Interlude: The Scholar’s Taste
The metallic bite of burnt copper and ash still coated the back of Callis’s throat.
The alchemical fire from Mara's pill was a relentless, burning gear grinding inside his chest, refusing to let his body acknowledge its own limits. As he stepped away from Sybil, the scalding turquoise water rushing off his waist, his vision momentarily blurred at the edges. The alchemy kept his cock in a state of rigid, aching iron, but the physical toll was heavy. His heart hammered against his bruised ribs with a frantic, unnatural rhythm, desperately pumping scalding blood to muscles that should have collapsed an hour ago.
He waded toward the head of the pool, gripping the marble coping as a wave of dizzying heat washed over his brain.
Soft, wet hands immediately cupped his jaw. Lysa was there. The baker did not offer him another goblet of spiced wine; instead, she pressed a cool, condensation-beaded silver cup of fresh water firmly against his lips.
"Drink," Lysa ordered, her voice completely stripped of the room's heavy lust, replaced entirely by a grounding, maternal authority.
Callis obeyed, swallowing the cold, clean water greedily. It cut through the thick sulfur of the springs and the lingering chemical heat in his throat. As he drank, Lysa pressed two fingers firmly against the pulse point on his neck, her brow furrowing deeply at the frantic, violent thumping of his artery.
"You are running like a furnace, Callis," Lysa murmured, her thumb soothingly stroking his wet cheek. She shot a brief, reprimanding glare toward Mara across the water. "The alchemy will keep you standing, but it is eating your marrow to do it. Pace yourself. Do not burn out your heart just to prove you can."
Callis let out a ragged exhale, the cold water finally anchoring his spinning mind. "I'm alright, Lysa. I gave my word to finish the room."
He gently pulled away from her soothing hands, his unnaturally rigid, aching erection leading the way through the current as he turned his attention toward the shallow steps.
Mina was huddled near the brass handrails. The young librarian had watched him systematically dismantle the most powerful, experienced women in the Lantern Ward. She had seen the raw, unpolished violence he applied to the dairyman’s wife, the heavy, suffocating grind he used on the mill master, and the feral, territorial claiming of the veteran trapper.
Now, his dark, predatory focus was solely on her.
As Callis waded closer, displacing the water around her dough-soft, impossibly heavy breasts, he read the distinct shift in her posture. She was incredibly flushed, her wire-rimmed glasses completely fogged, and her thick thighs were trembling beneath the surface. But it wasn't just anticipation making her shake. There was genuine, palpable hesitation.
Callis stopped a foot away from her. The feral, frontier beast that had just conquered Sybil instantly receded, replaced by the grounded, protective maturity of the Green March. He recognized a boundary when he saw one.
"You are shaking, Mina," Callis said softly, his voice dropping to a gentle, reassuring rumble. He kept his hands strictly at his sides. "Tell me what you need."
Mina swallowed hard, looking up at his towering, bruised frame. "I want you, Callis," she stammered, her voice a nervous, breathy whisper. "I’ve been watching you all afternoon, and I… I want it so badly. But not like this. Not in front of everyone. I've never… I haven't…"
"You want your first time to be private," Callis finished for her, completely understanding.
Mina nodded quickly, a deep blush staining her neck. "I want it behind a closed door. In a bed. Just us. I don't want to share my first time with the whole council watching."
Callis didn't sigh, and he didn't push. The alchemical fire in his veins was screaming for release, demanding he bury himself in her untouched heat, but his discipline was absolute.
"Then no one touches you today, Mina," Callis promised, offering a slow, respectful bow of his head. "Your boundaries are the perimeter. Nothing crosses them without your word."
He prepared to take a step back, to leave her in peace and move on to the next expectant matron, but Mina suddenly reached out through the water. Her small, pale hands caught his wrists.
"I didn't say I wanted you to leave," Mina whispered, her dark eyes darting down to the heavy, violently hard length of his cock jutting through the turquoise water. "I just… I want to serve you in a different way. If you'll let me."
Callis froze. "Mina?"
"Earlier, I only got to taste the linen," she murmured, a sudden, academic curiosity burning through her shyness. She slowly sank to her knees in the shallow water, the current lapping around her collarbones. "I want to know what the real thing tastes like. I want to learn."
Callis’s breath hitched. His heart was already pounding against his ribs, and the innocent, earnest hunger in her voice nearly buckled his knees. He widened his stance on the clay tiles, bracing his hands on his hips as he gave her total access.
Mina knelt before him, her face inches from his groin. For a moment, she just looked at it. Her scholar's mind couldn't help but study the anatomy up close—the thick, pulsing veins, the dark, bruised flush of the skin, and the blunt, weeping head that had just ruined the women she respected most.
With trembling fingers, she reached out and gently cupped the heavy, heated weight of his balls. Callis let out a low groan, his abdominal muscles cording tight.
Emboldened by the sound, Mina leaned forward. She parted her lips and tentatively touched her tongue to the very tip of his shaft.
She gasped softly against his skin. It was salty, musky, and incredibly hot—a raw, unfiltered taste of the frontier that no book in the archives could have prepared her for. The sheer heat radiating off his flesh made her head spin.
She opened her mouth wider and slowly slid her lips over the thick, blunt head.
"Gods," Callis rasped, his hands flying up to gently tangle in her wet hair.
Mina was incredibly clumsy. She didn't possess the experienced, predatory suction of Sybil Hollow, nor the practiced, milking rhythm of the older matrons. Her technique was entirely unpolished. Her jaw stretched awkwardly against his girth, her teeth occasionally scraped against his sensitive skin, and a thick, continuous string of saliva ran down her chin, making the act incredibly sloppy.
But what she lacked in technique, she made up for in pure, unadulterated enthusiasm. She practically bathed his shaft in hot drool, her soft tongue swirling hungrily over his weeping tip. As she bobbed her head, the impossible, dough-soft volume of her massive breasts pressed firmly against his knees, creating a plush, heavy friction that sent a fresh jolt of electricity straight to his groin.
"That's it, Mina," Callis praised roughly, his thumbs gently stroking her wet cheeks to guide her rhythm. "You're doing perfectly. Take whatever you want."
The alchemical pill made his nerves painfully sharp, and the sheer, sloppy wetness of her virgin mouth was absolute torture. Mina moaned around his thick root, her cheeks hollowing as she sucked him with an eager, desperate fascination. She was an untouched, quiet librarian, yet she currently held the district's most lethal protector entirely at her mercy, reducing him to trembling groans. She slurped loudly, her wet face nuzzling against his musky groin as she dragged her tongue across his heavy balls, marveling at the rich, salty sweat coating his skin.
The chemical fire inside Callis crested perfectly with her sloppy, devoted suction. His leg muscles locked, and his breathing turned into jagged, ragged pulls.
"Mina—pull back," Callis warned, his voice a tight, strained growl as his hips began to buck involuntarily. "I'm going to spill."
Mina didn't pull away. Instead, her dark eyes widened behind her fogged lenses, and she purposefully tightened her lips around his shaft, swallowing as much of his length as she could accommodate.
Callis roared, a raw, helpless sound that echoed over the hot spring.
His hips snapped forward, and he shattered. The alchemy forced a massive, violent release from his body. He pumped thick, scalding ropes of his seed directly into the young scholar's mouth. Mina gagged softly at the sudden, heavy volume, her throat working frantically to swallow the thick nectar. Hot, white fluid spilled past her lips, painting her chin, her cheeks, and the soft slope of her breasts in the messy evidence of her triumph.
Callis rode out the heavy tremors, his chest heaving as he finally slumped forward, his hands resting gently on her shoulders for balance.
Slowly, Mina pulled back. Her wire-rimmed glasses were completely skewed on her face, and a thick string of Callis's seed connected her lips to the tip of his softening cock. She wiped her mouth with the back of her pale hand, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
She looked up at Callis, her face burning with a furious, nuclear blush, but a deeply satisfied, giddy smile was plastered across her lips.
Then, she turned her head, looking across the steaming turquoise water toward the submerged marble benches where the imposing blacksmith was lounging.
"Aunt Yselle," Mina called out, her voice a squeaky, breathless mixture of absolute innocence and profound filth as she licked a stray drop of seed from her upper lip. "Cock juice tastes so good... especially the sweaty balls."
The entire bathhouse froze for a fraction of a second before completely dissolving into an uproar. Yselle blinked, her muscular arms crossing over her chest as she let out a booming, unapologetic bark of laughter that bounced off the cavern walls. Sybil cackled so hard she nearly choked, while Gemma clutched her sides in the shallows. Callis buried his burning face in his hands, completely defeated by the young scholar's utter lack of shame, leaning heavily against the tiled wall as the alchemical fire in his chest finally began to settle into a manageable hum.