James lay on his back, one arm thrown up to pillow his head which was currently tilted in her direction. Unlike other women, Lia looked radiant after he’d had her. Usually, he started to see the little blemishes or those irritating habits afterwards, reasons to run, but never with Lia. Perhaps the exercise brightened her eyes, or maybe it was something about how they twinkled. Whatever it was, James certainly didn’t mind. He always came back. He liked to think that she would’ve done the same, in his position.
Contrary to all appearances, James was a complete fool. He knew what Lia was and he knew that whatever coin he passed her was most likely more attractive to her than he was, but he liked to think it wasn’t all about the gold. At least, not every time. As a lad, he had always been fawned over by the ladies around court - and perhaps that was merely that his future wife would have been the most powerful woman in the South, someday - but James knew he was easy on the eyes. Even that much couldn’t be said of all her customers and James was taller than most, sculpted and chiseled. That much, at least, could be said for him, and when they talked it seemed to him that she quite liked him. He didn’t allow himself to question that too much. There were some things even he didn’t want to know for sure.
She was looking at him and reaching out with his free hand, he touched her chin. She was a ship in motion and he let her move away from him, laconically watching her movements. He smiled when he spoke. “Are you planning on missing me?” he teased, lightly. She was sitting up but he made no movement. Shaking his head, James propped himself up on one elbow. “A six month at most,” he responded lightly. His sandy hair fell against his eyes but still he smiled, cheeky to the last. “But that only if the storms keep up.”
He’d taken to her bed for refuge from one. Lightning ripped open the sky when they made love, thunder blackening hopes of swifter arrivals. Outside, rain had become humidity, sweeping back out to sea back towards the Southern Isles. He’d draw on memories of that night for many to come, cold and alone on a volcanic island.
“I predict only a few weeks,” continued James. “It’s all very routine.” A hateful word, really, routine. It was tiresome even to speak of routine, as far as James was concerned, and the fact that it was a routine kind of raid made it little better. He was a pirate and, by all the gods, pirates weren’t meant to be predictable. Once, he’d thought to leave that behind at Swystone Hall.
“What, done with me, already?” he joshed, tilting his head as she sat up. “One whiff of routine and I’m no longer of interest to you? Is that the way of it? If I weren’t so confident in my charms, I’d be wounded. Don’t tempt me to stay away longer.” His eyes twinkled as he pulled aside the meager coverings that had tangled his legs and sat up beside her, as naked and confident as she. He imagined himself to be joking, rather than making a prediction. “You’d miss me then,” he told her, hoping it was true.
“We’re sailing west,” he added, momentarily growing more serious as he glanced around for his discarded clothes. They’d been disposed of in rather a hurry, scattered here and there. So far, he’d managed to locate only a lone boot. He made no move to put it on. “Past Vysova and up.” Quirking a brow, he turned sea-blue orbs on her. “Cold waters.” She was looking at him and he ran finger through her raven tresses. “I’ll miss you, at least. Say you’ll miss me, too.”
She melted into his touch, her muscles tensing first beneath her brows, into her shoulders and down her back until her entirety curled over itself like a wounded animal. His skin left her aching, both for his presence and freedom from it. He bought her just like every other man, and when James returned to the inn every few months, Lia understood what to expect of her ngiht. She loathed her profession; every moment of the flirting and the fucking felt like anchors dragging from her ears. She awoke at night with stomach aches in the arms of men she did not know and rose the next morning sore with silvers thrown at her hemline. Because she had met James this very same way, she could never release him from the guilt of trafficking her body. In him, she saw a man content with buying a night and she hated that part of him. She wanted to shake it from his past and meet him on the road, both free Aragoth people with adventure in store.
James was no better than any common whorer, Lia knew this, but he was different nonetheless, because she knew he would return. Lia knew him by name, both first and last. She knew the stories behind his scars and his favorite type of brew. She recognized his twitches and threw extra sheets on him in the dark after he’d fallen asleep, because she knew he was easily chilled. He was consistent and dependable, furthermore, he was exposure to the world beyond the Swystone village. He was her fuel for a hopeful future, and so in that way, James continually broke Lia apart, reducing her to her worst while lighting the fire in her that yearned for something more. The more Lia lived as a woman capable of servicing James, however, the farther she ran from her ideal.
She knew all of this, and she glanced at his hand in her hair with this tragedy in her mind. I’ll miss you, he said. He would missed the warmth of her breath, the touch of her skin, the heft of her breast. James missed the bodies of a women all over the country just as Lia serviced men all over country. But the hand playing with her curls was more than just a man passing through, for even when James went north, he was never truly gone from Lia’s thoughts.
She reached up--her pulse still racing slightly from their games--to clutch his hand in hers. Strands of her hair wove in between their fingers. She squeezed his palm aggressively, pulling his fingers away from her head. They wrapped around each other, woven like the side of a basket. James’s hands, rougher than Lia’s, sent bumps rising on her skin. “It is not my job...” she whispered duskily, “...to miss you.” Her grasp softened around him, fingers moving softly over his callouses.
While choosing her words, she had been looking down him. His body was covered in scars, his chest molded and remolded like the shore of a beach. When crashed into, he healed. Then Lia looked down her own. Broken, yes, but not in the same way. Bruises healed and left no mark, but her bones stuck out in spots; her hips like the peaks of mountains, and the skin in-between like a shallow ocean. The hand weaving through James’s fingers dropped to his thigh and then Lia tugged on her collar bone. With the other hand she took a moment to clutch a recently sore spot on her ribcage. She breathed low.
Lia was an obedient worker, but she could never completely dedicate herself to something she did not believe in. Lia did not do her job well. It was then that she acted on the urge to kiss his cheek, as if to say that she was doing more than her job now. “Return to me safely,” she whispered, “and I won’t have to.” Their faces were close, and when she smiled, her breath hit his flushed cheek.
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