Chapter 13: The Armorer’s Bench
Callis spent the daylight hours hauling split timber for a lower-market merchant and discovering that honest labor did not purify a man’s thoughts. The work kept his hands busy and his shoulders screaming, but it did nothing to ease the dull ache settling low in his body. Whenever he bent to lift a log, the coarse wool of his trousers shifted against his skin, bringing back the immediate memory of Yselle Harrow pressing him against the wooden pillar. By the time the sky over Hartsgate bruised into a deep purple, his arms shook with fatigue. His blood simply ran hotter.
He bypassed the route to The Stag & Ember and walked straight into the forge district. The alleyway was darker tonight with the surrounding furnaces banked low, casting long shadows across the soot-stained cobblestones. Callis pushed open the timber door beneath the cracked iron anvil and stepped inside.
The wall of heat hit him instantly. The shop was empty of other customers, lit only by the low orange glow of the dying forge fire and a single oil lamp hanging over the workbench. Yselle stood beside the bench, wiping down a strip of harness leather with an oiled rag, the raised burn scars on her arms gleaming in the lamplight. A small iron pot sat over a brazier nearby, filling the room with the dense scent of melting beeswax.
"You are punctual tonight, Vale," Yselle observed, keeping her attention on her work. "Did you run out of things to apologize for in the upper districts?"
"I was working in the lower market," Callis said. He reached up and threw the iron deadbolt. No one had trapped him here. That was the problem. The sharp clack of the metal echoed in the cramped space, ringing loud enough to make the silence afterward feel deliberate.
Yselle stopped wiping the leather. Her pale eyes tracked the movement of his hand dropping away from the lock before rising to meet his face. A slow smirk curved the scarred corner of her mouth as she pointed toward the stool. "Take the armor off."
Callis unbuckled the thick side-straps of the cuirass and pulled the armor over his head, setting it on a nearby stool. He reached for the hem of his linen undershirt and dragged it off to toss aside. Freezing drafts leaked through the walls to wash over his bare, bruised torso.
Yselle tossed the rag onto the table, picked up the small clay pot of hot leather wax, and walked toward him. She stepped into his space until her stout work boots bracketed his, dipping two fingers into the melted mixture.
"The hide needs to be oiled," Yselle murmured, her voice dropping into a raspy register. "But so does the skin beneath it. Otherwise, the friction will tear you to ribbons tomorrow."
She pressed her wax-coated fingers against the chafed line on his collarbone. Callis hissed at the sudden sting, but the thick wax quickly sealed the broken skin and delivered a soothing heat. She smoothed the ointment across his collarbone, her hands sliding down over his pectoral muscles. Callis watched the clinical focus in her eyes as she worked the wax into his skin with practiced motions.
"You didn't come here for the armor," Yselle said quietly. She dragged her thumbs down the center of his chest to trace the tense line of his abdominal muscles.
"No," Callis agreed, his voice scraping out of his throat.
"What did you come for, then?"
"You."
Yselle let out a short, dark laugh. "You don't even know what to do with me, Vale. You grew up having servants draw your bathwater. Now you're standing in a filthy forge, begging an armorer to dismantle you."
"Then dismantle me," he said.
Her eyes darkened as the amusement vanished. She grabbed the canvas waistband of his trousers and shoved him backward. Callis stumbled, his calves hitting the edge of the stout wooden workbench. Yselle pushed him by the shoulders before he could catch his balance, forcing him to sit back onto the scarred, oil-stained wood.
She stepped between his knees, her grease-stained hands going to the horn buttons of his trousers to tear them open with impatient force. She shoved the wool and his linen smallclothes down his thighs, exposing him to the heated air. He jutted upward, rigid with anticipation.
Yselle looked down at him, her breathing picking up as she took in the sight. "Look at you," she mocked softly. "All that aristocratic breeding, and you're shaking like a stray dog in a thunderstorm."
She wrapped her wax-slicked hand around the base of his erection and squeezed. Callis’s head snapped back, his skull bumping against a hanging rack of leather straps as a raw groan tore out of his throat. The slick wax replaced the dry friction from the night before with a sliding, intense heat. She stroked slowly upward to the tip, her thumb smearing the wetness down the shaft before pulling back to the base. Her grip carried a pressure that bordered on pain.
"Yselle," Callis gasped, his fingers gripping the splintered edges of the workbench.
"Keep your hands on the table," she commanded, her grip tightening. "If you touch me before I give you permission, I will stop and throw you out into the alley."
He locked his fingers onto the wood, his body pulling taut like a drawn bowstring. He surrendered the control, leaning into the relief of having the choices stripped away from him.
Yselle leaned closer, her breath washing over his jaw. "The March does not care about your pacing, Vale. It dictates the terms. You follow them, or you break."
She set a punishing rhythm with her hand, drawing the slick wax up and down his length. Callis chased the friction, his hips jerking off the wood. Yselle drove her knuckles against his pubic bone, pinning him back down. "Hold still. You endure what the environment gives you. You do not rush it."
She stroked him three more times with a fast, hard rhythm that brought a ragged sound from his chest, then abruptly let go. Callis released a humiliating, needy sound. Yselle stepped back to reach for the ties of her canvas trousers, shoving them down her legs and kicking them aside. Beneath them, she wore nothing. The firelight caught the strong curve of her thighs. The musky scent of her arousal mixed with the forge smoke and hot iron.
She stepped back between his knees, grabbed his hips, and swung her right leg over him to straddle the workbench. She braced her hands flat on his bare chest, her palms pressing into his bruised ribs, and slowly sank down onto him. Callis cried out as she took him in. Her internal muscles gripped him with a scalding, wet heat that felt like sinking into hot oil.
Yselle’s head fell back, a long sigh escaping her lips as she seated herself to the hilt. The linen binding across her chest stretched tight as she arched her spine, pulling the burn scars along her jaw taut. Callis stared up at her, watching a conqueror cast in iron and firelight.
He shut his eyes against the sensory flood, trying to manage the intense spike of pleasure.
Yselle slapped her palm flat against his breastbone, the impact jarring his ribs. "Open your eyes," she ordered, her voice vibrating with authority. Callis’s eyelids flew open. She glared down at him, her pale eyes reflecting the forge fire. "You close your eyes out there, you die. You watch the threat. You watch me."
She initiated the rhythm, riding him with the same brutal efficiency she used at the anvil. She rose up until he nearly slipped free, then drove her hips down hard, the slapping sound of their bodies colliding echoing off the low ceiling. Callis’s hands shook on the edge of the workbench. He drowned in the sensation, his bruised torso taking the impact of her palms every time she shoved herself upward. Yselle ground her hips in slow circles at the base of each thrust, using his length to draw out her own pleasure.
The pace was an endurance test. She wanted to see how much pressure his frame could take before it fractured. The heat of the wax melted into the slick friction between them, generating a searing connection.
"Yes," Yselle hissed, her eyes locking onto his with fierce satisfaction. "Take it. Learn how to take the weight."
Callis broke the rule under the weight of his need. He ripped his hands from the wood and grabbed her waist, his fingers digging into the hard muscles of her hips to halt her downward drive and force his own upward thrust.
Yselle leaned forward instead of punishing him for the infraction. A dark, feral approval lit her features. "There it is," she growled. "You obey until you find the opening. Then you fight back."
Her sweat-slicked chest pressed against his to scrape the linen binding over his skin. She grabbed the back of his neck and brought her mouth down against his.
She tasted of salt and iron dust. Her tongue forced his lips apart, claiming his mouth with the same dominant possession she held over his hips. Callis kissed her back with starved energy, letting her dictate the depth and the pace. She rode him faster, the workbench groaning under their combined weight. Callis’s heels dug into the floorboards, thrusting upward to meet her downward strokes. The mix of leather wax and her natural wetness created a slippery, heated seal between them.
"Yselle, I can't—" Callis broke the kiss, his chest heaving.
"Now, Vale," she growled, her nails digging into the muscles of his shoulders. She sped up her rhythm, her hips snapping down in short, frantic bursts. "Do it."
She clamped her internal muscles down around him. Callis let out a raw shout, his hips driving upward into her and holding there as he came. He pumped into her in thick waves, his body going rigid on the scarred wood.
Yselle cried out, her own climax hitting her a second later. She clamped her thighs tight against his ribs, her body shuddering as she drew every drop from him. She collapsed forward, her weight pinning him flat against the workbench, her chest heaving against his as she rode out the aftershocks.
They lay tangled on the wood for a long time, sharing the silence with the crackle of the cooling forge and their ragged breathing. Callis stared up at the dark ceiling rafters, feeling emptied out. The aristocratic anxieties and the terror of the March had been ground into dust, leaving him with nothing but the satisfied exhaustion of his own bones. The encounter had hauled him through the forge fire and hammered him into a new shape.
Yselle pushed herself up, pulling off of him with a wet sound and shivering as the cold air hit her skin. She bypassed any soft aftercare to grab an oiled rag from the bench, wiped herself down quickly, and pulled her canvas trousers back on. She tossed a clean rag onto Callis’s chest.
"Clean yourself up, Vale," she said, turning her back to walk toward the washbasin. "The leather wax sets if it gets cold."
Callis slowly sat up. He used the cloth, pulled his trousers up, and fastened the horn buttons. He reached for his linen shirt, but Yselle turned around and tossed the cuirass at him instead.
"Your armor is oiled," she said, leaning her hip against the anvil. Her pale eyes were calm again, the feral heat banked and hidden away. "It will stop chafing the collarbone now. Go get some sleep. You look like a corpse."
Callis caught the armor. The hot wax and friction had forced the stiff hide to learn his shape. He looked at the scarred leather, then up at the formidable woman across the room. He had sought out the fire because he was freezing, and now the burn was on him.
"Thank you," Callis said quietly.
Yselle smirked. "I told you, Vale. I hate cutting custom hide for dead men. Keep breathing."
Callis slipped the armor over his head and walked out into the freezing night. The fire had not burned Mara out of him. The realization offered no comfort, only the terrifying understanding that his hunger had grown a new, dangerous edge. He adjusted the collar of his boiled hide and felt Hartsgate settle around his shoulders like something that had finally begun to fit.