The Dark Blooded Duchess. Ep1

‘Where are you going?’ Ardon demands as I ignore his attempts at getting me to slow down.

It isn’t as if I’m fast, honestly, I don’t know why he's strolling if he's so set on stopping me.

‘South’ I look around me at the village sliced into rows and chunks of huts, family huts (bigger ones), community buildings, washroom blocks, and everything in between. They all look the same to me. ‘I think’

But the trees, they sing differently wherever I go, but which different is the right one?

‘That would be great,’ says Ardon with the slightest smugness in his voice ‘except that the mountain is South, and the border is North.’

The border. That must be what the patrolled fence is about in the far distance. It’s good to know that my amazing eyesight is still intact, even if nothing else is.

I stop walking, or well - waddling, and Ardon curses as he wildly sidesteps in order to not crash into me

‘So what’s beyond that then?’ I ask.

‘They say it’s home to Lingsfolk’

‘To what?’

‘Lingsfolk.’ he says, suddenly uncomfortable with how his shirt is tucked in. ‘You know,’ he clears his throat ‘people who live in the wilderness. Without technology or community’ he looks over his shoulder and back at me, then whispers ‘savages’

I purse my lips in order to suppress my need to grin.

‘And what are they like,’ I whisper, mockingly ‘these savages? Are they fun?’

‘I don’t know-’

‘You mean you’ve never even investigated?’ I demand, suddenly annoyed.

‘Well no,’ he straightens his watch this time ‘our jurisdiction ends at the border’

I scoff at him as I lean onto my robot boot, turn and saunter off in the opposite direction.

‘What a hero you are’ I say, over my shoulder ‘truly a man is only as good as his juris-dick-tion’ I chuckle.

‘I-’ he seems to remember he has legs then ‘hey, wait!’

‘No time’ I say, nonchalant ‘it’s already going to take me twice as long to travel with this robot foot, probably more than twice, considering my tendency to get distracted by curious objects’ It was partly why it took me four years to organize my work room in hell, the other part was that it doubled as a… well let’s call it an entertainment room of sorts.

He stalls me with a hand on my arm. Lilith smite me but I just love the feel of his hands on me.

I sigh, more annoyed at myself than him ‘what?’

Hurt registers for a split second on his divinely-sculpted face, but he quickly recovers his calm demeanor.

‘Tell me what’s going on.’ he says ‘One minute you’re in the hospital, getting a boot fitted, the next you’re headed south on foot. The same foot. With a boot. With no weapon to speak of’ he sighs suddenly, probably realizing that I wasn’t going to tell him much ‘what’s South, Morgen?’

‘A hope to restore my powers’ I say, eventually ‘And other things that I can’t tell you, but I can tell you it’s of the utmost importance.’

All of it was true.

‘Why don’t you just tell me where you’re going and I’ll take you, with a rover or we could even take gliders?’

The… what?

What is a glider? And why is he- What?

I don’t know what it must look like, me standing there for a painful amount of time, trying to figure out what in the hell he’d just suggested to me.

‘You can tell me.’ he says gently.

‘Well obviously’ I scrub a hand over the side of my face ‘it isn’t that’

‘Then what?’

‘What is a glider?’ I demand ‘there are things that glide in hell and they’re all either hideous creatures, tortuous, or has to do with extreme sex.’

His deep blue eyes sparkle and his lips turn up ever so slightly as I say the last one.

‘Just tell me’ I snap, growing a tad impatient.

He clears his throat trying to focus, ‘It’s a flying bike almost, it hovers off the ground and it takes a single occupant.’

That actually sounds cool ‘So no sex?’ I feign disappointment.

He laughs ‘Not right now,’ his grin fades then ‘Just tell me where you’re headed at least.’

I try and fail to point my thoughts away from nasty, filthy sex scenes in my head at this point. At least I try. That’s something right?

‘Both.’ I say, with a decisive nod.

Ardon frowns. ‘What?’

‘Let’s do the gliders and the other thing.’ I say ’The roomer thing-

‘Rover’ He interrupts. And I love that he says it like it isn’t a dog name.

‘Yes, that. It has wheels, right? For rough terrain?’

‘It can handle any terrain’

Yeah, this conversation is so not conducive to clean and holy thoughts.

The shadows would have had a ball right about now.

‘Perfect’ I say, and the bizarre urge to kiss him becomes more of a twitch than a choice, so I shake my head, clear my throat and say ‘I’ll wait here, yes?’

‘Go sit down,’ he points at the knee-high stone walls that separate huts and living spaces from roads ‘I’ve got to get my sister to take over my duties until I’m back.’ he frowns then ‘when will I be back?’

I shrug ‘hell if I know.’

‘I’ll just say a few days.’

Suddenly the realization dawns on me that it will be just him and me. Me and him. Us. for an undetermined amount of time.

Something flops in my stomach.

‘Sure’ I say, ‘I’m going to go over there now’ I head to the nearest wall and I don’t look back at his descending steps even as I feel the strange urge to follow them and do something reckless.

So damn hot, but oh so reckless.

Once I get to the sitting part, there’s a crack in my smut brain where common sense seeps steadily through.

What is it with this body? If I’m not burning up with fever I’m burning for sex. I wish it would just settle down. I’ve already had puberty for fuck’s sake and I have bigger things to worry about.

Not that I don’t think it’s big -

No. Stop it.

I can’t be thinking about that with him for the next however many days, I have to focus. On the mission. Not sex.

DAYS. I have to resist this for freaking days.

I groan, ‘Lilith save me.’