“Again.”
Karlach spat out some blood-tinted spittle, glaring up at the unyielding mask of her erstwhile tormentor.
Eyes akin to the glacial chill of northern ice stared past a patrician nose, offering her no quarter. She’d just recovered from needing stitches in her side and her return to the local mercenary company’s salle was proving to bring with it far more pain than she had bargained for.
She’d shown up at the company dorms, eager to make up for the missed sevenday outing with Qat. Instead, she’d been informed that the company’s weapons master had decided to spend the morning drilling company recruits. What the fucking hells? She knew the woman was a hard taskmaster, but she was equally vocal about taking her rest when it was due, and Karlach knew it was due.
Karlach had memorised Qat’s schedule to the point where she had a better grasp of the elf’s daily itinerary than Qat herself, something that seemed to perplex the raven-haired fighter, if the expression the beauty had sent her way was anything to go by. But there had been a visible thawing of the icy gaze that the tiefling could see, and she knew it mattered to the taciturn woman that she’d bothered to collect such mundane information about the elf.
Boots polished to a shine scuffed at the packed dirt leading to the shaded and fenced in clearing that had been set aside for the company’s members to hone their martial skills. Amber eyes easily spotted the gracefully lithe form of her… The tiefling’s scarlet-tinted brows furrowed. They hadn’t put word to what they were, yet. After the afternoon spent napping together, followed by the very pleasant dinner of finger foods they had fed to one another, Qat had departed for another escort mission that had taken her out of the city for weeks.
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It was why Karlach had been so looking forward to spending sevenday with the woman. To talk, and perhaps more. Her tail tip twitched in hopeful anticipation, the twitches spreading further and further up the appendage the closer she got to the salle and the rich, parade master’s voice that easily projected itself past the edges of the weapons salle.
Qat was in her shabbiest clothes, suited only for the rough and tumble of beating snot-nosed younglings into competent mercenaries, and Karlach immediately felt her breath quicken. Her forearms were encased in her ever-present vambraces, but the rest of her arms had been left bare, the sleeves of her rough linen shirt long since torn off from one tussle or another. The lean paleness of the woman’s limbs defied both sun and winter cold and the way her muscles shifted under skin Karlach knew to be sinfully soft had the tiefling swallowing against a throat gone dry.
The trews the elf wore had fared no better against the ravages of time and wear, the rips and tears peppered up and down the length of either side to where Karlach itched to dispose of it entirely, just to stop the teasing of her senses.
Spotting her on the sidelines, Qat had roped Karlach in for a demonstration as to why one should always keep one’s elbows close to one’s sides. Or so the elf had lectured, her no-nonsense contralto clipped and to the point.
Feeling as if she were being punished for sins unknown, the tiefling had reluctantly picked up a practice great-axe and faced off against the icy woman who had barely said two sentences to her. Hair tamed in a heavy braid that hung down to the small of her back, the elf kicked up a practice lathe and saluted Karlach with an off-handed flourish that acknowledged nothing of the relationship between them.
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