It took us a bit of time to clear the dead kobolds off the road. I offered to collect the tail tips for the bounty, just like I had the last time we dealt with them, but the girls insisted that it wasn’t worth having to deal with the smell for the last part of the trip back to town. So instead, we just tossed the dead monsters into the bushes and hurried down the road.
Arriving back in Kintos just as the sun was going down, the three of us got a few odd looks from the city guards. I attributed that mostly to my bloodstained appearance.
While fighting with Shape-Shifting had a visceral satisfaction to it, it tended to make a mess of my clothing since it left me in the ‘spray zone’ for blood-spatter. I’d gotten used to it. But given how hard I was on clothes and the fact that the girls had claimed two of my three spare shirts for their own use, I had to wear the same tattered and bloody shirt into town that I had during the kobold fight.
The girls at least stopped laughing long enough to give me some pants after my shifting mishap, so I called it a win.
While the guards didn’t stop us at the gate, I did notice that one of them followed us at a distance. Well, based on his stare? He was actually following me, but let’s not split hairs.
Kassandra led the way into the evening crowds as the citizens of Kintos hurried about to ensure the last of their shopping was done. Rieka kept close behind her and I followed last in the group, as my height let me keep track of my serpentine lover the easiest. She wound through the crowds with a single-minded determination, nimbly avoiding putting her long tail in a position where someone might step on it.
This continued until we were partway through the evening market before Kassandra turned off the main road and onto a side road that showed a great deal of traffic with how clean it was. Only a handful of other people were on the side road, and they were all heading in the same direction as we were, though not at the speed Kassandra was.
“Kass, do we really have to race like this?” Rieka complained, though she did not slow the rapid walk she moved at.
“Yes, we do. This place is popular and I want one of the private rooms!” Kassandra grumped over her shoulder with a faux scowl at her friend. “Unless you want to be rubbing up against normal citizens, Princess?”
Rieka did not respond to her friend’s barb, but I caught the edge of her blush as I followed in her wake. A hint of color that highlighted her pale skin and reminded me of more salacious things.
“If you are too tired to keep up with our racing noodle, I could carry you?” I offered Rieka gently, smiling down when she turned to blow a raspberry at me.
“I’m not that tired, Liam! Thank you for the offer, though.”
“It’s a standing offer if you want to take me up on it later.”
“Enough you two! There it is, come on!” Kassandra called, and we turned back to chasing our energetic redhead to a large, low building set next to the city wall.
The girls had decided that, rather than trekking all the way back to Juneau and having to share a communal bathing room with their dorm-mates, it would be better to visit a bathhouse in the city instead. The girls never asked for my opinion and apparently did not need it. Not like I would protest, anyway.
Made of a simple, tan stucco with light wood accents along the doors and few windows on the front gave the building a rustic look. A wide door sat open in the middle of the building that took up most of an entire block with just its sheer size. Steam and smoke rose from a dozen different chimneys on the rounded roof of the extensive building.
Kassandra did not slow her charge as she writhed through the front door. Rieka and I stayed in close pursuit, so we did not lose track of her as the crowd was growing thicker now.
Walking through the front door of the building and off the cobblestone street, I felt an immediate increase in temperature as we crossed the threshold and stepped onto a mosaic floor made up of thousands of polished pebbles set into a stucco floor. The room had several benches set along the walls and scattered around where people sat and talked. Some were obviously laborers of the city, while others were off-duty guards, and still more were merchants at the end of their workday. The air itself was thick with moisture and over half the people loitering around the room had wet hair.
“Over there, Liam,” Rieka’s words drew my attention from scanning the room. I followed after my wolf-eared princess when she pointed me towards a counter set against the side of the room where Kassandra was already talking to a clerk in a loose, linen tunic of light blue.
The elven woman behind the counter smiled as she talked and nodded a few times thoughtfully before turning to check the hanging board behind her.
“We have one medium private bath and three small ones that aren’t reserved right now. Which would you prefer, Lady Silverscale?”
“We will take the medium bath,” Rieka interjected before Kassandra could speak. “I know that Kassandra would prefer to sprawl around, and I’d rather not trip on her while trying to bathe.”
The attendant turned to Rieka in surprise before smiling, her blonde hair shimmering in the torchlight.
“Of course, Princess. We are happy to accommodate you and your…” the attendant paused as she took me in with a glance before smoothly continuing, “guard. Please, come this way.”
I spotted the telltale puffing of Rieka’s tail alongside the stiffening of her posture that told of her growing irritation and I had a guess as to why. She calmed when I rested a hand gently on the small of her back, glancing over her shoulder at me. I shook my head to tell her not to bother with it. Rieka huffed irritatedly through her nose, a cute gesture in my eyes. I gently rubbed the base of her tail with the hand there and Rieka huffed again, this time with a small smile on her face, before leading our group in following the elf attendant.
“Slick move, Liam,” Kassandra murmured, falling in beside me as we headed down a hallway decorated in pale woods and tile
“Figured that it wouldn’t help if Rieka snapped at her, despite the attendant’s summary being correct. I am a guard,” I replied, smiling down at my redheaded lover.
“You are far more than just a guard to us, Liam.” Kassandra’s gaze took on a heated look, and she bit her bottom lip.
I considered her words for only a moment before my mouth got away from me and I responded more honestly than I probably should have.
“I’ll be whatever my girls need me to be, in more ways than one,” I said gently. Kassandra’s eyes widened behind the glass of her spectacles, and I saw Rieka stiffen slightly before her tail began to whip faster.
That’s right, Rieka has sensitive hearing… I reminded myself mentally with a roll of my eyes.
Before I could say something else stupid, we arrived at the end of the hallway that our guide had been taking us to.
“Here we are, Princess Rieka. The door locks from the inside to ensure your privacy. Only the mistress has a key to it, and that is for emergencies. Would you like anything to drink before I go?”
“Chilled fruit juice would be good, something to wash away the road dust,” Rieka replied in a neutral tone and the elf woman bobbed her head.
“Understood. An attendant will deliver it shortly. If you need anything else, feel free to send your guard to retrieve an attendant, or ring for us using the blue rope inside.” With that, the elf woman departed, leaving the three of us behind.
An awkward silence descended, but Kassandra was not about to let that linger for long. I felt a sharp impact on my ass and heard a giggle from Kassandra.
“Well get to it, Liam! Make sure the room is secure, would you?” She spoke in a teasing tone, and I knew the slap on my ass was just playful as well, so I just rolled my eyes and opened the door to the bathing room to poke my head inside to check on it.
The floor was made up of mortared river stones in gray and tan colors in the middle of the room and surrounding the large pool at one end. Wooden flooring took over for the tiles and circled the outer edge of the room. A section of wall had a dozen or more cubbies built into it to store clothes and things. High, narrow windows of smoked glass caught the light of the evening and scattered it around to provide light, aided by four or five lanterns hanging secured to the wall.
I studied the room carefully to make sure nothing looked out-of-place even as I heard the girls conversing in whispers behind me. Resisting the urge to pry, I gave the room another once over.
On one side of the rectangular room was a trio of spigots made of copper and several low benches beside stacks of wooden buckets. Clearly a space to wash before settling into the steaming bath that sat on the other side of the room. A set of shelves sat behind those spigots, loaded with fluffy towels the color of an afternoon sky. Beside those towels were hand sized cakes of soap in a dozen different pastel colors.
The whispering behind me stopped and then, a moment later, Rieka spoke.
“Everything good in there, Liam?”
“Yup. Come on in, girls,” I responded and turned to look just in time to catch Kassandra launching herself at me from the hallway with a big grin.
Given the whispering, I’d half expected my most mischievous lover to be up to something, so I braced and caught the flying dwarf lamia with a grunt.
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While I would have stumbled before, I only rocked slightly at her mass. My improved strength and dexterity was more than enough to catch a willing projectile like Kassandra. She cooed happily as I cradled her to my chest, her long tail wrapping around my waist.
Rieka rolled her eyes as she followed her friend into the room and closed the door behind her. Despite Rieka’s feigned indifference, I could see her tail whipping back and forth happily behind her as she turned to latch the door.
When Rieka turned back to me, I could see a faint blush coloring her cheeks, but she was grinning now as Kassandra finished her quick cuddle and slithered down out of my arms once more. As soon as Kassandra was out of the way, Rieka launched herself at me in a mirror of Kassandra’s affectionate tackle.
Laughing out loud, I easily caught Rieka and spun in a circle with her, getting a happy giggle from the normally stoic woman before cradling her in a princess-carry against my chest.
“That was surprising,” I teased her gently.
“I’ve always wanted to do that. Kass makes it look like so much fun, and it is.” Rieka sighed happily and nuzzled her face into my chest, her tail thumping solidly against my hip and leg.
“You are always welcome to do that, Rieka. I will never complain if one of you wants to be affectionate.”
“That’s what I told her! But no, she has to maintain her ‘noble image’.” Kassandra’s teasing was a bit distorted as she was currently in the middle of stripping her clothes off and had her shirt wrapped around her head. Her underbust corset lay discarded beside her already.
The image she presented was both alluring and adorable as Kassandra struggled a bit to tug the travel-stained garment off and it had gotten caught on her mass of curls. This left the pale curves of her breasts dancing in the air while she flailed a bit.
“Oh, let me help you, Kass,” Rieka said in exasperation before she wiggled slightly and I set her down.
Rieka was quick to help bundle Kassandra’s hair together so the other woman could finish getting undressed, clearly excited to get washed up.
“I can wait outside if you…” The girls cut off my half-hearted offer before I could even finish the sentence.
“Nope! You stay, Liam. You are finally getting the hang of scrubbing my scales,” Kassandra ordered.
“Please stay, Liam? I really enjoyed it when you brushed out my tail…” Rieka demurred. The faint blush on her cheeks darkened before she stiffened her spine and locked eyes with me, toying with the buttons of her top with one hand.
“If that is what my girls want,” I caved without hesitation to their requests.
What man wouldn’t cave to those two? There is something innately sexy about being able to bathe and cuddle with a beautiful woman who actively wants you to dote on them. Let alone two women who wanted that attention.
The wicked grin on Kassandra’s face and the happy wagging of Rieka’s tail only further reinforced the adorable image.
It didn’t take us long to strip down, tucking our dirty clothes into a cubby each while Rieka produced clean clothes for those of us that had them. Thankfully, I’d had the chance to wash the shirt I’d worn when I first got here at the beginning of the week, so I had something passably clean as the girls still refused to return my other shirts.
Kassandra, in normal fashion for her, was entirely unabashed about her nudity. The only thing she bothered to do was bundle her mass of red hair up and secure it in a chunky bun with several hair-sticks. She finished stripping down first and threw herself into the bathing area, quickly selecting a bench and opening the tap on one pipe to begin filling buckets with steaming water.
In contrast, Rieka was more demure as she stripped down and wrapped a towel around herself. This didn’t suppress any of her sexiness, as the base of her tail was more than enough to ensure the towel didn’t cover the toned curves of her bottom, as the fluffy appendage never stopped wagging. The curves of her breasts pushed at the towel up top as well, and the fading hickies and slight bruises from our intimate time still speckled her skin.
Yup… no doubt about that. Those are dead sexy, I thought, smiling at myself as I counted the slight bruises on her shoulders and neck, arranged just so she could conceal them if she had wanted to.
Earlier, Rieka had kept her shirt buttoned high, no doubt to keep with her ‘noble position’ as Kassandra had teased. But I noted that several of them lay just under the faint imprint of where the cloth of her shirt would have buttoned. Just where the shirt collar would have pressed on them lightly and been a constant reminder.
“Come on, you two!” Kassandra snapped me out of my distraction and I finished pulling my tattered pants off, then tossed them in on top of my dirty shirt.
I briefly considered throwing a towel around my hips, but dismissed it after a moment. I loved both of these women and had been intimate with them already. And, given how unreserved both of them had been, I didn’t feel any need to be self-conscious.
“Woo! Strut it, Liam,” Kassandra cheered, shooting me a playful leer as I headed over to where the soaps sat piled.
A quick sniff at three of the bars found me the one that had the least scent to it. I turned back to find Kassandra leering at me while scrubbing herself with a cake of yellow soap that left a glittering film all over her body. I had to struggle not to immediately have certain parts of my anatomy jump to attention at the sight.
“I thought the entire purpose of me joining you two was to dote on you, not act as eye candy. If you wanted that, I could have just stood guard in the buff,” I teased her.
Kassandra’s eyes got wide, and she bit her bottom lip lightly with a smirk.
“Is that still on the table?” she asked in a plaintive tone.
“Nope. I want my brushing when we finish washing,” Rieka interjected, plopping down on a bench and grabbing the bucket of steaming water that Kassandra had left out for her.
Rieka looked down at the bucket of hot water and then over at Kassandra. Her eyes finally flicked to me before her smile turned devious. A look that made a thrill race up my spine and my body reacted before I could stop it.
“Liam? Could you get me some soap?” Rieka asked, batting her eyelashes at me in feigned innocence. I rolled my eyes and turned back to the selection of soaps.
The temptation to just grab the first one I saw reared up briefly, but I reminded myself that Rieka was a princess — my princess, I thought possessively — and thus deserved to be treated well. Besides, her leaving this to me felt kind of hot. I’d be choosing what she would smell like for the rest of the day.
A bit of thought led me to one of the bars that was a milky green in color and had a faint citrus scent that reminded me of bergamot. I thought it would pair well with her natural ozone scent and turned to offer it to Rieka.
My wolf-eared princess had taken the opportunity with my back turned to shed her towel and was sitting there with a smile on her face, all her charms exposed to the world. A faint blush still colored her cheeks, but she winked when I froze after turning to her.
“See something you like?”
“Many things…” I mumbled, taking her tight form in with a long look before physically shaking myself back to reality. “Here you go, Rieka. I better scrub up so I can help Kass with her tail before she gets insistent. That way, she won’t begrudge us time to work on your tail later.”
“Smart move, Liam!” Kassandra chirped, and I glanced over to check on her before bursting into laughter.
My adorable, redheaded dwarf lamia had continued to lather herself until she had covered her entire torso in bubbles. The only parts of her exposed were her head and the wobbling peaks of her breasts. She looked like the strangest, and most delicious ice-cream sundae and knew it based on the wicked smile she was giving me.
What little blood I had left in my head drained towards my waist at the sight of the two beauties in front of me, a state that was only further reinforced when Rieka began scrubbing at her delicate skin and building up a shimmering lather contrasted by the faint marks I had left during our lovemaking.
“I swear, you two are going to be the death of me,” I mumbled.
“We’d never intentionally hurt you, Liam,” Rieka said huskily.
“But you would enjoy the entire process!” Kassandra cheered happily, her arms emerging from the cocoon of foam to make grabby hands at me.
<><><>
Washing up with the girls was delightful. I did my best to be respectful and not spend too much time caressing their curves, but they didn’t help much either. Both of my girls stole opportunities to return a fondle or help me wash myself.
Rieka took care of my back while I worked on Kassandra’s scaled tail, and then Kassandra got my front later. Rieka had me help with washing and scrubbing her tail and hair. She claimed that, while she could do it herself, it was better with help.
The tray of chilled fruit juice had arrived while I was in the middle of helping Kassandra remove her mountain of bubbles. I’d wrapped a towel around my waist to go retrieve it.
The serving girl who had knocked on the door looked briefly confused to see me inside the bathing room, but she didn’t protest and handed over the tray.
Both of my girls had enjoyed the cool, sweet drink. Each of us had cups remaining on the side of the pool now, if any of us needed to cool off some from the hot bath.
Soaking in the tub of hot water was glorious. Kassandra turned out to be a pretty good swimmer, using her muscular tail to power herself through the water. Rieka, with a bit of encouragement from Kassandra, spent most of our soaking time sitting on my lap and letting me play with her ears.
Rieka had her face buried in my neck and was nipping at my throat gently as I continued to stroke her ears and the back of her neck lightly. I needed something to distract myself from the happily humming and naked wolf-eared woman in my lap.
“How do they even heat this much water? The building is big enough, and the attendant made it sound like they had a lot of baths to work with,” I asked idly as Kassandra paddled past.
“Pipes,” Kassandra was quick to answer, deftly turning over and floating for a ways on her back with her breasts pressed to the ceiling. The heat of the bath had pinked her skin beautifully, leaving a rosy hue all over my serpentine lover. “There’s a furnace underneath the bathhouse that heats water as it passes through for the taps. When those are off, it cycles water into each of the baths in a steady flow and pulls from them to ensure the baths remain warm too. I don’t know the specifics. It’s more complicated than that, but I never studied the engineering courses. I don’t need the distraction from my magical studies.”
“Interesting,” I mumbled, kissing the tip of one of Rieka’s ears, getting a happy sigh and a slight wiggle on my lap from her. “And how do they make sure the baths remain full?”
“That is something I don’t know. I think it’s something to do with the pressure of the system and some enchanted pipes, but not something I’ve had the chance to look at closely,” Kassandra finished one more pass around the wide pool before sliding in on my left side, lifting up my arm on that side and tucking herself in against my hip while her long tail trailed out in the water behind her. “The baths in Rue House use a similar setup, but are smaller. Everyone gets a set time-slot to make sure that everyone gets to bathe. If you miss your slot, that’s on you. If you overflow your slot, you lose the next day’s bathing privilege. Lady Maia is very strict about that. Those with funds can bathe in their rooms too, but Lady Maia insists that they pay the servants for the service of bringing them bath water and cleaning up after it.”
“Good to know. Don’t make you two miss your bath times, then.” I turned and pressed a kiss to Kassandra’s forehead.
My serpentine lover cooed happily, her slitted brown eyes glimmering in the dim light that made it into the bathing room. I could see love and affection in equal measure in those orbs, for once not hidden behind her silver-rimmed glasses as the heat of the bath would have fogged them up.
“Smart man, Liam. One of many things we love about you,” Rieka murmured into my neck, wiggling slightly to get more comfortable.
“Another is that big co—” Kassandra started to say, but Rieka cut her off with a splash of water to the face and made her sputter.
“Shush you!” Rieka grumbled. Kassandra wasn’t about to let her friend off that easily, however.
The splash of water that Kassandra sent back at Rieka was enough to get both of us in the face. Dripping water, I shared a look with Rieka and my wolf-eared princess nodded before counterattacking once more.
“Get her!” Rieka called as she splashed furiously, and Kassandra fled deeper into the pool with a squealing laugh.