“It’s half the point. He once said he’d see me fucked by dogs.”

The Nail planted his other boot beside the first. “That was rude.”

“Now he’ll learn I decide who gets fucked and how.”

“So… you’re using me to teach him a lesson?”

She turned her head and spat out the chagga pellet. “I guess.”

He gave a little giggle. “Grand.” And he tossed the empty bottle out of the window, leaned down over the chair, a hand on each arm, and kissed her on the mouth. A delicate, polite little kiss, it was, catching her top lip between both of his, and then her bottom lip. So delicate and polite she almost laughed.

Kissing’s a simple thing in a way, but everyone’s got their own style at it, like talking, like walking, like fighting, like writing. He kept on kissing her, one lip, then the other, and she had to stretch up to kiss him back, to make the kisses a little deeper, to get the point of her tongue involved, and now she didn’t feel like laughing any more, not at all. She slid her hands along the scarred arms of Skarling’s Chair till they slid onto his, till she was gripping his wrists, till his knees were rubbing against the insides of her bare thighs, just gently, like there was nothing much in it, but to her mind there was quite a lot in it, actually.

He had his eyes open all the time, looking at her, and she had hers open all the time, looking at him—well, the one that worked—and that felt dangerous, somehow, like each little kiss was a risk. She craned up to kiss him harder but he moved his face away so she couldn’t quite get there, and she found she’d made an excited little gasp and he’d made a satisfied little grunt and the breath between them was hot and smelled of spirits. Good idea, this. One of her best.

She’d got his belt undone with one hand, rather pleased about her nimble fingers, and now she slipped them inside and dug around till she brought his cock out, halfway hard and definitely going in the right direction. She wouldn’t say she was drunk but she was on the road there, rubbing at him with one hand, fingers of the other around the back of his neck, scratching at his red-blond beard with her thumbnail.

“I’m going to need your help with something,” she whispered.

“Not sure… how I can show more willing—”

“Not that. Well, yes, that. But something else, too. Doubt you’ll like it.”

“You pick a hell—ah—of a time to ask for—ah—a favour,” he whispered, nudging at her lips with his.

“They say you should always bargain from a position of strength.”

“That so?”

Her turn to gasp as he pushed his hands under her arse, knelt down and pulled her towards him so her head slid down the chair back and her back slid down the chair seat and she was left lying half on it and half off it, her bare toes on the cold stone and her knees spread around his head and her hips pushed up towards him, the warmth of the fire on the side of her bare leg and the cold breeze from the window tickling her bare belly. She squirmed this way and that, couldn’t find anything close to comfortable among the unforgiving angles. You have to be hard, after all, to sit in Skarling’s Chair. Goes double for fucking in it.