Elven Legacy

Chapter 15

Dharkan

It was around mid-afternoon and the Frolicky Fox was still quiet as a funeral. Dharkan sat on an uncomfortable stool and slouched against the worn and striated oak wood of the bar counter.

The young barmaid, Odelie, had strawberry blonde hair and green eyes, and her baby face was offset by her generous breasts, currently tightly laced in a black corset. She was one of the newest of Alexa's girls. Odelie was in training – not yet entertaining the . . . gentlemen.

"How old are you again?" Dharkan asked her, yawning. He'd just gotten up.

Same old, same old.

He'd had too much to drink, stayed up late talking with Alexa and some of the older girls, then, finally, he'd gone to bed in his tiny, makeshift room in the attic. Woken up just now with a hazy mind, too lazy to comb his messy, long-ish black hair – too lazy, also, to do anything about a beard that was getting out of control.

Instead, he'd slipped in black pants, leather boots and belt, a loose-collared white shirt, and he'd drifted downstairs like the walking dead. On his way to the bar, he'd added a few logs into the hearth and stoked it, since it was getting cold in the room. The windows were all shut against a cloudy day, rain spattering the new glass panes he'd recently installed.

Summers didn't last long in Fellera. Two months. Maybe two months and a half, if they were lucky. And it was already over. They were in for about eight to nine months of shittiness, now. Varying from cold-ish, to plain cold, to really fucking freezing.

He shivered, then shook it off as Odelie walked over to his end of the bar counter, her heels clicking the floor. She leaned forward, white-skinned cleavage on full display, and he looked because, well, it was hard not to. Then, he looked back up, into her eyes.

"I'm fifteen," she said.

"Of course you are," he replied. He would have to talk to Alexa again about that. He didn't like that she hired such young girls.

Or, wait a second. Did we already talk about it last night?

Seemed familiar. He picked at his drunken memories. Yeah . . . and then Alexa had said something about it being better here than out there on the street. For girls like Odelie, apparently, this was the safest place in all the south-east quarter.

Well, she did have a point. At least for the safety part. Dharkan wasn't just the maintenance guy. He was also the muscle. There was a clear set of rules for clients to follow and respect. But some of them, in the heat of the moment, let their dick do the thinking and incidents happened.

Dharkan had installed a system of discreet silk ropes in each room, running from beside the beds and along the baseboards, each one attached to a different little copper bell. The set of bells were hitched on the wall in the corner of the common room that was closest to the staircase. Alexa and Dharkan often hung out at that table, to be alerted right away if a girl needed their intervention. When they weren't available, another one of the security guys took a turn.

"How old are you, anyway?" Odelie asked him.

He smiled. "Twenty-nine. Not old enough to be your father, but close."

She frowned as she studied his face. "You look older."

"It's the alcohol," he told her. "Not good for the skin."

"I think it's the beard," she argued.

Dharkan rubbed at his beard, shrugging. "Whatever you say, sweetheart."