day!” Kali replied enthusiastically.

“Three rooms for the night?”

“Two.” Matilde gripped Kali by her toned upper arm and pulled her to her side. “We’ll be sharing a room,” she grunted, firmly in the hopes it would keep Kali from making any loud and unnecessary comments.

Dani’s expression was stone-neutral. She was a dab hand at ignoring the sexual liaisons between Matilde and Kali. She had to have heard them in the night at least once by now, wet fingers and mouths creating moans and gasps. And yet she never said a word on the subject. Matilde was unspeakably grateful for their companion’s quiet nature, it made her life far easier.

“Of course.” The woman smiled politely and slid a pair of keys across the counter. “Each room is a silver a night.”

Dani pulled a silver from her coin purse, received another from Kali, and handed them to the woman with a small nod. The woman appraised each coin carefully despite her clear lack of knowledge in identifying fake silver, and gave them a smiling nod of approval.

“Both rooms are up on the left side. You will find matching numbers carved into the doors as on the keys. Supper tonight is a hog roast, served just after nightfall.”

They bid their thanks and headed upstairs without hesitation.

Dani entered her room first, bidding the pair good rest and promising to meet them at supper.

Matilde agreed and pushed Kali through their door with what was probably too rough of a hold on her arm. The always-smiling southerner said nothing, allowing herself to be manhandled until the door was secured, and then pulling away to unload her bags in a corner of the room. She spread her things across every raised surface she could find in an attempt to use the furniture as makeshift drying racks.

Matilde dropped her own load by the door and began to slowly unbuckle her weighty armour. Eventually, Kali joined her. She peeled off her leathers with exaggerated slowness and added the pieces to her dripping display. How the fearless spear-wielder hadn’t had an arm lopped off at the elbow with her arms permanently uncovered as they were, Matilde would never know. On her top half she wore only a chest piece over a thin blouse with no sleeves. Southerners did many strange things but Kali was certainly the strangest woman she had ever met. Matilde undressed down to her small clothes and placed her armour in neat piles across a low wooden table in the order she would be reattaching it to herself. She did not intend to let her skin feel the air for long, as soon as she was  clean and half-dry she would struggle back into her plain clothes at the very least.

When her eyes sought Kali’s lithe frame across the room, she found the blonde to be bare as at birth. A beautiful body: golden skin laid over distended abdominal muscles that shifted ever so slightly with every breath, continued over long and slim limbs littered with thin ivory scars; she had a far more impressive mark dug into the skin above her left hip bone, a cicatrix carved into a misshapen eight-pointed star. Well aware of her own beauty, there was no modesty to be found anywhere upon her pretty face.

“Do all southerners parade themselves about as you do?” Matilde asked quietly.

“Oh yes,” Kali cooed, climbing atop the miraculously unstained bedding cover and resting on her knees easily. “We don clothing only to save you poor northerners from fits of hysteria.”

“I’m not northern,” Matilde snorted. “You know I was born in Gants Wood.” She moved to the end of the large bed and leant her weight against it, it held firm without a creak.

Kali’s mahogany eyes slid over her slowly, almost intense enough to flutter self-consciousness through Matilde’s exposed body.

“Anything beyond the Tilli Fields is north, that makes you north-eastern,” she stated with a greedy grin. “I can overlook that though.”

“How gracious of you.”

“Only on account of your wide tongue, of course.”

With a roll of her eyes, Matilde gave her a shove, knocking Kali to her back with a breathless laugh. She took a narrow ankle in hand and dragged her over the rough material of the cover blanket, a decorative throw of thick mixed colour threads.

Between her legs, Kali’s slit was already slick and a light smattering of goose pimples lifted over her thighs at the feel of the cool air on her still-damp skin. Matilde took them in her hands and squeezed, pushing them open and watching her lips pull apart. She lowered her head and dragged her tongue over the warm flesh from hole to clit. Kali’s small feet trembled, but she kept her mouth shut for once. And Matilde devoured her.

The sight of Eudora had reminded her of how much more she enjoyed laying with her than Kali. Her soft, docile manner, her wide hips rolling in perfect synchronisation to Matilde’s ministrations as a skilled dancer follows her lead. Sex with Kali was far more reminiscent of a battle than a dance, she felt the need to push back, fighting for control of the bed. Cheeky and unashamed of her sexuality, Kali could prolong sex for hours upon hours, and often attempted to. Matilde had little patience for her games.

She couldn’t halt the thoughts of Eudora crawling through her mind, dragging their way from ear to ear and refusing to hurry no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on Kali beneath her: the taste of her on Matilde’s tongue, her fingers inside of her tight quim, her soft and pretty little gasps so unlike the Kali of the battlefield.

Kali gasped into her shoulder, now sat in her lap, her insides clinging to three of Matilde’s fingers as she jabbed her in a merciless rhythm. With a slow, grinding motion she used her thumb to rub at her clitoris, dragging her to completion with zero teasing.

“Oh gods…” Was Kali’s only forewarning that her small frame would be wracked with spasms, curling into Matilde and gripping at her with thin but strong fingers. Three climaxes for her, it was Matilde’s turn. Once she had slumped, her eyes twinkling and her breaths panting, Matilde slid her from her seat upon her thighs and she fell to her side on the bedding with a soft giggle, her eyes drooping.

“You owe me three, southerner.” Matilde reminded her with a satisfied smile, pulling off her underwear carefully and throwing it from the bed.

A sudden burst of energy seemed to shock its way through Kali at Matilde’s words, like a bolt of lightning hitting her between the eyes. She grinned wildly, her mussed blonde hair flying away from her head at odd angles and adding to her feral aura.

She pounced upon Matilde, knocking her back against the lumpy pillows and grabbing at her breasts and fondling her light pink nipples roughly.

“None of that,” Matilde grunted, giving her a gentle push. “No foreplay, just get on with it.”

Kali pouted, huffed, and dropped flat against the bed, facing Matilde’s cunt head-on.

“I will never understand you, Matilde,” she sighed.

“You don’t need to understand me, you need to fuck me.”

Kali mumbled something to herself and closed the gap between her lips and Matilde’s, latching to her with long slides of her tongue that had Matilde’s body warming quickly. Having another woman’s tongue upon you is a special kind of pleasure, warm and wet and delicate but desperate. It filled Matilde slowly, a thrumming sensation that fell in tempo with her heartbeat and tickled along her spine, over her fingertips and toes.

A finger pushed into her and she bit her lip to keep from snapping at Kali, demanding more and soon. She needed two, craved three, and if the little southerner kept teasing at her she would be considering four before she could release. She was already opened and aroused, Kali’s wanton gasps and writhing had left her dripping, she didn’t need to be handled gently or prepared for penetration. With a second finger sliding inside she felt her breathing quicken and her muscles squeezing against the incredible intrusion.

The sharp nip of teeth against her labia sent a jerk of white-hot pleasure through her. She pulled her head and torso up halfway, like the exercises performed by soldiers in Grès Barracks to keep their cores strong, and grabbed a handful of Kali’s blonde hair as close to her dark roots as she could reach. She pulled her in deeper to her sex, refusing to allow the mischievous woman to play with her any further, she was ready to finish.

The vibration of Kali moaning something intelligible against her cunt did nothing but encourage Matilde to keep her prisoner between her legs, clutching her head desperately. Her tongue was slipping through Matilde’s juices now, rubbing against her clit with an entirely new feeling of frictionless stroking without pause for breath. A further two fingers forced their way inside of her simultaneously and Matilde growled through gritted teeth, highly aware of Dani resting on the other side of the wall separating their rooms. Kali’s elbow bounced as she thrust her fingers back and forth, filling Matilde with more and more and more shocks of pleasure.

Her end was near and she shoved her free hand into her mouth, her fingers tucked into a fist, and bit her knuckles to muffle the cry as her entire being was filled with ecstasy until it could all but burst through her skin, and then released in a wave of fatigue that washed her clean of desire from head to toe, leaving only the sensation of her own heartbeat between her legs.

It was unclear in Matilde’s clouded mind when she had extricated her hand from Kali’s tresses but her head popped up between Matilde’s knees, eyes shining beneath her smudged kohl liner and gold powder. As usual, the young woman looked far too pleased with herself.

“Do you concede already, good knight?” Kali teased with a quiet laugh. She knew damn well Matilde’s struggle to keep her energy after climax. One day she would make it to round two without a snooze… one day.

Matilde let out an exhausted breath and dropped her head back to the pillows.

“Very well, then,” Kali’s sing song voice called from far away. “I shall call for the bathtub to be filled…”