Chapter 207: Heart to Heart

“We’re friends, right?” Kerr asked with a quick glance towards Jay before dropping her gaze down again.

“Yes,” Jay answered without hesitation. “Absolutely.”

To Jadis’ surprise, Kerr actually blushed, a faint pink coloring her cheeks. Jadis wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Kerr blush about anything. Ever.

“Yes, well,” Kerr cleared her throat. “I also see you as my friend. I also see you as a ridiculously hot stud who I get to ride regularly. I mean, we work well together, we hang out and have fun together, and we have so much great sex all the time it’s just amazing. It’s an amazing dynamic we have here. I know eight different languages and can curse in fourteen more and I can’t really think of a word to describe the kind of relationship we have.”

“Fuck buddies?” Jay said with a raised eyebrow.

“Uh,” Kerr paused, looking up at Jay with furrowed brows. “Yeah, I guess so? I mean, that’s what I thought we were. I mean, that’s what we are. Definitely. We’re friends and we fuck. So, yes. Fuck buddies.”

“Except…?” Jay prompted, sensing the uncertainty in Kerr’s tone.

“I don’t know,” the woman looked down again, unable to maintain her gaze with Jay. “That’s it. There’s nothing more.”

Jadis frowned, her focus almost entirely on the nervous, downcast archer standing before her. Kerr still wasn’t meeting her eyes. She was leaning against the door frame in an apparently relaxed posture but she was fiddling with her fingers, her claws picking at each other. Her tail was also tucked up close to her legs, still and unmoving.

There was more.

“Kerr,” Jay started gently, “I am in a relationship. A pretty open relationship, admittedly, but one I take seriously. I care a lot about Aila, more than I think even she realizes. Anyway, one of the ground rules that we set down when we started our relationship was that we would be open and honest with each other. We both knew that I’d be having sex with more people than just her due to the nature of my class, never mind my personality. But she’s fine with it, so long as I agreed that she’d always be present for these interactions and I never tried to hide anything from her.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Kerr said with a shrug. “That’s a reasonable way of going about it. Sometimes I forget that we’re not all therions and other races can be kind of weird about the whole sex thing. So yeah, it’s fine—”

As Kerr spoke, she shifted and moved to step out of the wagon. Her words and her movement were both stopped as Jay put a hand on her shoulder, holding her in place.

“We promised each other we’d always be open with each other when it came to our relationship,” Jay insisted firmly. “Especially when it came to sex stuff, but I’d say what’s going on here is arguably more important.”

“What do you—?” Kerr started, then stopped as her eyes went wide.

“We have something important to discuss?” Aila asked, looking between Kerr and Jay expectantly.

Advantages of having multiple bodies. While Jay had been speaking with Kerr, Dys had let Aila know that she was needed, giving her girlfriend time to get bundled up in a warm cloak before coming out to the wagon to join them in their talks.

“Oh shit,” Kerr cursed as she tried to find a way out, slowly backing away into the dark wagon interior behind her.

“No,” Jay stopped her, pulling her back forward with the hand still on her shoulder. “We are, if nothing else, a team. We are in the same mercenary group, we’re friends, and we all have sex together. This isn’t something we’re going to just leave unsaid and let fester. That’ll just poison us. So, we’re talking.”

“I see,” Aila said as she pulled herself up into the wagon to join Jay and Kerr. “That kind of important.”

“Look, Freckles,” Kerr started, then visibly stopped herself and started over. “Aila. I don’t know how much this fucking asino relayed to you while I thought we were having a private conversation but I promise I’m not trying to horn in on what’s yours. I’m always up for some fun times and I don’t pay attention too much to relationship lines I admit so sometimes maybe I do things that go a little too far—like that time in the restaurant—but that was just meant to be fun and also I did that to you not her so you see what I mean about not trying to get in between you two or you four or however it works with all this and fuck I sound like Sabina right now.”

As Kerr’s panicked rant carried on, her voice had grown progressively higher until the end where her tone lowered to a confused whisper. Shaking her head, Kerr looked back up to continue but was stopped by Aila, who had by then come to stand directly in front of the agitated therion.

“She didn’t tell me anything,” Aila said, her demeanor cool and her voice level.

“Yeah,” Jay added a little defensively. “I’m not a dick, I just told her to come out here so we can all talk.”

“However,” Aila continued, “I’m not blind or a fool. And your own words just now served as ample confirmation.”

“Uh,” Kerr fumbled, looking less and less like her usual carefree self.

“I suspected something of this nature might happen. Though I admit,” Aila mused, “I expected Eir to be the first to broach the subject of a multi-partner relationship, not you.”

“You did?” Kerr asked, confusion evident on her face.

“You did?” Jay echoed, her own confusion showing. “I mean, what?”

“Look,” Aila sighed, “Casual sex is one thing. Living with the same small group of people, working with them constantly, fighting together with them, getting into life and death situations, sharing deep and personal secrets… and having a great deal of sex, too—that’s not a recipe for a platonic relationship.”

“Good point,” Jay tilted her head in acknowledgement. “Though that doesn’t necessarily guarantee romantic feelings.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Aila nodded. “But you’d be stupid to not consider the likelihood. And as I have previously established, I am not a fool. I presume something was said between the two of you that has escalated your feelings towards each other?”

The last was said with a look between the two of them. Aila’s blue eyes showed no anger or judgement. Instead, she looked mostly curious, though she was still maintaining her placid expression.

“I might have called her my girlfriend in the heat of battle,” Kerr admitted with a little prompting. “I just—It was just, you know. It just came out. When I saw that fat piece of shit trying to choke her with that chain, I felt so, so…”

“I understand,” Aila said quietly. “I love Jadis, too.”

A shiver ran up Jadis’ collective spines at her girlfriend’s words. She wasn’t sure that Aila had ever said so, directly. To hear her admit her love blossomed a special warmth inside of her that erased every negative thought and emotion she’d had that day from her mind.

“Yeah,” Kerr said after a pregnant pause, one claw scratching at her cheek. “I think that’s what this is. Love.”

Now Jadis really didn’t know what to do. Hearing that two of the women that she loved and respected more than anyone else in the world both loved her made her soul soar. She wanted to shout for joy. She wanted to wrap both of them up in her arms and squeeze them tight. She wanted to dance through the courtyard and show off her amazing two lovers to everyone. She wanted to make love to them both right then and there, fucking them silly all night long.

She settled for a more restrained reaction.

“I love you, Aila,” Jay said before giving her a tender kiss. Once she pulled away, she looked at Kerr who was watching with her lower lip caught between her fangs. “I love you, too, Kerr.”

Jay leaned forward and gently kissed the nervous woman. With a needy moan, Kerr leaned into the kiss, turning it into something less than chaste for the few seconds it lasted. When Jay finally pulled away, Kerr’s eyes were half-lidded and her mouth hung open, breathing heavily.

“So, what now?” Jay said, swallowing loudly. “We’re, what, girlfriends? All three of us, together?”

“At the very least, you are my girlfriend,” Aila said as she leaned in a little closer to Jay. “And I would say Kerr is your girlfriend, if she accepts.”

“Fucking yeah I do,” Kerr said as she pressed her body up against Jay.

“I don’t know that Kerr and I have that kind of relationship, though,” Aila continued with one raised eyebrow.

“Yet,” Kerr said. “I mean, if we’re all being honest and baring our souls and shit like that, I do kind of like you, Blue. When you don’t have a stick shoved up your ass, that is. In fact, you can be pretty fun when you’ve got other things shoved other places.”

“I can assure you, Kerr,” Aila said as she moved to loom over the other woman, using her height to her advantage, “That in any relationship we may or may not have in the future, any shoving of things inside places will involve me doing the shoving, and you being the places.”

“Aw, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me,” the archer mewed in a saccharine voice. “Any time you want to fuck my face like you did to Jadis the other night, my mouth is always open for you.”

That sounded a lot more like the Kerr that Jadis knew and loved. It was also just the right combination of words to make Aila blush red as an ember, though she still maintained her domineering poise.

“Maybe if you beg nicely,” Aila responded in a haughty tone that did things for Jadis.

Kerr must have felt a similar way, as her expression morphed into a wide and toothy grin.

“Oh, I can do more than beg,” Kerr purred. “In fact, why don’t I show you right—”

“Aila? Kerr? I’m sorry, which of the three sisters are you?”

The three of them looked up, startled by the sudden intrusion into their private moment. Looking up, Jay saw that Captain Willa was approaching them from across the courtyard. She looked like she’d just exited one of the empty buildings and was still fully armored. She walked towards the wagon with a brisk step, holding a lantern overhead.

Aila quickly pulled away, making herself look presentable as she faced the military woman. Kerr, on the other hand, made no move to pull away from Jay and, in fact, draped against her side even more heavily.

“It’s Jay,” Jay called back, straightening up and forcing her new girlfriend to stand on her own feet at least. “Anything wrong, captain?”

“No,” Willa said as she came closer, her breath steaming in the cold air. “Nothing wrong that I’ve seen. Is naught amiss here? Why are you three standing out here in the chill of the night?”

“We were just discussing future plans,” Aila replied with such calm dignity that even Jadis never would have guessed that she’d actually just been telling Kerr to beg her for the privilege of letting her choke on her cock. “Today’s events have been… illuminating.”

“Mm, true,” Willa hummed, oblivious to Aila’s hidden meaning. “Those bandits aren’t exactly what we expected to run into on this trip, though maybe not too far off, either. I’m mostly concerned about why they were holding this fort.”

“What do you mean?” Jay asked, her interest piqued.

“If these are the thieves who have been illegally mining eleria, why were they this far south?” Willa asked. “The mountains are still days away by wagon. The only reason I can see would be to use this as some kind of stopping point for a smuggling route for getting the eleria out of Weigrun, but I’m not sure how. The reports we received indicate that the smugglers were using a coastal route. This is too far inland to be related, unless they were going by an unnecessarily long route.”

“That is quite odd,” Aila commented. “However, this may have just been a scouting position. They could have just been on watch for any authorities coming to investigate.”

“Maybe,” Willa nodded, though she didn’t look convinced. “This whole encounter just felt off to me, though. Is there anything else you remember from your encounter with them?” Captain Willa looked up at Jay. “Or maybe one of your sisters? If there are any more details, even seemingly insignificant ones, that could prove useful in my investigation.”

“I can’t remember anything I haven’t already told you,” Jay announced, her body stiffening up. With a forced smile on her face, she stepped down from the wagon and helped Aila and Kerr down as well, the two women looking confused by Jay’s sudden retreat. “I’ll ask my sisters though and if any of us think of anything, we’ll let you know in the morning.”

“Alright then,” Willa said with her own look of confusion as Jay swept Aila and Kerr into walking away. “Have a good rest.”

“You too! Sleep well!” Jay called back as she hurried towards the barracks building, Aila and Kerr in tow.

“What’s going on?” Aila whispered as she walked quickly on Jay’s right side. “That was more than a little abrupt. Did something happen?”

“Yeah,” Jay said as they approached the barracks door. “Sabina just asked me to have sex. I couldn’t really have that conversation with Willa while Sabina is trying to seduce me. Too distracting.”

Kerr let out a laugh from Jay’s left side. “Of course she is! Have I told you yet how much fun it is being your girlfriend?”

“Not yet,” Jay said, throwing open the door. “But I’m sure you will.”

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