“Deliver it and collect the payment from the buyer, return it to my Master and you will receive it,” she said, leaning forward. That only allowed an enhance view of the valley that disappeared between the concealed flesh of her bosoms.
“I meant how much,” he asked, his annoyance fleeting in light of her beauty. He was on guard this time though, unwilling to let her manipulate him quite as easily as she had the first time. Of course the first time he had still come out okay on the deal; it was a matter of principle to him.
“What do you want?” she asked in a voice that dripped seduction. Dexter was not sure how, but she had leaned forward more and her legs had spread some more as well, so that the panel of cloth that served as the front portion of her skirt had dropped between both legs and only covered her loins.
He blinked and the ties on her bodice loosened. They remained tied, but he was certain they had loosened and her breasts seemed on the verge of spilling out. He caught himself hoping she might sneeze and dislodge them for him.
“I want,” Dexter caught himself, knowing how good she was at this. He wondered if she was not a servant of Ormitor so much as an apprentice. She certainly was good at bewitching him! “I want to pay my crew. There and back will cost 1000 gold. I’m not keen on becoming your master’s personal shipper either, so we’ll be on our way after this is over.”
“Only a thousand?” Jarnella asked, frowning slightly. “You could have had more.” She straightened back up a little, disappointing Dexter. He was further disappointed by her words.
He brightened, considerably, when he noticed that the bodice on her dress, unmistakably, had loosened again. It remained tied, impossibly, but now the strings were tied at the fourth loop from the top, instead of the top one. The edges of it peeled away, giving her more room to breathe, among other things.
“I’d be happy to renegotiate,” Dexter offered weakly.
“Nothing is agreed upon, what else might you desire?” she asked, smiling and leaning forward eagerly again. Dexter made the mistake of looking at her beautiful lips as they moved with her words, then glanced back at her dress and was astonished to see it had, yet again, re-laced itself without his knowledge. Now the top seven loops were empty, yet it remained tied in the eighth one.
“What else are you offering?” Dexter asked, having a feeling that he was on a very slippery slope.
“My Master bade me to offer you whatever it is you required, within reason,” Jarnella said.
“I see,” Dexter said, although in truth he wanted to see, and feel, much more. “How much negotiating room do I have?”
Jarnella lifted her hands from the bed and placed them on her exposed thighs, near her knees. She slid them up her legs, pushing the skirts further away as she did so. “Uh-uh, that’s cheating.”
Dexter was not sure he wanted to play the game anymore, it was getting awfully warm in his cabin, after all. “I’d not want to be called a cheater,” Dexter admitted, matching her smile. “But you be the one wanting to contract my services, what are you willing to pay?”
Jarnella smiled and Dexter realized that her bodice was no longer tied. The dress kept her breasts trapped within it, but they bobbed free of it within and Dexter could have sworn he could see hints of the rosy colored flesh crowing them. “You’ve felt what my toes can do; imagine what the rest of me is capable of.”
To prove her point she used the fingers of both hands to scrape lightly up and down her legs. Dexter’s eyes widened and he swallowed loudly. “I am mighty curious,” he admitted somewhat nervously, “but that’s hardly a deal I can’t strike with myself, if you know what I mean.”
She smiled and before Dexter knew it, she slid off the edge of the bed and was on her knees and moving seductively towards him. She sucked on her finger and then pulled it out and dragged it down her chin and neck, then across her chest until she slid it beneath her dress to tease both herself and Dexter. Dexter’s breathing came faster. Her hands were on Dexter’s knees then, gently parting them so she could move between them undisturbed. Dexter looked down at her, eyes wide and his nostrils flaring with excited breath.
Someone knocked at his door, the harsh sound intruding upon the atmosphere of the room. Dexter looked up sharply, snapping out of the lust induced spell she had weaved. When he looked back at her he saw she was missing. Looking up he saw her back on the bed, her bodice once again tightly laced and everything perfectly in place about her. He gaped at her, not understanding.
“Is a thousand gold enough for the journey, Captain?” she asked loudly enough for whoever was outside his cabin to hear him.
Dexter shook his head and cleared his throat. Grasping for straws he said, “Twelve hundred and it’s a deal.”
She nodded, smiling and winking at him. “A deal is struck, I shall have it loaded and you can be on your way. The cargo must be delivered to the governor of Grafton, Sir Drayful the Wise.”
She rose up and opened the door, revealing Bekka, Jenna, and Rosh standing outside in the hallway. Dexter followed her out into the hallway and watched as she walked a few paces to the circular staircase.
Jarnella stopped, her foot on the first step, and said, “Oh, Captain, please give Sir Drayful this when he gives you payment for the cargo.” She slid her hand in the slit in her skirts, making it disappear somewhere on her upper thigh. Her hand reappeared a moment later holding an ornate key with a ribbon tied around it. She tossed it through the air to him, which he caught with no difficulties. By the time he had it in hand her skirts were vanishing from their view at the top of the stairs.
“Where did she keep that?” Rosh asked, eyes wide and excited.
Dexter looked at him, opened his mouth to respond, then thought better of it and closed it. It was warm to the touch but he knew damn well from what he had glimpsed earlier that it had not been hidden next to either of her thighs. Dexter just smiled and winked at him, then followed Jarnella up onto the main deck.
Jenna gave him a funny look as he left, while Bekka gazed thoughtfully at Jarnella. Rosh stood still for a moment, trying to decide whether he should be upset or not at Dexter’s response.
“Captain, something’s been bothering me,” Bekka confided in him several days after they had left Port Freedom. They were swapping out on the helm, something that Dexter was discovering he might not want to be a regular part of much longer.
He loved flying a ship, that much was true, and he was a good pilot. However, he often felt that his time could be better spent not glued to the helm as he often was. He wanted to make Bekka the primary helmsman — er, helmswoman, but she would need a backup or two, and thus far he did not have enough crew to support such a thing. They still ran extremely lean, something he hoped to fix.
But first he had more immediately things to deal with. “What’s bothering you?” he asked her, rising up from the seat and letting her take over. He stretched out his stiff muscles while he waited for her to find the words.
“It was Jarnella,” she began. Immediately Dexter’s heart beat a little faster at the memory of the intoxicating and seductive woman. “Well, not just her. All of Ormitor’s servants were a bit strange.”
“A bit strange?” Dexter asked. If only she knew the half of it!
“Yes Sir, I can tell things about people, it’s part of my talent, like if they’re special or not,” she explained.
“Special?” Dexter asked, raising an eyebrow.
Bekka frowned. “Not special, really… but different. Magical, I guess.”
It was Dexter’s turn to frown. “Magical?”
“Yes, there is something about them that is unnatural and magical,” Bekka said.
Dexter nodded. It made sense and explained both Jarnella’s otherworldly seduction and the trick with the laces of her bodice. He almost grinned as he remembered how he had particularly liked that trick.