Page 78 of The Unweaver

“Right-o,” Anita said. “You know, I never understood the phrase ‘losing your virginity.’ I ain’t lost shit. I know exactly where it went. Sold to the highest bidder. Nothing misplaced about it. He was a racist old codger who couldn’t get it up lesta blood mage was doing the heavy lifting for him. Funny how it was always the most bigoted toffs waiting in a long line for me. One white toff even paid me to whip him while he calledmemaster.” She gave a wistful sigh. “I miss it sometimes.”

They barreled into a wealthy SoHo shopping district. Cora had been there once when the leaves still clung to the bowering plane trees. This time she wasn’t scurrying through sewers in a filthy cloak but driven in a luxurious Bugatti by a retired courtesan.

“I miss it even more after this recent dry spell,” Anita said. “I ain’t gotten laid indays. How about you?”

“Er, I dunno. Six, or seven…”

“Weeks?” Anita’s brows shot up. “Months?”

Cora swallowed. “Years.”

Nate was a moth-eaten memory now. She hardly remembered what he looked like, only his earnest fumbling and sloppy kisses in the dark. She’d found his affection stifling. Which had been a major improvement given her less than romantic history.

Cora had known how Nate would die in the war and it had changed nothing. The foolish human had laughed at her warning and gone off to get himself killed. Not in the glory of battle, but in the trenches with typhoid. His dreams of valor died in the mud along with him.

In the years that followed, Cora had retreated into the safety of solitude. Sacrificing pleasure for sameness after deeming it not worth the risk.

“Years?” Anita stared at her. And not at the road. “You taking the piss?”

They nearly smashed into a mailbox. Cora screamed and Anita veered to the side at the last second, the wheels skidding.

“Blessed Mary,why?You’re a pretty bird. Was it because of the war? The ban on jimmy hats? Goddamn, there’s less extremeways of avoiding babies and crotch rot than seven years of bloody celibacy.”

“It’s not that.” Cora wished they’d crashed into that mailbox if only to avoid this conversation. “I never enjoyed sex. It… usually wasn’t my choice.”

Anita grabbed her hand, and Cora felt her blood stir where their hands touched. Sympathy brimmed in the Sanguimancer’s eyes. “I get it.”

Cora withdrew her hand and glanced out the window. Even with Nate she’d never been the initiator. His eager persistence had worn her down until sleeping with him seemed the less tiresome option. She had laid there with the bewildering discomfort of a body laboring away on top of and inside of her.

That first time, Nate had tried to make her climax. Grinding her clit under his thumb like he was sanding down a table, he’d asked, “Are you close?”

Grimacing, she’d tried to wriggle away, which he mistook as passionate encouragement. Did she lie to make it end sooner? Or be honest and possibly prevent future victims of this crime against clitorises?

She’d removed his hand. “No. Thanks.”

To both their relief, he hadn’t bothered again.

Thirty years old, and Cora had never felt pleasure from sex. Felix had seen to that. The reality she’d long resigned herself to was all the more frustrating given how close she’d come from that dream—that dream—last night. Nearly realized pleasure was worse than none at all.

There was a certain emancipation in spinsterhood, though. No man called the shots in her life. Well, until recently.

“Soon as we get you new rags, love, we gotta get you laid. Hell, you can borrow one of my two blokes. I could spare Lenny. He’s prettier when he don’t talk, and even prettier when he’s face down in your lap. Mmmmm.” Anita gave a throaty laugh.

Cora couldn’t imagine dating one man, let alone two. “Do your blokes know about each other?”

Anita shot her a look. “I’m sleeping with them at the same time.”

“Oh.” Then, “Oh.”

“Unless there’s a fella you already got your cap set on, eh?” Anita said with salacious curiosity. “Say, what is going on with you and Mal?”

“Nothing.”

Anita smacked her siren red lips. “Uh huh.”

“Nothing. Temporary cohabitation. Mutual animosity. Decent cook, though. In any case, Bane’s a cold-hearted bastard.”

“I used to think so, too. He don’t suffer fools lightly. But Mal? He don’t speak with his words. You gotta listen to what he’s doing.”

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