Chapter 52: The Tactical Report
The Stag & Ember was drowning in the heavy, chaotic noise of the evening rush by the time Callis pushed through the heavy oak doors. The taproom smelled of roasting pork, spilled ale, and the damp wool of fifty mercenaries trying to drink away the chill of the Green March.
Callis navigated the crowded floorboards, his heavy timber-wolf coat hanging open to reveal his bruised chest and linen tunic. He felt physically hollowed out, completely drained by the brutal fight against the Iron-Weaver and the subsequent, devastating hour spent pinned between Maeve’s plush thighs in her velvet parlor. Yet, despite the exhaustion dragging at his boots, a dark, incredibly satisfied heat radiated from his core.
He spotted Rhett Hollow sitting at a table near the main hearth, nursing a tankard of dark stout.
Callis walked up to the table. Before he could even pull out a chair, Rhett paused with his tankard halfway to his mouth. The veteran tracker’s pale, predatory eyes swept over Callis’s flushed face and the messy state of his dark hair. Rhett leaned forward slightly, his nose twitching as he caught the scent rolling off Callis's skin.
It wasn't the smell of forge smoke or swamp mud. It was the overpowering, dizzying aroma of expensive vanilla, spun sugar, and the unmistakable, heavy musk of thoroughly spent sex.
"By the Gods," Rhett muttered, setting his ale down with a heavy thud. "You smell like a confectioner’s private brothel, Vale. I take it the negotiations were successful?"
Callis opened his mouth to answer, but Rhett immediately held up a calloused hand, his pale eyes cutting toward a group of drunken militiamen arguing at the next table.
"Not here," Rhett ordered, his voice dropping into a flat, deadly serious register. He grabbed his tankard and his steel-tipped spear. "If the negotiations were that successful, the taproom is entirely too crowded for the tactical report. We don't need drifters eavesdropping. Upstairs. Now."
Callis nodded, appreciating the tracker's rigid operational security. He turned and led the way up the narrow, creaking staircase to the second landing.
They stepped into Room Four. Callis pushed the heavy timber door shut, and Rhett immediately slid the iron deadbolt into place with a sharp, definitive click, sealing them off from the noise of the tavern below.
Callis tossed his canvas satchel onto the floorboards and dropped heavily onto the edge of the narrow cot, letting out a long, ragged sigh. Rhett leaned his back against the warped wooden shutters of the window, crossing his arms over his chest as he took a sip of his stout.
"Where are Vance and Corin?" Callis asked, looking up at his patrol partner.
"Snoring in the barracks," Rhett assured him in the quiet room. "I watched them walk through the gates myself. They were practically dead on their feet. The boys are down for the night." Rhett leaned closer, a wicked, ravenous curiosity lighting up his weathered face. "Which means we are completely alone, and you are officially clear to deliver that report. You asked her?"
"I asked her," Callis confirmed. He rested his forearms on his knees, abandoning his aristocratic restraint entirely. "And she gave me explicit permission to tell you."
"So," Rhett grinned, his eyes gleaming. "Does the reality of the sugar merchant's wife live up to the imagination?"
"The reality is staggering," Callis stated flatly. He looked Rhett dead in the eye, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly register. "She is built out of pure, unapologetic luxury. She doesn't have a single ounce of hard muscle on her. Her thighs are incredibly thick, heavy, and pillowy soft. Her breasts are massive—pale, heavy globes with these sensitive, dark pink peaks that she begs you to bite. When she opens her legs, she drips this thick, sweet slickness that tastes exactly like imported wine and vanilla."
Rhett let out a low, appreciative whistle, shaking his head. "Gods bless the frontier."
"But that isn't the half of it," Callis continued, his eyes darkening as the memory of the hot springs surged back to the forefront of his mind. "A few days ago, the council rented out the private thermal pool in the Lantern Ward. The entire bathhouse was locked down. I stood waist-deep in the scalding water, completely bare, servicing every single woman in that room."
Rhett choked on his stout, coughing violently into his fist. "The whole council? In the water?"
"Yes," Callis confirmed, entirely serious. "But Maeve... Maeve demanded a different kind of toll. I hoisted her up right in the middle of the pool. She wrapped those thick, heavy legs around my waist and locked her ankles behind my back. Her pussy is so incredibly fat and plush, Rhett. It’s lined with this scalding, velvet heat. When I dropped her down onto my cock, she swallowed my entire length to the hilt with a loud, wet squelch that echoed off the cavern walls."
Rhett stared at him, completely captivated, his knuckles turning white around the handle of his tankard.
"I was pounding into her," Callis growled softly, the feral heat of the memory bleeding into his voice. "Driving my hips up and squishing my pelvis against that incredibly fat, soft ass of hers. The water was frothing around us. And while I was ruining her, right there in the open... she leaned down and told me her husband was a cold, empty man who couldn't give her another child."
Callis paused, letting the weight of the words settle into the quiet room.
"She begged me to breed her, Rhett," Callis whispered, his chest heaving at the confession. "She told me to take her cheating, fat pussy as my payment and put a baby inside her. She wanted my seed."
Rhett’s pale eyes blew wide open. The sheer, unadulterated madness of the frontier politics left him entirely speechless. "You... you bred her?"
"I filled her to the absolute brim," Callis confirmed, his jaw locking with dark, possessive pride. "I drove my cock as deep as it would physically go, grinding my bone against her cervix, and I blew my entire load deep into her womb. I pumped thick, scalding ropes of my cum into her until she was sobbing and shaking uncontrollably in my arms."
Callis leaned back against the plaster wall, leveling a profoundly serious look at his patrol partner. "And the best part, Hollow? The other matrons didn't look away. Every single woman in that thermal pool—Mara, Lysa, Gemma, Sarah, and your mother—sat there on the submerged benches and watched me breed the sugar merchant’s wife."
Rhett sat completely frozen against the window shutters for a long, agonizing minute. The image of the young, lethal Vanguard raw-dogging the pampered merchant queen in a steaming pool while his own mother watched from the shallows completely short-circuited the veteran tracker's brain.
Then, Rhett threw his head back and let out a breathless, hysterical bark of laughter, clapping his hand over his mouth to keep the noise from carrying through the floorboards.
Rhett laughed until his pale eyes watered, his shoulders shaking violently as he slid down the wall to crouch on the floor. "You absolute fucking madman," Rhett wheezed, wiping a tear from his soot-stained cheek. "You didn't just fuck the council. You're trying to repopulate the entire upper district!"
Callis couldn't stop a wicked, deeply satisfied grin from breaking across his face. "I just came from her private parlor," Callis added, crossing his arms over his chest. "I locked the mahogany doors, stripped her out of her pink silk dressing gown, and fucked her raw on a crushed velvet chaise until my legs literally gave out. She expects strict, regular maintenance from now on."
Rhett shook his head in sheer, unadulterated awe. He pushed himself up from the floorboards, lifting his tankard of dark stout to hold it out across the narrow room.
"I have tracked razor-boars, shadow-cats, and canopy crawlers," Rhett declared, his voice ringing with absolute, genuine respect in the locked room. "But you, Vale... you are the most dangerous thing roaming the Green March. To the Hearth Fire."
Callis picked up a dented tin cup from the washbasin, tapping it against Rhett’s tankard with a heavy, satisfying clink.
"To the Hearth," Callis agreed, leaning back on the cot as the deep, exhausted ache in his bones was finally overwhelmed by the absolute perfection of his new reality.