Weasel Presents (9 page)

“And a nice one,” Helfer said cheerfully. “And since I’m payin’ for this room, it’ll be a little longer of a morning, too, hm?” His paw rested on the rabbit’s still-quiescent sheath.

The rabbit looked down as though he could see through the blankets. “Of course, sir,” he said, “but I, um...” His words trailed off as Helfer’s paw began to massage, gently at first, then more firmly as he felt a response.

“Don’t worry, Norville. You just have to get up on all fours. I’ll do most of the work. Again.”

Norville proved more willing with a little more massaging, which was good. Helfer didn’t mind using his title to get what he wanted, but it was always nicer when the other guy was into it too. He didn’t make a practice out of forcing himself on people. And he certainly hadn’t had to do so with Norville or Norton or Norbert--Helfer had been more than a little tipsy when he’d propositioned the rabbit in the bar downstairs, and the part where they’d exchanged names, though it had clearly stuck with the rabbit, had blurred in his own recollection.

Which was one reason he was determined to get a little more for his money. His memories of last night had faded into a blissful blur. Certainly he didn’t remember the rabbit’s short maleness, which fit nicely into his paw, though he did remember the musky scent and the tightness that surrounded his own shaft as he took care of the other reason he was being so insistent about the morning. One of the burdens of being a weasel, he sighed to himself with a grin, and one of the reasons he often spent nights away from the castle. It was so much nicer to wake with a cozy rabbit nearby to bury one’s morning need in rather than resorting to the ever-present but rather boring and unexciting paw.

For one thing, his paw didn’t make nice breathy noises as he pushed his need into it. For another, his paws were better occupied on someone else’s hardness, stroking the length, teasing the tip that was still sticky from the previous night, feeling the body tense beneath him. And for a third, his paw didn’t have beautiful long ears that flicked and spread and yet managed to remain upright all through their brief tryst.

Sadly, his paws couldn’t quite reach those ears, but he’d played with them enough the previous night; at least, he assumed he had. They seemed familiar enough. Anyway, he had other things to concern him: the squirming of the lithe body below him, and his own mounting passion. He lay over Norbert’s back and sank his little teeth into the scruff between the shoulders, holding on as his hips thrust up hard under the rabbit’s tail. The tail pressed into his stomach, twitching as much as the long ears were doing. The little weasel held on below, too, gripping the rabbit’s stomach fur and stroking fast along the taut, hot length hanging below it. Norton squeaked and struggled, making Helfer hold on tighter, his short legs pushing his shaft into the rabbit’s tail hole as he felt the familiar snap, rush of blinding pleasure, and spine-tingling release.

“Rrr,” he growled, shoved all the way in, his hips pressed up against the furry rump. He felt the tension below him and kept on moving his paw, soft skin on sticky skin until Norville trembled, tensed, and bucked back into Helfer. More rabbit seed joined the dried mess already on the bed, and the rabbit collapsed onto his stomach a moment later, panting.

Helfer let go slowly. He drew his paws along the rabbit’s trembling sides, claws tracing paths through the fur. “There,” he said. “Wasn’t so bad, hm?”

“No, sir.” Norbert moaned softly.

Helfer grinned and slid back, working himself free from the embrace. He teased the fluffy short tail to watch it twitch, and then rolled off the bed, brushing his fur out with his claws. “I’d like to make it longer, but I have an appointment.”

“Thank you, sir,” Norton’s muffled voice came from the pillows.

It took him only a few minutes to throw on his ‘disreputable’ clothes, as Caresh called them. “You can stay here a little longer if you want,” he told the rabbit, who still hadn’t moved. “Til half-morning. Then they’ll be in to clean it.”

“Thank you, sir,” the rabbit said again.

“No, thank you, Nor...ville,” Helfer said. “Maybe we’ll meet each other again sometime down in the bar, hm?”

“I’d like that, sir.”

“Course you would, course you would,” Helfer chuckled to himself as he slipped out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Nobody else in the inn was stirring as he padded down the wooden hallway to the stairs and out the back door to the street. The streets were quiet too, in the between-time where nocturnals had gone to bed and it was too early for decent folk. Too early, he thought, checking the sun as he hurried toward the palace, but he was likely to be late for his run if he went back to his quarters. No secret passage this morning, then.

At the front gate, he presented his papers and asked about the health of the guard’s family. Just inside the huge front doors, he stripped his shirt off and handed it to a footservant with orders to leave them in his quarters. His shorts were designed to be loose enough for frisky boys to get their paws into easily, so they were well ventilated and perfectly suitable to run in.

He jogged over to the front garden and spent a little time exploring the flowerbeds. The old red and purple geraniums were dying, and soon it would be time to replace them. He knelt, picked one, and brought it to his nose, inhaling the scent. Volle could smell them standing, even with his nose a couple feet higher than Helfer’s, but Helfer’d always felt a keen nose was as much curse as blessing, especially in the palace. The few times he’d gotten close enough to some of the other nobles to smell them, he’d thanked Weasel for the rarity of the experience. Poor foxes and wolves had to walk around with scent-kerchiefs or just endure the assault of the palace’s residents less gifted and therefore less aware--and less hygienic--than they.

He squinted at the sun again. Where was that fox, anyway? He’d been out late before, but usually Helfer accompanied him, and he always knew what Volle had planned even if he didn’t go along. When he’d seen Volle the previous night at dinner and had invited him out, the fox had declined, saying he was tired and pleading some Agricultural Committee business to attend to. The poor fellow had only been here a quarter of the time Helfer had, so it wasn’t a surprise that he hadn’t yet figured out that the more one got involved in politics, the less happy one was. The weasel had seen it over and over again, with his friends, his former friends, and his parents.

It was severely late now, and he wanted to get his run in so he could go wash the scent of Norwood off himself. Volle would surely understand if he went ahead and started. But then again, he could just jog back to the palace and ask a footservant to go see what as keeping the fox. He could go himself, too, and while his desire for cleanliness and his coiled energy urged him to run, his sharp curiosity wanted to know what Volle had been doing sooner rather than later. He let the flower fall from his paw and got to his feet.

2

The run could wait, after all; summer was drawing to an end, and there wouldn’t be many more fine days, but this looked to be one. He jogged to the main entrance and slipped inside the wooden doors to the cool of the stone hallway.

The waking palace stirred around him, rustling from overhead hallways and footsteps on staircases the backdrop to murmured conversations. He waved to Lord Vanadi, the grey fox, in conversation with some official or another, and avoided the eye of Lord Ikinna, who was always trying to get him involved in some weasel bonding activity (and not the fun kind). Rounding the corner to the hallway that led to Volle’s rooms, he had to skip out of the way of a coyote who was walking fast in the other direction. Helfer kept going, but he heard the coyote stop.

“Oh, Ikling. A moment?”

He sighed and turned. “Morning, Alister.” It wasn’t unusual for the King’s Steward to be up at this hour, but it was unusual for him to have anything to do with Helfer.

“So this is where you are. Yes. I think it would be best if you come talk to me first. Can you do that?”

The words were delivered in rapid, staccato patter. Helfer put his paws up. “Look, I’m about to go on my morning run. Can I come by after that?”

“Well.” Alister fidgeted from side to side. Helfer and Volle often joked that Alister was the only noble as thin as they were, because he never stopped running. “Really, could you run after? This won’t take a minute.” He flared his nostrils. Helfer was sure he was going to comment on the smell of sex and bunny, but the coyote stayed quiet.

Helfer sighed. “All right.” Of all the lords in the palace, Alister was least likely to waste his time with something frivolous, if only because the coyote rarely had the time.

“Thank you. I’ll expect you momentarily.” Alister padded quickly around the corner, then stuck his head back around and said, “Oh, and could you change into something slightly more presentable?” Without waiting for a reply, he was gone again.

“More presentable?” Helfer said to the empty air, looking down at his loose, dirty shorts. “Isn’t my fur presentable enough?” There was no answer, of course; Alister was probably on the other side of the palace already, lining up his appointments for the next three days. The weasel snorted.

Since he had a few moments, and was so close, he took a detour down the hall to pass Volle’s chambers. The door was closed, but as he was about to knock, he heard a deep grunt, faint, and then a scraping noise. It took him a moment to place it as the movement of a very heavy bed. He chuckled. So the fox was getting into it with a bear, now. Well, much as he would like a nice glimpse of that foxy tail, he would leave them their privacy.

On his way to the stairs, he smelled fresh bread in the kitchens, and his stomach rumbled. If he was going to put off his run anyway, he might as well get fed. And it smelled like the cook had put cinnamon in the bread, which meant it was one of Taffen’s loaves, and therefore well worth stopping for.

He sneaked in through the kitchen door and ripped a piece of bread off of one of the steaming loaves, tossing it from paw to paw to cool it down while the porcupine manning the ovens gaped at him. Helfer winked and took a bite of the bread. “Delicious as always, Taffen.”

An elderly mouse assembling plates at the other end of the kitchen turned. She rolled her eyes. “Lord Ikling. You’re no servant’s whelp, you should be out there eating with the rest of them.” She gestured to the window through which Helfer could see footservants carrying full plates into the dining hall and empty plates back. “And you, Inky, back to work. You’ve seen Lord Ikling before.”

Helfer chuckled as the porcupine scrambled to the wash basin with some of the dirty dishes, finishing the piece of bread. “I’m not dressed for the hall. Besides, the bread’s better fresh from the oven.”

Taffen sighed. “You’d best take that whole loaf now. I can’t send it out there broken.”

“Why, thank you!” Pretending to be surprised at her gratitude, Helfer broke another chunk off the loaf and chewed on it as he gathered the steaming loaf into his other paw. “Mmmm, heavenly. You cook like the Mother, Taffen.”

“Get on with you,” the mouse said, but he saw her smile and knew her irritation was as fake as his surprise. He was about to leave the kitchen when he saw the door to the dining hall swing open, and heard an unmistakable laugh. The footservant who was bringing dishes back to the kitchen let the door close behind him, cutting off the noise, but Helfer would know the laugh of Dereath the rat anywhere. His fur prickled. If Dereath was laughing, then it was almost assuredly not at anything Helfer would find amusing, or even pleasant. He bit off another hunk of bread to make himself feel better, and took the stairs up to his room.

Caresh was absent, probably getting his own breakfast while his master was supposed to be on a run. The fox knew Helfer’s schedule to the minute, and often knew it even when it was disrupted, but apparently whatever Alister wanted to talk about hadn’t filtered through to the servants yet. Helfer paused at the entrance to his bathroom, wanting to clean up, but he was already later than Alister would be expecting. Anyway, the coyote had already missed his chance to criticize Helfer’s smell.

Volle would notice and comment on it, but he would smell like bear himself, so he’d have little room to feel superior. Helfer grinned, anticipating the exchange, and selected a simple tunic and trousers from his closet. Without Caresh to help him dress, he didn’t have the time or ability to get too fancy with his clothes.

And what did Alister want? He eased his door shut and paced down the hall. More than likely it was something to do with the King’s retreat. Every year, the King asked one of the nobles to host a retreat, and it had been over a decade since the gentle climate of Vellenland, the main province of Ikling, had had the “honor.” Helfer knew that Alister had been putting off a retreat to Vellenland because of his youth, but that wasn’t likely to save him this year or next. He started mentally checking off the people he would have to get to organize things: his own steward, his governor, and maybe there were some people in the palace he could get to help him out. Pleading ignorance and a sincere desire to make things go well probably would work. The prospect eased his tension as he made his way back to the Steward’s office.

“Morning, Jerish,” he said cheerfully, walking in and waving.

The mouse behind the desk lowered the quill with which he’d been copying documents and affected astonishment. “Goodness, Lord Ikling,” he said, “how did Lord Alister convince you to actually set foot in his office?”

“I made him sign a paper assuring me I wouldn’t have to do a lick of work.” Helfer grinned. “Is the old dog ready for me?”

Jerish shook his head. “I haven’t seen him but five minutes today, and four of those he was waiting for you. I could’ve told him to spend the time more profitably. He told me to keep you here, and dashed off to some other meeting.” He pointed. “Your valet is slipping. Your tunic’s fastened crooked.”

Helfer frowned, looking down at his tunic and tugging half-heartedly at one side. “Well, I have my own things to take care of.”