III: Winecocks
Loredas, 27 Midyear, Year 202 of the Fourth Era
Riften's newest inn was several years old. Anyone you cared to ask would agree the drinks were good, though not as good as those of The Bee and Barb—nothing original—but only the fancy ate or drank at the Bee and Barb. Maven Black-Briar herself had dinner there most nights. Tluldir was fancy now, for all the things she'd stolen, but she couldn't bear the looks the place's owners would give her anymore, so she drank and looked for people to fuck either at the new place or at the Ragged Flagon. The only people ever at the Flagon were Thieves Guilders she already knew and liked, or their support staff, or Dirge—for sexual partners, Lull wanted new flavors most nights, and certainly on this night. One or a few men or women she'd never been with. Ideally someone she'd never so much as seen before, someone new. Plus the Flagon's drink was never good and of late she kept getting really angry at being charged for anything despite basically owning the place and having single-handedly revived it, and the Guild, and probably the city too, and she also didn't want to get thrown out, again, for beating the piss out of Vekel the Man, again. Somehow thinking the word "again" repeatedly helped Lull let go of the anger.
So Lull went to the new place tonight: The Lonely Stag, much better known as "Winecocks" or "The Winecock" for its potent alcohol's common effect on men who drank to get liquid courage enough to proposition one of the place's whores, and then failed to perform with them, physically, almost always specifically being unable to get hard. Apparently winecock was a very common occurrence there, of a night. Lull had only encountered it a few times—once the man was simply too drunk to fuck, and every other time they couldn't get their cocks up—and never with one of the place's man-whores—only guests like herself—at which point she'd usually dump whatever man had failed her, and hire one, if she was still in the mood for cock; or hire a woman, if she wasn't. There always seemed to be as many women as men whoring their bodies out in Winecocks. The place catered to common people—it was by far the city's most popular inn, for its popularity, itself, now, and its drink prices and room rental prices and likely also their brothel side-business. Also that it wasn't in the Ratway, which the Ragged Flagon was, of course. Winecocks was most busy on any given Fredas—the end of the work-week—of course, and on a Loredas night it was only slightly less rowdy—by maybe one order of magnitude rather than several and dead inside or actually empty like the Bee and Barb was sometimes. An empty bar depressed Tluldir. The place's crowds suited Lull just fine tonight. She'd been asked a few times to join in with couples or groups to fuck on such nights—that sounded very attractive tonight. That or some love-play. She'd been thinking about that damnably tall and handsome watch-elf again, Solitar, although she was done with trying to find him anymore. She'd looked everywhere in Riften and still not found him. Other Guild thieves saw him plenty, but were too afraid to approach or speak with him. She needed to see the damn fantasy she kept having play out in a more tactile manner, and end with her feeling satisfied, preferably also with the taste of cum in her mouth, instead of helpless and alone except for her very worst enemy in Riften—that guard, the city's one clean guard, Solitar Ice-Veins.
As Lull made casual conversation with a few interesting-looking people who were probably also there for sex who kept turning out to be quite boring, Ice-Veins kept coming up. She brought him up once herself. Well, surely not more than twice. Maybe thrice. The man was very strictly law-abiding, everyone agreed with, but then Lull started hearing something good: that the man had a huge sexual appetite. Lull learned this night he had another nickname, or honorary Nord title, apart from the two she knew about—Ice-Veins and Horse-Killer: in the city's low places he was also known as Solitar the Naughty. Upon hearing his third sobriquet, Lull decided she liked the man, rather than hated him. Nobody she spoke with seemed to know quite why or how Sol had earned that last nickname—or the first two, either—except that people started calling him "the Naughty" after The Winecock's every woman whore noticed he'd fucked all of them. Every single one. If several boring people's speculation could be believed, most of those women hadn't even asked him for payment, he was such a good lover, and a few had paid him for the pleasure. That excited Lull, though she assumed it was nothing more than bawdy speculation. People liked to think the worst (or sometimes best, depending on your perspective of sexual relations) of other people.
Lull got so engaged in learning about Solitar the Naughty's carnal exploits that she forgot to keep drinking—she looked for the place's main barkeeper, Anina, a Nord woman with great legs she always hid, and couldn't find Anina and so talked to one of the lesser bartenders, an apprentice, a Bosmer everyone called Nightscrub, to ask him to bring her a whore to talk to about Sol the Mightily Naughty. Nightscrub smiled and said he hadn't heard the man called quite such before but liked it, and that he'd go get someone for her if she'd buy another drink. He said he hadn't seen her drink in dangerously nigh an hour. Lull said he was mistaken, bought a cheap ale and downed it in approximately one gulp, then slammed the empty wood mug down on the bar.
"I'll get you a whore," Nightscrub said, impressed, smiling.
"To talk to," Lull said.
"Sure," Nightscrub said, making a penis-in-vagina gesture with his hands. Lull didn't enjoy it.
A moment later a pretty but entirely too young-looking harlot Lull had seen at Winecocks frequently, but never hired to fuck, appeared. Metina the Thicc. Nord. Ignoring how she looked not more than eighteen, she was skinny, but gorgeous, with green eyes and red hair and really no tits but an ass that would not quit. Every time Lull saw her behind she thought Metina was some other adult with the best ass ever and she'd get excited, but then she'd see the hair and absurdly perfect hourglass figure and Metina's face and be very let down; she was far too young. If only Lull could've put Metina's ass on someone she hired regularly and only felt somewhat guilty about hiring (that she'd hired anyone at all for sex, not that she'd hired this person), Loth Palenix, called The Priestess, a Cyrodiil whose family was of middling nobility in some place Lull had never heard of whose family disowned her for her "whoredom" who turned to Dibella, was welcomed, but then found she had no patience for religious services—not even the sexy kind—and little for clothing in general and wound up in the thief's capital of Skyrim.
"Hiya, Guildmaster," Metina greeted Lull. The words were plain but Metina tried to emboss them with seduction. On anyone else's body they might've worked on Lull, though Metina sounded young, too, beyond looking young. Lull wasn't sure how many times she'd turned Metina down. Other people didn't often. Some people seemed to like Metina for her youth even more than her ass. "Fancy a fuck?" Metina added. She aimed her voluminous ass at Lull and looked back at Lull from over a shoulder.
"You still look too young," Lull said.
"I won't forever," Metina said, moving right on. "You wanted to talk about Solitar?"
"His High Naughtiness, aye," Lull said. Damn Nords, she thought. They've wormed their way even into my diction.
Metina laughed. Lull wanted to look at her ass some more, but then got lost in her eyes. Metina's eyes seemed older than all the rest of her body. "Nightscrub told me you just came up with a new title for him. Have you—"
"No," Lull said. Metina was about to ask if Lull had fucked him, Lull knew. Lull stopped her to keep her from making vulgar gestures. She didn't want to see such a young person be so sexual.
"You only wanna talk about him?" Metina said.
"Yes," Lull said. "What will that cost?"
"I have a proposition:" Metina said. "Tell me you'll consider my more fun services—" She gestured to her posterior and her pussy. "—and I'm free until somebody else wants them."
"Deal," Lull said. "Why'd he hire you?"
"He sampled every woman here," Metina said.
"It wasn't for your age?" Lull said.
"No," Metina said. "He didn't want to play with that at all. He liked my fun bits. He was most interested in my rear, as anyone with good taste is," she said, brandishing her ass at Lull again briefly. "Not my age, nor my visage. But I spoke truly: He wanted to bed every working woman here," she said, "and he did. I was one—no, I was toward the middle. Not first nor last. Apparently he does that every year or so."
"'That' meaning he fucks every whore in Winecocks?" Lull said. "Annually?"
Metina winced at the word "whore" but didn't linger on it. "Yes," she said.
"How many times has he been with you?" Lull said.
"I've only been here a few months—I'll get that man under my spell yet, mark my words. This ass needs a sugar daddy," Metina said, joking. "Only a handful of times. No, less. Three."
"Three's an auspicious number," Lull said, thinking, He paid to fuck this woman three times, and he hasn't been with me once. Lull deduced: he must only like very thin women who somehow had big tits or a great ass.
"Not when you have to pay rent," Metina said.
"True," Lull said, giggling. She didn't pay rent anymore—people paid it to her—but she still remembered it. "What was he . . . like?" Lull said. "Good? Bad?"
"The word 'good' falls so far short of his excellence I'm embarrassed to use it about him," Metina said. "He came here—to pay—for at least one of us daily for a month when the sex part was just starting. Brothel, I mean. I didn't work here then, but everyone has agreed with this, that I know of. He refused the discount this place offered for the first month. A promotional deal. So he paid full price, and tipped well. Or so everyone tells me. I thought he did it out of shame, but later learned he didn't—he doesn't feel bad about paying for pleasure, not at all. He's proud of it. Unlike some people I see. He still tips well, I can verify. The first time he was with me . . . " Metina blushed prettily, and touched her own lips. "I wouldn't let him pay me."
"You were that satisfied?" Lull said.
"Astonished," Metina said. "Not merely satisfied. And I tried to pay him, our second time."
"What about the third time?" Lull said.
"Group thing," Metina said. "The second time was too. The third's more fun to speak of, though, because it's so unusual. I've never heard of anyone thinking of such a lovely, naughty idea before: Sol paid almost every woman here, for a whole night, at the same time, for constant cock-sucking. I've never enjoyed sucking cock that much."
"Why not all of you?" Lull said. "If he's throwing gold around."
"It wasn't about a display of wealth," Metina said. "I think maybe he'd just been with someone who wouldn't give head, and got frustrated. To answer your question: altruism, I should think. He said he didn't want anyone to have to go the night unsated. Clients, I mean." Metina laughed. "He said if no one else came to the inn that night, or if it closed, he'd pay to fuck all of us, and maybe some of the men too."
Lull felt her face burning. She'd never before been interested in a man who "went both ways," as they said. "That's filthy!"
"I know, right?" Metina said. "Don't you just love it? He's so . . . unabashed. You know about Haelga, right? Her marks?"
"I do," Lull said. "I think the only people who don't are tourists."
Metina smiled but then got serious and said, "She does that as an excuse. Religion. She should be proud of herself. Love enough to share. Solitar—I mean, His High Naughtiness—" They laughed. "—has . . . he's so unabashed!"
"You just said that," Lull said.
"I don't know how better to put it," Metina said. "There's no judgment in that man."
"Excuse me?" Lull said, feeling her temper roused. The entire city knew of her arrest and incarceration by Solitar.
"Not like that," Metina said. "I beg your forgiveness, Guildmaster."
"You're forgiven," Lull said.
Metina curtsied cutely. She's just begging for it, Lull thought. Resenting her body for wanting Metina's.
"He is staunchly in favor of upholding existing laws, aye," Metina said. "I misrepresented—accidentally, of course."
"You might say he enforces laws . . . rigidly," Lull said.
Metina giggled cutely. An affectation. I wish I giggled cutely, Lull thought. Or did anything cutely. "I would say that," Metina said.
"And rigorously," some other harlot passerby said, laughing. Lull didn't recognize her—dark elf, irrepressibly large-breasted with an alarming amount of cleavage and ugly knees a short dress displayed. Maybe she's new? Lull thought.
"What else happened at that . . . cock-sucking orgy?" Lull said.
The other harlot sat on Lull's other side at the bar, evidently part of the conversation.
"Well, you know us," Metina said. "Some are about the business, money. They did as paid. But me and Loth and a few others got so excited from just watching it all that after a few turns of his we had to ravish him."
"And ravish him we did!" the dark elf whore said. Both whores laughed.
"Even Lilivah got into it later on," Metina said, gesturing at the uninvited dark elf.
"Yeah?" Lull said to the dark elf with the tits.
"I'm usually only business," Lilivah said. "That night . . . was special."
"I hope we can do that again sometime," Metina said, reaching around Lull and bumping into one of her tits on the way to grab one of Lilivah's sizable tits, then grabbing and squeezing it. Lilivah fake-gasped, but then really smacked Metina's hand off of her. "I'd pay to see his seed on your skin again, honey," she said to Lilivah.
Lilivah liked that. "I'd allow you to pay me for the privilege of licking it off me again," she said.
Metina snickered darkly.
Lull felt uncomfortable. "How long did he last?" she asked both whores. "Is his cock nice?"
"Oh yeah," Metina said. "Longer than I expected."
"Longer than I'm used to," Lilivah said. "Even with Altmer."
"What?" Lull said, puzzled by the racial comment.
"Mer tend to last longer than men," Lilivah said.
"You don't know that," Metina said. She looked back to Lull. "She thinks elves are so special. Sol is. Elves aren't." She looked back to Lilivah. "Men around here just aren't used to exotics like you," she said. "Their first elf. Of course they spurt quickly!"
"You know not of what you speak," Lilivah said and stomped away, turning her back to Metina.
Lull looked to Metina like "What was that about?" but Metina waved it off.
"Before—I didn't mean how long until Sol the Naughty loosed his seed," Lull said. "Or should it be 'lost?' No matter, I meant . . . You said he paid for the entire night. How long did he really endure such attention? An hour or two?"
"The whole night," Metina said, with reverence. "He climaxed more than once. As any man would under my attention. And some other lesser women's. And he had to work the next day." She laughed. "Mayhap unwise, that."
"With breaks in-between?" Lull said.
"Occasionally," Metina said. Lull got the impression Metina was low-key judging her for asking so many questions. Metina continued, "I think more for us than for him. That man could go for days if he wanted to. People—some of the old-timers here say he's a warfighter. Fought in days-long battles, all that. He doesn't like talking about it, but some of us do. Loth swears the jarl's son—the one that wants to suck Ulfric's cock—told her that Sol told him he fought in the Great War, and even other wars before it."
"How old is he?" Lull said. "He'd have to be fifty-something. I didn't think him older than thirty. Too vigorous."
"Elves can do that," Metina said. "Live long. I hadn't heard anything about their . . . endurance before I met Sol. His Filthy Naughtiness, I mean." She laughed. So did Lull; she couldn't help it. "He says it's not true, that elves always last longer than men. Before coming. Anyhow. My thinking is, if the man can fight for days, I don't see why he couldn't fuck for days. I wouldn't fight for money, but I love dick."
"Is he . . . gentle?" Lull said.
"You wanthim!" Metina said. "So badly!"
"No I don't," Lull said. She attempted to say so firmly, but it rang false. "Maybe a little."
"You do," Metina said. "It's my job, seeing truth. But yes, he's gentle. He can be. I mean, he's whatever you want him to be. On that legendary cock-sucking night it was about what he wanted, at first. When we all—most—started jumping on his cock, it became more . . . egalitarian. That was a great night. You go both ways, right?"
"What?" Lull sputtered.
"You heard!" Metina said. "You mostly come here for men, I hear. But women too. Is that . . . I wondered: Do you truly enjoy both? Men and women?"
"Don't tell anybody," Lull said, beginning, but Metina interrupted.
"A joke, surely," Metina said. "We all talk. You—"
"Don't call me Shirley," Lull said.
Metina giggled. "Fine, Guildmaster," she said, leaning more closely into Lull, touching her arm. "We have to talk amongst us," Metina said. "For self-defense. Maybe a man with a tiny cock hires one of us and we can't help laughing, so he hurts us. We all need to know that. About cruelty, or violence, or both. I don't care about cock size, but I know most men do. Or perhaps a man talks a big show but always bursts in seconds once you get his cock out, and then gets ashamed or indignant, and refuses to pay. Or tries to."
"Is it all about men?" Lull said.
"Of course not," Metina said. "They do tend to cause the most problems, though, react the most rashly and violently. It's not an easy job; I like fucking, but it's not only sex people pay for. Sometimes it's innocent, like to impress other men with your date to a ball, or for someone to talk to, or to pretend for a night you're their lover, rather than just for pleasure. Sometimes it's to have power over someone. Fantasy. I get the impression you come calling her for straight-up sex. Pleasure. Mechanical skill."
Lull couldn't meet Metina's knowing eyes.
"Don't be embarrassed," Metina said, rubbing Lull's arm kindly. Oddly motherly. "There's nothing to be embarrassed of. None of us judge anyone. Some of us might make japes, but we don't judge. Well, Calda does, but that's what people pay her for."
"Calda!" Lull said. "That's her name. I keep telling myself I'll try hiring her someday, yet I'm always too afraid to."
"Don't fear," Metina cooed. "Of course, she's not nearly as skilled nor as fiendishly attractive as me, but she's good, she's still worth the price. Which is reasonable. She says it's all in the mind. The mind matters, naturally, but me, I like to get my pussy licked."
Lull shrugged in agreement.
"You asked about his cock?" Metina said, biting her lip. Probably another affectation.
"I did," Lull said, smiling.
"METINA!" somebody else shouted—some drunkard, on the opposite side of the building, upstairs. Winecocks had a very open layout; its second and third floors overlooked the ground level and the bar from balconies. One oft heard naughty noises echoing about the place. Lull spied a balding Nord with white eyebrows with a large bottle—no, with a small cask in one hand. Metina looked at the source of the yell. Her eyebrows went up—cutely, of course—in question, but there was no way the drunk Nord saw that much detail. He concluded, "LET'S FUCK!"
"OKAY!" Metina yelled back at him, surprisingly loudly. She looked to Lull and said, "A woman must work." She kissed Lull's hand and left.
Nightscrub showed up instantly and suggested another round at Lull. She accepted and paid and he said, "You know he's here, do you not?"
"Who?" Lull said, in a second somehow having become certain that Nightscrub was talking about Ulfric Stormcloak. Not that the man ever left Windhelm.
"Your quarry?" Nightscrub said, pointing. "Sol the Mighty Naughty."
Lull felt eyes on her, assumed they were Solitar's and hid behind the bar reflexively, then resurfaced, and stumbled from the drinking she'd already done, and finally recovered, though by that time Nightscrub had lowered his arm. He took pity on her and pointed Solitar out again.
Solitar, His Naughtiness High, looked to be holding court out on the floor with a couple of whores. Most people got very handsy in Winecocks, but he didn't even have someone on his lap, as most of its visitors did. His whole group was speaking animatedly. Relaxed with one another. Happy. He didn't look pent-up or sexually frustrated at all, the bastard.
Lull started walking his way before she could stop herself or think about it.
