Skyrun

Chapter 38; Not like other pirates.

In the end, the tavern keeper gave them each a room for the night, as well as servants to attend to their injuries.

The rooms were located upstairs amidst the raucous chaos that was the tavern, and though Liam assumed that the floors were thick enough, he could still hear most of the commotion going on below.

Mainly the bets that were now being settled.

Taking a few steps into what was to be his own room, Liam sank gratefully into a chair located by a window no larger than his head and only nodded in a brief reply when Valentine poked her head in and informed him that she'd just be down the hall and she'd deck him if he so much as disturbed her nap.

In truth, he did not have the energy to bother her; his chest and face ached with oncoming bruises that he was certain would be black and blue tomorrow, and his knuckles still bled from the results of a few poorly thrown punches.

Odd, since he assumed he would have gotten used to punching people by now.

Nevertheless, all he really wanted was a hot bath and a chance to forget about the entire matter. Yet before he could do either of those things, the door to his room swung open once more and in walked the girl from before, her face lowered almost sheepishly, a bowl of water and a rag in one hand.

"Are you here to tend to my wounds?" Liam asked.

"Well, I can-- unless you'd rather bleed out, that is."

"Not likely. That sort of thing tends to take all the fun out of life. Dying, I mean."

With a small flutter of her lips, the girl smiled with a grin as warm as the rising sun and, for whatever reason, the sight made Liam's heart jump, his head going light for a brief moment.

That, or it was simply the blood-loss.

Moving closer, the girl knelt next to his chair and dipped her cloth in the bowl of water, her hands going to his chest before she stopped suddenly, hovering just short of actually touching him. "May I?" she asked.

With a start, Liam realized what she meant and quickly unbuttoned his shirt, exposing the wounds beneath, looking for all the world like gaping red mouths seared into his flesh, each of them burning like fire as the girl pressed the cloth to them.

Needless to say, it was a gruesome sight in and of itself and being nearly shirtless before a pretty girl made it no better seeing as he had not had very many pleasant experiences with such matters.

For a moment, if only to distract himself from the discomfort, Liam's mind drifted to the day he and Phillip had been at the airship docks, sweating from the work and heat while a group of girls had laughed at Liam himself, giving him more of a confidence issue than he would have liked to admit.

Still, he had been working on Valentine's ship for months now, his muscles toning, his skin no longer as pale as it had once been, but rather a sun-kissed tan that he grew to rather like the look of.

Looking at the girl's face now, Liam wondered if she too would laugh at him or if she would simply judge him silently. Yet before he could dwell on which was worse, she spoke again, her voice light and friendly.

"I wanted to thank you for saving me. Granted, I could have done it myself, but it's quite a bit of work and it's nice to have someone else do it every once in awhile."

Gaping at her, Liam felt his brows nearly raise to his hairline and in that beat of stunned silence, he simply watched her; the golden curls coiling about her rosy cheeks, the petite nose that held a crook to it as though it had been broken more than once, the light scar above her perfectly shaped brows... Everything about her spoke the tale of simply a pretty girl who spent her days curled next to the fire, a book in hand. Yet when one looked closer, one could see that, indeed, she was a fighter. And, judging from the scars that criss-crossed her knuckles, a frequent fighter at that.