It Pays To Be Nice, Sometimes

This story was written as a part of the Tales of Leinyere Story Event on Literotica, a collaborative fantasy worldbuilding event from many Literotica writers. Look for the event on Literotica's story page to find links to a map of Leinyere, the official timeline of all our stories, and links to all the stories in the event from all the participating writers. Thanks for stepping into this world with us, and happy reading!

Special thanks go out to Nouh Bdee for organizing this event, and for populating a world in which my characters could play.

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Once, it had been ale or wine: Gelsen had drunk for the same reason so many other men did, to forget. For years the ale had worked, blotting out whole days, but it had also brought slowness, sickness, shattered nerves. And wine had been worse. So now? Now, he no longer tried to forget, his worries and troubles a part of him he'd be doomed to carry forever.

Until he fired them into young, willing whores.

This one was excellent, he decided as he came slowly down, his cock still warm and slick from her pussy. Near thirty, or maybe even a bit older, a compactly curved and gloriously-breasted maid wearing the green satin that advertised her price. Gelsen didn't have the money this year for a green-silk whore, and certainly not for a green-lace one.

But satin had done quite well, he decided as his hand found her sweetly rounded ass. "What's your name, love?" he asked her, his voice roughened by exertion. And, sure, by emotion: Gelsen was something of a romantic.

"It's whatever you want it to be," she purred into the crook of his neck. Her hot breath made him jump. "Ooh! He's ticklish," she mused with a smile as her hand crept down, sharp-fingered, to toy with his balls. "There's a lot I can do with a ticklish man."

"Mmm." He sank into her pillow. "And are you ticklish, too?"

"So many questions," she fretted, but she kissed him anyway, spit trailing off her tongue as she sampled his lips. Her eyes stayed open, he noticed. Calculating. Deciding whether he had enough money for her to waste more time flirting with him, probably. "Why ask questions?" she hummed, her lips trailing along the side of his face, to his jaw, while her hand inched its way up his shaft; she'd decided he had a little more money, then.

"Life is full of questions," he groused, the words turning into a moan at the feel of her thumb on the head of his cock, running expertly over the sensitive slit there. She was clearly a woman who knew what she was doing, who loved dick. He felt himself spasm again, stiffening even though he'd shot a load into her not twenty minutes before. "You're very good."

"No," she gloated, her lips sinking to his nipples as she turned big blue eyes up to his face, "I'm very bad." Her hand moved surely along his cock, twisting as it went, jolting his brain. "It's only another fifteen pence," she added with a wink, "and you know exactly what I can do for fifteen pence..."

"Shit," he muttered softly. He couldn't. He had other uses for the pennies, pressing uses. Important uses. "I really don't have the money."

"Yes you do." The whore knew the fundamental truth of life in her trade: that a man whose dick is hardening in your hand is very easy to negotiate with. Her mouth sank further, tracing the scars along his ribcage. "And I have the time."

Gelsen's head burrowed hard into the pillow, dimly aware of how irresponsible this was: he really, really, really needed to use that money for a new packhorse. Their old one had gone lame, and without the new one, where was his company supposed to carry their shit? On their own backs? Fuck that! But all of that faded away now as his penis passed between the smug lips of this bewitching whore, her tongue already fluttering along the ridge at the base of his head. Tasting herself on him.

He was responding already, his hips rising to push into her mouth. Which explained that wicked, triumphant crinkle at the edges of the girl's lashes as she made urgent eye contact with him, watching the look on his face as he saw himself disappear into her mouth. "Fuck," he marveled, a gusting sigh, and then he was laying his hand on the back of her head and there it was, fifteen pence, as good as gone.

She took him deep, but not all the way, her neck coiling gracefully up as he thrust toward her. Her mouth was a hot, eager vise, squeezing his entire dick, her tongue strong and insistent on the bottom of his shaft. The girl knew her job, no doubt; three years younger, he guessed, and she'd probably been wearing silk. She waited him out, lips tightly pursed about halfway down his dark, twitchy cock, patient until his butt sank back onto her dirty sheets.

"There we are," she sang, low and throaty as her fingers found his tender balls. "There's another load in there for me, I can tell." Her lips were a crescent moon, the smile greedy, even smug as her naked flesh uncurled itself across his, arching over him, claiming his body and his money and his dick, her hand lifting it high toward her spreading thighs. "Unless, of course, you'd rather save your pennies..."

His head sank back again, shaking with a cynical grin. "You know better." She did, too, her deft fingers tracing the veins and ridges of a dick gone as hard as it had been just a little while ago, when he'd fucked her the first time. She teased him with her vagina, running his head up and down the length of her slit, smiling when he groaned. "They're your pennies already."

She laughed gaily, generous breasts shaking, her pink nipples dragging through his chest hair. "I like you. No illusions. What's your name, friend?"

"Tell me yours first," he sighed back, feeling the heat of her pussy sink lower along his shaft. She was sliding so, so slowly down him, her body accepting him again, and holy shit! she felt so good. "You're immaculate," he gasped, quite unprepared for the sensations she was bringing him, thinking he'd need to give her a tip.

Say, two extra pence.

"I'm just a whore." She leaned low, her skin on his, lips parting for his tongue. "Don't fall in love, sirrah." She sank onto him as she said it, taking him fully inside, claiming him. "I'd make a terrible wife."

They both laughed at that, breathless and exhilarated, enjoying each other as she began to rise and fall. Their first coupling had been much less personal, a straightforward fuck from behind as she bent over her dressing-table in this back room of hers at the Tipping Pitcher Inn, but this time she seemed to want to make it last. And Gelsen loved it when a woman rode him. He heard the wet, slithery sounds from between them as she thrashed over him, hips swiveling with liquid control.

He sucked desperately at her tongue, his sex-numbed dick feeling every squeeze of her pussy as his hands groped reflexively at those dangling tits she had. She moaned into his mouth, her breath tasting like his cock-sweat after a long morning in the saddle, and the flavor of it spoke to something deep inside his starved brain: he arched high, driving himself deep inside her.

"Yeah," she muttered, low and savage, responding, and for several moments the little garret was a loud, sweaty mess of creaking bed-ropes and a swaying headboard. "That's it, you bastard." Gelsen felt her spittle on his face alongside droplets of her sweat, his cock reaching and flexing far, far up inside her body. "Fuck that cunt."

He groaned, teeth-gritted, his fingers tightening on her tits, gripping her to him. Their hips churned, a fast and brutal rhythm tearing at the mattress before, with a harshly gusting breath, she cursed in his face. "Cumming," she grunted, her face twisting into a spasm, and Gelsen didn't even care if she was faking it: with a roar, he gathered his feet beneath him, arched her high over his hips, and unloaded into her with hard, euphoric intensity for the second time that long, warm afternoon.

She raised her eyebrows, her satin gown held loosely over her chest, when he slid the two extra pennies across her table. "Well!" She actually blushed. "A tip! Are you sure, sirrah?"

"I am." He wanted to lean in again and kiss those scarlet cheeks of hers, maybe spend yet another fifteen pennies. Instead, he settled for a warm smile. "You earned it."

She laughed, the joke well-rehearsed. "I earned more than just the tip." She winked, her hand curling between his legs over his leather breeches. "As I think you know, I earned the whole damn thing." He chuckled with her, never quite sure what to say at times like this, but then she surprised him. "I'm Ella. Ask for me if you come back this way?"

"A pleasure, Ella." He hesitated, never sure whether he should admit it, but then he decided he might as well. "I'm Lord Gelsen. Of Jorlan's Well," he added, self-conscious as ever: he'd not been back to the Well in many, many years.

Her face changed, going crafty, all at once thinking of gold rather than silver. "Well! A lord." She looked him over, her eyes hard now. "Then definitely ask for me sometime." She patted her stomach and winked. "Might be I've got a little heir in my belly then, aye?"

"If not," he sighed diplomatically, "it's not for lack of trying." He stirred, suddenly wanting to be gone and never, ever sure how to say goodbye. His mouth fell open, still searching for words, but then the big bell up at the castle began its slow, even tolling, both their heads cocking. "What's that for?"

"Slow bells mean a death fight." Ella arched an eyebrow. "If it's too dangerous out on the streets, my lord, feel free to take shelter with me..." She leaned close, her lips brushing his cheek. "Anytime you like." She winked broadly, theatrically, knowing it was a joke. "I can be a m'lady, for awhile."

He pulled back, his mind working. "You did say you'd make a terrible wife," he managed, his thoughts already moving past her. He had things to do here at the Fair. "So I'll bid you farewell, Ella. I'm sure I can handle myself out there."

"Yeah, yeah," she sighed. "I know my place. Good day, then." She turned away from him, the gown flung aside, and strode naked back to her dressing table. She smirked at him in the mirror, though, when she saw him peek at her ass.

The little market-village of Lesser Prossfield was thronged when Gelsen emerged blinking from The Pitcher, people talking in excited, dusty voices as they heaved toward the square. Gelsen fell in with them, one hand protectively over his sadly reduced coin purse as he stepped carefully over a puddle of horse piss.

He knew this village well from fairs past, usually finding all the same wares on display no matter which side-street he tried. But you never knew. Sometimes you could get lucky, say, by finding a green-silk piece of pussy at a green-satin price. Or by finding some young blacksmith with enough steel to make you a new knife. Or now, by hearing the slow bells of a death-match, shaking the whole town, tolling grimly from the tower where Lord Huckin's blue-dragon banner snarled in the breeze.

A death-match. Gelsen found his mind wandering into curious places where it hadn't gone before. Death-matches were still common in some of the nameless little realms tucked away among the valleys here at the edge of the great Mountains to the south, but Gelsen's part of the world hadn't ever really seen much importance in the damn things. Some lords used them as a trial, to avoid having to make a decision when townsfolk had a legal dispute or a criminal matter; others just staged them for fun.

The Lord of Prossfield, apparently, went with the latter. Because there was no way the two people Gelsen saw getting ready to face off in the middle of the Castle Square could have possibly had a dispute.

He was a monster, a big axe in his hand, brutishly scarred, with his little piglet eyes gazing out at the world through a haze of violence and rage. He stood now with his tree-trunk legs parted, scowling across the grass at his opponent. And while Gelsen could well believe the man with the axe could have been involved in any number of criminal disputes, his foe looked... well. Less likely.

The girl that faced him on the other side of the square was almost boyish, so slight was she; without her braids, Gelsen wasn't even sure he'd have realized she was a woman. She wore tight, supple leather over soft walking boots, and waited with her hip thrust out and a saucy grin on her sharp face. All around Gelsen, the townsfolk were talking in their usual simple tones.

"Wait. Is this a joke?"

"So... we get to watch him fuck her before he kills her? Or after?"

"Lord Huckin is a fool for letting this go on."

"Watch your fucking mouth. If his guards are around..."

"Does she, like, give good sport?"

"Fuck this. Odds of two hundred to one on her survival!" Gelsen pricked his ears up, thinking of the fifteen extra pence he'd slipped into Ella's cunt.

"What, did she piss him off somehow?"

"I mean, you know how paranoid his Lordship is!"

"Fine then! Fifty to one. Over-under? Say, five minutes?"

"Two," challenged a nearby voice. "Captain Kenning will fucking obliterate her."

Gelsen surprised himself then. "I'll take that over. Two minutes."

The rabble fell quiet, turning furtively, curious at the unfamiliar voice. Gelsen knew he was much better dressed than most of them, even though no Seigneur of Jorlan's Well had had any real wealth for over a decade now. "Will you, now?" The bookie stepped forward now with a strangely furtive twist to his mouth.

"Yes. And I think she'll kill him. At two hundred to one." He had no idea why he was saying any of this: it was instinct, and the one thing Lord Gelsen had learned over the years in this squabbling little bitch-pit of little kingdoms was that his instincts were usually right. "She'll win. Ten pence says so," he went on, "in addition to four pence on the two-minute over. Fifty to one, you said?"

"Now hold on," the bookie wheezed. The crowd was stomping now as Lord Huckin and his bodyguards showed up, thrusting their way through the crowd toward the High Seat. "You're a stranger. Captain Kenning has been through a dozen of these matches. His Lordship trusts him with his life, and the little bitch is nothing but a thief. What do you know that I don't, hmm?"

"Nothing." Gelsen shrugged, settling his face into that trustworthy smile he'd inherited from his mother. "I know nothing. I'm just a traveler who likes to gamble." He shook his coin purse; just twenty-three more pennies he had in there. "And you should want to take my money," he prompted as the crowd started to scream for blood.

"Hell, I do." A fat man to Gelsen's left spat into the dirt. "I'll take the under."

"Me too!"

"Me three!"

Gelsen handed his purse absently to the bookie, already scanning the crowd, the grass square, the combatants. The whole town had none of its usual Market Fair boisterousness all of a sudden; everything seemed to have gone deathly still, other than the earnest mutterings of the town's many bookies. He didn't think about his money, the odds, or his wager: he focused instead on the girl.

She'd unlaced her leather shirt and dropped it casually to the ground, showing a lean belly under a strip of black linen she'd wrapped around her tits. The man who was supposed to kill her, Kenning, had stripped down to nothing but a kilt; both eyed each other now, but as Gelsen stared at the woman he thought he detected something odd in her glance... not fear. Nor confidence.

Pity.

She pitied the brutish Guard captain, but no sooner had Gelsen seen it than she brushed it aside with a sweep of her hand across her narrow forehead, the other hand resting casually on the handle of a razorwhip at her belt. All around him the air throbbed with the slow bells, until they abruptly stopped. A hundred pair of eyes swiveled toward the High Seat like archers seeking the range of their enemies.

A short, slightly hunchbacked man stepped forward alongside the seat and its bored-looking occupant, Huckin seeming to stare at the accused girl's body while he absently polished his fingernails. Gelsen frowned, recognizing the hunchback: it was Silbert, one of his many Jorlan's Well cousins, some distant relation of his mother's. He frowned, his gaze shifting back to the girl.

"Hear, all ye people of Lesser Prossfield!" Silbert cleared his throat against the cloying dust and continued on in a rapid, clipped seneschal's voice. "Attend to the judgment of your lord, Huckin III, in the case against the thief known as Molley the Lash, of Peach Quay!" Gelsen stirred, looking again at the girl as the label fitted her: Molley the Lash. "In that she stands accused of theft from the Lord's Coffers in the amount of five golden quartos and seven silver pennies, plus two in copper!"

"You can keep those coppers!" Her voice was high and ringing, showing neither worry nor uncertainty. "I'll take the rest, though, when I'm done!"

A gasp, as if from one mouth, hovered over the waiting crowd. It was not usual for the accused to speak out of turn, and dear Cousin Silbert seemed to have no idea how to handle it; he gaped, bug-eyed, at the lounging Huckin, who simply waved an impatient arm.

"Well." Silbert cleared his throat once more, then assembled whatever remained of his dignity and pressed on. "So. The aforesaid accused Molley of Peach Quay petitioning the Lord Huckin for judgment by combat against Captain Kenning of the Guard, we assemble here today that justice be done under the eyes of Kelthala, who protects the innocent, et cetera, et cetera." He rolled his scroll up with a flourish. "When you're ready, my lord."

"Yes, yes." Huckin straightened in his seat, his vapid eyes narrowing now. "Go ahead and kill her, Kenning. Make it quick, please. It's hot."

"M'lord." The guardsman's voice suited his body, a low gurgle of spite and irritation. His seasoned little eyes swept over his opponent. "This shouldn't be difficult."

"Less than two minutes, I hope," piped a voice beside Gelsen. His lips tightened, but he said nothing. He was busy watching Molley's hands, the quick fingers reaching coolly to uncoil the whip. Molley the Lash. Across from her, Kenning was spitting on his hands, flexing his corded arms as he gave his axe a few swings, and the crowd all seemed to lean in closer, closing the ring, a wall of blood-lusty faces.

The Seigneurs of Jorlan's Well had never done this; they'd always just disembowelled their miscreants and thrown them over the Falls to die. Gelsen, caught up in the hushed expectancy of the crowd, realized that had been a wise decision on the part of his fathers. There was unrest in this crowd, a violent surge of force and aggression, all channeled through the captain of their lord's guard.

Power like that was hard to manage.

"I'm starting the hourglass now," Gelsen's bookie told his assembled knot of debtors. "Two minutes," but nobody was looking at anything but the two fighters. Gelsen noticed it now, the thing that seemed so wrong about the girl: she had no scars at all.

Everyone in the Marches had scars, especially thieves, and most particularly people who walked around with razorwhips. It was a very difficult weapon to handle, and even training with them was dangerous. Once again, Gelsen looked hard at the girl on the far side of the crowd as Kenning hefted his axe, and he realized with growing excitement that it wasn't the whip that was dangerous here.

It was Molley the Lash.

"I invoke Shall'ha Cloudbringer, the Goddess of War!" shouted Captain Kenning, his axe held high to catch the sun.

"What's that?" Molley's voice had the lilt of mockery in it. "Did you say the goddess of whores? Or did I hear you wrong?"