“You didn't want to talk,” she threw over her shoulder. He didn’t move. There was no shoulder shrug, no lifting of one eyebrow. Nothing. He glowered at her.

“I never said I wanted to talk.” His upper lip snarled up. “I said I wanted to drink.” There hadn’t really been much of a plan. He was never thinking very far ahead. The first step had been to find the wine. The second step, Skylla, had presented herself inside his hut. So he had a girl but no wine. Lukos would have preferred both. As far as asking her if she wanted to? That hadn’t factored into his thoughts at all. There had been no issue of asking because it was simply going to happen and he’d not even thought of what she might make of the fact. His entire thought process was on his own wants and hers were nowhere to be seen. Whores didn’t make demands. Slaves didn’t make demands. Lukos hadn’t had to deal with this sort of issue before.

Skylla drove that point home to him, as though able to read thoughts. “I'm not one of the ship slaves and I'm certainly not a port whore. Don't add me to your list of sordid stories my father tells at the dinner table. If you wanted to fuck, you could have just asked.” She turned, then, and fled down the gangway. He stood there, watching her streak away across the dock.

Sighing, he put his hands on his hips and looked across the lagoon at the bonfire glittering on the far beach. Shadows danced around it, wine bottles raised. He heard clinking in the crates and crossed quietly over, watching the dim form of Skylla’s back as she rooted around. Leaning on the railing, he observed her, his lust cooling a little and his reason returning. But only just. Skylla. The little island brat who made his life miserable. Well she was still doing that but she wasn’t so little anymore and her refusal was confusing at best. If she already wanted to, then what the fuck was the issue?

Then he focused on what she’d said: he’d have to ask. So she did want to. Well. He did have to ask the whores and he knew how to do this, then. She’d said she wasn’t a dock whore, so obviously that meant he didn’t have to check under her skirts first to ensure there weren’t any creepy crawlies or hiding cocks. Not all dockwhore women were female. One had to be careful unless one was into that sort of thing. What Lukos did assume was that he would have to pay her. No one wanted something for nothing.

So he drummed back down the stairs, hit the landing, and continued down the shorter stairs until he came to the hold where the men’s hammocks were still strung up. Near his own, under a floorboard was where he kept his coins. He pried up the board and picked out the pitifully small coin purse, replaced the wood, and walked back up onto the deck.

By now, he could see Skylla walking towards the fields and he smirked. Ha. For all her talk, she wanted him to come. He knew that much. He was beginning to understand her games up until now; why she wouldn’t ever leave him alone. For better or worse, she finally had his attention. All it had taken were curves in the right places.

He reached her once she was already settled in her place. Walking up with his hands behind his back, he presented a less aggressive front than before. A cooler, more businesslike one. “Skylla,” he said after a few seconds pause. “If you meant what you said on the ship, then yes. That’s what I want.”

Her blatant distrust didn’t bother him. He dealt with so many slaves who bit and screamed and clawed and raged that he was immune to being offended by things like that. The only thing that always did make him incredibly wrathful was being spit on. It was his hardstop and guaranteed to get anyone who did it, man, woman, or child, a backhand across the face. One insult for another. Skylla snarked at him that she still hadn’t heard an actual request and he sighed through his nose. But to get what he wanted, he would attempt to practice a little bit of patience.

He eyed the bottle as she took it from her mouth and lowered it. His attention moved back to her face. “What do you have behind your back?” The way she asked it, the wide roundness of her eyes, the frown marring her features; it made him smirk. Well, well. So she could be frightened. Good. He’d done things that would make her skin crawl and he liked the knowledge that she was finally beginning to understand and accept that he was not a little boy or a playmate. He was a man. Or, he thought of himself as one, at least.

When he didn’t answer her, she prompted again, saying his name and not letting go of the question. What was he holding?

“I’ve come to make you a deal,” he said and knelt in the grass, closer to her than he had been but not against her like in the captain’s cabin. Bringing the purse around, he put it in the grass between them. “I want to fuck. How much?” He doubted she’d be able to negotiate the way the dockwhores did - those women who had seen and done too much to be swayed by emotion or attachment. “I’m asking.”

Whatever Skylla thought or didn’t think, Captain Sophos did not take Lukos into his confidence regarding the spending of money or who paid or owed what on the island. Lukos couldn’t read and could barely count. He knew enough to get by but had exactly no formal education. What he had learned came from an ability to snatch at information and puzzle it out. Money was the only math he knew and that he’d picked up fairly quickly. One tended to do that when the alternative was getting whipped for getting swindled by a merchant.

Catos had taken pity on him after a particularly brutal beating when he was around twelve and had spent several days going over the coins, what their values were, and how many bags of flour were worth this and how many fish were worth that. Catos took extra care when Lukos was fourteen to train him on the ways of whores. This many coins will usually get you at least a blowjob, this many would get you half a night, this many would get you a full night.

Slaves sold for this, not for that. Don’t accept less than this for a trade of that, and on and on his education went, limited to merchant sort of negotiations or whores. Aside from the slaves, which was an entirely different set of circumstances, the only women Lukos had ever had any real contact with besides passing conversation, were whores. Whores weren’t after anything but coins in their hands. A couple of gold or copper coins made them pleasant and willing to do just about anything, from play drinking games to having sex in out of the way alleys. What whores didn’t as for was return affection. They took whatever came to them and said not a single word about it unless the man was too rough. He himself had been shoved off before and he’d seen the same half fear that was in Skylla’s eyes now from that painted woman then.

So when Skylla told him she didn’t leave the island, that she didn’t have use for money, and was irritated with him for bartering in this way, Lukos frowned. What did she mean she didn’t want money? All women wanted money. That was the currency. He wanted sex, they took money and that was the end of it. Simple.

“What do you mean you don’t want money?” he said flatly, no longer remotely turned on. It was a matter of principle, now. He wanted her, she would submit.

“I don't want your money,” she looked away. “You want to fuck, but you know what I want?” He shook his head, at a complete and total loss of what she wanted. She was making him feel stupid because he felt like he should know the answer to these simple things. His narrowed eyes never left her face. ”I want a kiss. That is my price.”

He watched her tip the bottle up and take a draft. “A kiss…” he repeated, slowly, as though this was the first time hearing that word. Of course he knew what one as and he’d dropped sloppy ones on whores before but that was in the heat of the moment and without thought. Why was Skylla trying to make this personal? Lukos shifted in the grass to sit down on his ass, thinking this out. All he wanted was to have sex. He didn’t understand why Skylla was being all strange about it.

Lying back in the grass, he pillowed his hands behind his head and looked up at the stars peeking out of the clear night sky. They were completely hidden here on this hillside with its long, waving grasses. He was near enough to her that his shoulder was almost touching her hip, but not quite. Without asking, he reached over and snatched at the wine bottle, bringing it to his own lips now. A kiss. And he could keep his gold? Hmmmm...For some reason, this felt like she was taking more from him than he wanted. But he was curious as to why she wanted a kiss. It wasn’t like she could spend it.

He lay like that a long time, sharing the bottle back and forth with her until it was gone. Then he grabbed the front of her dress and pulled her down, his mouth crushing up to hers. There. She had her kiss...and now that she was this close, he wanted her again and worse than before. “Get on top of me,” he said, still not understanding what it was that she wanted in all this. He was too feral and inexperienced with people or their feelings.

With that kiss, he’d fully expected her to bite him or claw at him. He still didn’t fully grasp that she was not wanting that sort of play time anymore. Up to now, their interactions had been fractious with occasional times of being calm and peaceful. Mostly they bothered each other and fought because their temperaments were similar. But she didn’t bite him. She climbed on top of him and leaned down, nosing him. He leaned harder into the grass, unsure of what she was doing. His black eyes remained open and on hers, blatantly mistrustful of this gesture.

"You don't ever have to pay me for this, but you should ask,” she spoke quietly and slowly and he was only half listening to her. The other half of his attention was on his own hands sliding up her dress. “I told you I'm not a whore, and I'm not a slave-” he snorted. “Now... you said you wanted to fuck.”

And they did, but probably not how she’d imagined it would be. For all that she kept telling him she wasn’t a whore or a slave, and he knew that, he also didn’t see her as what she wanted him to; a person to be gentle with. It never entered into his head that she might not like his roughness and with having been at sea so long, and so over focused on only what he wanted out of this, it was an unromantic sort of tussle with neither of them completely undressed and ending with Lukos sitting up at the end of it, pulling his trousers back up, and ready to head to his hammock, as though things between the two of them hadn’t changed.

He did pause, though, and look at her. “Why did you want me to kiss you?” that was still incredibly confusing.

”Because kissing feels nice.” There was a stretch of silence while she adjusted herself and he did the same. Usually by this point he was leaving the alley or establishment and didn’t need to bother with niceties. But this was an island and he would be seeing her again sooner rather than later, so he felt like he needed to say something...only he couldn’t think of what. She hadn’t acted like the whores did. In fact she’d acted like she was literally just tolerating what was happening...so….more like a slave. So that tracked, he guessed, because she hadn’t let him pay her.

“So... is... is always like that for you?”

“Hm?” her voice drew him back to the present and he looked over at her. He didn’t say anything, not feeling awkward, exactly, but definitely at a loss as to what it was she was now wanting from him.

“Fast and hard and...”

He almost asked if she would have rathered he make her cry. Her father very much liked it when he made the ‘strong girls’ break. Those were part of the stories she would have heard around the dinner table. So he didn’t ask her if that’s what she wanted because she already told him not to treat her like that. Well, he hadn’t. She wasn’t weeping into the grass, was she?

“It…” he finally said and looked away. Lukos squinted back at her, tilting his head again. “Why?” he finally asked instead, feeling like whatever answer he gave her was only going to compound something in her mind. Maybe she was laughing at him. The thought that she might find him amusing or possibly a joke made something black and dangerous stir in his chest. He didn’t like being laughed at.