II. The Hound Incident
While Teague Martin was a very nice man, and had given her a very nice orgasm, it was probably for the best that by the time she woke up the following day (too early, but Emily was up, and so she was up), he was gone and the news was already blaring that he had been accepted as the new High Overseer, without any extra effort on his part.
If he'd stayed around much longer, she might have found herself falling for him, worried chin and protruding ears and all. As it was, she got to stick by her policy of avoiding powerful men, and avoiding attachment altogether.
Everybody she ever loved had died (save for her uncle, but Corvo had alluded that it was a very near thing). And it was hard enough not to love Emily. She didn't need anybody else added to the mix, that she would have to hold at arms' length even though it pained her, all in order to keep him safe.
Which left her at the Hound Pits, a governess to a future empress, spied on by a mad inventor and currently huddled in a bath staring up at Corvo Attano.
He was being polite, at least, though he could have waited until she was through to tell him that Piero had been peeping.
"Corvo," she said, sinking a little lower in the murky water and trying not to think about the bruising love bites on her thighs, "I appreciate your concern. But-"
Something dark passed over his face. She waited through it.
"My apologies," he said at last, and finally, finally went to the door. "I… acted as if you were the late Empress. I wouldn't have thought twice-"
Oh, no. No, I don't want to hear this. She splashed at the water to cover whatever else he was going to mumble. "I understand," she said, while fervently attempting not to. "Now please- leave?"
He shut the door.
She sank fully beneath the surface.
Days passed with no word from Teague. Corvo infiltrated the party at the Boyle ladies' manor with nary a hiccup, and Emily did her best to turn all lessons on the bounty of the Empire into complaints about the tasted of jellied eels and brined hagfish. They all waited as Parliament trundled on, and Teague - Martin, she thought, and then the High Overseer - settled in to the Abbey.
Corvo took to telling Emily about the stars after dusk, leaving Callista free. She spent quite a bit of time on the banks of the Wrenhaven, though out of sight of that one piece of scrap metal. One night, after a long stroll that left her feeling mostly confident about the way everything was going to turn out (the feeling would fade by morning, if she wasn't careful with it), she returned to find Cecilia up far too late, cleaning up a spill of what smelled like whiskey mixed with river water.
Lord Pendleton must have returned for a visit, then.
"Cecelia," Callista said. "Go to bed, you've been up since before dawn."
The girl looked up, then continued mopping. "Wallace will have a fit if his shoes stick to the floor in the morning," she said.
"I'll take care of it. Go on."
Cecelia hesitated, then handed over the mop. "Thanks."
Callista smiled, faintly. "Go on," she repeated.
She was alone and rinsing the mop out when she heard a door creak open, and she froze. The room was almost entirely dark, the electric lights dimmed down and no lanterns out in their place. She could see a shadow. Pendleton? No, too wide. Havelock? Not wide enough. She had half a moment to think maybe Corvo had come down to get a midnight snack for Emily (which she would have to talk to him about) before whoever it was stepped into a spot of murky moonlight.
And there was Teague Martin, smiling as he caught sight of her.
"Good evening, Miss Curnow," he said, coming up to the bar and leaning his hands on it.
"High Overseer," she said, trying very much to be serious, but finding herself smirking all the same.
"Just the woman I was hoping to see." He tapped a finger against the wood a moment, then seemed to decide that going around to the entrance was just too much work, and levered himself over it, landing just in front of her.
To her own surprise, she didn't step back, not even to protect her toes.
"I expected I'd have to wait until the early hours of the morning, though. Or until tomorrow. Instead, you're mopping floors?"
"Cecelia needed a break."
He hummed acknowledgment, then looked down a moment. Playing at being bashful?
"And how is the Abbey?" she asked.
"In an uproar. A veritable nest of river krusts. Everybody's spitting and roaring and complaining, and I'm stuck in the middle of it. Had to take a break."
"I see." She canted her head to catch his gaze. "And you were hoping to find me."
There was that smile again, the rakish, boyish one. It made her belly twist a little, even obscured as it was in the low light. "Well, I said last time that it was a first lesson, didn't I? Implies a second. If," he added, "you're amenable, that is."
"I still share a room with Emily, and I'm not too interested in cavorting on the beach."
"And I still don't have a room of my own," he said, then snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her closer. "But I do have an idea for Lesson the Second - in addition to things you can do that don't require a bed, there are also things you can do that don't require undressing much at all, and so can be enacted, say, in a darkened bar."
"That sounds awfully similar to Lesson the First," she cautioned, even as she tilted her chin up, curious if he would let her kiss him.
He tilted his head in just the way that said, yes, ladies first. "Well, repetition is a good learning method. Or so I've been told."
She kissed him, rising up on her toes just a fraction of an inch, and carded her hands through his hair. The benefits of having a High Overseer as a bedmate were becoming more and more apparent: they apparently cared less about the Strictures than the rank and file in their shining masks, and this one, at least, bathed frequently.
He turned them both around, and backed her against the bar, the hard edge of it biting into her hip. His lips were dry and cool, no doubt from a jaunt along the river to get here, and he tasted of Serkonnos spices and some kind of aftershave she decided she quite liked. He broke the kiss quickly, though, and dotted little bites down her neck, then nudged at her hips until she turned in his arms.
"If only skirts were the fashion these days," he murmured against the nape of her neck, "like they were in Morley a decade ago." Instead, he fumbled again with the fastenings of her breeches and, like last time, tugged them down decisively. She shivered, half in delight and half in embarrassment.
"If somebody sees us-" she said, more aware now of her partial nudity than she had been on the riverbanks.
"Who's awake to see? Corvo?" He nipped at her earlobe as he pulled away to pull off his gloves and unfasten his own pants. "Besides. Whoever made that mess picked a nice quiet corner to do it in, and the benefits of the second lesson are the quick recoveries it allows if we're found." He covered her with his body again, warm and still mostly clothed, and slipped a hand between her thighs.
She forgot her arguments the moment he pressed a finger into her. She'd already forgotten how different it was, how glorious, not to feel her own touch but another's. Before she could find her thoughts again, he murmured against her neck,
"Restrict the wandering gaze that looks hither and yonder for some flashing thing that easily catches a man's fancy in one moment, but brings calamity in the next. For the eyes are never tired of seeing."
Oh. He certainly knew how to say the Strictures, even though he was clearly violating the Sixth, not to mention the Third. Restless Hands, indeed. She braced her hands on the bar and looked over her shoulder at him. "Are you saying," she managed as he added a second finger inside of her and her hips tilted of their own accord, "that I'm a flashing thing come to ruin you?"
"Maybe," he said, pressing hard against her and nibbling at the shell of her ear. "Or maybe I'm saying that- ah-"
He tried to distract her by removing his hand entirely, and instead gripping her hips and rocking his own against her, but she valiantly tried to focus. "Or maybe-?"
"Maybe," he said, voice a bare whisper as he gave up on whatever fumbled teasing he was attempting and guided himself into her, bit by bit with his breath rattling, "maybe I would… like it if you were to be… if we…"
He filled her in one stroke, then leaned shuddering against her, catching his breath. Callista let her head fall forward. If you, if we echoed with each thudding heartbeat, rooted at where they were joined.
"I want to be the only one, with you," he said at last, whispered so she could barely catch it.
And then, before she could think of a response, he began to move, fast enough and firmly enough that she had to grip the bar to stay standing, and had to bite her lip not to cry out.
There was all the skill he'd had when he nipped at her thighs and plied her with his tongue. His fumbling confession out of the way, he was all experience and power, and his fingers dug into her hips. There'd be marks. Outsider's eyes, she wanted the marks. She whined, low in her throat and arched her spine, feet sliding apart a little more with each thrust, legs bound only by the fabric bunched tight around her knees.
He was gasping something she thought might be her name, when footsteps on the stairs echoed into the room, cutting through their panting breaths. Teague stopped first, Callista rutting back for just a moment, until she heard it too: stumbling, heavy footsteps, followed by,
"Blast it all, Wallace! I told you- I told you-"
Before she could straighten up and pull away from Martin, he had an arm around her waist and dragged her back against him, then maneuvered them both to the floor, her across his lap, him still seated inside of her.
"Let go," she hissed, even as she shifted so that he could fill her less awkwardly. "I thought the point was we could cover ourselves up-"
"He's drunk. Just wait it out," Martin said, and he was half a second from laughing, she could tell. He grinned against her throat, then covered her mouth with one bare hand and bucked his hips a little. She cursed against his palm.
Light from a lantern broke across part of the room, beyond the bar, and she could make out maybe the left shoulder of one Treavor Pendleton, staggering in alone. No Wallace in sight. Treavor was mumbling to himself about needing more whiskey or brandy or something, and was crashing into just about every piece of furniture it was reasonable for him to encounter on the way. He tipped over a barstool, and it hit the ground with a resounding thud, which Martin used to cover another thrust, as well as the whine Callista let out as he reached between her legs with his free hand.
"He'll be gone in a minute," Martin said, and Callista nudged him firmly in the ribs with an elbow. He kissed her shoulder in response.
"Bloated hagfish," Treavor muttered, "telling me that it was unfashin.. enable…"
Another crash, along with liquid splashing and dripping. There goes a bottle, likely of something good. The curses Treavor were coming up with were impressive, and she tried to focus on those rather than how Martin could apparently still keep rhythm through it all, even sitting, pinned under her weight.
When he blew cool air against the nape of her neck, though, she couldn't help but squeal and arch, her voice loud enough that Martin's hand could do precisely nothing about it.
Treavor's footsteps shuffled to a halt.
"Hello?" he asked. "'s something there?"
Callista froze.
Maybe he would go away.
Treavor took a few steps closer. "Anything? Body? Anybody?"
Martin had stopped moving too, at least. In fact, he gave her a reassuring squeeze on her hip.
And then he barked and snarled like a hound, loudly enough that Treavor jumped back, stumbled, and fell on his ass.
Another few snarls, and Treavor retreated with an undignified protest of Who let those in here! and slammed shut the door to the staircase.
Callista slowly turned to look at Martin.
He winked, then bucked his hips again.
The next morning, Wallace organized a search of the whole premises for any sign of loose hounds. Cecelia had to clean up another spill. And Teague Martin sat in conference with Havelock for a whole day and acted like he hadn't spent the whole night laughing and delighting in Callista Curnow's body.
Keeping work and play separate was a very important part of being High Overseer, after all.