“Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“No. How is your tomb the woods?”
“It’s like the cathedral. It’s different on the inside than it is on the out.”
“Like my cottage.”
“No. Not really. That’s like… I don’t know. Personal design preferences or whatever. My tomb is more like the hallways up the staircases.”
“What hallways? I need to hear all about this. Like… right this very moment.”
“You’d rather hear about my tomb than know that the Book of Debt is real?”
She smirks up at me. “You just want me to polish your horns, don’t you?”
“I mean…” I begin. She laughs. “I can lie and say no. But. Yeah. It feels good. It’s been a long time since I had a horn polish.”
And even in the dim moonlight filtered through the tops of trees, I can see her blush.
Is she slow? Stupid? Naïve?
No.
She is just cute.
I wave my hand towards the path. “Shall we?”
I take her back to the steam cave where we left the Book of Debt. I open it up to her page.
Pages. She’s got quite a few of them already.
This makes her deflate a little, but I’m ready. “Look.” I flip to the first page of the book and point to all the ways she can work off her debt. Of course, her eyes only see the sex. And she’s about to start pointing that out when I smack her finger away and show her the only one that matters tonight. “Right there. ‘Polish horns.’”
She leans down to get a better look at the elaborate calligraphy. “One thousand? Is that in dollars?”
“Dollars,” I confirm.
“How come it’s dollars? Shouldn’t it be in… drachma or something?”
“You’re definitely not stupid.”
“What?” Her eyes narrow.
“You’re close. The drachma? But that’s Greek. In Rome we called them aurei or denarii. It’s actually pretty complicated. But we’re not in Rome, so we don’t do things like the Romans. We’re in PA, and we do dollars.”
“Hmm. OK, then. I’ll take a horn polish for one thousand, Alex.”
“Who’s Alex?”
She smiles, pats my chest like I’m simple. “It’s not important. Let’s do this.”
And do I detect a little excitement in her voice?
I do believe I do.
I grab a wooden box off a nearby ledge and set it on a stone table just to the left of a configuration of rocks that allows me to sit and lean forward, resting my head on a smooth, flat stone to give her total access to my horns. I take out a pot of polish, remove the lid, and give it a smell.
“Mmm. That kind of smells good.”
“Sandalwood oil,” I say. “It’s old. But the paste is infused with magic, so it’s fine. One day though, you should learn to make your own batch of horn polish. It’s better that way. It will leave your imprint on me.” She goes still at this, maybe thinking too hard about that and what it might mean. So I change the subject. “Just dip your fingers in, get a little bit of paste, and then rub it into my horns.”
She nods to herself, like she’s having a whole internal conversation, then sucks in a deep breath and dips her fingers into the jar.
I lean forward on the stone, my chest pressing against the smooth rock, my face resting on my hands. And I close my eyes and almost moan when her gentle hands begin massaging the oil into my horns.
It’s not as tame an act as I let on. My horns are twisted and hard like bone, but just picturing her hands as they slide around the curve of them turns me on a little.
It’s a lot like a handjob, actually.
“They’re hot,” she whispers.
“Mmmm.”
“How come they’re hot?”
“I’m made of fire,” I mumble.
“What?”
“Pie?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I enjoy it, at least?”
“Sorr-ree. Jeez.”
I pick up my head and look her in the eye. “I know it’s weird and you’re uncomfortable, but I don’t care. It feels good and I want to enjoy it. It’s been a long time. And I’ve never had a woman in here with me. This is… quite nice.”
She frowns a little, but nods. “OK. I’ll shut up.”
I feel a little bad for being so blunt. And now I can’t enjoy it because I feel bad. “Fuck it. If you need to talk your way through it, then fine. Talk. It will still feel good.”
“Never mind,” she says. “We both want to get the maximum benefit out of this, right?”
I put my head back down without answering her and she resumes her massage.
Maybe this is just a transaction for her, but that’s not how it is for me.
I am starting to enjoy Pie Vita and the debt is a reassurance to me.
I don’t know how Grant got out of his debt and got his youthful body back, but Pie isn’t anything like Grant.
There is no way she will break this curse and that means I could get stuck here with her forever.