Iris reached the door of the great bedroom and then stopped in mid motion. She stilled her beating heart, forced herself to breathe normally, then undid the robe and threw it, belt and all, behind her onto the floor. The purple heap lay crumpled where it fell and she strode with a bold and confident step into the larger space. Her feet slapped the stone floor as she rushed to the front.

She ignored the orc bodyguards, except to point them to disappear out of view. She opened the door wide as if she were not completely nude. The stains of mingled lust trickled down her firm thighs, and she wore the most professional lying smile that she could.

She raised her chin to bare the silver collar, “Room service isn’t due for a few more hours!” She said and put her hand on the door frame so that she was blocking their way in. Their eyes popped at the naked beauty slick with sweat and desire, her hair tumbled free around her, but Iris tried to conceal nothing. “Master isn’t even slightly tired enough for dessert yet. Come back tonight and bring what I’ve asked for him to have, then.” She made her smile arrogant, even taunting. “Let a professional work uninterrupted for a while, and maybe you’ll get a fantastic tip. Or I will, at least. Tell the downstairs not to worry about the other things though, I’ll send the bodyguards out to fetch them instead, he likes that stuff from a special shop...” She laughed as if she’d made a big joke and nodded urgently to them.

They laughed as she did, and backed away to let her close the door, her heart leaping into her throat, Iris stepped back, and closed the door, then secured each latch to be sure.

The chains and rods slid into place, and she turned around. Xagen and Xagin looked her up and down with absolute indifference. ‘Clearly I’m not their type.’ She noted abstractly and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “That buys us time. When Master Gottfried can fight at full strength again, I’m sending you out. They’ll be watching I’m sure, do you think they’ll mind the service entrance?”

The two orcs traded glances and looked at Iris with new respect.

“I was a person of note once, you know, an Abacleon noble, we had to think about these kinds of things.” She all but hissed the words out and if it got to them, she couldn’t tell.

“No. No reason to. One door to be opened. The other, just a hindrance.” Xagin said to her, thus adding more words in a few seconds than in all the time combined before the present.

“I agree. Go out in public when I send you out, then circle around and come back up the service entrance, have the guard there go for help, once they’re committed and inside it will be too late.” Iris gushed out her improvisation and the orcs nodded in approval.

“Once in, hide in his bedroom, the three of you can ambush them, there are about a dozen, dressed in servants' clothes that let them move about the hotel, nobody notices servants, but they’re a little bulky, some armor underneath, short weapons, knives, things they can hide and probably some other long hidden weapons.” Iris told them what she saw, and then looked toward the door where Gottfried lay.

“If that’s all…” She said, and there were no objections, and so she returned to Gottfried’s room.

He lay limp as a corpse on the bed, but asked her, looking up and down the exposed flesh of his lover, “Why… exactly did you go naked?”

Iris answered swiftly as she padded over to him, slower, with a steady rolling of her hips and a wicked gleam in her eye. “Because, people are easier to control when you catch them off guard. Plus, they know I’m a whore, so of course with all the… evidence before their eyes between my thighs, they would have no doubt about what happened. It made an easy cover. They might have believed me even if I wore a robe, but that wouldn’t have caught them off guard. Unsettled minds are easy to control.” She said, and leaned over him, she stroked his stubbly beard.

“I wonder how much of this you’ll remember after the last of that stuff wears off. A lot of people… they go to sleep after, then wake up, they don’t remember more than a blur.” Iris said and got on top of the dressed and armored man.

“Iris…” Gottfried said and put his mailed hands on her back, her hair tumbled free to either side, allowing him to stroke the sleek contours of her lower back.

“Don’t… I want to pretend for a little while, I spend all my time on deception, let me deceive myself for a little while.” Iris whispered and began to nuzzle his face, her entire body lay over his.

“Iris… I meant. It.” Gottfried said.

“I know. Let me pretend it will stay that way, my cohort, when you’re yourself again, after a good night’s sleep and when you’re safe.” She replied to him, and kissed the dark fuzz of his cheek, her tender, soft lips pressed into flesh of his own that was surprisingly tender to the touch beneath fine dark hairs which, fully grown out, might have been very attractive.

“Did you enjoy the Xanadu?” She asked, “Were they pleasing to you…?” She asked, and he, after silence, answered.

“It confirmed one thing for me.” He said, and he held his arms around her, his forearms bent at the elbows on her side, his fingers curled into her upper back. He never hated his armor in his life until that moment, when it came between his body and her own. “That whatever it is we’re doing… no other pleasure can replace it.”

“So you enjoyed it, then.” She asked archly, and he blushed.

“Going was… not my idea.” He said somewhat defensively.

“Is this?” She asked, taking his hand and placing it over her heart, and then shook her head. “No, don’t answer that.”

“Isn’t there something I can give to you… won’t you accept anything from me…?” Gottfried asked, his hands, unable to move with their customary quickness, slowly drifted through the sea of black hair that cascaded around his lover until he found her head and touched it as softly as he could.

“The happiest days of my life… you can give me that, and if it stops here, then you’ve already done it. When they stop on some other tomorrow, you’ve already done it.” She said, and covered his mouth with a kiss.

Privately however, as their tongues explored one another, she could feel her ancestors crying out at her, ‘Traitor! Betrayer! What about your family?! What about your city?! What about your people!’ And as she felt the curses and scorn of ghosts plying at her conscience, she all but mocked them. ‘You can’t betray, then be angry at betrayal.’ She cursed the dead with her accusation, ‘This is just a consequence.’

She sought pleasure in his touch, and lay with him as he tried to bring her to blissful climax over and over again, with fingers, with his mouth, no part of her body was spared his slow and deliberate attention, and gradually his body’s strength began to return.

It was not until she felt his hands go on their own to his pants, and felt the head of his shaft at her sex again that she knew, “You’re recovered…?”

He grinned, then grabbed her at her hips and began to rut in the most primitive of dances, she accepted his answer with a rocking undulation and steady moans of her own, her hands pressing down on the armor over his body, the danger imminent and growing larger on the horizon only made their copulation more urgent, as if it could stave off death itself by way of the act which could create life… until he drained himself in his lover again.

“Now... “ She said after squeezing herself around his manhood to take everything his desire offered to her, “We do the next part.”

She and Gottfried removed themselves from the bed, he buckled his belt after raising his pants again, then they quickly improvised a sleeping body beneath the bed by using long pillows and covering them with the blanket and sheets.

Iris then went out and informed Xagen and Xagin that it was time to act, and they left the room.

She rushed to the service entrance faster than she needed to, scurrying there on nervous feet before unlatching it. ‘We don’t have long… no, not long… minutes only.’ Her heart raced, her mind raced, the orc twins rushed through the door, and again Iris secured it as it had been.

The two towering orcs looked down at the little naked human female, gave her a quiet and respectful nod, then put her at their backs when they walked into Gottfried’s room to lay their counter ambush.

Iris bit and chewed on her lower lip, her hands wrang, or opened and closed into tense, uncertain fists. ‘What if it goes wrong? What if there are more, what if they’re better equipped than I thought? What if I made a mistake?’

Then she was out of time, the knock came to the door for the third time that night.