Chapter 742: Open Perverts [Bonus - ]

Chapter 742: Open Perverts [Bonus Chapter]

Thora closed the book with a soft dignified thwack.

She set it neatly on a little side table beside a polished silver fruit bowl.

With slow graceful poise she picked up a crisp red mountain apple, lifted it to her lips and took a small delicate bite, chewing in a calm measured rhythm.

She dabbed the corner of her mouth with a clean linen handkerchief and looked up at him with steady unblinking eyes.

"I understand, Lord Silas," she replied softly, with a polite little nod.

Silas stared at her.

He didn’t move yet, Silas just stood there with his dark blue eyes slowly widening in mounting horror.

’The hell...?!’ Silas’s mind screamed as a cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. ’Why is she acting so mature?! Where’s the yelling?! Where’s the swagger?! She’s sitting there dabbing her mouth with a napkin like she’s at a royal banquet! I’m used to Thora charging across the room like a battering ram, jumping straight at my waist, screaming about my thighs and acting like a shameless pervert! Where the hell is my Thora?!’

A dark suspicion flared at the back of his mind.

’Wait a minute... What if she got replaced while I was gone? Is this one of those shapeshifting monsters?! Did some doppelganger crawl out of the mine shafts and eat my blacksmith?!’

"Alright, that’s enough of this," he muttered.

He stepped up onto the platform in a single stride and he didn’t ask permission.

Silas leaned down, hooked both hands under Thora’s arms and hoisted the four-foot dwarf straight out of the armchair and into the air!

CLATTER!

Her glasses flew off her face and bounced across the floorboards... Her half-eaten apple tumbled out of her fingers, and the linen handkerchief fluttered uselessly onto the rug.

"Hey! Unhand me, you insolent lout!" Thora squawked as her composure cracked and her short muscular legs kicked wildly at the air. "What is the meaning of this?!"

Silas held her up at eye level with both hands, his gaze dead serious as he searched her amber eyes and checked her forehead for fever or parasites.

"Are you sick?" he demanded, giving her a little shake like a sack of grain. "Where’s my Thora? What did you do with her? Are you one of those shapeshifting monsters from the deep caves?! Spill it!"

Thora stopped kicking.

She hung in his grip and looked directly into his tense suspicious face.

Slowly the outraged scowl melted away. A wide wicked grin spread across her round freckled face, and her amber eyes lit up with triumphant degeneracy.

"Aha~!" Thora chirped.

Before Silas could react, she went limp, slick as an oiled eel.

SLIP!

She twisted her shoulders and dropped straight out of his hands with terrifying practiced skill but she didn’t land to catch herself.

As her boots dropped toward the platform, her hands shot forward like a striking viper and locked onto the waistband of Silas’s dark trousers.

YANK!

With all the explosive strength of a master smith who swung eighty-pound hammers for fun, Thora pulled down with everything she had.

SHRRRRK!

Silas’s trousers dropped straight to his knees in a fraction of a second.

The heavy fabric bunched around his boots and left him standing on the platform in nothing but his dark undershorts... The draft of the foundry washed over his bare thighs, and the thin cloth did absolutely nothing to hide the heavy unmistakable bulge underneath.

"Ehehe~!" Thora cackled, dropping to her knees on the platform and pointing at his crotch with both hands, her face glowing with depraved victory. "I knew that trick would make you let your guard down! You got so freaked out by a book and some glasses that you walked right into it! And just like that, I’ve gotten to see your bulge! Hehehe~!"

She leaned forward on her hands and knees, her amber eyes practically bulging out of her skull as she stared at the shape pressed against the cotton.

’Sweet mother of the deep forge,’ Thora thought, her heart slamming against her ribs like a runaway trip-hammer. ’It really is big! Look at the size of that thing! The displacement alone could drive a six-ton piston! If he ever put that thing in me, it would break me in half—’

DRIP!

A bright red stream of blood burst from her left nostril and dripped onto the floorboards as her brain short-circuited on the filthy images flooding through it.

She sat back on her heels and wiped the blood across her upper lip with her forearm with a huge filthy grin plastered across her face.

She looked up at Silas, fully expecting her Lord to knock her on the head or bellow an exasperated curse like he always did... instead Silas didn’t raise a fist.

He calmly reached down with both hands, pulled his trousers back up over his hips and fastened the belt with slow unbothered precision.

His face was completely flat, and his dark blue eyes looked down at her with deadpan exhaustion.

"You really are a big pervert, Thora," he sighed. "A top degenerate actually."

Thora blinked, visibly offended that she hadn’t gotten the flustered reaction she’d planned for.

She scrambled to her feet, crossed her muscular arms over her leather vest and puffed out her cheeks in a defiant pout.

"Are you sure you’re my Lord...?!" she snapped, her voice back to its usual booming tavern rasp. "What, you enjoy being naked now?! You didn’t even yell! You just stood there letting the draft blow over everything! What a freak you are! A total exhibitionist!"

Silas let out a long heavy breath and rubbed the bridge of his nose then, without another word, he stepped forward before she could dart away and brought his open palm down against her backside.

SPANK!

The smack landed loud and clean across the tight curve of her leather-clad rear and echoed through the rafters like a pistol shot.

"Aaaahnnn~!"

Thora let out a shockingly loud and breathy moan that rang through the whole Warlord Foundry... Her eyes rolled back and her knees buckled on the spot!

Across the hall every hammer stopped mid-swing. A bellows wheezed out and went quiet.

Down by the third hearth a young apprentice dropped her tongs, and they clanged against the stone in the sudden silence while two dozen soot-streaked faces turned toward the platform at once.

SPLASH!

A sudden gush soaked straight through her leather breeches, ran down her calves and spread into a glistening puddle around her boots on the polished floorboards.

Thora trembled from head to toe with her face flushed the color of a boiled lobster, gripping her own thighs in dazed shock.

"I-I came..." she whimpered, staring down at the puddle between her boots. "I came from just a single touch..."

Silas stared at the wet spot on the floor with his eyebrows dead flat.

"I’m sure that’s just pee, Thora."

"Eeeeeeeeek!"

Thora’s brain detonated in unbearable humiliation.

She grabbed the seat of her soaked breeches with both hands, let out an ear-piercing shriek of pure mortification and bolted across the platform like a frightened rabbit! She kicked open the door to a side room, threw herself inside and slammed it shut with a deafening bang, then threw the iron deadbolt with a frantic clatter.

...The platform went completely silent.

Out on the main floor the hammers started up again one by one, as if nothing had happened at all.

A couple of the older smiths traded knowing grins over their anvils, and the apprentice picked up her tongs with her ears burning red.

At the bottom of the wooden steps Solenne stood frozen.

Her nine silver tails had stopped moving and hung behind her like nine frozen icicles.

Her long fox ears were pinned flat against her skull, and her golden eyes were round and trembling as she looked from the puddle on the platform to her Lord, who was calmly brushing a speck of dust off his freshly fastened belt.

’What... what did I just see?!’ Solenne’s mind wailed. ’She was reading a book! Then she pulled his trousers down! Then there was a bulge! Then he spanked her! Then the liquid... oh, sweet ancestors, the liquid!’

She stared at Silas’s calm handsome profile as a horrible question took shape in her innocent engineer’s mind.

’Are they just open perverts...?’

The deadbolt of the side room slid back with a sharp metallic screech.

A moment later Thora stepped back out onto the platform.

Her face was scrubbed clean of sweat and nosebleed, though the tips of her ears still burned a lingering pink.

She had swapped her soaked leather breeches for a fresh pair of heavy gray canvas work trousers cinched with a wide brass-buckled belt, and a clean sleeveless leather vest that showed off her thick corded arms.

She stomped down the wooden steps in her iron-shod boots and cleared her throat with a loud exaggerated rumble, chest puffed out, as if she hadn’t squeaked like a stepped-on frog and bolted into a closet two minutes ago.

Over in the annex the commotion had finally drawn the attention of the new arrivals.

A small cluster of female dwarves came out from under the stone arches, wiping soot and forging oil off their palms with heavy shop rags.

Leading them was Borna, the Master Blacksmith of the Greyrock Clan, broad and thick-shouldered with forearms like carved oak trunks and sharp hazel eyes.

Right behind her hurried Dagna, the clan’s runic engraver, pushing a pair of brass spectacles up her nose with an alloy tuning chime still in her other hand.

Half a dozen younger apprentices trailed after them with grime and curiosity all over their faces.

The moment Borna and Dagna reached the main floor, they froze as their eyes locked onto Silas.

A heavy confused silence settled over the archways. The apprentices looked at his broad shoulders, his tall frame and his dark blue eyes, then glanced frantically around the hall as if they expected an alarm bell to start ringing.

"What in the stone is this?" Borna grunted, her gravelly voice carrying over the crackle of the nearest furnace. "A man? On the forge floor? Who let an outsider past the gates?"

Dagna pushed her spectacles higher and narrowed her eyes at him.

"We swore our oaths to Lord Vespera back in that shack in Central City," she said slowly. "We’ve only ever seen the Lady Kara. Who’s this?"

Thora let out a loud snorting laugh and waved a callused hand at Silas as she sauntered up beside him.

"Calm down, girls," Thora barked. "Vespera’s just a disguise. This is the man behind it... This is Lord Silas, the real Lord of Blessed Land, the one you swore your oaths to, and the one whose roof you’re sleeping under."

CLATTER! BANG!

Three iron calipers, two chisels and a heavy brass file slipped out of limp fingers and crashed onto the flagstones.

Borna, Dagna and the six Greyrock apprentices stood with their mouths hanging open then their eyes began to trace him.

They took in his tall athletic frame, a giant next to their stocky dwarven builds.

They took in the sharp jawline, the messy dark bangs falling over his forehead and the easy confidence he carried himself with as a collective heated flush spread across the cheeks of every single dwarf in the annex.

"Ancestors above..." one of the younger apprentices whispered with her knuckles pressed to her apron and her eyes practically sparkling. "Look at the width of those shoulders!"

"The bone structure," Dagna muttered, her spectacles sliding down her nose again as her gaze lingered shamelessly on his neck and chest. "The balance in his stance... it’s beautifully proportioned... A masterwork."

Borna let out a low appreciative whistle through her teeth and crossed her massive arms with a broad toothy smirk.

"Aye. A proper mountain of a man. I thought Vespera was impressive, but this is a Lord worth breaking your back over."

Before any of the Greyrock women could take an admiring step forward, Thora leaped right in front of Silas like an angry badger guarding a gold mine.

STOMP!

She planted her boots wide on the flagstones, threw both muscular arms straight out to the sides and glared at the newcomers with her teeth bared and her amber eyes burning with territorial greed!

"Back off, you vultures!" Thora yelled at the top of her lungs. "He’s mine! Once he’s given me some tall kids, then you’re free to have your share!"

Silas pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long exhausted groan.

"Thora," he complained, staring down at the back of her head. "You’re literally admitting you only care about me for that. You’re not even trying to hide it anymore..."

Thora whipped around, looked up at him and stuck out her tongue with a loud childish "Bllllrrt!" before turning back to glare at the snickering Greyrock smiths.

Borna just barked out a hearty laugh and scooped her chisel off the stone. "Fair enough, Foundry Master! We know the pecking order around a hot hearth!"

Thora huffed proudly and dropped her arms.

As she turned back around, her gaze snagged on the nine billowing clouds of silver fur floating behind him.

Her amber eyes went as wide as saucers.

"Holy blazing coals..." she gasped.

Before Silas could get out a single word of warning, Thora shot forward like an arrow.

SWOOSH!

She plunged both hands into the thick impossibly soft fur of Solenne’s middle tail and buried them up to the wrists in silver.

"Oh, by the stone!" Thora squeaked, her voice turning high and syrupy as she rubbed the fur against her cheeks in pure unhinged bliss. "It’s so soft! It’s like sleeping on a cloud made of lamb’s wool and spun silk! Look at the volume! Where did you find this gorgeous creature, Lord Silas?!"

She looked up at the fox-artificer’s trembling bright-red face and flashed an enormous filthy grin.

"I’m calling you Fluffy-Buns," she declared proudly, giving the tail a fond squeeze. "You’re my personal cushion from now on, Fluffy-Buns!"