Authors: Kyell Gold
Vin straightened a little, interest gleaming in his eyes. “Stark, you said?”
“We’ve not met.” Stark paid Vin full attention now. “But Stark keeps his ears out and nose up, and there’s little he doesn’t know.”
Vin turned to Helfer. His expression showed a blossoming interest. Helfer had to admit that the wolf’s muscles were impressive, though he wasn’t getting the tingle and hard-on that he was sure Vin now was. The wolf seemed sincere, but his comment about knowing people made Helfer wonder what Stark knew about him.
As he held that thought in his head, Stark turned his one blue eye on Helfer. “Bichi wasn’t lying about the brothel,” he said. “You can pay just to rent a room for an hour. Cheaper than one upstairs for a night.” He jabbed one rough claw at the ceiling.
9
The sparkle in the wolf’s eye was a familiar one. So it really was just all about sex. Well, he could think of worse ways to work up an appetite for lunch, truth be told. Besides, maybe it would finally settle down Vin. It wasn’t that Helfer didn’t find Vin attractive; it was more that the constant enthusiasm for sex leached some of the specialness out of it. The addition of the mysterious wolf, who practically exuded danger, promised something quite unique. Helfer drained the rest of his ale and said, “All right then. Lead on.”
Stark’s grimace was probably supposed to be a leering smile. He pushed back and got up from the table in one fluid motion. Vin slid from the chair, bouncing eagerly as Helfer took his time standing, amused at the enthusiasm of the other two. Vin was alight as he hadn’t been since Helfer had first seen him that morning, and although Stark controlled his actions well, he left behind a musky scent of interest that stirred Helfer’s sheath too. The two weasels followed the wolf and his scent to the door below the staircase, and through it.
In the austere room of wood and glass on the other side, you would have thought scents would be lost easily. Clearly, the bare floor and lack of upholstery on the furniture was intentional, because the drifting smell of sex was noticeable enough that Helfer thought any tapestry or cloth in the room would soon become imbued with it. He lost the traces of the wolf’s scent in the myriad of others, but though he did sniff for fox, he didn’t catch any.
Stark gestured Vin to one of the benches that framed the door, bringing Helfer with him to the opposite wall. He grasped a wooden handle and tugged, setting a small bell ringing somewhere inside. While he examined himself in the mirror beside the door, Helfer looked around the room.
The lack of cloth didn’t make the room plain, not by a long shot. The benches and furniture all bore expensive-looking decorations, though none seemed to match any other. Besides the mirror currently occupied by a scarred wolf, there were three more around the room, as well as two portraits, both of mice Helfer didn’t recognize. And suspended from the ceiling was a decorative glass chandelier with recent smoke marks and candle ends, unlit now because of the light from three high windows set in the wall to the right of the door.
A female mouse opened the door beside the bell pull. “I already told him--” she began, and then stopped when she saw Stark. “Oh, it’s you. Winterfrost is free. Who’s paying? The noble?”
Helfer looked down at his tunic and fingered it as Stark said, “Aye.”
“Two silver,” she told him, and held out her paw.
Winterfrost, it transpired, was a small room decorated in blue and white, with a snow pattern traced across the wall. The bed which dominated the room had a dark blue coverlet that showed each threadbare patch clearly. Narrow windows, slanted up, afforded light and privacy, but a set of white ceramic candleholders indicated that the room saw use at all hours. Helfer’s quick thought, before Stark shut the door and began unlacing his tunic, was that the room had at one time been a high-class operation, and either been sold to less ambitious owners or fallen on hard times, or both.
The wolf pushed him to the bed as these thoughts skittered across his mind. Stark grinned at him and leaned back against the door while Vin slid out of his clothing so fast it might have been cut away from him. Helfer spared a glance at the other weasel’s lithe form and dangling sheath, already hard between his legs, before looking back at Stark. The wolf’s paws were unlacing his tunic, taking his time about it, his one eye fixed on Helfer.
“Stark likes to take his time,” he said unnecessarily, fingering each knot before loosening it.
Vin lasted about three of the five knots before saying, “Vin doesn’t,” and applying his own paws to the wolf’s pants.
Stark didn’t react, just kept working on the fourth knot as Vin got his nimble paws inside the wolf’s pants. Some fastening came loose and they slid down, revealing a set of thighs as thick as pillars, muscled and scarred in rather improbable places. The wolf seemed to have gotten into a lot of fights with opponents determined to unman him, Helfer mused.
They hadn’t succeeded. Vin stepped to one side, flashing a grin at Helfer and showing his paw cupped around a huge white sac. The tunic hid the sheath for the moment, but its outline jutted through the cloth. Vin turned back and stuck his head under the tunic, the up-and-down movement a moment later unmistakable.
Helfer grinned, a paw rubbing lightly on his own sheath as Stark kicked his pants free and lowered his paws to the last knot of his tunic. Already his broad chest was on full display, and he knew it, muscles tightening and flexing from one side to the other. He did look down at Vin now, the tip of his tongue showing, eye creasing slightly. His legs shifted and spread, giving the weasel more room to work.
Vin kept his muzzle going, his tail wagging quickly and his own legs doing a little dance from side to side. Between them, Helfer could just glimpse his full hardness bobbing temptingly. Without removing any of his clothes, he slipped to the floor and slid his paw down there, tracing the other’s sheath and sac, teasing beneath his tail.
He heard a soft rustle and saw white fabric fall to the floor. Craning his neck to see around Vin, he looked up.
Stark naked was, if anything, more imposing than Stark clothed. His grey and white fur was anything but neatly groomed, but the ragged patches and lines of muscle just added to his formidable appearance. Below the thick chest, his stomach was lean and taut, tensed above Vin’s head. His grin remained fixed, a casual, confident leer that surveyed the two weasels below him. One arm reached down to tease Vin’s ears, and as Helfer followed that movement, he could see what had Vin so excited his shaft felt like it might explode just from Helfer’s light touch.
Vin’s mouth was wrapped around a long, hard shaft, dark pink, a knot already showing at the base. It glistened in the room’s dim light from the weasel’s attentions, matching his every movement as though they were parts of the same being. The sight drove Helfer to tease his fingers along Vin’s shaft, making the other moan around his mouthful. Helfer watched the wolfhood disappear into his friend’s muzzle and emerge again, sometimes catching a glimpse of Vin’s little tongue, getting fully hard himself as he wrapped his paw around Vin and imagined how the weasel’s muzzle would feel on his erection.
The weasels remained focused on their parts, but after a pleasant few minutes, Stark shifted his weight and pushed Vin backward, into Helfer. As the weasel stumbled, Stark reached forward and picked him up bodily in one arm. “Stark’s ready for more,” he said, carrying Vin to the bed and dropping him there on his stomach. One paw lifted the weasel’s tail while the other gestured to Helfer to get up on the bed. “Bout time you got some more too,” he said.
Vin waggled his tongue at Helfer. Needing little more encouragement, the weasel slipped out of his pants and tunic and crawled up onto the bed while Stark positioned himself behind Vin. Despite the evident distraction, Vin wasted no time in putting his talented mouth to work on Helfer for the second time that day. Helfer leaned back against the wall, his friend’s tongue warm and tingling on his shaft, looking across the lithe brown form at the white expanse of Stark’s belly and chest.
The wolf showed more eagerness now, muscles jumping as he held Vin’s rear. He thrust forward quickly, making Vin freeze. The weasel’s eyes rolled up to Helfer’s, half-closing, his expression and the deep moan saying plainly
oh, you should be feeling what I’m feeling right now
.
Helfer caressed his friend’s ears and grinned, watching the wolf start to ease back out and in, hips swaying in the familiar, age-old rhythm. After a moment, Vin took up that rhythm on Helfer’s shaft again. Warmth built between his legs, and from the expression on Stark’s muzzle, Helfer thought it might be a race to see who finished first.
He was dimly aware of some noise outside, people walking around loudly, but nothing penetrated the warm haze Vin’s muzzle was putting him in. He clutched the sheet and closed his eyes, but they flew open again a moment later at a pounding on the door.
“Bashers,” the female voice called sharply. She didn’t linger; he heard her running back down the hall.
“Damn.” Stark stared at Helfer. “Stark hates ’em, but you mustn’t be found here.”
“It’s okay,” Helfer said. “I’ve got a bit of a rep--”
Stark shook his head. “Not here.” He lifted Vin from the bed, holding the weasel against his stomach with one arm, still buried deep inside him as far as Helfer could tell. With the other arm he tossed Helfer his tunic. “Quick! Out the door to the left, last door on your right leads to an alley.” When Helfer hesitated, he snapped, “Move!”
Panic surged in his blood. Helfer struggled into the tunic, pulling it down over his hips, and ran for the door. A moment later, he stood in the shadows of the alley watching the grimy wood door close. There wasn’t much else in the alley but himself and the door. He listened for sounds of the Bashers, aware that there wasn’t much in the way of hiding places should they peer down the alley, but Stark must have chosen well, because he wasn’t disturbed. He paced back and forth for several minutes, the enjoyment of his free-hanging sheath shrinking as fast as his sheath itself. When the alley remained deserted, he tried the door leading back into the brothel.
It was locked.
10
“Well,” Helfer said aloud, to nobody in particular, “events certainly seem to be conspiring to make it difficult for a bright-eyed weasel to maintain his sunny disposition.” He tried the door again and then kicked it ineffectively. The lack of any activity at either side of the alley brought the growing suspicion that Stark had concocted the whole scheme as a ploy to relieve Helfer of his purse. He doubted Vin had been in on it, but for all that, he still wasn’t feeling too well-disposed toward his fellow weasel at present. After all, Vin was still likely enjoying the effects of a large wolf member sliding up under his tail, if not still enjoying the sliding itself. Somehow, Helfer doubted that Stark had just ended his little play session once he’d gotten rid of the mark.
Toward the front of the building, Helfer could see people walking back and forth in the street. He pulled his tunic down again. Luckily, none of them had noticed him yet, nor come strolling down the alley for any other reason.
There was far less activity at the back of the alley. He didn’t feel quite up to swinging his privates around in public just yet, but he also didn’t feel like waiting like a fool at the back door. He imagined Stark inside, peering out through a peephole and having a silent laugh. While still buried to the hilt in Vin’s backside. Then he imagined that Vin’s backside possessed supernatural powers of contraction, and that image set him smiling as he strolled toward the quiet end of the alley, at the back of the building. If there might be another way in too small for a wolf, but suitable for a weasel, he would find it and then he would set about making a different series of images in his head come true. Robbing a noble was not an offense looked upon lightly.
The ground grew progressively filthier as he walked, the smell of garbage leaving no doubt what he would find when he rounded the corner. Indeed, behind the brothel and the inn, a small street with a trough down the middle delivered garbage from them and the neighboring buildings to the river, half a mile or so downslope. Helfer waved a paw in front of his nose and stepped around the piles, looking up at the stone rears of the buildings.
No doors led off from the rear of the brothel. A window on the second story hung open, a trail of waste down the stone below showing its main use. For a moment, Helfer debated climbing up to it. The rough stone would afford enough fingerholds, and if he fell, well, there was a soft pile of...something. But while he considered it, the breeze kicked up around his sac and sheath again, reminding him that not only would he be rubbing his tender bits against the rough stone (the thoughts of abrasions there made him wince), but they would be unprotected from the filth below if he did fall. He looked at the spatterings from chamber pots and the less identifiable messes, and shuddered.
Picking his way around to the back of the Four Vines, he found both a door and a window just above it. Helfer had set his paw to the door handle when it occurred to him that just because there was a door didn’t mean there was nothing on the other side. He set his ear against the wood and heard atonal humming, shuffling footsteps, and a subdued clanking of metal that, in conjunction with the smells that wormed their way through the cracks and past the odor of refuse, told him the Four Vines’ kitchen lay beyond the door. Had he not been standing in a filthy alley, his mouth might have watered. At the very least, his stomach rumbled, reminding him that wherever he went, lunch should probably be one of his top priorities--at least, now that his sheath wasn’t demanding his full attention.
He doubted very much that a pantsless, penniless weasel strolling in from the garbage street would stand much of a chance of getting lunch, so he stepped back from the door and looked up. The window appeared to be open from what he could see, though the angle made it difficult to be sure. Even when he took another step back, he couldn’t quite tell. Well, he thought, Weasel smiles on those who take chances, and really, I’ve little else to lose save my tunic.