"You're a natural, Caleigh. You have the mark of Sithis himself. There's no point in running from it."
There was a long silence, punctuated only by her jagged, hitching breaths. I tried to remember how I felt after my first assassination, but it was too long ago, and our situations were too different. I was raised by the Brotherhood, and have called Sithis and the Night Mother my family since I could speak. The transformation I was witnessing in her was something completely alien to me.
"Why are you so upset about this?" I sat down completely then, dwarfing her on the floor.
"I just murdered a man!" Her eyes opened wide, clearly questioning my sanity.
"Yes. You ended the life of a murderer and a rapist. He's never going to hurt anyone ever again, and yet you're sitting there crying about it!"
Her breath caught, and she blinked several times in surprise. "What?"
"One fewer killer in the world, my dear. By your hand. How is that not helping? By ending his life, you may have saved others."
She wanted to believe me. I could see it in the tenseness in her shoulders, in how still the air around her had become. I had her, and we both knew it. Cautiously, I reached my hand out and rested it on her shoulder. After a moment, she resigned herself to taking comfort from a stranger and leaned into me gently. I threw one arm around her and began stroking her hair, taking the opportunity to bury my face in her coppery waves and inhale deeply. She smelled of the road, an aroma which mingled nicely with the thick iron scent of Rufio's blood below us. The warmth of her against me was invigorating. My hand settled on the bare skin between her shoulderblades left exposed by her gown, and she shivered in response to my touch. I hadn't felt this tense in years—not before a kill, not during a job gone bad. Every nerve of my body that was also in contact with hers was practically shrieking in excitement.
Discipline is something the Dark Brotherhood weaves into its members from their first day, but her proximity destroyed all my restraint. I wanted to taste her, to run my hands over her skin until she begged me to take her. I lowered my mouth to her shoulder and let my tongue play along the groove above the collarbone. She stiffened against me, but did not pull away. Soon I was nibbling her neck, slowly easing my hands down to her waist to pull her closer to me. I remember being vaguely aware that she was no longer crying, but she was still silent. So silent. As my hands caressed her face, neck, shoulders, slid down her back, all the tension slowly melted from her muscles. When my fingers lingered at the laces to her gown, she refused to look at me, but as I began to expose her body to the flickering candlelight, covering her newly bared skin with slow kisses, she at last gave a quiet gasp.
Soon she was completely naked, stripped of her blue velvet gown, free of all weaponry, curled in my lap like a child who had just woken up from a nightmare. The hem of my robe was saturated with Rufio's blood from the slowly growing pool developing beside us, and the thought of sullying her skin with it seemed suddenly detestable to me. Wrapping her in my arms, I picked her up and carried her to her hit's recently vacated bed. Her face was turned up to mine as I set her down. I moved in to at last kiss her as I had wanted to for months now, but her hands rose to my shoulders and gently stopped me. All action paused as she worked up the will to speak and I tried to remember how long it had been since someone had told me no, even indirectly. If I had cared less for her, or maybe if I had cared one iota more, I would have backhanded her for denying me.
“Take—take off your hood,” she murmured at last, and I stood frozen before her. It had been years since even another ranking member of the Brotherhood had seen me out of my robes and known who I was. Was I really going to reveal myself to a mere initiate?
When she saw that I would not do so myself, her hands reached up haltingly and carefully slid the cowl from my face. As the candlelight illuminated me clearly, she gasped again, this time in recognition, and shook her head. “I should have known.” But her eyes never left mine, and when I pressed my lips against hers she kissed me back with terrifying need. I meant to ask her where she recognized me from, to see if she knew just how long I had been following her, but when her fingers twined their way into my hair it seemed suddenly irrelevant. I shoved her over onto Rufio's bed, grabbing her by the wrists and pinning her against the faded fabric of the bedclothes. Her eyes slid shut as I bit at her neck. Her shoulders. When my tongue began to play over her breasts, she tossed her head back and arched into me.
The damp trails I left on her skin glimmered in the dim light of the room as I took a moment to pause and admire her. When I let her wrists go, she tugged at my robe insistently, though her eyes remained shut. I undressed without fanfare, experiencing a thrill as my skin realized it was no longer clothed. Oh, Night Mother, this girl made me feel like I was on fire. My brain was overcome by fog, and the only coherent thoughts I could conjure were telling me to bury my head between her legs and break her silence entirely.
When I leaned to gently pushed her knees apart, her eyes came open, and she lifted her head to stare at me. I stood naked before her, unashamed that it was clear how much I wanted her. As she watched me, I slid my hand up her inner thigh and began to work her clit with my thumb. She bit her lip, her hips bucked slightly, but still she remained silent. My fingers dropped lower, exploring the extent of just how wet I, or perhaps Rufio's death, had made her. If I chose to enter her now, it would be effortless. But first, I decided to taste her. Falling to my knees, I ran my tongue hungrily across the flesh my hands had just teased, licking and flicking at her most sensitive spots in an effort to elicit a noise from her. Though her fingers dug into the bedclothes, she did not make a sound. When she came, she bit into her hand so hard it drew blood, so strong was her desire to deprive me of her voice.
The sight of her, back arched, teeth buried into her own skin, covered in a thin sheen of sweat, but still silently riding out her orgasm was enough to make me incoherent with rage. I wanted to hear her! Grabbing her by the legs, I dragged her to the edge of the bed and flipped her over before she was quite sure of what had happened. Her hands moved to find purchase and lift herself off the bed as she felt her knees hit the floor, but I was faster than she and restrained her by pressing her wrists into the small of her back. She looked back over her shoulder at me, a sight which made my nerves scream with desire, and began to struggle to wrench her hands free from my grasp.
“No!” I snapped, grabbing at the belt of my robe where it lay on the floor and quickly binding her hands together, leaving enough leather free for me to hold on to it and keep her mostly immobilized. She was about to glare at me until she felt my fingers caressing the back of her thigh, then instead wilted back against the bed. Her nerves had rendered her incapable of resistance. I positioned myself behind her, keeping ahold of her wrists just in case. She was going to make noise for me whether she wanted to or not. I coaxed her legs apart with teasing fingers and pushed into her smoothly, resisting the urge to groan in ecstacy as she enveloped me.
One thrust was all it took to realize I was not her only lover, and for the first few seconds I was inside her I battled the overwhelming urge to find and personally murder every man she'd ever been with. If they were still alive, that is. But she felt too warm and soft for me to be distracted long, and soon I was holding her by the hips, forcing myself into her with a steady rhythm. Without hands free to steady her, each of my thrusts sent her hard against the bed. When she began to push back to meet me, she was able to keep herself stable with her legs. Her face was pressed sideways against the bed, eyes shut, lip bitten. Still silent. It didn't matter how roughly I pushed into her. Even when she winced in pain she kept completely quiet.
Fine. I grabbed her restrained wrists in one hand, leaning back and using her weight to balance me as my other hand wound back. I smacked her on her exposed rump as hard as I could, the sound of the impact echoing against the stone walls of the room. Again, and again I struck her, until I could see even in the dim light of the room that her skin was glowing red and angry. I lost count of the number of times the sound of her being spanked resounded through the room. I had no idea how long the tears streaked her face. All I know is that when I paused so that I could listen I found her breathing ragged with pleasure. And when I leaned forward again to tease at her nipples with my fingers, the groan I elicited from her returned my sanity to me. I bit at her back with a low moan, reveling in the sounds she made in response.
A few thrusts later, I felt her tighten around me, and she came with a series of loud gasps, the sound made thick by tears. I wanted to keep going, to make her come again and again until her voice was hoarse, but there was no way I would be able to hold off. Seconds after she fell silent again I finished within her, groaning and shuddering, clutching at her hips for support. The muscles in my back and legs felt wobbly and weak, and I collapsed against her, panting. Her freshly-spanked skin startled me with the heat my blows had pooled within her skin.
The room was hot but silent, filled with the scent of sex and iron, so thick it made my mouth feel dry and unclean. I pulled away from her and slumped onto the edge of the bed, chest heaving, but she remained still against the bed. A glance to my left told me she was crying silently.
“Welcome to the family,” I muttered, twisting to free her hands. Once they were unbound, she moved them as if she planned on lifting herself from the bed, but she remained face-down.
“What do I do now?” She asked at last, her voice barely audible over the rushing blood in my ears.
I told her about the abandoned house in Cheydinhal, about Ocheeva. She listened quietly for a moment, then sighed. “How am I supposed to get there with the Guard after me?”
I'd already thought about this. “I'll return before you do and frame one of the other citizens. There's a female Dunmer who has been outspoken against Ulrich for weeks now. She'll do nicely.”
“Why would you do that?”
I chuckled. “Because we need our Hero of Kvatch.”
Caleigh didn't respond, and silence stretched between us again. After a few minutes I quietly rose and dressed myself again. “I'll return tonight and take care of it. By the time you make it back, your name should be cleared and your home returned to you.” Her beating me to the city was an impossibility—I doubted she'd be able to keep in a saddle for at least a week, and even walking would be a slow endeavor.
She rolled over and sat up with a wince. “This Sanctuary, do you live there?”
“No. I merely oversee its operations when it is needed. I trust Ocheeva to do most of the work.”
I used the next span of silence to take my leave of her and the Inn together, hoping she'd have the sense to clean herself up and leave before Rufio's stone-cold corpse was discovered in the doorway to the room. The innkeeper was nowhere to be found as I left, so I assumed he'd gone to bed shortly before Caleigh began slicing Rufio into tiny bits.
