Liberty and Death, Chapter 46
Eldridge blinked in surprise.
“Y-you would?” He asked.
“Of course! Dear brother,” Cora laughed, not hiding her amusement at his bewilderment. “I mean, you know my preferences-”
She raised a hand in front of Hawk, and snapped.
Blessedly obedient, she felt Hawk’s strong, rough fingers stroke along her neck, and didn’t suppress the tiny gasp of excitement they drew out of her. Then considerably less obedient, Hawk wrenched her chin skyward, Cora’s eyes had just enough time to go wide before Hawk’s mouth covered her own in a deep, rough, delicious kiss.
Cora grabbed Hawk’s forearm in shock, but her grip quickly turned tender, stroking along the corded muscle as she lost herself in the taste and feeling of Hawk’s tongue exploring her mouth, claiming the territory inside as her own.
When Hawk finally broke the kiss, releasing Cora’s chin, leaving her gasping and breathless, Cora had all but forgotten what she’d been doing. Eldridge swam back into focus as her mind recovered, and she gave him a dopey grin that she quickly schooled into lasciviousness.
“- ah, hah, while you know my tastes, Eldridge, what kind of noble would I be, were I not to consider a political match, with such an eligible bachelor as yourself?”
By the time Cora had finished talking, she’d recovered fully, on the outside at least. Internally, she still boiled with anger, lust, and a little resentment at herself for not seeing that one coming.
She wasn’t alone. In the beautiful void of Eldridge’s eyes, rage, envy, and a mirror of her own lust shone naked and raw.
“Yes…” he hissed, “A political match, of course, sister.”
Behind him, his guards looked dumbfounded, and somewhere between uncomfortable and aroused.
“Oh come now, Eldridge,” Cora mocked, leaning into the capital-C Cunt. “You can’t seriously be upset about me using my toys, can you?”
She gave him her best cute little innocent pout.
“Am I to suppose you’d marry me, and all the sudden develop the ability to keep it in your pants?” she was just making assumptions, but fucking look at this asshole.
Eldridge let out a forced laugh, and his expression cooled impressively quickly, though those eyes still burned.
“Perhaps not, Linnea, perhaps not,” he said, then grew a specifically disgusting grin Cora had seen on men a hundred times before. “Though as far as your tastes, well… we shall see after you spend a few nights in my company.”
In her mind, Cora shot him in the head.
In reality, she smiled coyly, wiggling her eyebrows, and reaching up for Hawk’s arms once more.
“I suppose we will see how you measure up, won’t we, brother?” She purred, and one of Eldridge’s guards coughed, drawing an elbow from the other one. She let her hand fall off of Hawk’s arm, and folded it in front of her. “Now, was there anything else, or can I get back to my morning, Eldridge?”
“Nothing else,” he hissed through clenched teeth that he almost managed to make look like a smile. “Save for making the plans! My mother will be holding a Ball at the Compass Hall in one week's time. May I send a carriage to retrieve you then?”
“Of course, Eldridge, I’d like that very much,” she said, switching easy as pie to her most charming, sugar-sweet smile. “Should I bring any-”
Her eyes flicked to Hawk and Trish behind her.
“-party favors?”
Eldridge’s grin at that was genuine, and Cora fought back vomit.
“No, no, my dear, mother has all that sorted,” he laughed. “Though I wouldn’t mind laying eyes that bed-slave of yours again, seeing as with any luck, our beds shall be one and the same in time.”
“With any luck indeed,” Cora smirked, the only expression she could muster other than a grimace. “I suppose I’ll see if the little slut’s leash still fits, then. It's so rare I have her wear anything at all these days.”
Hawk coughed, the sound more or less entirely obvious as covering a laugh.
Cora glared back at her.
“Mmm. This one has had the reward, and it seems she’s hungry for punishment. If you’d excuse me, Eldridge, I do believe these plans have been made, yes?”
“Of course, sister,” Eldridge said, frowning at being dismissed. “I do so look forward to seeing you.”
“Mmm, yes, you as well,” Cora said absently, focus once more taken up entirely by Hawk. Specifically on the way her lips were twitching, in the fight of their lives against a smirk. On the way those lips had felt against her own.
She heard Mike usher the men out of the door, as her eyes wandered up to the beast-yellow of Hawk’s, sparkling with mischief, and possessive desire.
The second the door closed, Cora let Linnea fall away.
A few more seconds for safety, then she leapt out her chair, punching Hawk hard in the chest. The big woman just laughed.
“What the fuck was that!?” Cora hissed, still wary of keeping her voice down in case Eldridge’s party was lollygagging.
“Best first kiss of your life, I reckon,” Hawk grinned down at her.
True.
“No!” Cora lied, “bitch, do you know how big of a slut I was back home!? I ate girls like you for breakfast!”
“Yeah?” Hawk chuckled, “that an invitation?”
Cora just scowled at her, realizing this was one of those interactions where, unless she cooled off, she was just going to keep handing Hawk the upper hand.
Goddammit. And I did so well last night.
She sighed, wiping her hand down her face, locking eyes with Trish. She’d hoped to find support there, but she found the woman biting down on her finger to guard against what threatened to be an absolute flood of laughter.
“Fuck you both,” she growled.
“Is that an invit–”
“Shut up Trish. Lux, would you call everyone in here, once our esteeemed fuckin’ guests have left, please?” Cora asked the air.
‘Of course, Miss Casanova,’ Lux responded, and fuck if it didn’t sound like the goddamn house was laughing at her.
A few minutes later, the motley inhabitants of Luxholme had crowded into the office.
“Okay,” Cora said, hopping up on the desk from standing, with an ease that still surprised her. “First of all, thank you. Not only for helping that go smoothly, but for all of your understanding and forbearance over the last few days. I know things have been…. Strange, and please realize they’ve been at least as strange for me. You’ve probably heard by now, from people you trust more than me, that I’m claiming I’m not the horrible bitch who enslaved and abused you. I would have loved to tell you all that myself, but to be honest, I wouldn’t have believed me, so I didn’t expect you to either.”
She locked eyes with Kyra, Tania, and Tinny in turn.
“I hope some of the people I have convinced have had better luck with you all on that front. Even if they haven’t I hope you’ll at least agree things are better here. That isn’t going to change. Luxholme is going to keep improving. Its people are going to keep improving. Shit, some of you have superpowers already,” Cora laughed.
In a show of cooperation and solidarity Cora wasn’t sure she’d ever be grateful enough for, Kyra disappeared, before melting back through the floorboards into reality behind Cora, placing a firm hand on her shoulder.
“And even more of you are going to get them, or at the very least turn into the kind of badass bitches that treat the threat of slavery like the killin’ offense it is,” she continued, nodding at Iain.
“For these first couple days, my only real concern has been survival. And honestly, things are still dicey on that front. But we’ve gotten things rolling, and I think you’ll all be happy to hear those plans involve killing a lot of slaver bastards,” she gave everyone her best movie star grin. A murmur of approval, with a couple ‘whoop!’s of elation from Tania and Tinny topping them off.
“Today made it clear, though, we aren’t going to be able to operate out of view of the upper echelons of Tyrinno. We’ve got eyes on us, and they aren’t going to like what they see. I'm going to need help from all of you, for all of you, to make us strong enough that it doesn't matter,” her voice was rising with each word now, emotion getting away from her a bit, “because, and I promise you this, my allegiance will always be to the people of Luxholme. But I hope that this world pisses you off as much as it does me. I hope that you all want to see the changes happening here start being the changes happening everywhere.”
She swept her gaze over the assembled people, seeing in their eyes that her next words would ring true.
“But most of all, I just hope. Hope like you do. Hope like it doesn’t seem like anyone else does in this fucking city. So please, stay with me, be that hope for everyone. Be the spark, the flame, the inferno that burns this goddamn city to the ground.”
What Cora had really hoped, was that things would stabilize. They’d get a little shop set up, deal with the Chains, then let Luxholme be a tiny oasis in a desert of misery. But Eldridge represented a lot of things, and one of them was that the eyes on Luxholme wouldn’t let an oasis like that go unpunished.
As she watched the crowd, she wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Maybe more whoops and cheers, but that was probably more than she could have wished for. What she saw was maybe better anyway.
On each and every face was a look of grim determination, in each and every eye, a spark of hope.